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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, This Is the End , by Stella Benson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: This Is the End 
+
+Author: Stella Benson
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2004  [eBook #11324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS IS THE END ***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THIS IS THE END
+
+BY STELLA BENSON
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This is the end, for the moment, of all my thinking, this is my
+unfinal conclusion. There is no reason in tangible things, and no
+system in the ordinary ways of the world. Hands were made to grope,
+and feet to stumble, and the only things you may count on are the
+unaccountable things. System is a fairy and a dream, you never find
+system where or when you expect it. There are no reasons except
+reasons you and I don't know.
+
+I should not be really surprised if the policeman across the way grew
+wings, or if the deep sea rose and washed out the chaos of the land. I
+should not raise my eyebrows if the daily press became the Little Sunbeam
+of the Home, or if Cabinet Ministers struck for a decrease of wages. I
+feel no security in facts, precedent seems no protection to me. The
+wisdom you can find in an Encyclopedia, or in Selfridge's Information
+Bureau, seems to me just a transitory adaptation to quicksand
+circumstances.
+
+But if the things which I know in spite of my education were false, if
+the eyes of the sea forgot their secret, or if the accent of the steep
+woods became vulgar, if the fairy adventures that happen in my heart fell
+flat, if the good friends my eyes have never seen failed me,--then indeed
+should I know emptiness, and an astonishment that would kill.
+
+I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is
+not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I
+cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.
+
+She was a person who took nothing in the world for granted, but as she
+had only a slight connection with the world, that is not saying very
+much. Her answer to everything was "Why?" The fundamental facts that you
+and I accept from our youth upwards, like Be Good and You Will Be Happy,
+or Change Your Boots When You Come In Out Of The Wet, or Respect Your
+Elders, or Love Your Neighbour, or Never Cross Your Legs Above The Knee,
+did not impress Jay.
+
+I never knew her as a baby, but I am sure she must have been born a
+propounder of questions, and a smiler at the answers she received. I
+daresay she used to ask questions--without result--long before she could
+talk, but I am quite sure she was not embittered by the lack of result.
+Nothing ever embittered Jay, not even her own pessimism. There is a
+finality about bitterness, and Jay was never final. Her last word was
+always on a questioning note. Her mind was always open, waiting for more.
+"Oh no," she would tell her pillow at night, "there must be a better
+answer than that ..."
+
+Perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that she had quarrelled with her
+Family, and run away from home. Her Family knew neither what she was
+doing nor where she was doing it. Families are incurably conceited, and
+this one supposed that, having broken away from it, Jay was going to
+the bad. On the contrary, she was a 'bus-conductor, but I only tell you
+this in confidence. I repeat the Family did not know it, and does not
+know it yet.
+
+The Family sometimes said that Jay was an idealist, but it did not really
+think so. The Family sometimes said that she was rather mad, but it did
+not know how mad she was, or it would have sent her away to live in a
+doctor's establishment at Margate. It never realised that it had only
+come in contact with about one-fifth of its young relation, and that the
+other four-fifths were shut away from it. Shut away in a shining bubble
+world with only room in it for one--for One, and a shining bubble Story.
+
+I do not know how universal an experience a Secret Story and a Secret
+Friend may be. Perhaps this wonder is a commonplace to you, only you are
+more reticent about it than Jay or I. But to me, even after twenty years'
+intimacy with what I can only describe as a supplementary life that I
+cannot describe, it still seems so very wonderful that I cannot believe I
+share it with every man and woman in the street.
+
+The great advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you
+cannot put it into print. So I can only show you the initial letter,
+and you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic. Or
+you may not.
+
+Just this, that a bubble world can contain a round and russet horizon of
+high woods which you can attain, and from the horizon a long view of an
+unending sea. You can run down across the dappled fields, you can run
+down into the cove and stroke the sea and hear the intimate minor singing
+of it. And when you feel as strong as the morning, you can shout and run
+against the wind, against the flying sand that never blows above your
+knees. And when you feel as tired as the night, you can climb slowly up
+the cliff path and go into the House, the House you know much better than
+any house your ordinary eyes have seen, and there you will find your
+Secret Friends. The best part about Secret Friends is that they will
+never weary you by knowing you. You share their House, your passing hand
+helps to polish the base of that wooden figure that ends the banisters,
+you know the childish delight of that wide short chimney in the big
+turret room, a chimney so wide and so short that you can stand inside the
+great crooked fireplace and whisper to the birds that look down from the
+edge of the chimney only a yard or two above you. You know how comfy
+those big beds are, you sit at the long clothless table in the brown
+dining-room. With all these things you are intimate, and yet you pass
+through the place as a ghost, your bubble enchantment encloses you, your
+Secret Friends have no knowledge of you, their story runs without you.
+Your unnecessary identity is tactfully ignored, and you know the heaven
+of being dispassionate and detached among things you love.
+
+All these things can a bubble world contain. You have to get inside
+things to find out how limitless they are. And I think if you don't
+believe it all, it is none the less true for that, because in that case
+you are the sort of person who believes a thing less the truer it is.
+
+If Jay's Family did not know she was a 'bus-conductor, and did not know
+she was a story-possessor, what did it know about her? It knew she
+disliked the smell of bananas, and that she had not taken advantage of an
+expensive education, and that she was Stock Size (Small Ladies'), and
+that she was christened Jane Elizabeth, and that she took after her
+father to an excessive extent, and that she was rather too apt to swallow
+this Socialist nonsense. As Families go, it was fairly well informed
+about her.
+
+The Family was a rather promiscuous one. It had more tortuous
+relationships than most families have, although there were only four in
+it, not counting Mr. Russell.
+
+I might as well introduce you to the Family before I settle down to the
+story. From careful study of the press reviews I gather that a story is
+considered a necessary thing in a novel, so this time I am going to try
+and include one.
+
+You may, if you please, meet the Family after breakfast at Mr. Russell's
+house in Kensington, about three months after Jay had run away. There
+were four people in the room. They were Cousin Gustus, Mrs. Gustus, Kew,
+and Mr. Russell.
+
+It behoves me to try and tell you very simply about Mrs. Gustus,
+because she prided herself on simplicity. Spelt with a capital S, it
+constituted her Deity; her heaven was a severe and shadowless
+eternity, and plain words were the flowers that grew in her Elysian
+fields. She had simplified her life and her looks. Even her smile was
+shorn of all accessories like dimples or twinkles. Her hair, which
+was not abundant, was the colour of corn, straight and shining. Her
+eyes were a cold dark grey.
+
+Now to be simple is all very well, but turn it into an active verb and
+you spoil the whole idea. To simplify seems forced, and I think Mrs.
+Gustus struck harder on the note of simplification than that of
+simplicity. I should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin
+Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is
+just possible that he occasionally wished that she would dress herself in
+a more human way--patronise in winter the humble Viyella stripe, for
+instance, or in summer the flippant sprig. But a large proportion of Mrs.
+Gustus's faith was founded on simple strong colours in wide expanses,
+introduced, as it were, one to another by judicious black. Anybody but
+Mrs. Gustus would have been drowned in her clothes. But she was conceived
+on a generous scale, she was almost gorgeous, she barely missed
+exaggeration. In her manner I think she did not miss it. She had
+therefore the gift of coping with colour. It remains for me to add that
+her age was five-and-forty, and that she was a novelist. The recording
+angel had probably noted the fact of her novelism among her virtues, but
+she had an imperceptible earthly public. She wrote laborious books, full
+of short peevish sentences, of such very pure construction that they were
+extremely difficult to understand. She wore spectacles with aggressive
+tortoise-shell rims. She said, "I am short-sighted. I am obliged to wear
+spectacles. Why should I try to conceal the fact? I will not have a pair
+of rimless ghosts haunting my face. I will wear spectacles without
+shame." But the real truth was that the tortoise-shell rims were more
+becoming to her. Mrs. Gustus was known to her husband's family as
+Anonyma. The origin of this habit was an old joke, and I have forgotten
+the point of it.
+
+Cousin Gustus was second cousin once removed to Kew and Kew's sister
+Jay, and had kindly brought them up from childhood. He was now at the
+further end of the sixties, and embittered by many things: an unsuitable
+marriage, the approach of the psalmist's age-limit, incurably modern
+surroundings, an internal complaint, and a haunting wish to relieve the
+Government of the management of the War. These drawbacks were to a
+certain extent linked, they accounted for each other. The complaint
+hindered him from offering his services as Secretary of State; it made
+of him a slave, so he could not pretend to be a master. He cherished his
+slavery, for it happened to be painless, and supplied him with a certain
+dignity which would otherwise have been difficult to secure. During the
+summer the complaint hibernated, and ceased to interest either doctors
+or relations, which was naturally hard to bear. To these trials you may
+add the disgraceful behaviour of his young cousin Jay, and admit that
+Cousin Gustus had every excuse for encouraging pessimism of the most
+pronounced type.
+
+Jay's brother Kew was twenty-five, and from this it follows that he had
+already drunk the surprising beverage of War. His military history
+included a little splinter of hate in the left shoulder, followed by a
+depressing period almost entirely spent in the society of medical boards,
+three months of light duty consisting of weary instruction of fools in an
+East coast town, and now an interval of leave at the end of which the
+battalion to which he had lately been attached hoped to go to France. In
+one way it was a pity he ever joined the Army, for khaki clashed badly
+with most of Mrs. Gustus's colour theories. But he had never noticed
+that: his eye and his ear and his mind were all equally slow to
+appreciate clashings of any kind. He was rather aloof from comparison and
+criticism, but not on principle. He had no principles--at least no
+original ones, just the ordinary stuffy old principles of decency and all
+that. He never turned his eyes inward, as far as the passer-by could see;
+he lived a breezy life outside himself. He never tried to make a fine Kew
+of himself; he never propounded riddles to his Creator, which is the way
+most of us make our reputations.
+
+Mr. Russell, the host and adopted member of the Family, was fifty-two. He
+did not know Jay, having only lately been culled by Mrs. Gustus--that
+assiduous collector--and placed in the bosom of the Family. She had found
+him blossoming unloved in the wilderness of a War Work Committee. He was
+well informed, yet a good listener; perhaps he possessed both these
+virtues to excess. At any rate Mrs. Gustus had decided that he was worthy
+of Family friendship, and, being naturally extravagant, she conferred it
+upon him with both hands. Mr. Russell was married to a woman who had not
+properly realised the fact that she was Mrs. Russell. She spent her life
+in distant lands, helping the world to become better. At present she was
+understood to be propagating peace in the United States, and was never
+mentioned by or to her husband. My first impression of Mr. Russell was
+that he was rather fat, but I never could trace this impression to its
+origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half,
+and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired
+in a pronounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed
+peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity
+skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his
+dog. He often talked to his dog; he told it every speakable thought that
+he had. This was his only bad habit. Occasionally his dog was heard to
+reply in a small curious voice proceeding also from Mr. Russell.
+
+These four people looked out at Kensington Gardens, which were rejoicing
+in the very babyhood of the year. The naked trees were like pillars in
+the mist, the grass was grey and whitened to the distance, the world had
+mislaid its horizon, and one's eye slid up without check between the
+trees to where the last word of a daylight moon whispered in the sky.
+
+"I glory in a view that dispenses with colour," said Mrs. Gustus
+severely. She always spoke as though she were sure of the whole of what
+she intended to say. When she did hesitate, it only meant that she was
+seeking for the simplest word, and she would cap her pause with a
+monosyllable as curt as an explosion.
+
+But glory is the right word, I think, for London in some moods. Do you
+know the feeling of a heart beating too high, when you see the great
+cliffs of London under rain or vague sunshine, or rising out of yellow
+air? Do you ever want, as I do, to stand with arms out against the
+London wind, and shout your own unmade poetry on the top of a 'bus?
+With this sort of grotesque glorying does London inspire me, so that I
+spend whole days together feeling that the essential _I_ is too big for
+what encloses it.
+
+Anonyma never felt like this. She often spoke the right word, but she
+nearly always spoke it coldly.
+
+"This morning," said Kew, "when I looked out, I felt the futility of bed,
+so I made an assignation with the Hound when I met it trooping along with
+Russ in single file to the bathroom. Why does your Hound always accompany
+you there, Russ? Dogs must think us awfully irrational beasts, and
+yet--does that Hound really think you could elope for ever and be no more
+seen, with nothing on but pyjamas and a towel? I suppose he thinks 'You
+can't be too careful.' It makes one humble to live with a dog. I always
+blush when I see a dog dreaming, because I'm afraid they give us an
+undignified place in their dreams. Your Hound, Russ, dreams of you
+plunging into the Serpentine after a Canadian Goose, with your topper
+floating behind you, or Anonyma with her tongue hanging out, scratching
+at a little mousehole in Piccadilly. It is humiliating, isn't it? Anyway,
+before breakfast, Russ's Hound and I went and jumped over things in the
+Gardens. The park-keeper mistook us for young lambs."
+
+Russell's Hound was called so by courtesy, in order to lend him a dignity
+which he lacked. He may have been twelve inches high at the shoulder, and
+he thought that he was exactly like a lion, except for a trifling
+difference in size. Dignity is not, of course, incompatible with small
+stature, but I think it was the twinkling gait of Mr. Russell's Hound
+that robbed him of moral weight, and prevented you from attaching great
+importance to his views.
+
+"Young lambs!" exclaimed Mrs. Gustus. "Really, my good Kew, had you
+nothing better to do?"
+
+"Not at that time," replied Kew. "You weren't up." And he sang to drown
+her sigh. Kew was the only person I ever knew who really sang to the tune
+of his moods. He sang Albert Hall sort of music very loudly when he was
+happy, and when he was extremely happy he roared so that his voice broke
+out of tune. When he was silent it was almost always because he was
+asleep, or because some other member of the Family was talking. When, by
+some accident, the whole Family was simultaneously silent, you could not
+help noticing what an oppressively still place London was. The sound of
+Russell's Hound sneezing in the hall was like a bomb.
+
+But at the present moment Kew only sang a few bars of Beethoven in a
+small voice. He was rather sad, because of Jay. He had not realised
+till he came home how very thoroughly Jay had disappeared. He led
+the conversation to Jay. It often happened that Kew led conversations,
+because conversations, like the public, generally follow the loudest
+voice.
+
+"Why so sudden?" asked Kew, apparently of the Round Pond, so loud was his
+voice. "That's what I can't make out. She used to be such a human sort,
+and anybody with half an ear could hear the decisions bubbling about
+under the lid for weeks before they boiled over."
+
+Everybody--even Cousin Gustus--knew that he was talking of Jay. Kew said
+so much that he might be excused for forgetting occasionally what he had
+not said. Besides, he had talked of little else but Jay since he rejoined
+his Family two days before.
+
+"She used to be a good girl," sighed Cousin Gustus. "So few girls
+are good."
+
+Cousin Gustus is an expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends
+are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is
+immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you
+were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and
+died of pneumonia contracted during the flight, you would not surprise
+Cousin Gustus. He is never at a loss for a precedent. The only way you
+could really astonish him would be by living a blameless life without
+adventure, and dying of old age in your bed.
+
+"There were warnings," said Anonyma. "Little disagreements with Gustus."
+
+"She wanted to bring vermin into the house," mourned Cousin Gustus.
+
+Kew suggested: "White mice?"
+
+"Not vermin unattended," Anonyma explained. "She wanted to adopt Brown
+Borough babies. She had been working desultorily in the Brown Borough
+since War broke out."
+
+"That might explain the peculiar and un-Jay-like remark in her letter to
+you--that she would settle in no home except the Perfect Home. I hate
+things in capital letters."
+
+"Why didn't she get married?" grumbled Cousin Gustus. "She was engaged
+for nearly three weeks to young William Morgan, a most respectable young
+man. So few young men--"
+
+"She wrote to me that she couldn't keep up that engagement," said Kew.
+"Not even by looking upon it as War Work. She called him a 'Surface young
+man,' and that again seemed unlike her. She usen't to mind surfaceness.
+The War seems to have turned her upside down. But then, of course, the
+War has turned us all upside down, and in that position you generally get
+a rush of brains to the head. We're all feverish, that's what's the
+matter with us. When I was in hospital I lived for three weeks on the top
+of a high temperature, laughing. I want to laugh now.... It's a damn
+funny world."
+
+"I once knew a man who died of apoplexy while swearing," sniffed
+Cousin Gustus.
+
+"You have been damned unlucky in your friends, Cousin Gustus," said Kew.
+He paused, and then added: "Besides, I hardly ever say Damn without
+saying Un-damn to myself afterwards. It seems a pity to waste a precious
+word on an inadequate cause, and I always retrieve it if I can."
+
+"Before you came down to breakfast this morning, Kew," said Anonyma, "we
+had an idea."
+
+"Only one between you in all that time?" said Kew. "I was half an
+hour late."
+
+"Now, Kew, be an angel and agree with the idea. I've set my heart on it,"
+said Mrs. Gustus.
+
+When Mrs. Gustus talked in a womanly way like this, the change was always
+unmistakable. She was naturally an unnatural talker, and when she
+mentioned such natural things as angels, you knew she was resorting
+deliberately to womanly charm in order to attain her end. There was
+something very cold-blooded about Anonyma's womanly charm.
+
+"Good Lord," said Kew, "I wish angels had never been invented. I never
+am one, only people always tell me to be one. I never get officially
+recognised in heaven. What is the plan?"
+
+"There is Russell's car doing nothing," began Mrs. Gustus.
+
+"Do you mean Christina?" interrupted Kew, shocked at such formality.
+"Don't call her Russell's car, it sounds so cold."
+
+"There is Russell's Christina doing nothing," compromised Anonyma. "And
+petrol isn't so bad as it will be. And it's a beautiful time of year. And
+you are not strong yet, really. And we want Jay back."
+
+"A procession of facts doesn't make a plan," objected Kew.
+
+"It may lead to one, eventually," said Mrs. Gustus. "Oh, Kew, I want to
+go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear
+the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a
+wave of bluebells. I want to forget blood and Belgians and kiss Nature."
+
+"Take a twenty-eight 'bus, and kiss Hampstead Heath," suggested Kew.
+"The Spring has got there all right."
+
+Anonyma, behind the coffee-pot, was jotting down in a notebook the
+salient points in her outburst. She always placed her literary calling
+first. And anyway, I should be rather proud if I could talk like that
+about the Spring without any preparation.
+
+"The idea originally," began Mr. Russell tentatively, "was not only
+formed to allow Mrs. Gustus to enjoy the Spring, but also to make you
+quite strong before you go back to work. And, again, not only that, but
+also to try and trace your sister Jay."
+
+Will you please imagine that continual intercourse with very talkative
+people had made Mr. Russell an adept at vocal compression. He had now
+almost lost the use of his vowels, and if I wrote as he spoke, the effect
+would be like an advertisement for a housemaid during the shortage of
+wood-pulp. I spare you this.
+
+"There are three objections to the plan," said Kew. "First, that
+Anonyma doesn't really want to kiss the Spring; second, that I don't
+really want convalescent treatment; third, that Jay doesn't really want
+to be traced."
+
+When Mrs. Gustus did not know the answer to an objection she left
+it unanswered. This is, of course, the simplest way. She snapped
+her notebook.
+
+"Oh, Kew," she said, "you promised you'd be an angel." The double row of
+semi-detached buttons down her breast trembled with eagerness.
+
+"Angeller and angeller," sighed Kew, "I never committed myself so far."
+
+"I have a clue with which to trace Jay," said Mrs. Gustus. "I had a
+letter from her this morning."
+
+Kew was a satisfactory person to surprise. He is never supercilious.
+
+"You heard from Jay!" he said, in a voice as high as his eyebrows.
+
+The letter which Mrs. Gustus showed to Kew may be quoted here:
+
+"This place has stood since the year twelve something, and its windows
+look down without even the interruption of a sill at the coming and going
+of the tides. It has hardly any garden, and immediately to the right and
+the left of it the green down brims over the top of the cliff like the
+froth of ale over a silver goblet. To-night the tide is low, the sea is
+golden where the shallow waves break upon the sand, and ghostly green in
+the distance. When the tide is high, the sound and the sight of it seem
+to meet and make one thing. The waves press up the cliff then, and fall
+back on each other. Do you know the lines that are written on the face of
+a disappointed wave? To-night the clouds are like castles built on the
+plain of the sea. There is an aeroplane at this moment--dim as a little
+thought--coming between two turrets of cloud. I suppose it is that I can
+hear, but it sounds like the distant singing of the moon. I have come
+here to count up my theories, to count them and pile them up like money,
+in heaps, according to their value. Theories are such beautiful things,
+there must be some use in them. Or perhaps they are like money from a
+distant country, and not in currency here. Yet just as sheer metal, they
+must have some value.... It is wonderful that such happiness should come
+to me, and that it should last. I have the Sea and a Friend; there is
+nothing in the world I lack, and nothing that I regret...."
+
+"What better clue could you want?" asked Mrs. Gustus. "We will take
+Christina round the sea-coast."
+
+"Looking for silver cliffs and a golden sea," sighed Kew.
+
+I don't know if I have mentioned or conveyed to you that Mrs. Gustus was
+a determined woman. At any rate she was, and it would therefore be waste
+of time to describe the gradual defeat of Kew. The final stage was the
+despatch of Kew to call on Nana in the Brown Borough. Jay's letter had
+the Brown Borough postmark, so it had apparently been sent to Nana to
+post. Nana might be described as the Second Clue in the pursuit of Jay.
+She was the Family's only link with Jay. The one drawback of Nana as a
+clue was that she was never to be found. Mrs. Gustus had called six
+times, but had been repulsed on each occasion by a totally dumb front
+door. But then Nana never had liked Anonyma. Nana was simple herself in
+an amateurish, unconscious sort of way, and I expect she disliked
+Anonyma's professional rivalry in the matter of simplicity. But Kew was
+always a favourite.
+
+The 'bus roared up the canyons of the City, and its voice accompanied Kew
+in his tuneful meditations. A 'bus is not really well adapted for
+meditation. On my feet I can stride across unseen miles musing on love,
+in a taxi I can think about to-morrow's dinner, but on a 'bus my thoughts
+will go no further than my eyes can see. So Kew, although he thought he
+was thinking of Jay, was really considering the words in front of him--To
+Stop O'Bus strike Bell at Rear.[Footnote: He must have changed at the
+Bank into a Tilling 'bus.] He deduced from this that it was an Irish
+'bus, and supposed that this accounted for its rather head-long
+behaviour. He spent some moments in imagining the MacBus, child of a
+sterner race, which would run gutturally without skids, and wear a
+different cut of bonnet.
+
+He dismounted into a faint yellow fog diluted with a faint twilight, in
+the Brown Borough. The air was vague, making it not so much an
+impossibility to decipher the features of people approaching as a
+surprise to find it possible. A few rather premature bar row-flares
+adapted Scripture to modern conditions by hiding their light under tin
+substitutes for bushels, in the hope of protecting such valuables as
+cat's meat and bananas from aerial outrage. Kew pranced over prostrate
+children, and curved about the pavement to avoid artificially vivacious
+passers-by, who emerged from the public-houses.
+
+Nana lived in a little alley which was like a fiord of peace running in
+from the shrill storm of the Brown Borough. Here little cottages shrank
+together, passive resisters of the twentieth century. Low crooked windows
+blinked through a mask of dirty creepers. Each little front garden
+contained a shrub, and was guarded by a low railing, although there would
+have been no room for a trespasser in addition to the shrub. Nana's
+house, at the end of the alley, looked along it to the far turmoil of the
+mother-street.
+
+Kew insulted the gate, as usual, by stepping over it, and knocked at the
+door. He held his breath, so that he might more keenly hear the first
+whisperings of the floor upstairs, which would show that Nana was astir.
+
+A gardenful of cats came and told him that his hopes were vain. Cats only
+exist, I think, for the chastening of man. They never come to me except
+to tell me the worst, and to crush me with quiet sarcasm should my
+optimism survive their warning.
+
+But before the cats had finished speaking, there was a most un-Nana-like
+sound of bounding within, and Jay appeared. She threw herself out of the
+darkness of the door on to the twilit Kew.
+
+The cats were ashamed to be seen watching this almost canine display, and
+went away.
+
+"I didn't know you weren't in France," said Jay to Kew.
+
+"I didn't know you weren't in Heaven," said Kew to Jay. "What's all this
+about golden seas and aeroplanes snarling around?"
+
+"Oh, snarling.... That's just what they do," said Jay. "Let's pretend I
+said that."
+
+It seemed as if childhood turned its face to them again after a thousand
+years. These roaring months of War run like a sea between us and our
+peaceful beginnings, so that a catchword flashed across out of our past
+is as beautiful and as incredible as the light in a dream.
+
+When they were little they used to bargain for expressive words. Their
+childhood was full of such hair-splittings as: "If you tell how we said
+Wank-wank to the milkman, you must let me have the old lady who had a
+palpitation and puffocated running after the 'bus."
+
+They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of
+words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of
+overweighting common life with romance. It was perhaps good for them to
+have acquired such a very simple relation by marriage as Anonyma.
+
+"About the sea," said Jay, "I'll tell you later."
+
+"Well, tell me first why you found home so suddenly unbearable. You've
+stood it for eighteen years."
+
+"I've been a child all through those eighteen years. And to a child just
+the fact of grown-upness is so admirable. I wonder why. But under the
+fierce light that beats from the eye of a woman suddenly and violently
+grown old, Cousin Gustus and Anonyma don't--well, Kew, do they?"
+
+The dusk filled the room as water fills a cup, and to look up at the
+light of an outside lamp on the ceiling was like looking up through water
+at the surface. Jay wore a dress of the same colour of the dusk, and her
+round face, faint as a bubble, seemed to float on its background
+unsupported.
+
+"Didn't you think about adopting a baby?" suggested Kew. "That evidently
+put Cousin Gustus's back up."
+
+"I didn't put Cousin Gustus's back up so high as he put mine," answered
+Jay. "Oh, Kew, what are the old that they should check us? What's the use
+of this war of one generation against another? Old people and young
+people reach a deadlock that's as bad as marriage without the possibility
+of divorce. Isn't all forced fidelity wrong?"
+
+"What did you do, tell me, and what are you going to do?"
+
+"Oh well, I felt something like frost in the air, and I couldn't define
+it. Really, it was work waiting to be done. Not work for the poor, but
+work with the poor. At home I talked about work, and Anonyma wrote about
+it, and Cousin Gustus shuddered at it. You were doing it all right, but
+where was I? Three days a week with soldiers' wives. My brow never
+sweated a drop. I thought there must be something better than a
+bird's-eye view of work. So I took a job at a bolster place.... Oh well,
+it doesn't matter now. I earned ten shillings a week, and paid
+half-a-crown for a little basement back. On Saturdays I got my Sunday
+clothes out of pawn, and came to tea with Nana. Do you remember the
+scones and the Welsh Rarebit that Nana used to make? I believe those
+things were worth the terror of the pawnshop. Oh, Kew, those pawnshops!
+Those little secret stalls that put shame into you where none was before.
+The pawn man--why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment
+that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime.
+That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a
+big bright grocers' calendar--the Death of Nelson--and if I could see it
+through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my
+lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches--not fruit jam, you know, but
+raspberry flavour. It wasn't nice, and it used to get fluffy in that air.
+The others sat round and munched and picked their teeth and read Jew
+newspapers. Have you ever noticed that whichever way up you look at a Jew
+newspaper, you always feel as if you could read it better if you were
+standing on your head? My governor was a Jew too. He wasn't bad, but he
+looked wet, and his hair was a horror to me. His voice was tired of
+dealing with fluff--though he didn't deal with it so intimately as we
+did--and it only allowed him to whisper. The forewoman was always cross,
+but always as if she would rather not be so, as if she were being cross
+for a bet, and as if some one were watching her to see she was not kind
+by mistake. She looked terribly ill, because she had worked there for
+three months, which was a record. I stood it five weeks, and then I had a
+hemorrhage--only from the throat, the doctor said. I wanted to go to
+bed, but you can't, because the panel doctors in these parts will not
+come to you. My doctor was half an enormous mile away, and it seemed he
+only existed between seven and nine in the evenings. So I stayed up, so
+as not to get too weak to walk. I went and asked the governor for my
+stamps. I had only five stamps due to me, only five valuable threepences
+had been stopped out of my wages. But I had a silly conviction at that
+time that the Insurance Act was invented to help working people. What an
+absurd idea of mine! I went to the Jew for my card. He said mine was a
+hard case, but I was not entitled to a card; nobody under thirty, he
+said, was allowed by law to have a card. So I said it was only fair to
+tell him I was going to the Factory and Insurance Inspectors about him. I
+told him lots of things, and I was so angry that I cried. He was very
+angry too, and made me feel sick by splashing his wet hair about. He said
+it was unfair for ladies to interfere in things they knew nothing about.
+I said I interfered because I knew nothing about it, but that now I knew.
+I said that ladies and women had exactly the same kind of inside, and it
+was a kind that never thrived on fluff instead of food. I told him how I
+spent my ten shillings. He couldn't interrupt really, because he had no
+voice. Then I fainted, and a friend I have there, called Mrs. Love, came
+in. She had been listening at the door. She was very good to me.
+
+"Then, when I was well again, I found another job, but I shan't tell you
+what it is. As for the Inspectors, I complained, but--what's the use? So
+long as you must put fluff of that pernicious kind into bolsters, just so
+long will you kill the strength and the beauty of women. It looked so
+like a deadlock that it frightened me, and now in this wonderful life I
+lead, my Friend won't let me think of it. A deadlock is a dreadful
+accident, isn't it? because in theory it doesn't exist. I am working for
+a new end now. Isn't it splendid that there is really no Place Called
+Stop? There is always an end beyond the end, always something to love and
+look forward to. Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but
+how delightful!"
+
+"You haven't told me about the sea yet," said Kew.
+
+"Because I don't think you'd believe me. We were always liars, weren't
+we? That's because we're romantic, or if it's not romance, the symptoms
+of the disease are very like. Why can't we get rid of it all as Anonyma
+does? She has no gift except the gift of being able to get rid of
+superfluous romance. She takes that great ease impersonally, her pose
+is, 'It's a gift from Heaven, and an infernal bore.' But I never get
+nearer to joy than I do in this Secret World of mine, and with my
+Secret Friend."
+
+"But what is it? What is he like?"
+
+"I should be guilty of the murder of a secret if I told you. He isn't
+particularly romantic. I have seen him in a poor light; I have watched
+him in a most undignified temper; I have known him when he wanted a
+shave. I don't exist in this World of mine. I am just a column of thin
+air, watching with my soul."
+
+"Then you're really telling lies to Anonyma when you write about it all?
+I'm not reproaching you of course, I only want to get my mind clear."
+
+"I suppose they're lies," assented Jay ruefully, "though it seems
+sacrilege to say so, for I know these things better than I know myself.
+But Truth--or Untruth, what's the use of words like that when miracles
+are in question?"
+
+"Oh, damn this What's the Use Trick," said Kew. "I suppose you
+picked that up in this private Heaven of yours. The whole thing's
+absolutely--My dear little Jay, am I offending you?"
+
+"Yes," said Jay.
+
+Kew sighed.
+
+Chloris sighed too. Chloris had played the thankless part of third in
+this interview. She was Jay's friend, a terrier with a black eye. She
+shared Jay's burning desire to be of use, and, like most embryo
+reformers, she had a poor taste in dress. She wore her tail at an aimless
+angle, without chic; her markings were all lopsided. But her soul was
+ardent, and her life was always directed by some rather inscrutable
+theory or other. As a puppy she had been an inspired optimist, with legs
+like strips of elastic clumsily attached to a winged spirit. Later she
+had adopted a vigorous anarchist policy, and had inaugurated what was
+probably known in her set as the "Bite at Sight Campaign." Cured of this,
+she had become a gentle Socialist, and embraced the belief that all
+property--especially edible property--should be shared. Appetites, she
+argued, were meant to be appeased, and the preservation of game--or
+anything else--in the larder was an offence against the community. Now,
+at the age of five or so, she affected cynicism, pretended temporarily
+that life had left a bitter taste in her mouth, and sighed frequently.
+
+"Kew," said Jay presently, "will you promise not to tell the Family you
+saw me? I don't want it to know about me. After all, theories are driving
+me, and theories don't concern that Family of ours. What's the use of a
+Family? (I'm saying this just to exasperate you.) A Family's just a
+little knot of not necessarily congenial people, with Fate rubbing their
+heads together so as to strike sparks of love. Love--what's the use of
+Love? I'd like to catch that Love and box his ears, making such a fool of
+the world. What's the use?"
+
+"God knows," said Kew. "Cheer up, my friend, I promise I won't tell the
+Family I've seen you, or anything about you." At the same moment he
+remembered the motor tour.
+
+"Promise faithfully?"
+
+"Faithfully."
+
+"It's a lovely word faithful, isn't it?" she said, wriggling in her
+chair. "Yours faithfully is a most beautiful ending to a letter. Why is
+it that faith with a little F is such a perfect thing, and yet Faith,
+grown-up Faith in Church, is so tiring?"
+
+"Perhaps one is overworked and the other isn't," suggested Kew.
+
+As he went out into the darkness the noise of London sprang into his
+ears, and the remote brown room where he had left Jay seemed to become
+divided from him by great distances. The town was like a garden, and he,
+an insect, pressed through its undergrowth. The rare lamps and the stars
+flowered above him.
+
+
+  My yesterday has gone, has gone, and left me tired;
+And now to-morrow comes and beats upon the door;
+So I have built to-day, the day that I desired,
+Lest joy come not again, lest peace return no more,
+Lest comfort come no more.
+
+  So I have built to-day, a proud and perfect day,
+And I have built the towers of cliffs upon the sands.
+The foxgloves and the gorse I planted on my way.
+The thyme, the velvet thyme, grew up beneath my hands,
+Grew pink beneath my hands.
+
+  So I have built to-day, more precious than a dream;
+And I have painted peace upon the sky above;
+And I have made immense and misty seas that seem
+More kind to me than life, more fair to me than love,
+More beautiful than love.
+
+  And I have built a House, a House upon the brink
+Of high and twisted cliffs,--the sea's low singing fills it.
+And there my Secret Friend abides, and there I think
+I'll hide my heart away before to-morrow kills it,
+A cold to-morrow kills it.
+
+  Yes, I have built to-day, a wall against to-morrow,
+So let to-morrow knock, I shall not be afraid,
+For none shall give me death, and none shall give me sorrow,
+And none shall spoil this darling day that I have made.
+No storm shall stir my sea. No night but mine shall shade
+This day that I have made.
+
+
+"We will start on our quest to-morrow," said Anonyma. "To-day I
+must work."
+
+Nobody in Anonyma's circle was ever allowed to forget that she spent
+four hours a week in the service of her country. You would never guess
+how much insight into the souls of the poor, four hours a week can give
+to a person like Anonyma. She had written two books about the Brown
+Borough since the outbreak of War. The provincial Press had been much
+impressed by their vivid picture of slum realities. Anonyma's poor were
+always yearning, yearning to be understood and loved by a ministering
+upper class, yearning for light, for art, for self-expression, for
+novels by high-souled ladies. The atmosphere of Anonyma's fiction was
+thick with yearning.
+
+Anonyma always came home from her Work with what she called
+"word-vignettes" in her notebook. She gave her Family the benefit of
+these during the rest of the week, besides fitting them into her books.
+So that although Cousin Gustus always conscientiously bought a dozen
+copies of each novel as it came out, he really wasted his money, for he
+was obliged to know all his wife's copy by heart before it got into
+print. By speaking each thought as well as writing it, Anonyma rather
+unfairly won a reputation twice over with the same material.
+
+Anonyma produced a vignette now, in order to show how necessary it was
+that she should hurry to her yearning flock.
+
+"I came into the room of one of my sailors' wives last week, and I found
+her with a baby sobbing on her breast, and an empty hearth at her feet. I
+thought of the eternal tragedy of womanhood. I said, 'Will my love help,
+my dear?'"
+
+There was a pause, and Cousin Gustus sighed.
+
+"What did she say?" asked Kew, without expecting an answer from the
+artist. After all, a word-vignette is not intended to have a sequel. It
+is supposed to fall complete with a little splash into your silent
+understanding. I must say Kew was rather tiresome in refusing to be
+content with the splash.
+
+"So few women really understand how to stop a child crying," said Cousin
+Gustus, speaking from bitter and universal experience.
+
+"That's the point," said Kew. "The child had probably swallowed a pin."
+
+It generally breaks my heart to hear a story spoilt, but with Anonyma's
+word-vignettes I did not mind, because they were told as true, and yet
+they did not ring true. I must tell you that Anonyma had married into a
+family of accomplished white liars, and to them the ring of truth was as
+unmistakable as the dinner-bell. Few people could lie successfully to Kew
+or Jay, they knew that art from the inside. White lies are easily
+justified, but almost any lie can be whitewashed. Apart from the mutual
+attitude of Kew and Jay, who possessed something between them that might
+be called good faith, there was hardly any trust included in that family
+relationship. Cousin Gustus distrusted youth. He thought young people
+were always either lying to him or laughing at him, and indeed they often
+were. Only not so often as he thought. He was no prop on which to repose
+confidence, and it was very easy both to tell him lies and not to tell
+him facts.
+
+Mrs. Gustus had no gift of intimacy. She was reserved about everything
+except herself, or what she believed to be herself. The self that she
+shared so generously with others was, however, not founded on fact, but
+modelled on the heroine of all her books. She killed her heroine whenever
+possible--I think she only once married her,--yet still the creature
+remained immortal in Mrs. Gustus's public personality. She concealed or
+transformed everything that did not seem artistic. Her notebook was a
+tangle of self-deceptions. The rest of the Family knew this. They never
+pretended to believe her.
+
+Kew and Jay were skilled romancers, fact was clay in their hands.
+Nobody had ever taught them such a dull lesson as exact truthfulness.
+If they built the bare bones of their structures fairly accurately,
+they placed the whole in an artificial light, altering in some
+effective way the spirit of the facts. Education had impressed the
+importance of technical truthfulness on Kew. But he was a quick
+talker, and in order to keep him in line with his tongue, nature had
+made him quick of wit, quick in argument, and unconsciously quick in
+making and seeing loopholes for escape.
+
+He was at present perfectly comfortable in his anomalous position
+regarding a search round the sea-coast for a Jay he knew to be in the
+Brown Borough.
+
+"If I am going to work, I must go," said Anonyma. "Russ and I will go
+together as far as the Underground."
+
+She looked at herself in the glass. The scarlet bird in her hat had an
+arresting expression. As she was putting on her gloves she said, "I'm
+sorry, Kew, about your disappointment, not finding Nana at home last
+night. But I told you so."
+
+She had no fear of this much-shunned phrase.
+
+"Never mind," said Kew mildly. "We'll put Christina on the track
+to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Russell said a polite Good-bye to his Hound, and accompanied
+his friend Anonyma to the Underground. That was a fateful little
+journey for him.
+
+As he turned from Anonyma's side at the bookstall, he noticed a 'bus
+positively beckoning to him. It had a lady conductor, and she was poised
+expectantly, one hand on the bell and the other beckoning to Mr. Russell.
+His nature was docile, and the 'bus was bound for Chancery Lane, his
+destination. He mounted the 'bus.
+
+I need hardly tell you that a 'bus that makes deliberate advances to the
+public is the rarest sight in London. The self-respecting 'bus looks upon
+the public as dust beneath its tyres. Even a Brigadier-General with red
+tabs, on his way to Whitehall, looks pathetically humble waggling his
+cane at a 'bus. All 'bus-drivers have a kingly look; it comes from their
+proud position. The rest of the world is only worthy to communicate with
+that noble race by means of nods and becks and wreathed smiles.
+
+"Chancery Lane, please," said Mr. Russell. "But why did you stop
+specially for me?"
+
+"I thought your wife hailed me, sir," lied the 'bus-conductor.
+
+Any allusion to his wife mildly annoyed Mr. Russell. "Not my wife," he
+said. "Merely a friend."
+
+"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, sir," said the 'bus-conductor, and underlined
+the "beg" with the ting of her ticket-puncher. She was rather a darling
+'bus-conductor, because she was also Jay. She had a short, though not a
+fat face, soft eyes, and very soft hair cut short to just below the lobes
+of her ears.
+
+A gentleman with dingy but elaborate boot-uppers hailed and mounted the
+'bus. "Shufftesbury Uvvenue?" he asked. He said it that way, of course,
+because he was a Shakespearian actor. The 'bus-conductor gave him his
+ticket, and then took her stand upon her platform, more or less unaware
+that Mr. Russell and the actor, both next to the door and opposite to
+each other, were looking at her with a pleased look.
+
+Mr. Russell thought for some time, and then he said, "'T's a
+b'tiful day."
+
+"That's what it is," replied the 'bus-conductor. "I wonder if it's wrong
+to enjoy being a 'bus-conductor?"
+
+"I shouldn't think so," said Mr. Russell cautiously. "Why?"
+
+The 'bus-conductor waved her hand towards a State hint that shouted in
+letters six foot high from an opposite wall: "DON'T USE A MOTOR CAR FOR
+PLEASURE." Mr. Russell read it very carefully and said nothing.
+
+"This is a motor car," observed the 'bus-conductor, glancing at her
+inaccessible chauffeur. "And as for pleasure ..."
+
+The high houses rose out of the earth like Alps, and the roar in the
+morning was like large music. She knew she had been an Olympian in a
+recent life, because she found herself familiar with greater and more
+gorgeous speed than any 'bus attains, and with the divine discords that
+high mountains and high cities sing.
+
+"I hope it's not wrong, because I'm going on a motor tour to-morrow,"
+said Mr. Russell. "On business of a sort, and yet also on pleasure. On a
+search, as a matter of fact."
+
+"Oh, any search is pleasure," said the bus-conductor. "Especially if it's
+an abstract search."
+
+"'Tisn't," said Mr. Russell. "'T's a search for a person."
+
+The 'bus-conductor looked at the sky. "And are Anonyma and Kew going
+too?" she thought. You must bear in mind that she had deliberately
+plucked him from the side of Anonyma.
+
+"Perhaps any pleasure is wrong in these days," she said.
+
+"Come, come," said the actor. "Whut's wrung with these days? A German
+ship sunk yesterday. Thut's pleasurable enough."
+
+The 'bus-conductor turned a cold eye upon him.
+
+"I can cheer, but not laugh over such news as that," she said pompously.
+"Doesn't even a German find the sea bitter to drown in? An English woman
+or a German butcher, isn't it all the same when it comes to a Me, with a
+throat full of water? Hasn't a German got a Me?"
+
+The actor looked at his boot-uppers. Mr. Russell thought. Shufftesbury
+Uvvenue arrived soon, and the actor alighted with some relief.
+
+When the 'bus started again, the bus-conductor said, "Don't you think the
+only way you can get pleasure out of it all is by treating life as a bead
+upon a string?"
+
+"That's a sufficient way, surely," said Mr. Russell. "If you can truly
+reach it."
+
+In the Strand he asked, "May I come in this 'bus again?"
+
+"This is a public 'bus," observed the 'bus-conductor.
+
+"This is Monday," said Mr. Russell. "May I gather that during this
+week your 'bus will be passing Kensington Church at half-past eleven
+every morning?"
+
+The 'bus-conductor did not answer. She went to the top of the 'bus to
+say, "Fezz plizz."
+
+Mr. Russell thought so furiously that he was only roused by the sound of
+St. Paul's striking apparently several dozen in his immediate vicinity.
+
+"This is Ludgate Hill. I only paid you as far as Chancery Lane. I owe you
+another halfpenny," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"A penny," said the 'bus-conductor.
+
+As he disappeared she thought, "There is something remarkable about that
+man. I wish I hadn't been so prosy. I wonder where and why Anonyma
+picked him up."
+
+When Mr. Russell came home that evening, he said, "I met--"
+
+"Isn't it wonderful--the people and the things one meets?" said Mrs.
+Gustus. "I met to-day a child with nothing but one garment on, rolling
+like a sparrow in the dust. The one garment, I thought, was the only
+drawback in the scene. Why can't we get back to simplicity?"
+
+Mr. Russell, on second thoughts, was glad he had been interrupted. He did
+not feel discouraged, only he decided not to try again. His Hound jumped
+on to his knee and put a paw into his hand.
+
+"I also persuaded a woman to give up drink," continued Mrs. Gustus. "I
+put it to her on the ground of simplicity. She was in bed, having been
+drunk the night before, and I sat on her bed with my hand on hers. I
+said, 'Dear fellow-woman, there are no essentials in life but bread and
+water and love. Everything else is a sort of skin-disease which has
+appeared on the surface of Nature, a disease which we call civilization.'
+She cried bitterly, and I gathered that she was lacking in all three
+essentials. I went and bought her four loaves of bread, on condition she
+would promise never to touch intoxicants again. I said I would not go
+away until she promised. She promised. I left her still crying."
+
+Cousin Gustus sighed. He never went about himself, and only saw the world
+through his wife's eyes. This did not tend to cure his pessimism.
+
+"It is wonderful how one can reach the bed-rock of life in two hours
+among the poor and simple," said Mrs. Gustus. "By the way, I only put in
+two hours to-day, because I think I can do better work in two hours
+twice a week than in four hours once. So I shall come up for the
+afternoon one day this week from wherever we are by then, and leave you
+three men prostrate on some shore, with your ears to Nature, like a
+child's ear to a shell."
+
+She groped for her notebook.
+
+"I must come up now and then too," said Mr. Russell, and poked his Hound
+secretly in the ribs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can't tell you what countless miles away his 'bus-conductor was by now.
+A certain fraction of her, to be sure, was sitting in the dark room at
+Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown Borough, with fierce hands pinching
+the table-cloth, and a hot forehead on the table. All day long the thirst
+for a secret journey had been in her throat. All day long the elaborate
+tangle of London had made difficult her way, but she had kicked aside the
+snare now, and her free feet were on the step of the House by the Sea.
+
+No voices met her at the door, the hall was empty. The firelight
+pencilled in gold the edges of the wooden figure that presided over the
+stairs. I think I told you about that figure. I never knew whose it
+was--a saint's I think, but her virtuous expression was marred by her
+broken nose, and the finger with which she had once pointed to Heaven was
+also broken. Her figure was rather stiff, and so were her draperies,
+which fell in straight folds to her blocklike feet. Her right hand was
+raised high, and her left was held alertly away from her side and had
+unseparated fingers. She had seen a great procession of generations pass
+her pedestal, but she never saw Jay. Of course not, for Jay was not
+there. Only a column of thin watching air haunted the House.
+
+There are many ghosts that haunt the House by the Sea. Jay is, of
+course, one of them, and for this reason she knows more about ghosts than
+any one I know. Fragments of untold stories are familiar to her. She
+knows how you may hear in the dark a movement by your bed, and fling out
+your hand and feel it grasped, and then feel the grasp slide up from your
+hand to your shoulder, from your shoulder to your throat, from your
+throat to your heart. She knows how you may go between trees in the
+moonlight to meet your friend, and find suddenly that some one is keeping
+pace with you, and how you, mistaking this companion for your friend, may
+say some silly greeting that only your friend understands. And how your
+heart drops as you hear the first breath of the reply. She knows how,
+walking in the mid-day streets of London, you may cross the path of some
+Great One who had a prior right by many thousand years to walk beside the
+Thames. These are the ghost stories that never get told. Few people can
+read them between the lines of press accounts of inquests, or in the
+dignified announcements of the failure of hearts, on the front page of
+the _Morning Post_. But Jay knows, because of her intimacy with the House
+by the Sea. There she meets her fellow-ghosts.
+
+The House, as I told you, has hardly any garden; having the sea, it
+doesn't need one. But there is a little formal place about twenty paces
+across, set, as it were, in the heart of the House. A small prim square,
+bounded on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west
+by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the
+garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with
+becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly
+ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the
+garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange
+and red from the walls. The only official way into the garden is a door
+from the House, a bald door without eyebrows, so to speak, like all the
+doors and windows in the House. But there is an unofficial way into the
+garden, and Jay found her Secret Friend there. This is the short cut to
+the sea. In other words, it is a wriggly ladder, one end of which you
+attach to a hook in the wall, and the other you throw over the balustrade
+down the cliff to the sea. It is a long way to walk round the House and
+along the cliff and down to the sea by the path. And just as the
+house-agents always want to be one minute and a half from the church and
+the post-office, so we in the Secret House cannot afford to be more than
+a minute and a half from the sea.
+
+The Secret Friend was there, and he was gazing so earnestly down the
+cliff that his hair was hanging forward most unbeautifully, and he was
+rather red in the face. He was looking at a little boat which was on its
+way towards the foot of the wriggly ladder. A schooner with the low sun
+climbing down her rigging breathed on the breathing sea not far away. The
+tide was high.
+
+The oars of the little boat suddenly wavered and were paralysed. One of
+the rowers made a quick movement with his hand.
+
+"It's the Law," said the Secret Friend, and he tried spasmodically to
+extinguish the sun with his hand. "It's the Law. The man with the tall
+and dewy brow."
+
+The Law, in a fat officious-looking boat, came sneaking round the near
+point of the cliff. The air was so still, and the sea so calm, that you
+could hear the sides of the boat grate against the cliff. And the air was
+so clear that you could see the tall and dewy brow of the Law, as he
+stood up and discovered the wriggly ladder.
+
+"To have a face like that," said the Secret Friend, "is to challenge
+fate. It makes me sick."
+
+"What is this?" asked the Law, although there seemed little doubt that
+the thing was a wriggly ladder. No one answered; so the Law rowed to the
+foot of the thing in question. The Secret Friend jerked it up about six
+feet, and secured it so.
+
+The Law cleared its throat, and looked nervously at the schooner, and at
+the sun, and at the other boat, and at the Secret Friend. The Law likes
+to be argued with. Take away words and where is the Law? Silence always
+annoys it.
+
+Yet there was no silence in the Secret World. I remember how the roses
+sang, and how the sea mourned over the confusion of its gentle dreams.
+The knocking of the slow sea upon the cliff seemed like the ticking of
+the great clock that is our world. It was a night when every horizon had
+heaven calling from the other side.
+
+The Story went on....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Chloris who brought Jay back to Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown
+Borough. Chloris gave an unromantic snort and sat with unnecessary
+clumsiness upon Jay's toe. So Jay returned, falling suddenly out of the
+music of the sea into the band-of-hopeful music of distant Boy Scouts on
+the march.
+
+Number Eighteen Mabel Place is not, as a rule, a hopeful place to return
+to. Jay and I know quite well what Satan felt like when he was expelled
+from Heaven.
+
+So Jay, whose refuge from most ills was talk, went to see a friend. She
+had many friends in the Brown Borough, and most of them were what Mrs.
+Gustus would call "undeserving." Mrs. Gustus has a very high mind; she
+and the C.O.S. are dreadfully grown-up institutions, I think; they forget
+what it feels like to have a good rampageous kick against the pricks.
+Nearly everybody in the Brown Borough enjoys a kick once a week (on
+pay-day)--and some of us go on kicking all our lives. At any rate, the
+Brown Borough is peopled with babies young and old, and high minds and
+grown-up institutions are apt to look over heads. Jay had a low mind and
+walked about on the Brown Borough level.
+
+"I have got neuralgia," said Jay to Chloris, "my hat feels too tight.
+My head feels like _tête de veau farcie_. I shall go and talk to Mrs.
+'Ero Edwards."
+
+And so she did, and found that Mrs. 'Ero Edwards had been wanting to
+see her to tell her that the war would be over in June, and that the
+Edwards's nephew knew on the best authority that the Kaser couldn't get
+no kipper to his breakfast any more because Preserdink Wilson was
+a-holding of them up upon the high seas, and that Jimmy Wragge was
+"wanted" for "helping himself," and that young Dusty Morgan, the
+lodger, had gone for a soldier, and his wife had taken his job as
+driver of a van.
+
+"There's only two jobs now," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, "wot you never see
+a woman doin', and one's a burglar, an' the other's a scarecrow."
+
+Jay said, "The lady burglars would be so clever they'd never get into the
+papers, and the lady scarecrows would be so attractive that they'd
+fascinate the birds."
+
+And then Mrs. 'Ero Edwards considered what she would say to an 'Un if she
+had him here, and Jay was called upon to provide 'Unnish replies in the
+'Unnish lingo. Her German was so patriotically rusty that she could think
+of no better retorts than "Nicht hinauslehnen," or "Bitte nicht zu
+rauchen," or "Heisses Wasser, bitte," or "Wacht am Rhein," or "Streng
+verboten." Yet the dramatic effect of the interview was very good indeed,
+and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards's arguments were unanswerable in any tongue.
+
+And then they thought they would make a surprise for young Mrs. Dusty
+Morgan, the lodger, against she come back from work, because she was that
+down'earted. So they went and bought some ribbon to tie up the curtains,
+and some flowers for the table, and put the chairs in happy and new
+attitudes of expectancy, and cleaned the windows, putting a piece of
+white paper on the broken pane instead of the rag, which was rather weary
+of its job. And then Mrs. 'Ero Edwards confided to Jay that young Mrs.
+Dusty wanted very much to find the picture of a real tip-top soldier, so
+that she might look at it and remember how this business was going to
+make a man of young Dusty. And Jay went all the way to the City and could
+find no picture of a tip-top soldier, and then she came back to the Brown
+Borough, and because of the intervention of Providence, found Albrecht
+Dürer's "St. George" second-hand in a Jew-shop. And they hung it up over
+the mantelpiece, and decided that it was rather like Dusty, if it wasn't
+for the uniform. And the general effect was so superb that Jay nearly
+spoilt it all by jumping a hole in the floor, so as to jog Time's elbow
+and bring Mrs. Dusty home quickly to see it all. It was a very delicate
+floor. Jay always jumped when she was impatient. She did everything with
+double fervour, and where you or I would have stamped one foot, she
+stamped two at once.
+
+Mrs. Dusty Morgan came back a little bit drunk. When she saw the Saint
+over the mantelpiece she cried, and blasted the war that made it
+necessary to wear them ... respirators all over (the Saint is in
+armour),--and when she saw the flowers, she laughed, and said it seemed
+like Nothing-on-Earth to have Dusty away.
+
+
+    Oh, bend your eyes, nor send your glance about.
+Oh, watch your feet, nor stray beyond the kerb.
+Oh, bind your heart lest it find secrets out.
+For thus no punishment
+Of magic shall disturb
+Your very great content.
+
+    Oh, shut your lips to words that are forbidden.
+Oh, throw away your sword, nor think to fight.
+Seek not the best, the best is better hidden.
+Thus need you have no fear,
+No terrible delight
+Shall cross your path, my dear.
+
+    Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
+Build up no plan, nor any star pursue.
+Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger.
+Thus nothing Fate can send,
+And nothing Fate can do
+Shall pierce your peace, my friend.
+
+
+Christina the motor car started next morning. She set her tyres on the
+road to the Secret World. For all the clues that Jay provided pointed to
+that region.
+
+"Here is another letter from Jay," said Mrs. Gustus as they started,
+bristling with clues. Odd, under the circumstances, that she writes to
+me so often and so freely. I will read you some of it, but not all, until
+I have thought my suspicions over. She writes:
+
+"... A collision with the Law to-night, under a great sunset. It would
+have been rather silly by common daylight, but under a yellow sky with
+stars in it, I think nothing can live but romance. The tide was coming
+up, and the Law--a man with a tall and dewy brow--rowed up to the foot of
+our little ladder that leads to the sea.... You know those round stone
+balls that sit on the balustrades of formal gardens such as this ... we
+only meant to frighten the Law, a splash was all that we intended, but
+the sun was in my Friend's eyes as he dropped the ball. It struck the bow
+of the boat, which went under like a frightened porpoise. There were two
+men in it, besides the Law itself, and they all came up spitting and
+spouting, and stood up to their necks in water. Oaths bubbled up to us.
+The boat came up badly perforated, and I expect we shall get into
+trouble. It was funny, but the War has rather pacified us peace-time
+belligerents, and made people like me unused to collisions with
+authority. I felt very nervous, but it was all right because ..."
+
+"I will read you no more, but in that much there should be several clues.
+We must keep the western sun in our eyes to begin with."
+
+"We must look out for a householder of irregular--not to say
+murderous--habits," said Cousin Gustus. "Juggling with stone balls is a
+trick that is frequently fatal. Nobody but Jay would encourage it."
+
+"We must comb out all western seaside resorts for local police with tall
+and dewy brows," said Kew.
+
+But Mr. Russell, who preferred not to speak and drive Christina at the
+same time, drew up to the kerb, and removed his gloves, preparatory to
+saying something of importance.
+
+Mr. Russell was at his best in a car, or, to put it another way, he
+was at his worst everywhere else. When he and Christina went out
+together they were only one entity. They were a centaur on wheels; Mr.
+Russell could feel the rushing of the road beneath his tyres, and I
+think if you had stuck a pin into the back seat, Mr. Russell would have
+known it. You could feel now the puzzled growl of Christina's engines
+as Mr. Russell pondered.
+
+"But I remember ..." said Mr. Russell. "Now, did I see it in the
+paper...? I remember.... Half a minute, it is coming back."
+
+"Here's to-day's paper," said Kew, who was getting a little confused. You
+will feel the same when you set out to follow the western sun in search
+of something you know you have left behind you.
+
+Mr. Russell and Christina lingered beside the kerb for quite a minute,
+and then shrugged their shoulders and started again.
+
+So the Family set their faces towards the Secret World, with Mr. Russell
+as their guide, and the morning sun behind them.
+
+London is a friend whom I can leave knowing without doubt that she will
+be the same to me when I return, to-morrow or forty years hence, and
+that, if I do not return, she will sing the same song to inheritors of my
+happy lot in future generations. Always, whether sleeping or waking, I
+shall know that in Spring the sun rides over the silver streets of
+Kensington, and that in the Gardens the shorn sheep find very green
+pasture. Always the plaited threads of traffic will wind about the reel
+of London; always as you go up Regent Street from Pall Mall and look
+back, Westminster will rise with you like a dim sun over the horizon of
+Whitehall. That dive down Fleet Street and up to the black and white
+cliffs of St. Paul's will for ever bring to mind some rumour of romance.
+There is always a romance that we leave behind in London, and always
+London enlocks that flower for us, and keeps it fresh, so that when we
+come back we have our romance again.
+
+Mr. Russell was a lover of London, and that is why he liked his new-found
+'bus-conductor. He was an uncalculating sort of man, and he only thought
+that he had found a flower in London, a very London flower, and he hoped
+that London would show it to him again. He had no instinct either for the
+past or the future. He never looked back over the road he had trod,
+unless he was obliged to, and he never tried to look forward to the end
+of the road he was treading.
+
+Mrs. Gustus, with an iron expression about her chin, kept time to the
+beat of Christina's engine with the throbbing of disagreeable thoughts.
+There was one thing very plain to her in the matter of Jay--that Jay was
+living a life that in a novel is called free, but in a Family--well--you
+know what ... Mrs. Gustus knew all about these Friends with capital F's,
+Friends with hair flopping over their foreheads, Friends who might drop
+stone balls on the Law and still retain their capital F's. She had, in
+fact, written about them with much daring and freedom. But one's young
+relations may never share the privileges of one's heroines. Sympathy with
+such goings on must be confined to the printed page.
+
+"I will keep these things from the others," thought Mrs. Gustus. "They
+have no suspicions, and if we can find Jay I may be able to save her
+reputation yet."
+
+Really she was thinking as much of her own good name as of Jay's. For
+there was a most irritating similarity between Jay's present apparent
+practices and Mrs. Gustus's own much-expressed theories. The beauty of a
+free life of simplicity had filled pages of Anonyma's notebooks, and
+also, to the annoyance of Cousin Gustus, had overflowed into her
+conversation. Cousin Gustus's memory had been constantly busy extracting
+from the past moral tales concerning the disasters attendant on excessive
+simplicity in human relationships. For a time it had seemed as if Cousin
+Gustus's lot had been cast entirely with the matrimonially unorthodox.
+And now Mrs. Gustus, for one impatient minute, wished that the children
+would pay more attention to their elderly and experienced guardian. It
+was too much to ask her--a professional theory-maker--to adapt her
+theories to the young and literal. That was the worst of Jay, she was so
+literal, so unimaginative, so lacking in the simple unpractical quality
+of poetry. However, not a word to the others. Jay's reputation and
+Anonyma's dignity might yet be saved.
+
+"I don't know where we are going," said Anonyma presently. "I have no
+bump of locality."
+
+She always spoke proudly of her failings, as though there were a
+rapt press interviewer at her elbow, anxious to make a word-vignette
+about her.
+
+Mr. Russell was thinking, and Kew was singing, so between them they
+forgot to shape the course of Christina due west. When they got outside
+London, they found themselves going south.
+
+To go out of London was like going out of doors. The beauty of London is
+a dim beauty, and while you are in the middle of it you forget what it is
+like to see things clearly. In London every hour is a hill of adventure,
+and in the country every hour is a dimple in a quiet expanse of time.
+
+The Family went out over the hills of Surrey, and between roadside
+trees they saw the crowned heads of the seaward downs. The horizon
+sank lower around them, the fields and woods circled and squared the
+ribs of the land.
+
+Before sunset they had reached the little town that guards the gate
+in the wall of the Sussex downs. They were welcomed by a thunderstorm,
+and by passionate rain that drove them to the inn. Christina, torn
+between her pride of soul and her pride of paint, was obliged to edge
+herself into a shed which was already occupied by two cows and a red
+and blue waggon.
+
+When the pursuers of Jay set their feet on the uneven floor of the inn,
+they recognised the place immediately as ideal. Its windows squinted, its
+floor made you feel as though you were drunk, its banisters reeled, its
+flights of stairs looked frequently round in an angular way at their own
+beginnings.
+
+"How Arcadian!" said Mrs. Gustus, as she splashed her signature into the
+visitor's book. "One could be content to vegetate for ever here. Isn't it
+pathetic how one spends one's life collecting heart's desires, until one
+suddenly discovers that in having nothing and in desiring nothing lies
+happiness."
+
+But when they had been shown their sitting-room, and had ordered their
+supper--lamb and early peas and gooseberry tart with _tons_ of
+cream--Mrs. Gustus saw the Ring, that great green breast of the country,
+against the broken evening sky, and said, "Now I see heights, and I
+shall never be happy or hungry till I have climbed them. The Lord made
+me so that I am never content until I am as near the sky as possible.
+Silly, no doubt. But what a sky! Blood-red and pale pink, what a unique
+chord of colour."
+
+"Same chord as the livery of the Bank or England," said Kew, who was
+hungry, and had an aching shoulder. He hated beauty talked, just as he
+hated poetry forced into print apropos of nothing. Even to hear the
+Psalms read aloud used to make him blush, before his honest orthodoxy
+hardened him.
+
+Mrs. Gustus asked the lamb and gooseberry tart to delay their coming; she
+placed Cousin Gustus in an arm-chair, first wrapping him up because he
+felt cold, and then unwrapping him again because he felt hot; she kissed
+him good-bye.
+
+"We shan't be more than an hour," she said. When Mrs. Gustus said an
+hour, she meant two. If she had meant an hour, she would have said
+twenty minutes. "You must watch for us to appear on the highest point
+of the Ring."
+
+"Don't watch, but pray," murmured Kew. "There's that thunderstorm just
+working up to another display."
+
+And so it was, but when they reached the ridge of down that led to the
+Ring, they were glad they had come. They were half-drowned, and
+half-blinded, and half-deafened, but there is a reward to every effort.
+There was an enormous sky, and the sunlight spilled between the clouds to
+fall in pools upon the world. There was a chord made by many larks in the
+sky; the valleys held joy as a cup holds water. From the down the
+chalk-pits took great bites; the crinolined trees curtseyed down the
+slopes. The happy-coloured sea cut the world in half; the sight of a
+distant town at the corner of the river and the coast made one laugh for
+pleasure. There was a boat with sunlit sails creeping across the sea. I
+never see a boat on an utterly lonely sea without thinking of the secret
+stories that it carries, of the sun moving round that private world, of
+the shadows upon the deck that I cannot see, of the song of passing seas
+that I cannot hear, of the night coming across a great horizon to devour
+it when I shall have forgotten it. Further off and more suggestive than a
+star, it seems to me.
+
+A gust of sunlight struck the watchers, and passed: they each ran a few
+steps towards the sight that pleased them most. And then they stood so
+long that Mr. Russell's Hound had time to make himself acquainted with
+every smell within twenty yards. He turned over a snail that sat--round
+and striped like a peppermint bull's-eye--on the short grass, he patted a
+little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate
+size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from
+Mr. Russell's pensive hand, he suggested that the pursuit should
+continue. So they walked to the crest of wood that stands at the top of
+the Ring, a compressed tabloid forest, fifty yards from side to side, as
+round as a florin piece.
+
+The slopes rushed away from every side of it. There was a dark secret
+beneath those trees, there was a hint of very ancient love and still more
+ancient hatred. You could feel things beyond understanding, you left
+fact outside under the sky, and went in with a naked soul.
+
+They walked across it in silence, well apart from each other. When they
+came out the other side, Mrs. Gustus said, "We must stay for a little
+while within reach of this. It has something ..."
+
+Mr. Russell swallowed something that he had thought of saying, and
+instead drew his Hound's attention to a yellow square of mustard-field
+which made brilliant the distance.
+
+Kew said nothing, but he felt choked with a lost remembrance of a very
+old childhood. He seemed to taste the quiet taste of youth here, there
+was even a feeling of going home through a damp evening to a nursery tea.
+It was the nursery of all Secret Worlds. Gods had been born there. No
+surprise could live there now, no wonder, no protest. The years like
+minutes fled between those trees, dynasties might fall during the singing
+of a bird. I think the thing that haunted the wood was a thing exactly as
+old and as romantic as the first child that tracked its Secret Friend
+across the floor of a forest.
+
+Oh, friend of childlike mind, what is it that these two years have taken
+from us, what is it that we have lost, oh friend, besides contentment?
+
+All the way home Kew sang very loudly the first tune he ever knew.
+
+When the Family (including Mr. Russell) got back to the inn, the lamb and
+the gooseberry tart and Cousin Gustus were all waiting for them. But they
+were delayed in the hall. A stout young woman with a pleasant face of
+small vocabulary turned from the visitors' book and stopped Mrs. Gustus.
+
+"Are you THE Mrs. Augustus Martin?" she asked.
+
+"I am she," replied Anonyma. Her grammar in moments of emergency always
+impressed Kew.
+
+I cannot say that Mrs. Gustus seemed surprised. She was the sort of
+person to hide even from herself the fact that this thing had never
+happened before. She remained perfectly calm as if repeating a hackneyed
+experience. Kew was astonished. Mr. Russell shared this feeling. Having a
+certain personal admiration for Mrs. Gustus, he had tried on more than
+one occasion to find pleasure in her books, but without success.
+
+The stout young lady said nothing more than "Oh" for the moment, but she
+breathed it in such a manner that Mrs. Gustus saw at once the duty of
+asking her to dine with the Family.
+
+When the admirer was introduced to Cousin Gustus, she said, "Oh, so this
+is your husband ..." and gazed on that melancholy man with eagerness.
+When she saw Mr. Russell's Hound she said, "And this is your dog," and
+was about to crown him with a corresponding halo when Mrs. Gustus
+disclaimed the connection.
+
+"It is wonderful to meet you, of all people, in this romantic place,"
+said the admirer as she pursued her peas. "Do you know, whenever I finish
+one of your books, I feel so romantic I want to kiss everybody I meet.
+Oh, those courtly heroes of yours!"
+
+A heavy silence fell for a moment.
+
+"And your descriptions of nature," continued the admirer. "That sunset
+seen from the west coast of Ireland that you describe in _The Courtship
+of Hartley Casey_. You must know Ireland very well."
+
+"I have never been there," said Mrs. Gustus. "I evolve my scenery. After
+all, Nature lives in the heart of each one of us. I think we all have a
+sort of Secret World of our own, out of which all that is best in us
+comes. One does not need to see with one's outward eyes."
+
+"Oh, goodness me, how true that is," said the admirer. "But you
+must write a book about the downs, won't you? Do you take notes on
+your travels?"
+
+"My notebook is never out of my hand," answered Mrs. Gustus. "I jot down
+whatever occurs to me, wherever I may be. I write by moonlight in the
+night, I have had to pause in the middle of my prayers in Church, I have
+stood transfixed in the full flow of a London street. I always hope that
+people will think I am suddenly remembering that I forgot to order
+to-morrow's dinner."
+
+But really she knew that no one could ever be deceived in the purpose of
+the notebook.
+
+"Oh, mustn't it be wonderful!" breathed the admirer, and Cousin Gustus,
+who was always properly impressed by his wife when the example was set by
+strangers, nodded with a proprietary smile. "And are you writing now?"
+she continued.
+
+"I am always writing," said Mrs. Gustus, who had seldom enjoyed herself
+so much, "my pen never rests. A lifetime is too short to allow of rest.
+But I am not here primarily for inspiration. We are on a quest."
+
+"Oh, how romantic," moaned the admirer.
+
+"It is a quest with a certain amount of romance in it," agreed Anonyma.
+"We are seeking a House By The Sea. We know very little about it except
+that it exists. We know that its windows look west, and that the sun sets
+over the sea. We know that it stands ungardened on the cliff and has a
+great view. We know that it is seven hundred years old, and full of
+inspiration ..."
+
+"We know," continued Kew, "that you can--and often do--drop a
+fishing-line out of the window into the sea when you are tired of playing
+the goldfish in the water-butt. We know that the owner of the house is a
+rotten shot, and that the stone balls from the balustrade are not at this
+moment where they ought to be. We know that aeroplanes as well as
+seagulls nest in those cliffs...."
+
+"We know--" began Mr. Russell, but this was too much for Mrs. Gustus.
+After all, the lady was her admirer.
+
+"What's all this?" said Mrs. Gustus. "What do you people know about it?"
+
+"I just thought I would talk a little now," said Kew. "I get quickly
+tired of hearing other people giving information without help from me."
+
+"At any rate, Russ," continued Mrs. Gustus, "you can't know anything
+whatever about the matter. You have hardly listened when I read
+Jay's letters."
+
+"I told you that I remembered," said Mr. Russell. "I don't know how. I
+remember sitting on a high cliff and seeing three black birds swim in a
+row, and dive in a row, and in a row come up again after I had counted
+hundreds."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Gustus, trying not to appear cross before the
+visitor, "you're thinking of something else. You can see such a sight as
+that at the Zoo any day."
+
+"You all seem to know quite a lot about the place," said the admirer,
+"yet not much of a very practical nature, if I may say so."
+
+"Everything practical is unromantic," said Mrs. Gustus. "There is
+nothing true or beautiful in the world but poetry. If we seek in real
+simplicity of mind, we shall find what we seek, for simplicity is poetry,
+and poetry is truth."
+
+"Also, of course, England has only one west coast," added Kew, "and if we
+don't find the place we shall have found a good many other things by the
+time we have finished."
+
+"It may be in Ireland," suggested the admirer.
+
+"No, because she answers our letters so quickly."
+
+"She?"
+
+"My young cousin, the object of our search."
+
+"Did she run away?" asked the admirer, in a voice strangled with
+excitement.
+
+To admit that a young relation of Anonyma's should run away from her
+would be undignified.
+
+"You mustn't take us too seriously," said Mrs. Gustus lightly. "It isn't
+a case of an elopement, or anything like that. Just an excuse for a
+tour, and a rest from wearisome war work. A wild-goose chase, nothing but
+fun in it."
+
+"Wild goose is a good description of Jay," said Cousin Gustus. It
+was rather.
+
+Next morning the admirer, twittering with excitement, came in upon the
+Family while it was having its breakfast.
+
+"Oh, I had such an idea in the night," she said. "I couldn't sleep, of
+course, after such an exciting day. I believe I have been fated to help
+you in your quest. I know of a house near here, and the more I think of
+it the more sure I feel that it is the place you want."
+
+"Who lives there?"
+
+"A young man with his mother. I forget the name."
+
+"Place we want's west," objected Mr. Russell.
+
+"You never can tell," said Anonyma. "This place may stand on a salient,
+facing west. Our search must be thorough."
+
+"It's such a lovely walk," said the admirer. "I should be so much
+honoured if you would let me show you the way. Oh, I say, do you think me
+very presumptuous?"
+
+Her self-consciousness took the form of a constant repentance. In the
+night she would go over her day and probe it for tender points. "Oh, that
+was a dreadful thing to say," was a refrain that would keep her awake for
+hours, wriggling and giggling in her bed over the dreadfulness of it. She
+had too little egoism. The lack gave her face a look of littleness. A
+lack of altruism has the same outward effect. A complete face should be
+full of something, of gentleness, of vigour, of humour, of wickedness.
+The admirer's face was only half full of anything. All the same there was
+charm about her, the fact that she was an admirer was charming. Mrs.
+Gustus reassured her.
+
+"We shall be most grateful for a guide."
+
+"We should be even more grateful for an excuse to call on this
+inoffensive young man and his mother at eleven o'clock in the morning,"
+objected Kew.
+
+"He ought to be at the Front," was the excuse provided by Cousin Gustus.
+
+"So ought I," sighed Kew.
+
+"Oh, but you're a wounded, aren't you?" asked the admirer. There were
+signs of a possible transfer of admiration, and Mrs. Gustus interposed
+with presence of mind.
+
+"We'll start," she said. "Don't let's be hampered in the beginning of our
+quest by social littleness."
+
+She was conscious that she looked handsome enough for any breach of
+convention. She wore an unusual shaped dress the colour of vanilla ice.
+Instead of doing her hair as usual in one severe penny bun at the back,
+she had constructed a halfpenny bun, so to speak, over each ear. This is
+a very literary way of doing the hair, and the remembrance of the
+admirer, haunting Anonyma's waking thoughts, had inspired the change.
+
+Their way lay through the beechwood that embroiders the hem of the down's
+cloak. There are only two colours in a beechwood after rain, lilac and
+green. A bank of violets is not more pure in colour than a beech trunk
+shining in the sun. The two colours answered one another, fainter and
+fainter, away and away, to the end of one's sight, and there were two
+cuckoos, hidden in the dream, mocking each other in velvet voices. The
+view between the trees was made up of horizons that tilted one's chin.
+The bracken, very young, on an opposite slope, was like a cloud of green
+wings alighting. But the look of their destination disappointed them.
+
+"This house faces south," said Kew.
+
+"I feel sure--" began Mr. Russell, but Mrs. Gustus said:
+
+"As we are here, we might ask. To be sure, the cliff is rather tame."
+
+"But there is an aeroplane," persisted the admirer.
+
+"Now pause, Anonyma," Kew warned her. "Pause and consider what you are
+going to say."
+
+"Consideration only unearths difficulties," laughed Anonyma. "Best go
+forward in faith and fearlessness."
+
+She was under the impression that she constantly laughed in a nicely
+naughty way at Kew's excessive conventionality.
+
+As they drew nearer to the cliff, it grew tamer and tamer. The house,
+too, became dangerously like a villa; a super-villa, to be sure, and
+not in its first offensive youth, but still closely connected with the
+villa tribe. Its complexion was a bilious yellow, and it had
+red-rimmed windows. It was close to the sea, however, and its windows,
+with their blinds drawn down against the sun, looked like eyes downcast
+towards the beach.
+
+There was no lodge, and the Family walked in silence through the gate.
+Mr. Russell's Hound went first with a defiant expression about his tail.
+That expression cost him dear. Inside the gate there stood a large vulgar
+dog, without a tail to speak of. Its parting was crooked, its hair was in
+its eyes. All these personal disadvantages the Family had time to note,
+while the dog gazed incredulously at Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+A Pekinese dog never wears country clothes. It always looks as if it had
+its silk hat and spats on. If I were a country dog, who had never even
+smelt a Piccadilly smell, I should certainly bite all dogs of the type of
+Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+I could hardly describe what followed as a fight. Although I have always
+loved stories of giant-killers, from David downwards, and should much
+like to write one, I cannot in this case pretend that Mr. Russell's Hound
+did anything but call for help. Anonyma's umbrella, Kew's cane, and Mr.
+Russell's stick did all they could towards making peace, but the big dog
+seemed to have set itself the unkind task of mopping up a puddle with Mr.
+Russell's Hound. The process took a considerable time. And it was never
+finished, for the mistress of the house interrupted it.
+
+She was rather a fat person, apparently possessing the gift of authority,
+for the sound of her call reached her dog through the noise of battle. He
+saw that his aim was not one to achieve in the presence of an audience.
+He disengaged his teeth from the mane of Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+"Is your dog much hurt?" asked the mistress of the house, and handed
+Anonyma a slate.
+
+Anonyma scanned this unexpected gift nervously. She was much more used to
+taking other people aback than to being taken aback herself. But Kew was
+more ready. He dived for the pencil and wrote, "Only a bit punctured," on
+the slate.
+
+"You'd better bring it in and bathe it," suggested the lady, when she had
+studied this.
+
+They followed her in silent single file. Anonyma noticed that her hair
+was apparently done in imitation of a pigeon's nest, also that many hooks
+at the back of her dress had lost their grip of the situation.
+
+The bathroom, whither Mr. Russell's Hound was carried, was suggestive of
+another presence in the house. A boat, called _Golden Mary,_ was
+navigating the bath. There were some prostrate soldiers and chessmen in a
+little heap on the ledge, apparently waiting for a passage.
+
+"I'm getting out my son's things because he is coming home," said the
+lady.
+
+Mr. Russell was bathing his bleeding Hound in the basin, and Anonyma was
+at the window, ostentatiously drinking in the view. Kew took the slate
+and wrote politely on it: "From school?"
+
+"From the War," said the lady.
+
+Kew donned a pleased and interested expression. It seemed to him better
+to do this than to write, "Really!" on the slate.
+
+"He wrote about a fortnight ago," the lady's harsh voice continued, "to
+say he would come to-day. He said he was sick of being grown-up, he told
+me to get out the soldiers and the _Golden Mary_. He wants to launch
+them on the pond again."
+
+Kew nodded. "I have felt like that," he murmured, and the lady seemed to
+see the sense of his words.
+
+"I should think you are six years older than Murray," she said, "and very
+different. Come out into the garden, and I'll show you."
+
+Kew followed her, and Anonyma, after a moment's hesitation, went too. But
+Mr. Russell, who had finished his work of mercy, seemed to think it
+better to linger in the bathroom, explaining to his Hound the subject of
+a Biblical picture which hung over the bath.
+
+"You might think I was rather too old to play things well," the mother
+said to Kew. "But you should see me with Murray. Even my deafness never
+hindered me with him, I could always see what he said. Look, we made this
+road for the soldiers coming down to the wharf. Do you see the way we
+helped nature, by tampering with the roots of the beech. It is a perfect
+wharf, this little flat bit, it is just level with the deck of the boat
+at high tide. The lower wharf is for low tide, but of course we have to
+pretend the tides. That round place is the bandstand, and there the
+pipers play when there is a troop-ship starting. Sometimes only the
+Favourite Piper plays, striding up and down the little bowling-green at
+the top here, but not often, because the work of keeping him going
+interferes with the disembarkation. We never let the Highlanders go
+abroad, because Murray loves them so. He is afraid lest something should
+happen to them. Were the Highlanders your favourites?"
+
+Kew wrote on the slate: "No, the Egyptian Camel Corps."
+
+The lady nodded. "We loved them too, but of course they lived on the
+other side of the pond, and sometimes they and the Sepoys and the
+Soudanese had to insurrect. Somebody had to, you know, but we regretted
+the Egyptian Camel Corps awfully. I hope you don't think us silly....
+Murray was always a childish person. I hope I am too. The bowling-green
+gave us a lot of trouble to make; it is nice and flat, isn't it? We trim
+it with nail-scissors."
+
+It was a good bowling-green, about twelve inches by six. There were some
+marbles on it.
+
+"It has historical associations," said the mother of Murray. "It was
+here that Drake played when the Armada was sighted. Of course that was
+before our time, but sometimes, on a moonlit summer night, we used to lie
+down on our fronts and see his little ghost haunting the green. We used
+to bring our young sailors here, and inspire them with stories about
+Drake. The sailors used to stand on the green, and we put up railings
+made of matches all round, and civilians used to stand in great
+breathless crowds outside the railings watching. Chessmen, of course.
+Murray used to make the civilians arrive in motors, so as to make ruts in
+the road. Somehow it was always rather splendid and real to have ruts in
+the road."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Later on, of course, things got more grown-up. The last time we played
+before the War--when War was already in sight--we shipped an
+unprecedented mass of troops to that peninsula, and had a wonderful
+battle. You can still see the trenches and gun emplacements; I cleared
+them out yesterday. Murray joined the Army in that first August, and
+whenever he came home after that he was somehow ashamed of these things.
+I quite understood that. When I am having tea with the Vicar's wife, or
+cutting out shirts for the soldiers, I sometimes blush a little to think
+how old I am, and to think of the things I do at home with Murray. I am
+sure he felt just the same when he was with other men. But his last
+letter was young again. He wrote that the War should cease the moment he
+set foot inside this gate, and we would have a civilian game, an alpine
+expedition up the mountains. You see the beech-root mountains. There is
+the cave where we put up for the night. There is a wonderful view from
+Bumpy Peak, over the sea, and right away to far-off lands. Murray thought
+that when the expedition had caught a chamois it might turn into
+engineers prospecting for the building of a road up to Bumpy Peak, so
+that the soldiers might march up, and look out over the sea, and
+see--very far off--the fringes of the East that they had conquered, when
+they were young and not tired of War...."
+
+She broke off and looked at Kew.
+
+Anonyma stood a few paces away, gazing at her vanilla-ice reflection
+in the pond.
+
+"I dare say you think us silly," said the lady. "I dare say you would
+think Murray a rotter if you met him. It doesn't matter much. It doesn't
+matter at all. Nothing matters, because he will come home to-night."
+
+Kew fidgeted a moment, and then took the slate and wrote: "I am very much
+afraid that all leave from abroad has been stopped this week."
+
+"Yes, I know," said the mother, "I have been unhappy about that for some
+days. But it doesn't make any difference to Murray now. You see, I heard
+last night that he was killed on Tuesday. That's why I know he will come,
+and I shall be waiting here. Can't you imagine them shouting as they get
+through, as they get through with being grown-up, shouting to each other
+as they run back to their childhood and their old pretences...."
+
+After a moment she added, "That is the only sound that I shall ever hear
+now,--the shouting of Murray to me as he runs home."
+
+It was in a sort of dream that Kew watched Anonyma go forward and take
+both the hands of the mother. I suppose he knew that all that was
+superfluous, and that Murray would come home.
+
+Anonyma said, "I am so sorry. I am so sorry that we intruded. You must
+forgive us."
+
+The mother of Murray did not hear, but she saw that sympathy was
+intended, and she nodded awkwardly, and a little severely. I don't think
+she had known that Anonyma was there.
+
+Kew was not sorry that he had intruded.
+
+At sunset, when the high sea span
+About the rocks a web of foam,
+I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
+Come home.
+I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
+Run from the weariness of War,
+I heard him laughing as he ran
+Across his unforgotten shore.
+The great cliff, gilded by the west,
+Received him as an honoured guest.
+The green sea, shining in the bay,
+Did drown his dreadful yesterday.
+
+Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
+The honest years shall make amends,
+The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
+The everlasting hills your friends.
+And some shall seek their mothers' faces,
+And some shall run to trysting-places,
+And some to towns, and others yet
+Shall find great forests in their debt.
+    Oh, I would siege the golden coasts
+    Of space, and climb high heaven's dome,
+    So I might see those million ghosts
+    Come home.
+
+Next day all the Family, including Mr. Russell and excepting Cousin
+Gustus, came to breakfast with the intention of announcing that he or
+she must go up to London by the next train. Mrs. Gustus, as ever,
+spoke first.
+
+"My conscience is pricking me. My work is calling me. I must go up
+and see my old darlings in the Brown Borough. There is, I see, a
+train at ten."
+
+"I was just going to say something quite different to the same effect,"
+said Kew. "I want to go up and whisper some secrets into the ear of
+Cox. I want to have my hair cut. I want to buy this week's _Punch_. I
+want some brown bootlaces. Life is empty for me unless I go up to town
+this morning."
+
+Mr. Russell, although he had tried the effect of all his excuses on his
+Hound while dressing, was silent.
+
+Mrs. Gustus was never less than half an hour too early for trains. This
+might account for the excellence of her general information. She had
+spent a large portion of her life at railway stations, which are, I
+think, the centre of much wisdom. She and Kew started for the station
+with mouths burnt by hurried coffee and toast-crumbs still unbrushed on
+their waistcoats, forty minutes before the train was due. The protests of
+Kew could be heard almost as far as the station, which was reached by a
+walk of five minutes.
+
+Cousin Gustus, Mr. Russell, and the convalescent Hound went to lie upon
+the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn.
+They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the
+blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew
+what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's diary, nobody ever wanted to
+know. It gave him grounds for claiming literary tastes, and his literary
+tastes presumably made him marry a literary wife. So the diary had a
+certain importance.
+
+They spread out the rug in a little hollow, like a giant's footprint in
+the downs, and sheep and various small flowers looked over their
+shoulders.
+
+For the first ten minutes Mr. Russell lay on his back listening to the
+busy sound of the bees filling their honeybags, and the sheep filling
+themselves, and Cousin Gustus filling his diary. He watched the rooks
+travel across the varied country of the sky. He watched a little black
+and white bird that danced in the air to the tune of its own very high
+and flippant song. He watched the sun ford a deep and foaming cloud. And
+all the time he remembered many reasons why it would have been nice to go
+up to London. Oddly enough, a 'bus-conductor seemed to stand quite apart
+from these reasons in the back of his mind for several minutes. One would
+hardly have believed that a bus-conductor could have held her own so long
+in the mind of a person like Mr. Russell.
+
+And Providence finally ordained that he should feel in his cigarette case
+and find it empty.
+
+"No cigarettes," said Mr. Russell, after pondering for a moment on this
+disappointment.
+
+"You smoke too much," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew a man who
+over-smoked all his life, and when he got a bullet in his lung in the
+Zulu War he died, simply as the result of his foolishness. No
+recuperative power. They said his lungs were simply leather."
+
+"Should have thought that would've been a protection," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"The train is not even signalled yet," said Cousin Gustus. "You would
+have time to go to the station and tell Kew to get you some cigarettes."
+
+But this was not Providence's intention, as interpreted by Mr.
+Russell. "D'you know, I half believe I'll go up too," he said. "Would
+you be lonely?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Cousin Gustus pathetically; "I'm used to being
+left alone."
+
+As the signals dropped Mr. Russell sprang to his feet and ran down the
+slope. He had country clothes on, and some thistledown and a sprig or two
+of clover were sticking to them. He reached the station in time, and fell
+over a crate of hens. The hens were furious about it, and said so. Mr.
+Russell said nothing, but he felt hurt when the porter who opened the
+door for him asked if the hens were his. After the train had started he
+wished he had had time to tell the porter how impossible it was that a
+man who owned a crate full of hens should fall over it. And then he
+thought that would have been neither witty nor convincing. He was one of
+those lucky people who say so little that they rarely have need to regret
+what they have said.
+
+The business that dragged him so precipitately from the country must, I
+suppose, have been very urgent. It chanced that it lay at Ludgate Circus,
+and it also chanced--not in the least unnaturally--that at half-past
+eleven he was standing at Kensington Church waiting to be beckoned to
+once more by a 'bus-conductor. The only unnatural thing was that several
+'buses bound for Ludgate Circus passed without winning the patronage of
+Mr. Russell.
+
+The conductor came. Mr. Russell saw her round face and squared hair
+appear out of the confusion of the street. He noticed with surprise that
+he had not borne in mind the pleasing way in which the strap of her hat
+tilted her already tilted chin.
+
+Jay had been thinking a little about Mr. Russell, not much. She had been
+wondering who he was. The Family's friends and relations were always much
+talked of in the Family, and much invited, and much met. Mr. Russell had
+not been among them when Jay had last known the Family. An idea was in
+her mind that he might be a private detective, engaged by the Family to
+seek out their fugitive young relation. Mr. Russell had plainly alluded
+to a search. Jay had no experience of private detectives, but she thought
+it quite possible that they might disguise themselves with rather low
+foreheads, and rather frowning eyes, and shut thin mouths, and shut thin
+expressions. She hoped that she would see him to-day. An hour ago a young
+man with a spotty complexion and bulging eyes like a rabbit's had handed
+her a note with his threepence, asking for a "two-and-a-half" in a
+lovelorn voice. She handed him back his halfpenny and his unopened note
+at once, saying, "Your change, sir," in a kind, absent-minded voice. I am
+afraid an incident like this is always a little exciting, though I admit
+it ought to be insulting. That suggestive fare made Jay hope more and
+more that she would meet Mr. Russell to-day. I don't exactly know why,
+except that sentimentality is an infectious complaint.
+
+Mr. Russell got happily into the 'bus. He made the worst entrance
+possible. His hat slipped crooked, he left one leg behind on the road,
+and only retrieved it with the help of the conductor. Jay welcomed him
+with a nod that was almost a bow, a remnant of her unprofessional past.
+
+"Told you I'd come in this 'bus again," said Mr. Russell, sitting down in
+the left-hand seat next to the door. I really don't know what would have
+happened if that seat had been occupied. I suppose Mr. Russell would have
+sat upon the occupier.
+
+"A good many people like this service," said Jay; "it is considered very
+convenient. How is your search going?"
+
+"It hasn't begun yet," said Mr. Russell. "We haven't got within three
+hundred miles of the House we're looking for."
+
+"You know more or less where it is, then?" asked Jay, who sometimes
+wanted to know this herself.
+
+"I do know, but I don't know how I know, nor what I know."
+
+"How funny that you--an Older and Wiser Man--should feel that sort of
+knowledge," said Jay. As an afterthought she called him Sir.
+
+The 'bus grew fuller, and only Jay's bell punctured the silence that
+followed. A lady asked Jay to "set her down at Charing Cross Post
+Office." "The 'bus stops there automatically, Madam," said Jay, and the
+lady told her not to be impertinent.
+
+Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had
+stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr.
+Russell, "London seems dead to-day, doesn't it? Not even fog, only a
+lifeless light. What's the use of daylight in London to-day? You know, I
+don't live in London."
+
+"No," said Mr. Russell, "where do you live?"
+
+"London," replied Jay. "I mean my heart doesn't live in London mostly. I
+think it lives very far away in the same sort of place as the place you
+know without knowing how you know it. The happy shore of God Knows Where
+must have a great population of hearts. To-day I hate London so that I
+could tear it into pieces like a rag."
+
+"You ought to start your 'bus on the search for the happy shore," said
+Mr. Russell. "You'd find the track of my tyres before you. I b'lieve
+you'd find the place."
+
+"Well, that would be the only perfect Service," said Jay. "But I don't
+believe the public would use the route much. I would go on and on, and
+leave all old ruts behind. I would stop for no fares, even the sea should
+not stop me. I would go on to the horizon to see if that secret look just
+after sunset really means that the stars are just over the brink. Why do
+people end themselves on a note of despair? I would choose that way of
+perpetuating my Perfect Day. The police would see the top seats of the
+'bus sticking out at low tide, and the verdict would be, 'Suicide while
+of even more than usually unsound mind.'"
+
+A 'bus has an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is
+made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to
+retain withal its fantastic atmosphere.
+
+Mr. Russell asked presently, "Why are you a 'bus-conductor?"
+
+"To get some money," replied the conductor baldly. "I want to find out
+what is the attraction of money. Besides, if one talks such a lot as I
+do, to do anything--however small--saves one from being utterly futile.
+When I get to Heaven, the angels won't be able to say, 'Tush tush, you
+lived on the charity of God.' That's what unearned money is, isn't it?
+And what's the use of charity?"
+
+"Do you ever get a day off?" asked Mr. Russell.
+
+"Occasionally."
+
+"Will you meet me on the steps of St. Paul's next Sunday at ten?"
+
+"No, because I shall be at work next Sunday."
+
+"Will you meet me the Sunday after that?"
+
+"Yes," said Jay. The Family's theories on the bringing up of girls had
+evidently been wasted on her.
+
+"What's the use of looking for this girl?" she asked, after a round of
+duty. "Why not leave her on her happy shore? Do you know, sir, I
+sympathise enormously with that girl."
+
+"I don't expect you would if you knew her," said Mr. Russell. "She must
+be quite different from you, by what I hear from her relations. I think
+she must be an aggressive, suffragetty sort of girl. Girls nowadays seem
+to find running away from home a sufficient profession."
+
+"You say that because you are so dreadfully much Older and Wiser," said
+Jay. "Why are you looking for her, then?"
+
+"I'm not," said Mr. Russell. "She is just a trespasser. I'm looking for
+the place because I know I know it."
+
+"I hope you'll never find it," said Jay crossly. She announced Ludgate
+Circus in a startling voice, and ended the conversation.
+
+She was tired because she had been up all night among distressed friends
+in the Brown Borough. There had been a fight in Tann Street. Mrs.
+O'Rourke had broken the face of little Mrs. Love. Mrs. Love had never
+fought before; her fists were like lamb cutlets, and she had had a good
+mother with non-combatant principles. All these things are drawbacks in
+a Brown Borough argument. But Mrs. Love was a friend of Jay's, and I
+don't think she had found that a drawback. Feverish discussions with
+dreadfully impartial policemen, feverish drying of feverish tears,
+feverish extracting of medicaments from closed chemists, and finally a
+feverish triumph of words with which Jay capped Mrs. O'Rourke's triumph
+of fists were the items in the sum of a feverish night. So Jay was tired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Russell was too early for his business, and he went into St. Paul's
+and sat on a seat far back.
+
+St. Paul was an anti-saint, I think, who very badly needed to get married
+and be answered back now and then. I believe it is possible that he was
+unworthy of that great house called by his name. The gospel of a very
+splendid detachment speaks within its walls, its windows turn inward, its
+music sings to itself. Tossed City sinners go in and out, and pass, and
+penetrate, but still the music dreams, and still the dim gold blinks
+above their heads. A muffled God walks the aisles, and you, in the
+bristling wilderness of chairs, can clutch at His skirts and never see
+His eyes. Nothing comes forward from that altar to meet you. It is as if
+He walked talking to Himself, and as if even His speech were lost in
+those devouring spaces.
+
+Mr. Russell sat near the door, and found only his thoughts and the
+shuffle of seeking feet to keep him company.
+
+"An Older and Wiser Man ..." he thought. "God forgive me for
+letting it pass."
+
+If he had thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would
+have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a
+heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It
+doesn't matter" to everything. He never expressed his thoughts to
+himself--it was not worth while,--but I think he knew within himself
+that life was made of paper, and thrown together in a crackling chaos.
+There was no depth in anything, and a mere thought could slay the
+highest thing in the world. The only thing that ever made his heart
+laugh was the idea of fineness finding place in himself. A dream of
+himself in a heroic light sometimes made him poke himself in the ribs,
+and mock the farce of human vanity. He was like a man in a world that
+lacked mirrors, a man who sees his dark deformed shadow on the sands,
+and thinks it represents him fairly.
+
+He was without self-consciousness, knowing that he was not worth his own
+recognition. At home he often recited little confused poems of his own
+composition to his Hound, and never noticed the surprise of the servants.
+He never knew that in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Gustus and Kew he was
+hardly allowed to utter three consecutive words, although, when he was
+away from them, and especially when he was with the 'bus-conductor, he
+felt a delightful lack of restraint.
+
+As he sat down and looked at the far unanswering altar, he had two dim
+thoughts. One was that a man might get Older and Wiser, without getting
+old enough or wise enough to choose his road. The other was a question as
+to whether it is ever really worth while to read what the signpost says.
+
+From the moment when Mr. Russell left her 'bus, Jay became stupefied by
+an invasion of the Secret World.
+
+She gave the tickets and change with accuracy, she kept count of the
+stream of climbers on to the top of the 'bus, she stilled the angry
+whirlpool of people on the pavement for whom there was no room, she
+dislodged passengers at the corners of their own streets--even that
+gentleman (almost always to be found in an obscure corner of an
+east-going 'bus) who had sunk into a sudden and pathetic sleep just when
+his pennyworth of ride was coming to an end,--she received an unexpected
+inspector with the smile that comes of knowing every passenger to be
+properly ticketed; she even laughed at his joke. She weeded out the
+Whitechapel Jewesses at the Bank, and introduced them to the Mile End
+'buses. She handed out to them their sombre and insolent-looking babies,
+and when one mother thanked her profusely in Yiddish, she replied,
+"Bitte, bitte...." Yet all the while the wind blew to her old
+remembrances of the low chimneys and the bending roofs of the House by
+the Sea, and the smell of the high curving fields, and the shouting of
+the sea. And all the while her hands must grope for the handle of the
+heavy door, and her eyes must fill with blindness because of the
+wonderful promise of distant cliffs with the sun on them, and because the
+sea was so shining. And all the while her ears must strain to hear a
+voice within the house....
+
+It is a very great honour to be given two lives to live.
+
+The monotonous journeys trod on each other's heels. Slowly the day
+consumed itself. It grew dimmer and dimmer for Jay, though I have no
+doubt that habit protected her, and that she behaved herself throughout
+with commonplace correctness.
+
+She found presently that the great weight of copper money was gone from
+her shoulder, and that it was evening, and that Chloris was coming down
+Mabel Place to meet her. Chloris was wagging her whole person from the
+shoulder-blades backwards; she never found adequate the tail that had
+originally been provided for that purpose. Jay stumbled up the step of
+Eighteen Mabel Place, and found at last the path she wanted.
+
+The path was one that had never been touched by a professional
+pathmaker. Feet, not hands, had made it. The rocks impatiently thrust it
+aside every little way, and here and there were steps up and down for no
+reason except that the rock would have it so. The path chose its way so
+that you might see the sea from every inch of it. The thundering
+headlands sprang from Jay's left hand, and she could see the cliffs
+written over with strange lines, and the shadow that they cast upon deep
+water. It was the colour of a great passion, and against that colour pink
+foxgloves bowed dramatically upon the fringe of space. The white gulls
+were in the valleys of the sea. I wish colour could be built by words. I
+wish I could speak colour to myself in the dark. I can never fill my eyes
+full enough of the colour of the sea, nor my ears of the crying of the
+seagulls. I am most greedy of these things, and take no thought for the
+morrow, so that if my morrow dawns darkly I have nothing stored away to
+comfort me.
+
+The path joins the more civilised road almost at the door of the House by
+the Sea. You tumble over a great round rock that still bears the marks
+of the sea's fingers, and you are at the door.
+
+The house was full of sunlight. Great panels of sunlight lay across the
+air. The fingers of the honeysuckle in the rough painted bowl by the
+window caught and held sunlight. In every room of the house you can
+always hear the eternal march of the sea up and down the shore. Nothing
+ever drowns that measured confusion. Sometimes the voices of friends
+thread in and out of it, sometimes the dogs bark, or a coming meal clinks
+in the stone passage, or you can catch the squealing of the children in
+their baths, sometimes your heart stops beating to listen to the speech
+of the ghosts that haunt the house, but no sound ever usurps the throne
+of the sea.
+
+They were all on the stairs, the Secret Friend and the children. They all
+wore untidy clothes, and hard-boiled eggs bulged from their pockets. The
+Secret Friend has red hair, you might call its colour vulgar. But Jay
+likes it very much. He hardly ever sits still, you can never see him
+think, he has a way of answering you almost before you have finished
+speaking. His mind always seems to be exploring among words, and
+sometimes you can hear him telling himself splendid sentences without
+meaning. For this reason everything connected with him has a name, from
+his dog, which is called Trelawney, to the last cigarette he smokes at
+night, which is called Isobel. This trick Jay has imported into her own
+establishment: she has an umbrella called Macdonald, and a little
+occasional pleurisy pain under one rib, which she introduces to the
+Family as Julia.
+
+The children in the house were just those very children that every woman
+hopes, or has hoped, to have for her own.
+
+They were just starting for a walk, and the Secret Friend was
+finishing a story.
+
+"How can you remember things that happened--I suppose--squillions of
+years ago," said the eldest child. "You tell them as if they happened
+yesterday. Doesn't it seem as if all the happiest things happened
+yesterday?"
+
+"To me it seems that they will happen to-morrow," said the Secret Friend.
+"But then there is so little difference between yesterday and to-morrow.
+How can you tell which is which? Only clocks and calendars are silly
+enough to tread on the tail of a little space between sunrise and sunset
+and call it to-day. How do you know which way up time is happening?"
+
+"Because yesterday the sun set, and we went to bed," said the
+youngest child.
+
+"I think to-morrow is a little person in dark clothes watching and
+listening," said the eldest child. "And to-day is Cinderella, all shiny
+and beautiful until twelve o'clock strikes."
+
+"All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening," said the
+Secret Friend. "This is the place where time is without a name. Here the
+beginning comes after the end. To-morrow we shall be born. Yesterday we
+died. To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours.
+And now we will sing the Loud Song."
+
+They were on the rocky path now, and they sang the Loud Song. Both
+that path and that song go on for ever, and the words of the song are
+like this:
+
+There is no house like our house
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no family like our family
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no Country like our Country
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no sea like our sea
+Even in Heaven.
+
+Most families sing this song, more or less, but few could sing it so
+loudly as this family did.
+
+The dog Trelawney ran after the shadows of the seagulls.
+
+  There is the track my feet have worn
+By which my fate may find me:
+From that dim place where I was born
+Those footprints run behind me.
+Uncertain was the trail I left,
+For--oh, the way was stormy;
+But now this splendid sea has cleft
+My journey from before me.
+
+  Three things the sea shall never end,
+Three things shall mock its power:
+My singing soul, my Secret Friend,
+And this my perfect hour.
+
+  And you shall seek me till you reach
+The tangled tide advancing,
+And you shall find upon the beach
+The traces of my dancing,
+And in the air the happy speech
+Of Secret Friends romancing.
+
+For some minutes some one had been knocking on the door. The sound was
+like an intruder in the Secret World, beckoning insistently to Jay. But
+she took no notice of it until a loud voice said: "You need not think you
+are paddling in golden seas and inaccessible to your relations, because
+you are here, and I can see you through the window."
+
+After a moment's confusion, Jay found that this was so, and she got up
+and let Kew in.
+
+"I will just ask you how you are," he said hurriedly. "And how things are
+going in the Other World, and all that. But you needn't answer, because I
+haven't much time, and I want very badly to talk about myself. I never
+get a chance when Anonyma is there, and when I return to France (which is
+likely to happen soon), I shan't find much chance to talk there. I am so
+glad I am going back, I am so sick of hearing other people talk about
+things that are not worth mentioning. Poor dear Anonyma, she meant all
+this recent gaiety as a reward to me for war work dutifully done. But if
+this be jam, give me my next pill unadorned. A motor tour combined with
+Anonyma is tiring. If I were alone with Russ I might enjoy it."
+
+"Who is Russ?"
+
+"The owner of Christina, and Christina is the vehicle which contains us
+during the search for you."
+
+He became aware of the velvet face of Chloris, gazing at him from between
+his knees.
+
+"What does Chloris do while you are week-ending in Heaven. Do you take
+her with you?"
+
+"There is already a dog there, called Trelawney."
+
+"By Jove, that would make a nice little clue for Anonyma. There can be
+only one dog on the sea-coast called Trelawney. We could stop and ask
+every dog we met what its name was. Besides, the name suggests
+Cornwall. What breed is the dog? Look here, will you write the Family
+a letter giving it a few neat clues for Anonyma? After all, we ought to
+give her all the pleasure we can, I sometimes think we are a
+disappointing family for her to have married. We lie to her, she lies
+to us, her enthusiasms make us smile behind our hands, ours make her
+yawn behind her notebook. Send us a good encouraging letter, addressed
+to the house in Kensington. We always wire our address there as we
+move. Give us details about Trelawney, and, if possible, the name of
+the nearest post town. If we must lie, let us give all the pleasure we
+can by doing so. Poor old Anonyma.
+
+"It's getting dark, I must go back to the Family. I am as a babe in the
+hands of Anonyma, and like a babe I promised her I would be back before
+dark. Do you remember how we used to long to be lost after nightfall,
+just for the dramatic effect? Yet we were awfully frightened of the dark.
+Do you remember how we used to dare each other to get out of bed and run
+three times round the night nursery? I have never felt so brave since, as
+I used to feel as I jumped into bed conscious of an ordeal creditably
+over. Why is bed such a safe place? I am not half so brave as I used to
+be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to
+do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the
+innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap
+looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is
+everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the
+danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the
+War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop talking, I am so pleased to be nearly out of
+the clutches of my relations."
+
+"Are you sure you won't be killed?" asked Jay suddenly.
+
+"I can't be," said Kew. "How could I be? I'm me. I'm not brave, and I
+don't go to France with one eye on duty and the other on the
+possibility of never coming back. I go because the crowd goes, and the
+crowd--a rather shrunken crowd--will come back safe. I'm too average a
+man to get killed."
+
+"Don't you think all those million ghosts are thinking, 'What business
+had Death to choose me?'" suggested Jay.
+
+"No," said Kew. "I'm sure they know."
+
+After a few seconds' pause he said, "By Jove, are you in fancy dress?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"Why indeed. Why a kilt and yards of gaiters? Why a hat like a Colonial
+horse marine?"
+
+"Oh, this is the uniform of a bus-conductor," replied Jay.
+
+Kew scanned it with distaste. Presently he said, "Don't you think
+you'd better give it up? Buy a new hat with a day's earnings, and get
+the sack."
+
+"I can't quarrel with my bread and butter," said Jay.
+
+"Surely this is only jam," said Kew. "You've got plenty of money of your
+own for bread and butter."
+
+"I haven't now," answered Jay. "I gave up having money when the
+War started. Perhaps I chucked it into the Serpentine. Perhaps
+not. I forget."
+
+Kew got up slowly. "Well," he said, "sure you're all right? I must be
+going. I don't know when the last train goes."
+
+In London it is impossible to ignore the fact that you are late. The
+self-righteous hands of clocks point out your guilt whichever way you
+look. Your eye and your ear are accused on every side. You long for the
+courteous clocklessness of the country; there, mercifully, the sun
+neither ticks nor strikes, nor cavils at the minutes.
+
+There was a crowd of home-goers at Brown Borough Church, and each 'bus as
+it arrived was like the angel troubling the waters of Bethesda. There was
+no hope for the old or timid. Kew was an expert in the small sciences of
+London. He knew not only how to mount a 'bus, while others of his like
+were trying four abreast to do the same, but also how to stand on a space
+exactly half the size of his boot soles, without holding on. (This is
+done, as you probably know too, by not looking out of the window.)
+
+Kew had given up taxis and cigars in war-time. It was his pretence
+never to do anything on principle, so he would have blushed if anybody
+had commented on this ingenuous economy. The fact that he had joined
+the Army the first day of the War was also, I think, a tender spot in
+the conscience of Kew. A Victoria Cross would have been practically
+unbearable, and even to be mentioned in despatches would have been a
+most upsetting contradiction of that commonplace and unprincipled past
+of which he boasted. He thought he was such a simple soul that he had
+no motives or principles in anything that he did, but really he was
+simpler than that. He was so simple that he did his best without
+thinking about it. It certainly sounds rather a curious way to live in
+the twentieth century.
+
+"'Ere, you're seven standin' inside," said the gentleman 'bus--conductor,
+when, after long sojourn in upper regions, he came down to his basement
+floor. "Five standin' is all I'm supposed to 'ave, an' five standin' is
+all I'll allow. Why should I get myself into trouble for 'avin' more'n
+five standin', if five standin' is all I'm allowed to 'ave?"
+
+In spite of a chorus of nervous assent from all his flock, and the
+blushing disappearance of the two superfluous standers, the
+'bus-conductor continued his lament in this strain. To the man with a
+small but loud grievance, sympathy is a fatal offering.
+
+The 'bus-conductor had a round red nose, and very defective teeth. Kew
+studied him in a new light, for this was Jay's fellow-worker. Somehow it
+seemed very regrettable.
+
+"I wish I hadn't promised not to tell the Family," he thought.
+
+He and Jay never broke their promises to each other, and there was a
+tacit agreement that when they found it necessary to lie to each other,
+they always gave each other warning. Where the rest of the world was
+concerned, I am afraid they used their discretion in this matter.
+
+"It ought to be stopped. The tactful foot of Family authority ought to
+step on it."
+
+He presented his penny angrily to the 'bus-conductor.
+
+"I expect this sort of man asks Jay to walk out with him," he thought,
+and with a cold glance took the ticket offered to him.
+
+"Lucky I'm so utterly selfish," he thought, "or I should be
+devilish worried."
+
+His train was one which boasted a restaurant car, and Kew patronised
+this institution. But when he was in the middle of cold meat, he thought:
+"She is probably trying to live on twopence-halfpenny a week. Continual
+tripe and onions."
+
+So he refused pudding. The pudding, persistent as only a railway pudding
+can be, came back incredulously three times. But Kew pushed it away.
+
+"If I could get anybody outside the Family to use their influence, I
+should be within the letter of the law. But I mostly know subalterns, and
+nobody below a Brigadier would be likely to have much influence with Jay.
+She'd probably talk down even a sergeant-major."
+
+It seems curious that he should deplore the fact that Jay had turned into
+a bus-conductor more deeply than he had deplored her experiments in
+sweated employment. I think that a uniformed sister or wife is almost
+unbearable to most men, except, perhaps, one in the nurse's uniform, of
+which even St. Paul might have approved. The gaiters of the
+'bus-conductor had shaken Kew to his foundations. The thought of the
+skirt still brought his heart into his mouth. He was so lacking in the
+modern mind that he still considered himself a gentleman. No Socialist,
+speaking between clenched teeth in a strangled voice of largely
+groundless protest, had ever gained the ear of Kew. He had never joined a
+society of any sort. He had never attended a public meeting since he gave
+up being a Salvationist at the age of ten.
+
+"It must be stopped," he said, as he got out of the train. "I'll think of
+a way in my bath to-morrow." This was always the moment he looked forward
+to for inspirations.
+
+Anonyma was observable as he walked from the station to the inn, craning
+extravagantly from the sitting-room window. She came downstairs, and met
+him at the door.
+
+"Such a disaster," she said, and handed him a telegram.
+
+Kew stood aghast, as she meant him to. No disaster is ever so great as it
+is before you know what it is. But Kew ought to have known Anonyma's
+disasters by experience.
+
+"Russ's wife has appeared."
+
+"Why should she be introduced as a disaster?" asked Kew, with a sigh of
+relief. "Is she a maniac, or a suffragette, or a Mormon, or just some one
+who has never read any of your books?"
+
+He opened the telegram. It called upon him to rejoin his battalion next
+day at noon.
+
+"Russ went to his house to fetch something this morning and found his
+wife there. He looks quite ill. She insisted on coming here with him, and
+now she wishes to go on the tour with us. As I hear the car is hers, we
+can hardly refuse."
+
+"I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of this disaster," said
+Kew. "But as you evidently don't intend me to, I will not try. Notice,
+however, that I am keeping my head. I have always wondered how I should
+behave in a disaster."
+
+"Wait till you meet her," said Anonyma.
+
+Kew heard Mrs. Russell's melodramatic laughter as he approached the
+sitting-room door, and he trembled. She laughed "Ha-ha-ha" in a concise
+way, and the sound was constant.
+
+"That is her ready sense of fun that you can hear," said Anonyma
+bitterly. "She is teaching Gustus to see the humorous side."
+
+They entered to find poor Cousin Gustus bending like a reed before a
+perfect gale of "Ha-ha-ha's." Mrs. Russell was so much interested in what
+she was saying that she left Kew on her leeward side for the moment,
+hardly looking at him as she shook hands.
+
+"It's enough to make the gods laugh on Olympus," she said, but it did not
+make Cousin Gustus laugh. Noticing this, Mrs. Russell turned to Kew.
+
+"I was telling your cousin about my pacificist efforts in the
+States," she said. "Yes, I can see your eye twinkling; I know a pacifist
+is a funny thing to be. But I'm not one of the--what I call
+dumpy-toad-in-the-hole ones. I do it all joyously. I was telling your
+cousin how very small was the chance that robbed us of success in Ohio."
+
+"What sort of success?" asked Kew.
+
+"Peace," said Mrs. Russell.
+
+"But is Ohio at war?"
+
+Mrs. Russell laughed heartily. Her unnecessarily frank laughter showed
+her gums as well as her teeth, and made one wish that her sense of
+humour were not quite so keen.
+
+"I see you are one of us," she said. "What I call one of the Jolly
+Fraternity. No, Ohio is still enjoying peace. But--if you follow me--from
+the States peace will come; there we must fix our hopes. If we can get
+those millions of brothers and sisters of ours 'across the duck-pond'--as
+I call it--to see its urgency, peace must come. For brothers and sisters
+they are, you know; patriotism will come in time to be considered a vice.
+How can one's soul--if you take my meaning--be affected by the latitude
+and longitude in which one's body was born? From the States the truth
+shall come, salvation shall dawn in the west. Listen to me trying to be
+poetic, it makes me laugh."
+
+One noticed that it did.
+
+"War is so reasonless as to be funny," she said.
+
+"But you haven't told me yet about the little chance that you thought
+would tickle Olympus," said Kew.
+
+"You're laughing at me," said Mrs. Russell. "But I don't mind, for I
+laugh at myself. I like you. Shake."
+
+Kew immediately thought her a nice woman, though peculiar.
+
+Mr. Russell looked in and saw the Shake in progress. He murmured
+something and withdrew hurriedly. For a moment they could hear his
+agitated voice in the passage reciting Milton to his Hound.
+
+"Do listen to my husband, never silent," said Mrs. Russell. "Did you ever
+see a man like him?"
+
+There is no real answer to this sort of question, so Kew said "Yo," which
+is always safe. Then he added, "Do tell me about the little chance."
+
+"This was the little chance," smiled Mrs. Russell. "We ought to have had
+a tremendously successful peace-meeting in a certain town in Ohio. We had
+every reason to expect three thousand people, and we thought of proposing
+the re-naming of the town--calling it Peace. But the little chance was a
+printer's error--the advertisement gave the date wrong. A crowd turned up
+at the empty hall, and two days later, when we arrived, they were so
+tired of us that they booed our demonstration. Just the stupidity of an
+inky printer between us and success."
+
+"Do you mean to say that but for that we should have had peace by now?"
+asked Kew in a reverent voice.
+
+"You never know," said Mrs. Russell. "That meeting might have been the
+match to light the flame of peace all over the world. It's bitterly and
+satirically funny, isn't it, what Fate will do. Ha-ha-ha."
+
+Cousin Gustus laughed hysterically in chorus, and then said that his
+head ached, and that he thought he would go to bed early. Anonyma
+led him away.
+
+"Please don't make peace for a week or two yet," begged Kew. "Let me see
+what I can do first. I am going to-morrow."
+
+"How foolish of you," said Mrs. Russell. "If you like, I believe I have
+enough influence to get you to America instead."
+
+"I think I like France best," said Kew. "I don't feel as if I could be
+content anywhere short of France just now."
+
+"Surely you won't be content anywhere, murdering your fellow-men," said
+Mrs. Russell. "You won't mind my incurable flippancy, will you? I can't
+help treating things lightly."
+
+"Not at all," replied Kew. "But I am often content in the intervals of
+murdering my fellow-men. I play the penny whistle in my dug-out."
+
+"Now tell me," said Mrs. Russell, "what are you all doing here? What
+mischief are you leading my Herbert into?"
+
+When Kew had recovered from a foolish astonishment at hearing that Mr.
+Russell was known to others as Herbert, he said, "We're looking--not very
+seriously--for my sister, who seems to have eloped by herself to the west
+coast, without leaving us her address."
+
+"I know. Herbert told me that much. A place on the sea-front, isn't it?
+But you know, I feel a certain responsibility for Herbert, I have
+neglected him so long. I cannot bear that he should waste his time in
+what I call these stirring days. You mustn't think because I treat life
+as one huge joke that I can never be serious. One can wear a gay mask,
+but--you understand me, don't you? You are one of us."
+
+There was a pause, and then she said, "Ha-ha. Doesn't it seem funny.
+We've only known each other an hour, and here we are intimate...."
+
+Kew obediently allowed himself for a moment to see the humorous side, and
+then said, "What are your plans then, yours and Mr. Russell's?"
+
+"I have neglected him too long, poor old thing," said Mrs. Russell. "I
+must stay with him now, and cheer him up. A cheery heart can bridge any
+gulf, don't you think? You know, I was just what I call a jolly girl when
+I married him, and afterwards I forgot to grow up, I think. Perhaps my
+treatment of him has been rather irresponsible. I must try and make
+up--what I call 'kiss and be friends,' like two jolly little kiddies."
+
+"Then why not join the motor tour?"
+
+"I would rather take Herbert back to our little nest in London. There's
+no place like home, as I always say. From there we might work together
+for the great cause of Peace--what I call 'My Grail.'"
+
+She had crimped hair and a long nose, the tip of which moved when she
+spoke. You would never have given her credit for such influence as she
+claimed in the world's affairs. Only her Homeric laughter, and a pair of
+lorgnettes, reminded you of her greatness.
+
+When Kew finally disentangled himself from the company of this jolly
+creature, it was very late. But the voice of Anonyma arrested him on his
+way to bed. Her face, with a corn-coloured plait on each side of it,
+looked at him cautiously from a dark doorway.
+
+"Kew," said Anonyma, "I won't stand it. We must be rescued."
+
+"Nobody can remove her now without also removing Russ and Christina,"
+said Kew. "The reconciliation has gone too far."
+
+"Then Russ must be sacrificed, and even the car," said Anonyma firmly.
+"Gustus and I can hire if we must. That woman must be removed. The
+jealous cat!"
+
+Kew began to see light. "I'll rescue you, then," he replied. "I'll think
+of a way in my bath."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning a great noise, centring in the bathroom, overflowed through
+the inn. It was the noise of Kew singing joyful extracts from _Peer
+Gynt_. Do you remember the beginning of the end of the Hall of the
+Mountain King? It goes:
+
+"Bomp--chink.... Bomp--chink....
+Tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle-tee.... Bomp-chink, ..."
+etc., etc.
+
+The way in which Kew rendered this passage, notoriously a difficult one
+for a solo voice, would have conveyed to any one who knew him that he had
+solved both his problems.
+
+Anonyma knocked on the bathroom door, and said, "Cousin Gustus's headache
+is still bad."
+
+Kew therefore broke into Anitra's Dance, which is more subdued.
+
+Before breakfast he and Mr. Russell and the Hound walked to the downs.
+The motor tour seemed to have come to a standstill. Cousin Gustus's
+headache could be felt all over the house.
+
+The moment Mr. Russell and Kew were out of earshot of the inn, Kew made
+such a violent resolve to speak that he nearly broke a tooth.
+
+"Russ," he said, "I want to get off my chest for your benefit something
+that has been worrying me awfully."
+
+Mr. Russell made no answer. He had got out of the habit of answering.
+
+"It's about Jay," continued Kew. "I must break to you first that Jay's
+'house on the sea-front,' with all its accessories--gulls, ghosts,
+turrets, aeroplanes, and Friends--is one large and elaborate lie. She and
+I are very much alike. The only difference between us used to be her
+skirt, and now she has gone a good way towards discarding that. She is
+nowhere near the sea. She is in London. Now you, Russ, are what she and I
+used to call an 'Older and Wiser--'"
+
+Mr. Russell jumped violently, but uttered nothing except a little curse
+to his dog, which was almost under his feet.
+
+"--And you are about the only person I could trust, in my absence, to get
+Jay out of an uncommonly silly position. I can't bear her present pose.
+It must stop at once, and if I had time I would stop it myself. I have
+unfortunately sworn not to give her away to the Family, so I come to you.
+She is a 'bus-conductor."
+
+Mr. Russell refrained from jumping. I believe he had expected it. But he
+said, "It would be too funny."
+
+Kew looked at him nervously, fearing for a moment lest Mrs. Russell's
+sense of humour had proved infectious.
+
+Mr. Russell was thinking how funny it would be if the finger of desirable
+coincidence had touched his life. How funny if a nice piece of
+six-shilling fiction should have taken upon itself to make of him its
+hero. Too funny to be true.
+
+But you, I hope, will remember that the coincidence was not so funny as
+he thought, since Jay had beckoned to it with her eyes open.
+
+"Now, I have a prejudice against 'bus-conductors," said Kew.
+
+"Why?" asked Mr. Russell rather indignantly.
+
+"I can't explain it. If I could, it wouldn't be a prejudice, it would be
+an opinion. But--well--just think.... The trousered 'bus-conductors
+probably ask her to walk out with them in Victoria Park on Sundays."
+
+"I see your point," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"You are about double as old as she is--if I may say so--and you are not
+one of the Family, two great advantages. You know, Jay has suffered from
+not meeting enough Older and Wiser people. She has had to worry out
+things too much by herself; she has never been talked to by grown-ups
+whom she could respect. Anonyma never talked with us, though she
+occasionally 'Had a Good Talk.' She never played, but sometimes suggested
+'Having a Good Game.' It's different, somehow. You, Older and Wiser
+without being too old or too wise, might impress Jay a lot, I think,
+because you don't say overmuch. And I want you to tell her something of
+what I feel about it too."
+
+"I never realised before that from your point of view there was any
+advantage in being Older and Wiser," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"You don't mind my saying all this?" said Kew. It was an assumption
+rather than a question.
+
+"Not at all. But I don't understand exactly what you want me to do."
+
+"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London,
+and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let
+the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of
+her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay
+between. I do want it all to come right. I'm going off to-day, and I may
+not see her again. And I know hardly any trustable person but you."
+
+"Right," said Mr. Russell.
+
+He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be
+surprised.
+
+Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.
+
+On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay,
+evidently written for private circulation in the Family.
+
+Dear Kew--I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was
+beautiful. We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of
+a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated
+walnut-shell. The village is grey and white, all its walls are
+whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop
+clinging to them. Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its
+only birds. The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road
+is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded,
+you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became
+aware that you had strayed from the street. But we were not
+absent-minded. We sang Loud Songs all the way. We ran across the grass
+after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky. In
+single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls. Everything
+was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself
+to itself on our horizon. I don't know its name; they say it bears a
+town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true. I
+think that island is an intermittent dream of ours. When you get beyond
+the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and
+such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant
+wall against a giant sea. Only it occasionally defeats its own object,
+because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock
+down. On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its
+eye on Trelawney. It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak. And
+Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do. He ran
+for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge. Well, this is not a
+tragic incident, only an exciting one. Trelawney fell on to a ledge
+about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect
+safety, shrieking for help. My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my
+teeth and Go.'" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan
+childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites
+his teeth and goes. The less you like it, the harder you bite your
+teeth, and it certainly helps. My Friend said: "If we never meet again,
+remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder. It would look
+rather nice stuffed in the hall." The cliff overhangs rather just there,
+and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside
+down, he missed his footing. We heard a yelp from Trelawney. But the
+seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to
+Trelawney's ledge. So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs
+on the scene of the incident.
+
+"I remember--" said Mr. Russell.
+
+"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."
+
+She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the
+plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well. Cousin Gustus also,
+with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had
+come down hopefully to breakfast.
+
+"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell. "The village
+might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy.... Such an intensely
+funny name, Lundy, isn't it? Ha-ha! For some reason it amuses me more
+and more every time I hear it. It reminds me of learning geography with
+the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth. I used to catch my sister's
+eye--just as I'm catching yours now--and laugh ever so much, over Lundy.
+I used to be a terror to my governesses."
+
+"I'm very much afraid that I can't spare much more time for the motor
+tour," said Mr. Russell, and Anonyma was so anxious for the first signs
+of rescue that she actually let him speak. "Business in London. I dare
+say I could get you to Cornwall within the next few days, but some time
+this week I must get back to town."
+
+"I'll come with you," said his wife. "You can't shake me off so easily,
+my dear. Ha-ha!"
+
+"It's too rainy to start to-day," said Cousin Gustus. "I have known
+people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just
+such a deluge as this. We will start to-morrow."
+
+"Wet or fine," added Anonyma.
+
+"The fact remains," said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten
+something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds,
+along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent
+good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of
+anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the
+Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day next month--say at Land's End
+or the Firth of Forth. Otherwise--say forty years hence in Heaven."
+
+"It is very wrong to joke about Death," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew
+a man who died with just such a joke on his lips."
+
+"I hope it was a better joke than that," said Kew. "It can't be wrong to
+laugh at Death. Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little
+wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good."
+
+Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about
+Death and Immortality.
+
+So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain. Mrs. Russell
+was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes. It was
+hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor
+of a rival notebook.
+
+It rained very earnestly. There was no hole in the sky for hope to look
+through. The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the
+force of the rain. You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained
+several times in the Spring of 1916. But this day was a most perfect
+example of its kind.
+
+Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing. I am afraid I have not
+given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus. I ought to have
+told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that
+he loved Kew better than any one else in the world. I might say that the
+departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus's intense grievance against the
+Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose
+that had never been pent up.
+
+Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but
+the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper
+some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.
+
+"The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to
+hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever," said Cousin Gustus.
+"Talk about Iron Crosses--Pish! I should like to have a German here for
+ten minutes. I should say to him: 'My Kew was a good boy, I would almost
+say a clever boy, doing well in his profession: no more thought than that
+dog has of being a soldier till War broke out. Does that look as if we
+were prepared for War?' I should say. 'Doesn't that show where the blame
+lies?' What could he answer?"
+
+Mr. Russell and his Hound were apparently listening, but they could offer
+no suggestions.
+
+"Kew's going has upset me so that my headache has returned, and I cannot
+get any Aspirin here," continued Cousin Gustus. "I know a man who was
+very much addicted to these neuralgic headaches, who committed suicide by
+throwing himself from the bathroom window, solely owing to neuralgia. And
+the rain does nothing towards improving matters. They say the German guns
+bring on the rain. I tell you there is no limit to their guilt. Look at
+this morning's paper: 'The enemy bombarded this section of our front with
+increasing intensity during the day....' I ask you, IS THAT WAR?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Russell absently.
+
+"Nonsense," said Cousin Gustus. "What we ought to do is to shoot every
+German we can catch. Shooting's too good for them. Hang them. That would
+teach them. Any Government but ours would have thought of it long ago.
+Iron Crosses, indeed, Pish!"
+
+Cousin Gustus finds the Iron Cross very useful for the filling up of
+crannies in his edifice of wrath.
+
+Anonyma said: "When I think of those old fairy-like German songs, I feel
+as if I had lost a bit of my heart and shall never find it again. That is
+what I regret most about this War. It is bad art."
+
+"Art, indeed," said Cousin Gustus. "Why, every time they steal a picture
+they get an Iron Cross. I know a man who saw a German wearing a perfect
+rosary of Iron Crosses; the fellow was boasting of having bayoneted more
+babies than any other man in the regiment. Listen to this: 'The enemy
+attacked the outskirts of the village of What D'you Call'em, and engaged
+our troops in hand-to-hand fighting.' Think of it, and we used to say
+they were a civilised race. At the point of the bayonet, it says--isn't
+it atrocious? 'The enemy were finally repulsed at the point of the
+bay--' oh well, of course that may be different. I don't pretend to be
+a military expert...."
+
+"I hate the Germans," said Anonyma, "because they have spoilt my own idea
+of them. I hate having a mistake brought home to me."
+
+"I hate the Germans," began Mr. Russell, "because--"
+
+"I'm going for a walk," said Anonyma. "I am sick of sitting here and
+hearing you two old fogies argue about the War. If War is bad art, it is
+vulgar to refer to it."
+
+I know exactly what Mr. Russell was going to say. He had a vague culinary
+metaphor in his mind. I hate the Germans because they are underdone, they
+are red meat. Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their
+greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been
+roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to
+an extent that seems to us excessive. The reason why some of us dislike
+red meat is that it reminds us too much of what our food originally was.
+As we ourselves, possibly, are rather overcooked by the fire of
+civilisation, this vulgar deficiency in our enemy is very apparent to us.
+This is an elaborate, but not a pleasing analogy, and it was fortunate
+that Mr. Russell was interrupted. Otherwise, I think he might have been
+trying to this day to explain it to an exasperated Cousin Gustus. He
+spoke of it to his Hound, and the idea interested that animal very much.
+
+Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such
+a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus. But Anonyma went out in a
+mackintosh that gave her the "silhouette" of a Cossack, and a beautiful
+little tarpaulin sou'wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to
+give the boots every chance of advertisement. The notebook was safe in a
+water-tight pocket.
+
+She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea. She
+reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the
+gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall
+breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore. The furthest breakwater
+had seaweed like hair waving on the water. At intervals it would seem to
+be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for
+deliverance from the grip of some monster. And then the sea's lips would
+close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were
+beaten into submission. The tide was rather low, and not very far away a
+great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow
+quadrille. There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of
+these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be
+washed gracefully away.
+
+"Lazy Nature!" said Anonyma reprovingly. "To sketch such a scheme in a
+few careless lines."
+
+For the whole world was rain-colour. There was no horizon to the sea, the
+downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the
+waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow. There was nothing but the
+porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand
+dune, sketched on the canvas of that pale day.
+
+Anonyma perpetuated in her notebook her opinion of Nature as an artist.
+On the whole, it was a flattering opinion. Then she sat on the
+breakwater, and thought how fortunate she was to be able to think such
+interesting thoughts about what she saw. How fortunate to enjoy thought
+and to cause thought! How fortunate to feel oneself a member of the
+comforting fellowship of intelligence! "It is much more delightful,"
+Anonyma informed the sea, "to be intelligent than to be beautiful. Why do
+we all try to make our outsides beautiful? There is competition in
+beauty, but there is brotherhood in intelligence. To be clever is to
+share a secret and a smile with all clever people." A vision of the coast
+of the United Kingdom encircled by a ring of consciously clever Anonymas
+sitting on breakwaters, sharing each with all a secret and a smile, came
+vaguely to her.
+
+She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.
+
+And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her,
+appearing stealthily over a breakwater. The face wore the grin that some
+people wear when they are doing anything with great caution. This gave it
+a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in
+a theatre decoration. The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after
+meeting Anonyma's surprised eye for a second or two.
+
+Anonyma kept her head.
+
+First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes
+she was unwittingly barring.
+
+Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her
+intrusion.
+
+Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.
+
+The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather
+reduced their possibility to a minimum. The third she instinctively
+adopted as a certainty. The face at once became obviously German in her
+eyes. It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink,
+the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.
+
+She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.
+
+Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two
+before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring. She
+also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning
+her to the effect that walls--and probably breakwaters--have ears and
+eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish
+to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.
+
+"I am having an adventure," said Mrs. Gustus. "I must keep cool."
+
+She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and
+began to walk away. When she looked back, she saw the top of the man's
+head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own
+course. When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied
+him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of
+elaborate indifference, followed her.
+
+"I must keep even cooler than this," thought Anonyma. "I must try and
+catch the spy."
+
+She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and
+reached the main road. The man crossed the waste land behind her. He
+tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.
+
+On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him. It seemed useless in
+that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of
+each other.
+
+"Did you wish to speak to me?" she asked, as well as she could for the
+great lump of excitement that beat in her throat. Before her eyes visions
+of headlines danced: "LADY NOVELIST'S PLUCKY CAPTURE OF A SPY."
+
+The man became dark red as she spoke. "Yes," he said. "I wanted to ask
+you what you were writing in that notebook?"
+
+Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do. Then
+she said in a hoarse voice: "I have detailed military information about
+this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports
+as to the depth of the water. If you come to my lodgings in D----, I can
+show you a map that I have made."
+
+A tremor ran through the stranger.
+
+"A map?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, a map," said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on
+the spur of the moment, "Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I
+bought from a man in London."
+
+"A bomb?" he said.
+
+Anonyma thought that he was evidently a foreigner, though his accent was
+English. He seemed to find English rather difficult to understand.
+
+"Why do you tell me all this?" he asked finally.
+
+"Because I recognise your face as that of a sp--I mean a fellow-worker
+in the great brotherhood of espionage," said Anonyma.
+
+"Come on, then," said the man.
+
+So they walked off together.
+
+"Why did you take up this--calling?" asked the man presently. "Are you
+a German?"
+
+"Well, more or less," said Anonyma. "At least, I have never been a
+Christian. I believe that one must take either War or Christianity
+seriously. Hardly both."
+
+It was a good opportunity for a monologue. Obviously the stranger was
+not one who would resent a monopoly of the conversation.
+
+"After all, men are only minor gods," said Anonyma, "and War is what gods
+were born for. Germany knows that. That's why, under the present
+circumstances, I'd rather take German money than English."
+
+"Are we anywhere near D---- yet?"
+
+Anonyma hoped that he still had no suspicions. His voice was distinctly
+nervous. To reassure him, she said, "Why did you take up espionage
+yourself?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" said the stranger in an ardent voice. "Of course the pay
+was enormous. Twenty thousand francs if I could get an exact chart of the
+South Coast."
+
+"Why francs?" asked Anonyma.
+
+"Not francs. I find these various currencies so confusing, don't you? Of
+course I mean pfennigs."
+
+"Twenty thousand pfennigs?" said Anonyma. "Look here, are you trying to
+be funny?"
+
+"Far from it," said the man. "To tell you the truth, I am awfully
+nervous."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"Yes. No. I mean of discovery."
+
+"You don't seem to be absolutely cut out for your job," said Anonyma.
+
+They walked in silence for a while. Anonyma sought through her mind to
+find something she could say in keeping with her part. She decided
+finally on a rather ambiguous though imposing attitude.
+
+"The Germans have discovered the truth that anything good is belligerent,
+love included. You can't fight properly with any weapon but your life.
+Death is not the only thing that passes by the peace-man. He remains
+alive, but he also remains ignorant. All peace-men are really women in
+disguise, and all women are utterly superfluous to-day. We only know men.
+People who disapprove of War shall have no part in peace. The peace shall
+be ours who suffered for it, and only we have earned it. The only decent
+thing left for the Americans and Quakers to do now is to hold their
+tongues when peace comes. They haven't earned the right to rejoice."
+
+"I am a Quaker," said the stranger.
+
+"I didn't know the Germans allowed Quakers at large."
+
+"I am not a German," said the stranger.
+
+"Then what has happened?" asked Anonyma, standing suddenly still at the
+top of the main street of D----. "Why did you want my notebook?"
+
+"Because I could plainly see you taking notes in it."
+
+"You thought me a spy?"
+
+"You don't leave me much room for doubt."
+
+They guided each other to the gate of the police-station. There they
+stopped again.
+
+"This is where I was bringing you," said Anonyma, as their eyes fell
+simultaneously on the label over the door: "Sussex County Police."
+
+"It seems to me that honours are easy," she added after a pause. "Don't
+you see what has happened?"
+
+The stranger thought for a moment with a look of dawning relief on his
+pink face. "But you couldn't have made up all those dreadful
+opinions," he said.
+
+"I didn't," said Anonyma. "I meant them all--as applied to England."
+
+"Don't you think we'd better take each other in to make sure?" suggested
+her companion. "The Inspector's quite a good sort. I know him well...."
+
+"You may read my notebook if you like to make quite sure," said Anonyma.
+"I'm almost sure the Inspector would have either too much or too little
+sense of humour for the situation."
+
+She was conscious of a certain disappointment. Her adventure had fallen
+flat, she felt no pleasure in the idea of painting a vivid word-vignette
+for the people at home. Even her notebook must never hear of this
+morning's work.
+
+"How foolish of you," she said irritably. "Do I look like a spy?"
+
+"Do I?"
+
+She felt impelled to be angry with him, and seized upon another pretext.
+
+"You are a conscientious objector, I suppose. And what business has a
+conscientious objector to be spy-hunting? Do I understand that you will
+only help your country when you can do it vicariously, through the
+police, with no risk to yourself? It isn't very dignified."
+
+"A spy is outside every pale," said the stranger. "My conscience objects
+to the shedding of blood. Yet it is an English conscience all the same."
+
+"English?" said Anonyma. "If you won't die for England, England isn't
+yours to love. You shall not have that honour."
+
+"If dying for England is the test of a patriot," said the pink Quaker,
+"what about you?"
+
+"I would die for England. I work for England," said Anonyma.
+
+(Four hours a week.)
+
+She went on: "I have told you already that women--in either sex--are
+superfluous to-day. But after all, real women were born to their burden,
+women were born to put up with second bests. And also posterity is mostly
+a woman's job. But you were born a man, with a great heritage of honour.
+You have kicked that honour away. You have sold your birthright."
+
+The Quaker was the sort of man in whose face and mind one could see
+exactly what his mother was like. Some men are like that, and others,
+one would say, could never have been so intimate with a woman as to be
+born of her.
+
+"My soul is greater than I am," said the stranger. "There is no command
+that drowns the command of the soul. I cannot possibly be wrong."
+
+"You could not possibly be right," said Anonyma. "Good-morning."
+
+Anonyma, on her return to the inn, was very generous with
+"word-vignettes" dealing with Nature. Her Family during supper was not
+left in ignorance as to the Peace and Meaning of the Sea, and the
+Parallel between Waves and Generations, and the Miracles of the Mist, and
+the Tranquil Musing of the Beaches, and the Unseen Imminence of the
+Downs. "It would make a wonderful background to a short story," said
+Anonyma, and then she stopped rather abruptly. Her silence after that
+might have struck the Family as strange, had it not coincided with the
+arrival of the evening paper, which turned the listeners' thoughts to
+less beautiful matters.
+
+"Air raid," said Cousin Gustus. "I prophesied quite a long time ago that
+we should have another raid, but nobody ever listens to what I say. Two
+horses killed somewhere in the Eastern Counties."
+
+"I thought Somewhere was a town in France, ha-ha," said Mrs. Russell.
+
+"Was London attacked?" asked Mr. Russell. "I'm rather anxious about--St.
+Paul's...."
+
+Anonyma rose to the surface again. "I had such a wonderful talk with a
+'bus-conductor once about his experiences during a raid. Such an
+intelligent man. I dearly love 'bus conductors, such an interesting and
+vivacious class. I should feel it an honour to be intimate with one. He
+told me in the most vivid terms how a bomb fell in the street in front
+of his 'bus, blowing the preceding 'bus to atoms. He told me how his
+driver turned the 'bus in what he called 'The spice of 'arf a crown,'
+and plunged into a side street. He said that he could see the Zeppelin
+balanced on its searchlights like 'a sausage on stilts,' and when it was
+directly above them, the top of his 'bus was suddenly cleared of people
+as if by magic, except for one man who put up an umbrella and 'sat
+tight.' I pitied the conductor, it must have been a terrible
+experience, his eyes were starting from his head,--bulging like a
+rabbit's,--he said he had a wife and baby up Leyton way, and that he was
+so worried about them that he frequently called out his list of
+destinations the wrong way round."
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Russell, "I think I'd better go up and see
+about--"
+
+"Nonsense," said his wife. "I refuse to go to London until the moon is
+there to protect me, as it were. So comic to look upon a heavenly body as
+a practical protection. I will not allow you to run needlessly into
+danger. Only this morning you were making plans to go to Cornwall,
+naughty boy."
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Darling, I insist," said Mrs. Russell. "Cornwall it is for the
+present. If you say another word I shall smack you and put you in the
+corner, ha-ha."
+
+Cornwall it was.
+
+The Family drew near to its destination on a misty day. The sun shone not
+at all, but occasionally showed its bare pale outline through a veil of
+cloud. The road in front of Christina was so dim that Mr. Russell could
+people it for himself with imaginations. Now a knight in armour stood at
+the next corner, now a phantom sea gleamed over the curve of the road,
+now he saw great slim ghosts beckoning him on.
+
+There were real sheep every few hundred yards, for a sheep fair was
+taking place somewhere near by. The sheep came out of the mist like
+armies of giants, and shrank as they grew clearer. The roads were rippled
+with the footprints of many sheep. Even when there were no sheep in
+sight, the mist filled their places with ghostly flocks.
+
+Each sheep as it passed examined the wheels of Christina as long as the
+dogs allowed it to do so. Each flock was followed by two men, and
+sometimes a child in ill-fitting clothes on a pony, and sometimes a woman
+with a shawl over her head.
+
+Anonyma's notebook became very restless, and finally Mr. Russell was
+obliged to drive the Family to the point whither the sheep were bound.
+
+So they went to the little town, through which the excitement of the fair
+thrilled like the blast from a trumpet. Bewildered sheep looked in at
+its shop windows; farmers in dog-carts shouted affectionate remarks to
+each other across its village green, and introduced dear friends at a
+great distance to other dear friends with much formality. Dogs argued in
+a professional way about the merits of their sheep. Mr. Russell's Hound,
+who had never before heard the suggestion that dogs were intended for any
+purpose but ornament, looked on breathless with surprise. His morals were
+affected for life by the revolutionary sight of a dog biting the tail of
+a disobedient sheep. "I'll try it in Kensington Gardens," thought Mr.
+Russell's Hound, as he looked nervously at his master.
+
+Christina, the motor-car, found her way to the centre of this activity.
+There the sheep bleated in tight confinement, and to each pen was
+attached the appropriate dog, looking very self-conscious. Dogs who had
+come from great distances to buy sheep were anxiously sniffing up the
+smell of their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way
+home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent
+continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along
+to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer
+with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall
+at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as
+"Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep departed constantly.
+
+"Isn't it terribly slavish, somehow?" said Anonyma. "The sheep
+never being consulted at all. Bought and sold and smelt and spat
+upon as if they had no heart beating beneath that wool. No 'Me,' as
+Jay used to say."
+
+Mr. Russell heard and remembered. There were few doubts left in him as to
+the truth of his too-funny miracle.
+
+He had a little tune, the scaffolding of a poem, in his head, and to the
+sound of it he lived that day, although I don't expect he ever got the
+poem into words.
+
+If you start your idea along an uncertain course, you have to stop and
+start afresh to get it straight. You can never finish it when once it has
+a crooked swing. I gather that motor cyclists occasionally have much the
+same experience with their machines.
+
+But Mr. Russell, with a mind steering a tangled course, asked for
+nothing better. He was very nearly sure of romance for the first time
+in his life.
+
+I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people
+who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share
+it. I think perhaps the same thrill that goes through Mr. Russell and me
+when the ghost of a completed thing begins to be seen, also delights the
+khaki coster who writes his first--and very likely last--love-letter from
+France; and the little old country mother who lies awake composing the In
+Memoriam of her son for a local paper; and the burglar "down 'Oxton" who
+takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is
+a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession,
+and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great
+glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did,
+what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to
+your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts you with your
+limitations.
+
+Mr. Russell and Christina knew well their road through the mist that
+afternoon. There was no difficulty in the world, and no need to see or to
+think. The sign-posts all spoke the names of fated places. It was useless
+for Anonyma to study the map, she found no mention there of the enchanted
+way on which their course was set.
+
+"We will not go through Launceston," said Anonyma. "There must be a
+quicker way to the sea than that."
+
+Mr. Russell cared not for her and cared not for Launceston. The spell was
+cast upon Christina's wheels. There was no escaping the appointed way.
+Launceston reached out its net and caught them. Almost as far as the post
+office, Anonyma was protesting: "We will NOT go through Launceston."
+
+"Launceston was determined to get us," laughed Mrs. Russell. "Ha-ha!
+isn't it humorous the way things happen?"
+
+The sun was setting as they first saw the Cornish sea. The sky was swept
+suddenly clear of mist. The seagulls against the sky were like little
+crucified angels.
+
+The road ran to the shore.
+
+The sun had little delicate clouds across its face, like the islands in
+a Japanese painting. The wet rocks that lay in the sun's path were plated
+with gold, and the tall waves with shadowed faces made of that path a
+ladder. The fields of foam on the sea looked very blue in the pale light.
+
+The sun was like an angel with a flaming sword. The angel dipped his feet
+into the sea.
+
+The sun was like a flaming stage for the comedies of gods. A ship passed
+dramatically across it. One's dazzled eyes saw great phantom ships all
+over the sea.
+
+The sun was like a monster with horns of fire that pierced one's two
+eyes. And gradually it sank.
+
+The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that
+was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it. There was
+suddenly no sun. The little forsaken clouds were like flames for a
+moment, and then they were blown out.
+
+Mr. Russell waved his right hand towards great cliffs like the towers of
+kings behind the village.
+
+"This is the place," he said.
+
+  If I have dared to surrender some imitation of splendour,
+Something I knew that was tender, something I loved that was brave,
+If in my singing I shewed songs that I heard on my road,
+Were they not debts that I owed rather than gifts that I gave?
+
+  If certain hours on their climb up the long ladder of time
+Turned my confusion to rhyme, drove me to dare an attempt,
+If by fair chance I might seem sometimes abreast of my theme,
+Was I translating a dream? Was it a dream that you dreamt?
+
+  High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes;
+All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true.
+Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me;
+Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?
+
+Man ought to feel humble when he reflects upon the fact that he can
+survive, and even thrive on, any distress except distress of the body.
+God can wither his soul, and still he lives. Grief can swallow his heart,
+and still he lives. But his stomach can kill him.
+
+"All is apparently over between me and Peace," thought Jay. "But there
+must be something to take the place of Peace."
+
+There is only one thing that can adequately usurp the place of Peace. But
+its name did not occur to Jay.
+
+She did not know what had happened to her. She felt constantly a little
+mad. Irresponsible wants clamoured in her breast from morning till night,
+and all night the company of her Secret Friend was more glorious than
+ever. She ran to her world as you perhaps run to church, yet even there
+she felt expectant.
+
+When a tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the
+first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness
+seems impossible and at the same time imperative.
+
+So Jay waited, feeling all the time that she could not wait
+another minute.
+
+You shall not hear whence comes my fear.
+You shall not know the name of it.
+But out of strife it came to life,
+And only striving came of it.
+Though for its sake my heart may break,
+Yet worse would I endure for it.
+This thing shall be a God to me,
+I will not seek a cure for it.
+
+She thought a good deal about Mr. Russell. I am sure that he would have
+laughed painfully could he have seen the picture of himself that remained
+with the 'bus-conductor. The picture made him thinner, and his eyes more
+intelligent, and the line of his mouth happier, but it did not make him
+look younger, because Jay liked him to be Older and Wiser. He never came
+into the Secret World; several times she tried to drag him thither, but
+always at the critical moment he got left outside. Yet I cannot say that
+in her Secret World she missed him; the point of the bubble enchantment
+is that there is nothing lacking in it.
+
+'Bus-conducting is a profession that does not engross the mind unduly.
+The eye and the ear and the hand work by themselves. Charing Cross
+whispered in a conductor's ear at the Bank produces a white ticket from
+her hand without any calculation on her part. She becomes a
+penny-in-the-slot machine, with her human brain free for other matters.
+She grows a great hatred for all fares above fourpence, because they need
+special thought.
+
+Jay filled her day with unsatisfactory thinking. She found to her
+surprise that one may love life and yet also think lovingly of death. To
+live is most interesting in an uneasy way, but to die is to forget at
+once all these trivial turbulences, to forget equally the people you have
+loved and the people you have hated, to forget everything you ever knew,
+to be alone, and to be no longer disturbed by unceasing voices.
+
+At this time I think Jay felt more hatred of everybody than love of any
+one person. But then, of course, she had vowed to Chloris after the
+affair with young William Morgan that she would never fall in love again.
+She said, "I have been through love. It is not a sea, as people say. It
+is only a river, and I have waded through it."
+
+"Yet there is certainly something very remarkable about that man," she
+thought. "I don't believe I like him much, I don't want to know him
+better, though I should like him to know me. I believe he is my real next
+of kin. I believe he has a Secret World too."
+
+She was on her last homeward journey, and it was one of her early days.
+The hours of a conductor move up and down the day. Sometimes Jay
+punctured her first ticket at a time when you and I are asleep, and when
+the coster-barrows, waving with ferns and fuchsias, move up the Strand
+like Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane. On those days she was due home at
+half-past four or so. On other days she was able to have a late
+breakfast and to darn her stockings after it, but that meant that she
+did not get home till very late. Some 'buses, I gather, are called
+"single 'buses," but in this case the word does not imply celibacy
+alone. The single 'bus is occupied by one conductor all day Jong for a
+fortnight. The "double 'bus" is shared by two conductors, one presiding
+in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The double state also
+lasts a fortnight; it is arranged as an opportunity for lady
+'bus-conductors to recuperate after the rigours (the more remunerative
+rigours) of service on a single 'bus. These statements of mine are open
+to extensive correction. Jay's hours always struck me as so very
+confusing that it is unlikely I should be able to retail the information
+correctly. However, it doesn't matter very much.
+
+This was one of the early days on a double 'bus, and Jay was on her last
+journey, with several restless waking hours between her and possible
+sleep. Her 'bus was full, but not pressed down and running over. For the
+moment everybody in it was provided with a ticket. Jay was laboriously
+thinking small thoughts because she was tired of thinking of Love and
+Life and other things with capital letters.
+
+She thought of the various indignities to which the public submits its
+'bus-tickets. Some people use the ticket as a toothpick, some put
+spectacles on and read it without understanding, some decorate
+outstanding features of the 'bus with it. But I myself tear it gradually
+into small strips, and grind the strips by means of massage into fine
+powder. If the inspector comes, I am perfectly willing to pour the powder
+into his hand, and yet he often seems annoyed.
+
+Jay reviewed the perspective of faces that lined her 'bus. They were all
+ugly, and not one of them was eager. The British public as a whole
+considers a deaf, dumb, and blind expression the only decent one to wear
+in a public conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world,
+and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears,
+and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that
+moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of
+them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved by women, only found
+expedient.
+
+But there was a sailor, a simple sub-lieutenant, sitting by the door.
+Sailors are a race apart. They have twisty faces, their boots and
+gloves look curiously accidental. In London they are rarely seen
+without a _London Mail_ or a _London Opinion_ in their grasp. There is
+something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by,
+and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some
+one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk
+climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of
+a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a
+fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I
+suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to young ladies
+of this type is to suggest that they have brains. Jay pondered on this,
+and then turned elsewhere for inspiration. All roads of thought at that
+time led to one destination, so she only allowed herself to go a little
+way along each road.
+
+And presently she reached the end of her journey. She walked home, and
+Chloris was as usual waiting for her just outside the rocking-horse
+factory at the corner. Jay, as she passed that factory every day, watched
+with interest the progress of the grey ghost rocking-horses, eyeless,
+maneless, and tailless, as they ripened hourly into a form more like that
+of the friend of youth.
+
+She smelt the little smell that is always astray in Mabel Place, she
+heard outside in the damp afternoon two rival barrow-men howling a cry
+that sounded like "One pound hoo-ray!" A neighbour in the garden was
+exchanging repartee with a gentleman caller. "Biby, siy Naughty Man,
+Biby, tell 'im what a caution 'e is." But there seemed little hope that
+the baby would. These sounds were provided with the constant Brown
+Borough background of shouts and quarrels and laughter and children
+crying and innumerable noises of work.
+
+"Something has happened," said Jay to Chloris, as they went in. "I feel
+as if I had no friends to-night. Not even a Secret Friend."
+
+Chloris lay on her lap in her usual attitude, bent into a circle like a
+tinned tongue. Chloris knew it was no use worrying about these things.
+
+"Funny," thought Jay. "King David was a healthy man of ruddy countenance,
+and presumably he never lived in the Brown Borough, yet he knew very
+well what it feels like to have a temperature, and a sore heart, and to
+be alone in lodgings. Whenever I am very tired, it is funny how my heart
+quotes those tired Psalms of his, without my brain remembering the words.
+I wonder how David knew."
+
+The little house was empty but for her. I ought perhaps to have told you
+before that Nana had been taken ill a month or so ago, and had gone away
+at Jay's expense to a South Coast Home.
+
+"I'll go round and see Mrs. 'Ero Edwards," said Jay, when she had changed
+into mufti. "Neither Chloris nor David is adequate to the moment."
+
+The ground-floor back room of Mrs. 'Ero Edwards was crowded. The Chap
+from the Top Floor was there, and Mrs. Dusty Morgan, and little Mrs. Love
+from Tann Street, and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards's daughter, Queenie, and several
+people's children. Conversation never wavered as Jay knocked and came in.
+When you find that your entrance no longer fills a Brown Borough room
+with sudden silence, you may be glad and know that you have ceased to be
+a lidy or a toff.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor was talking, and everybody else was there to
+hear him do it, except Mrs. 'Ero Edwards who could hardly bear it,
+because she only liked listening to herself. Jay sat modestly in a corner
+and listened, like the other representatives of her generation.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor was an Older and Wiser Man. His wife could
+not live with him, but he was very kind and fatherly to every one else,
+and Jay was rather fond of him. He was about fifty, and anything but
+beautiful. Also the C.O.S. would not have admired him. But I believe he
+did a good deal of thinking inside that bristly head of his.
+
+"Ow my dear," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, laying a fat hand on Jay's knee.
+"We're all so 'appy. Dusty's wrote to siy 'e's got the sack from the Army
+becos of 'is rheumatics. We're 'avin' a bit of a beano becos of it."
+
+Everybody smiled at Jay, and her heart grew warmer. Some one handed her a
+cup of tea sweetened with half an inch of sugar at the bottom of the
+cup. The spoon had been plunged to its hilt in condensed milk. What
+vulgar tastes she had!
+
+"You can never mike a pal of a woman," said the Chap from the Top Floor,
+continuing an argument for the benefit of an audience of women. "One
+feller an' another--well--a pal's a pal. But women are all either wives
+or--, there ain't no manner of palliness in them."
+
+"'Tain't gentlemanly to talk so, Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards. "Yore
+mother was a woman, an' from 'er comes all you know, I'm thinkin', an'
+all you are. Women is pals with women, an' men is pals with men. It's
+only when men an' women gets assorted-like that palliness drops out."
+
+"'Usbinds an' wives can be pals," said Mrs. Dusty. "Me an' Dusty useter
+'ave a drop an' a jaw together every night for three months after we
+married. Never 'ad a thought apart, we didn't."
+
+"If I ars't Dusty," said the Top Floor Chap, "I don't know but what 'e
+wouldn't tell a different tile."
+
+"'Ere, 'bus-conductor, you can talk, an' you're a suffragette," said
+Mrs. Dusty. "Ain't bein' a pal just as much a woman's job as a man's?"
+
+"What is bein' a pal?" asked Mrs. Love bitterly. "'Avin' some one 'oo
+drinks wiv you until she's sick, and then blacks your eye for you. There
+ain't no pals, men or women."
+
+"I think they're rare," said Jay. "Isn't being a pal just refusing to
+admit a limit? Some people draw the line at a murderer, and some at a
+suffragette, and some at a vegetarian, and some at a lady who wears the
+same dress Sundays and week-days, but a real pal draws no line. Women and
+dogs as well as men can be faithful beyond limit, I think, but it's very
+rare in anybody."
+
+"'Bus-conductors don't know nothink," said the Chap from the Top Floor in
+a loud belligerent voice, illuminated by an amiable smile. "I orfen look
+at 'bus-conductors, an' think, 'Pore devils, they don't know 'arf of
+life, not even a quarter. They only meets the harisocracy wot 'as pennies
+to frow about, they never passes the time of day with a plain walkin'
+feller like me wot ses 'is mind an' never puts on no frills.
+'Bus-conducting oughter be done by belted earls an' suchlike, it ain't a
+real man's job. Pore devils,' I ses, lookin' at 'em bouncin' along, doin'
+the pretty to all the nobs, wivout so much as puttin' their toe in the
+mud. 'Pore devils.'"
+
+"'Ere Elbert, 'old your jaw," said the tactful Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, nervous
+lest Jay should resent this insult to her calling. "Let's all go roun' to
+the Cross'n Beetle, an' see whether that won't stop 'is noise."
+
+"After all, it's Dusty's birfdiy," said Mrs. Dusty with alacrity.
+
+The day was evidently growing in importance every minute.
+
+"You come along too," said little Mrs. Love, suddenly putting her
+hand in Jay's.
+
+"No treatin' nowadiys," said the Top Floor Chap amiably. "But I don't
+mind 'andin' around the price of a drink before we start."
+
+He only extended half-hearted generosity to Jay, because she was, after
+all, a 'bus-conductor, and to that extent a nob. She shook her head and
+laughed, when he held out to her the Law-circumventing coin.
+
+Mrs. 'Ero Edwards only really found scope for her voice out of doors.
+No sooner was she in the street than she seized the arm of the Chap
+from the Top Floor and shouted him down, as she led him towards the
+Cross'n Beetle.
+
+Mrs. Dusty and young Queenie walked arm in arm behind them, and whenever
+they saw a soldier they squeaked loudly, and addressed him invariably as
+"Colonel Mawmajuke."
+
+Jay and little Mrs. Love, both rather confused and unhappy people, walked
+hand in hand a little way behind.
+
+"We needn't go as fur as the Cross'n Beetle, if we don't like," said Mrs.
+Love. "They'll never notice if we 'ook it."
+
+"I don't want to 'ook it," said Jay. "I want to keep very busy listening
+to noisy people. I don't want to hear myself think."
+
+"You're mopey, eh?" asked Mrs. Love gently.
+
+"I'm cold," said Jay. "I believe I've lost something. I believe I've lost
+a friend of mine."
+
+"Friends is always gettin' lost," said Mrs. Love. "I told you so. Let's
+go an' 'ave a look at the pictures. They've got the 'Curse of a Crook' on
+up the street. Fairly mike yer 'air curl."
+
+"I want noise," said Jay, "a much louder noise than that old piano. The
+pictures are so horribly quiet. Just an underfed man turning a handle,
+and an underfed woman hitting an underfed piano. At a play you can at
+least pretend that the actors are having a little fun too, but the
+pictures--there's only two sad people without smiles at the bottom of it
+all. I won't go to the pictures, I'll go and get drunk."
+
+"Come on then," said Mrs. Love. "You won't find no lost friends there,
+but come on. I'll be yer pal for to-night. You've been a pal to me before
+now. We're temp'ary pals right enough, there' ain't no permanent kind.
+You won't find no shivers straying around in the ole Cross'n Beetle.
+Let's 'urry, an' get drunk, and keep 'and in 'and all the time. That's
+wot pals oughter do."
+
+Jay suddenly saw the whole world as a thing running away from its
+thoughts. The crowd that filled the pavement was fugitive, and every man
+felt the hot breath of fear on the back of his neck. One only used one's
+voice for the drowning of one's thoughts; one only used one's feet for
+running away. The whole world was in flight along the endless streets,
+and the lucky ones were in trams and donkey carts that they might flee
+the faster.
+
+"Hurry, hurry," said Jay. And she and little Mrs. Love ran hand in hand.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards were already leading
+society in the Cross'n Beetle when Jay and Mrs. Love reached it. The
+barman knew Mrs. Edwards too well to think that she was drunk already,
+but you or I, transported suddenly thither, would have supposed that her
+beano was over instead of yet to come.
+
+"'Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, "yo're an 'Un, yo're an internal
+alien, thet's what's the metter with you. I wonder I 'aven't blacked yer
+eye for you many a time and oft."
+
+There was almost enough noise even for Jay, and she and Mrs. Love, each
+armed with a generously topped glass, sat in the background, on the
+shiny seat that lined the wall.
+
+To Jay this evening was an experiment, an experiment born of weariness of
+a well-worn road. She watched Mrs. Love blow some of the superfluous
+froth on to the floor, and did likewise. Directly she had put her lips to
+the thick brim of her glass she knew that here was the stuff of which
+certain dreams are made.
+
+She had, I suppose, the weakest head in the world, and in three minutes
+she was giddy and much comforted. The noise seemed to clothe itself in a
+veil of music, there was hope in the shining brightness that shone from
+the bar. The placards that looked like texts and were advertisements of
+various drinks, seemed like jokes to Jay.
+
+"There are only dreams," she thought very lucidly, "to keep our
+souls alive. We are lucky if we get good dreams. We'll never get
+anything better."
+
+Through the glass between the patriotic posters that darkened the windows
+she could see the morbid colour of London air.
+
+"Apart from dreams," thought this busconducting Omar Khayyám, "there is
+nothing but disappointment. We expected too much. We expected
+satisfaction. There is nothing in the world but second bests, but dreams
+are an excellent second best. Our last attitude must be 'How interesting,
+but how very far from what I wanted....'"
+
+The speed of time, and the hurry of life suddenly rushed upon her again.
+
+"I must hurry," she said. "Or I shan't have lived before I die. I
+must hurry."
+
+"No 'urry, Jine," said Mrs. Love. "Let's keep in the light for a bit."
+
+"Is this the only light left us, after a deluge of War?" thought Jay. "It
+doesn't matter, because of course War is hurrying too. Rushing over our
+heads like the sea over drowned sailors. But it will be over in a minute;
+this new kind of death must be a temporary death for temporary soldiers.
+What do fifty years without friends matter? You can hardly breathe before
+they're done."
+
+She was dazzled and deafened. She had emptied her glass, and she did not
+know what steps she took to fill it again. Only she found it was
+suddenly full.
+
+And in a minute she was on the path to the House by the Sea. She had
+come by a new way.
+
+There was less colour than usual about the sea, a certain air of guilt
+seemed to haunt the path. And it was extraordinarily lonely, there seemed
+to be no promise of a Friend waiting at the other end of the path.
+
+She sang the Loud Song to encourage herself, but she did not sing it
+very loudly.
+
+There is no dream like my dream,
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no Friend like my Friend,
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no life like my life,
+Even in Heaven.
+
+A voice said, "For 'eaven's sike, Jine, don't begin to sing."
+
+Jay laughed. "Treating me as if I were drunk ..." she thought. She did
+not feel giddy any more. She could see the familiar outline of the House
+against an unpretentious sky, and that calm shape steadied her.
+
+No breath of sound came from the House. The sky was grey, the sea was
+grey, there was no hint of sunlight. As Jay came to the door she noticed
+that the honeysuckle in the bowl at the hall window was still there, but
+dead. The wind had strewn the doorstep with leaves and straws and twigs,
+little refugees of the air.
+
+In the hall there was an old woman, dressed in a black dress patterned
+with big red flowers. She was knitting. Her stiff skirts spread out in
+angular folds round her. Jay knew she was a fellow-ghost, because
+their eyes met.
+
+Jay felt swallowed up by the silence. She could not speak, even to
+think, she felt, would be too noisy. The stiff skirt of the old lady
+made no rustle, the knitting needles made no click. But Jay could see
+that she was counting. The House seemed to be full of unmoving time.
+Outside the rain began to fall, and that grey sound enclosed the silence
+of the House.
+
+After a very long time Jay spoke. "Where is my Friend?" she asked.
+
+"Gone to the War," answered the old woman.
+
+"There is no War in this world," said Jay.
+
+"On the contrary," the fellow-ghost replied, "war is, even here, where
+Time is not. War is like air, in every house, in every land, on every
+sea. For ever."
+
+Between her sentences she counted. Unpausing numbers moved her lips.
+
+"On these shores," she said, "time and Life and the sea go up and down.
+Eternity has no logic. There are no reasons, there is no explanation. But
+there is always War. There are fighting sea men in the caves on the
+beach. Haven't you seen them, the dark sea people? Haven't you heard
+their high voices that were tuned to cut through the voice of the sea?
+Haven't you found their very wide, long-toed footprints in the sand? Have
+you walked blind through this world?"
+
+"No," said Jay, "I remember. The women decorate their hair with seaweed,
+pink and green. I have watched them catch fish with their hands. I have
+watched them put their babies to play in the pools among the rocks...."
+
+"On the cliffs," said the fellow-ghost, "men clad in armour share the
+camps of the Englishmen who fought at Cressy, and at Waterloo, and at
+the Marne. On these seas the most ancient pirates sing and laugh in
+chorus with Nelson's drowned sailors, and with men from the North Sea,
+men whose mothers still cry in the night for them. Did you think there
+was any seniority in Eternity?"
+
+"But I don't understand," said Jay. "Time seems to leave itself behind so
+quickly...."
+
+"There is nothing to understand," said the old woman. "There is no
+explanation. Time does not move. Men move." The noise of the rain seemed
+to wash out everything but remembrance, and there was no feeling in Jay
+but a terrible longing to have her Secret Friend with her again, and that
+long secret childhood of theirs, and to wipe out half her days and all
+her knowledge, and to hear once more those songs upon the sands of the
+cove, and to feel the tingling ground of the sunny hills.
+
+"My Friend has never forsaken me before," she said.
+
+She felt a hand press her hand, and she met the eyes of little Mrs. Love.
+
+"Yo're a mousey sort of kid," said Mrs. Love, "sittin' there as if you
+was in church. Shall we go 'ome? The rine's gettin' worse an' worse, an'
+it's no good wytin'. I'll see you 'ome."
+
+When Jay, very wet and dazed, reached Eighteen Mabel Place, she found a
+card pushed under the door. The name on it was Mr. Herbert Russell's, and
+there was a suggestion in a beautiful little handwriting on the back of
+it that she should ring him up next morning and tell him when to come and
+see her, as he had a message from her brother.
+
+"This is the sort of thing that couldn't possibly happen in real life,"
+said Jay. "I must be drunk after all. On no doorstep except Heaven's
+could one find a message so romantic."
+
+She was instinctively disobedient to Older and Wiser people. She never
+entertained the idea of telephoning. She could imagine Mr. Russell
+answering the telephone in a prosaic voice like a double bass. She wrote
+the following letter:
+
+DEAR SIR--Don't you remember, I was to meet you anyway on the steps of
+St. Paul's at ten o'clock next Sunday? I will wait till then for the
+message.--Yours faithfully,
+
+JANE ELIZABETH MARTIN, 'Bus-conductor.
+
+"That letter ought to put two and two together for him," she thought, "if
+he hasn't done it already. It's a complicated little sum, and the result
+is--what?"
+
+She felt hot and feverish when she wrote the letter. And directly she had
+posted it she regretted having done so.
+
+"I forget what I wrote," she said. "It is dangerous to post letters to
+Older and Wiser Men when drunk."
+
+All that night she lay awake and mourned the desertion of her
+Secret Friend.
+
+You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
+You promised true, but we were very blind,
+And very young, and in our ignorance
+We never called to mind
+That truth is seldom kind.
+
+You promised love, immortal as a star.
+You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
+For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
+And, deathless, still we cry,
+Nor hope for a reply.
+
+You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
+You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
+Behold a reaper strode across the field,
+And man of woman born
+Was gathered in as corn.
+
+You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
+You promised true. In joy we trembled lest
+We should be found unworthy when it came;
+But--oh--we never guessed
+The fury of the test.
+
+You promised friends and songs and festivals.
+You promised true. Our friends, who still are young,
+Assemble for their feasting in those halls
+Where speaks no human tongue.
+And thus our songs are sung.
+
+I have very rarely found Sunday in London a successful day. I hate
+idleness without peace, and festivity without beauty, and noise without
+music. I hate to see London people in unnatural clothes. I hate to see a
+city holding its breath.
+
+Jay waited ten minutes on the steps of St. Paul's for Mr. Russell. This
+was not because he was late, but because she was early; and this again
+was not because she was indecently eager, but because she had hit on an
+unexpectedly non-stop 'bus. She felt a fool for ten minutes. And when you
+have waited ten minutes on those enormous steps under the eye of the
+pigeons, you will know why she felt a fool.
+
+Mr. Russell arrived in Christina the motor car, and simultaneously a
+shower fell. From the first moment Jay felt unsuccess in the air of that
+much-anticipated day. She was introduced to Christina, and said, "But we
+can't take that thing into the Cathedral."
+
+"We don't want to," said Mr. Russell, although, as he was a born driver,
+the challenge made him instinctively measure with his eye the depth of
+the steps, and the width of the doorway, from Christina's point of view.
+"We don't want to pray. We want to talk."
+
+Anonyma would have been astonished to hear him say this.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Jay, "I brought Chloris for the same reason."
+
+Chloris was eating the bread which a kind but short-sighted old lady
+believed herself to be giving to the pigeons.
+
+Mr. Russell had hardly been able to imagine his 'bus-conductor in any
+dress but that of her calling. Now that he saw her in unambitious
+London-coloured things, he was glad to notice that her clothes were not
+Sunday clothes, but the sort that you forget about directly you look away
+from them.
+
+This was the sort of day that breaks up delusions, and as Christina the
+motor car started away, Jay discovered that her hat was not adequately
+attached to her head. There are few discoveries more depressing than
+this at the beginning of a day of movement.
+
+The bells of St. Paul's began to sing. Little fairy bells dodged behind
+and about the great notes. But Christina soon swept the sound into the
+forgotten air behind her.
+
+"I've got a lot to talk to you about," said Mr. Russell as he headed
+Christina Hackney-way. He was conscious that he was taking his miracle
+curiously for granted. I don't think he really believed in it yet. For
+Mr. Russell all truth was haunted by the ghost of a clanking lie. He
+discerned deceit on the part of Providence where no deceit was. "I'll
+give you your brother's message first, because it interests me personally
+least. He is gone. There was a sudden move across the Channel last week,
+and he went--I suppose--ten days ago now. The message he hadn't time to
+give you was an appeal to give up 'bus-conducting. He had an absurd idea
+that you walked out with men-conductors in Victoria Park."
+
+"Not at all absurd," said Jay. "Not half so absurd as the idea of driving
+out with a casual fare. I know some delightful conductors and drivers;
+we joke together when the traffic sticks. There is one perfect darling
+called Edward; his only fault is that he drives a mere Steamer. But we
+always bow, and once when a horse fell down and we got hung up for twenty
+minutes in the Strand, he sang me a little song about a star."
+
+Mr. Russell listened to all this very attentively, and then continued:
+"Your brother wants you to go back to your Family. His last words to me
+about it were that if you could manage to be ladylike for three years or
+the duration of War, at the end of that time he and you would go and live
+by your two selves in New Zealand, and if you liked you need wear no
+skirts at all there, but riding breeches all the time."
+
+"Ladylike!" snorted Jay. "What's the use of ladyliquity even for five
+minutes? So Kew sent you as an antidote? I suppose he didn't know you
+were one of my fares?"
+
+"A fare," said Mr. Russell sententiously, "may, I suppose, be a wonderful
+revelation, because you only see your fare's eyes for a second, and the
+things you may see have no limit, and you never know the silly little
+truth about him. Yet even so, there is more than a ticket and a look
+between you and me, and you know it."
+
+"Possibly there is a Secret World between you and me," said Jay. "But
+that's a pretty big thing to divide us."
+
+"Supposing it doesn't divide us?" said Mr. Russell, looking fiercely at
+the road in front of him. "Supposing it showed me how much I love you?"
+
+"How disappointing!" said Jay in the worst of possible taste. (She was
+like that to-day.) "You're ceasing to be an Older and Wiser, and trying
+to become an ordinary Nearah and Dearah."
+
+("Oh, curse," she thought in brackets. "I shall kick myself to-night.")
+
+"That's a horrid thing to say," said Mr. Russell. "But still I do
+love you."
+
+"It sounds very Victorian and nice," said Jay, wondering if he could
+still see her through her veil of bad temper. "But, you know, in spite of
+Secret Worlds, and secret souls, and centuries of secret knowledge, we
+still have to keep up this 1916 farce, and leave something of ourselves
+in sensible London. How do I know you're not married?"
+
+Mr. Russell thought for a very long time indeed, and then said, "I am."
+
+Jay was not very well brought up. She did not stop the car and step
+out with dignity into respectable Hackney. She was just silent for a
+long time.
+
+"As you were," she said to herself, when she found herself able to think
+again. "This is a bad day, but it will be over in something less than a
+hundred years."
+
+"You drive well," she said presently, looking with relief from Mr.
+Russell's face to his hands. Christina the motor car and two 'buses were
+just then indulging in a figure like the opening steps of the Grand
+Chain. "You drive as though driving were poetry and every mile a verse."
+
+"After all," she told herself, "the man loves me, and I must at least
+take an intelligent interest in him."
+
+"Are you a poet?" she added.
+
+Nobody had ever asked Mr. Russell this question before, and not knowing
+the answer to it, he did not answer.
+
+"I have never written a line of poetry," said Jay. "Or rather, I have
+several times written a line, but never another line to fit it. Yet
+because I have a Friend,--I know in what curious and extended order the
+verses come, and how the tunes come first, and the various voices next,
+and the words last, and how a good rhyme warms you like a fire, and how
+the tunes fall away when the thing is finished, and how ready-made it all
+is really, and yet how tired you feel...."
+
+To Mr. Russell it all seemed true, and part of the miracle. He had
+nothing to add, and therefore added nothing.
+
+"Obviously you are a poet," said Jay. "You have a poetic look."
+
+"What look is that?" asked Mr. Russell, much pleased. It was twenty years
+since he had even remembered that he possessed a look of his own.
+
+"A silly sullen look," said Jay. Presently she added: "But it must have
+been disappointing to find yourself a poet in Victorian times. I always
+think of you Olders and Wisers as coming out of your stuffy nineteenth
+century into our nice new age with a sigh of relief."
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Russell. "You must remember that when we were born
+into it, it became our nice new age, and therefore to us there is no
+age like it."
+
+"It seems incredible," said Jay. "Did Older and Wiser people ever live
+violently, ever work--work hard--until their brains were blind and they
+cried because they were so tired? Did they ever get drowned in seas full
+of foaming ambitions? Did they ever fight without dignity but with joy
+for a cause? Did they ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in
+the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at
+the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"
+
+"We were fools often," said Mr. Russell. "Once, when I was fifteen, I bit
+my hand--and here is the scar--because I thought I had found a new thing
+in life, and I thought I was the first discoverer. But as to jokes, you
+are on very dangerous ground there. One's sense of humour is a more
+tender point than one's heart, especially an Older and Wiser sense of
+humour. You know, we think the jokes of your nice new age not half so
+funny as ours. But as neither you nor I make jokes, that obstacle need
+not come between us."
+
+"Oh, I think difference of date is never in itself an obstacle," said
+Jay. "Time is not important enough to be an obstacle."
+
+"You and I know that," said Mr. Russell.
+
+A little unnoticed knot of Salvationists surprised Jay at a distance by
+singing the tune of a sentimental song popular five years ago, and then
+they surprised her again, as she passed them, and heard the words to
+which the tune was being sung. Brimstone had usurped the place of the
+roses in that song, and the love left in it was not apparently the kind
+of love that Hackney understands.
+
+"Why don't they sing the old hymn tunes?" asked Jay. "Or tunes like
+'Abide with Me'--not very old or very good, but worn down with
+devotion like the steps of an old church? Why do they take the drama
+out of it all?"
+
+Chloris at that moment introduced drama into the drive by jumping out of
+the back seat of Christina. I must, I suppose, admit that Chloris was not
+Really Quite a Lady. On the contrary, motor 'buses were the only motors
+she knew. She mistook the estimable Christina for a deformed motor 'bus,
+and when she smelt Victoria Park, she jumped out. Even for Chloris this
+was an unsuccessful day. A flash of yelping lightning caught the tail of
+Jay's eye, and she looked round to see her dignified dog, upside down,
+skid violently down a steep place into the gutter, and there disappear
+beneath the skirt of a female stranger who was poised upon the kerb.
+Unhurt, but probably blushing furiously beneath her fur over her own
+vulgarity, Chloris was retrieved, and spent the rest of the drive in
+wiping all traces of the accident off her ribs on to the cushions of
+Christina. I am glad that Mr. Russell's Hound was not there to witness
+poor Chloris's unsophisticated confession of caste.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Jay, when she was calm again.
+
+"God knows where ..." said Mr. Russell.
+
+"I'm always coming across districts of that name," said Jay severely. "I
+often direct my enquiring fares to the region of God Knows Where. It is
+most unsatisfying. Where are we going?"
+
+"On for ever," said Mr. Russell. "Out of the world. To the House
+by the Sea."
+
+"Then will you please set me down at Baker's Arms?" said Jay. "Do you
+know, by the way, that Anonyma always says 'Stay' to a 'bus, if she
+remembers in time not to say 'Hi, stop,' like a common person."
+
+She was talking desperately against failure, but it seemed a doomed day,
+and nothing she could think of seemed worth saying.
+
+"I want to talk to you about your House by the Sea," said Mr. Russell.
+"You know I found it."
+
+"Don't tell me any facts," implored Jay. "Don't tell me you pressed half
+a crown into the palm of the oldest and wisest inhabitant, and found out
+facts about some nasty young man who was born in seventeen something, and
+lived in a place called Atlantic View, and wore curls and a choky stock,
+and fought at Waterloo, and lies in the village church under a stone
+monstrosity. Don't tell me facts, because I know they will bar me for
+ever out of my House by the Sea. Facts are contraband there."
+
+"There is no House by that Sea now," said Mr. Russell. "A slate quarry
+has devoured the headland on which it used to stand. Where the House used
+to be there is air now. I daresay the ghosts you knew still trace out the
+shape of the House in the air."
+
+"The ghosts I know," corrected Jay. "Don't put it in the past."
+
+"It's all in the past," said Mr. Russell. "It's all a dream, and an echo,
+and the ghost of the day before yesterday."
+
+"How do you know?" asked Jay. "How can you tell it's not 1916 that's
+the ghost?"
+
+She had been taught by her Friend to take very few things for granted,
+and time least of all.
+
+"I asked you to tell me no facts," she added.
+
+"I'll only tell you two," persisted Mr. Russell. "One is that they have
+in the church near the quarry a dark wooden figure of a saint, with the
+raised arm broken, and straight draperies. I saw it, and they told me
+what I knew already, that it came out of the hall of a house that was
+drowned in the sea. The other fact is a story that the tobacconist told
+me, about a wriggly ladder, and stone balls, and the Law. In the
+tobacconist's childhood they found the stone balls at the foot of the
+cliff in the sand. That story, too, I knew already. Quite apart from
+your letters, you little secret friend, I knew the face of that sea
+directly I saw it."
+
+"But how did you know? How dared you know?"
+
+"Oh well," said Mr. Russell, "you asked me to tell you no facts."
+
+Mr. Russell was not observant. He was not sufficiently alive to be
+observant. He was much occupied in remembering phantom yesterdays, and I
+do not think he listened very much to what the 'bus-conductor said. He
+only enjoyed the sound of her voice, which he remembered. So he did not
+know that she was unhappy.
+
+They came presently to a separate part of the forest, which is impaled
+upon a straight white road. The earth beneath the trees was caught in a
+mesh of shadows. The trees are high and vaulted there, but the forest is
+very reticent. The detail of its making is so small that you can only
+see it if you lie down on your face. Do this and you can see the green
+threads of the earth's material woven across the skeletons of last year's
+leaves. You can see the little lawns of moss and weeds, too small to
+name, that make the way brilliant for the ants. You can watch the heroic
+armoured beetles defying their world. You can cover with a leaf the great
+open-air public meeting-places of six-legged things. You can see the
+spiders at work on their silver cranes, you can watch the bold elevated
+activities of the caterpillars. You can feel the scattered grasses stroke
+your eyelids, you can hear the low songs of fairies among the roots of
+the trees. All these things you may enjoy if you lie down, but the forest
+does not show them to you. The forest pays you the great compliment of
+ignoring you, and it does not care whether you see its intimate
+possessions or not. I think perhaps no day is really unsuccessful that
+gives you forest earth against your forehead, and forest grass between
+your fingers, and high forest trees to stand between you and the ultimate
+confession of failure.
+
+Jay and Mr. Russell boarded out Christina the motor car for the day at
+an inn, and then they sat and gradually introduced themselves to the
+forest. Showers fell on their hatless heads, and they did not notice. A
+mole rose like a submarine from the waves of the forest earth, and they
+did not notice. The butterflies danced like little tunes in the sunlit
+clearing, and they did not notice. And from a long way off, near the
+swings, holiday shrieks trailed along the wind, and they did not notice.
+
+Jay told Mr. Russell, one by one, small unmattering things that she
+remembered out of her Secret World, and each time when she had told him
+he wondered with regret why he had not remembered it by himself. He had
+never thought it worth while to remember before; his imagination was
+crippled, and needed crutches. He had not thought it worth while to think
+much about the time when he was young, the time when his past had been as
+big and shining as his future. The longer we live, it seems, the less we
+remember, and no men and few women normally possess a secret story after
+thirty. It would not matter so much if you only lost your story, a worse
+fate than loss befalls it--you laugh at it. It is curious how the world
+draws in as one gets older and wiser. The past catches one up, the future
+burns away like a candle. I used to think that growing up was like
+walking from one end of a meadow to the other, I thought that the meadow
+would remain, and one had only to turn one's head to see it all again.
+But now I know that growing up is like going through a door into a little
+room, and the door shuts behind one.
+
+I think Mr. Russell's point of difference from most older and wiser
+people was that he had not forgotten the excitement of writing down
+snatches of his secret story as it came to him, and the passion of
+tearing up the thing that he wrote, and the delight of finding that he
+could not tear it out of his heart. He was a silent person, and a
+rather neglected person, and unbusinesslike, and unsuccessful, and
+uncultured, and unsociable, and unbeautiful. So there was nothing
+worse than emptiness where his secret story used to be. He had not
+found it worth while to fill the space. He had not found it worth
+while to shut the door.
+
+"Do you remember that Christmas," said Jay, "when there was a blizzard,
+and a great sea, and the foam blinded the western windows of the House,
+and the children went out to sing 'Love and joy come to you'? (Those
+aren't real words any more now, are they? only pretty caricatures.) And
+when the children came in with snow and foam plastered up their windward
+sides, do you remember that one of them said, 'Is this what Lot's wife
+felt like?'"
+
+"I can just remember Love and Joy mixed up with the wind at the window,"
+said Mr. Russell. "But always best of all I can remember the way you
+looked on ..."
+
+"Me?" said Jay. "I wasn't there."
+
+"Oh yes you were, and that's what you forget. You were there always, and
+when I was looking for the House I believe it was always you I was
+expecting to find there."
+
+"Me! Me, with this same old face?" gasped Jay. "Oh, excuse me, but you
+lie. You never recognised me in my 'bus."
+
+"I knew without knowing I knew. I remembered without remembering that I
+remembered. We haven't made a psychical discovery, Jay, we have done
+nothing to write a book about. Only you remember so well that you have
+reminded me."
+
+"I don't believe that can be true," said Jay. "I know I wasn't there."
+
+"Why can't you see the truth of it?" asked Mr. Russell, sighing for
+so many words wasted. "In that House by the Sea, who was your
+Secret Friend?"
+
+"My Friend," said Jay, "is young and very full of youth. He is like a
+baby who knows life and yet finds it very amusing, and very new. He is
+without the gift of rest, but then he does not need it, the world in
+which he lives is not so tired and not so muddling as our world. In him
+my only belief and my only colour and my last dregs of romance, and
+certainly my youth survive. We never bother about reserve, and we never
+mind being sentimental in my Secret World. We just live, and we are never
+tortured by the futility of knowledge."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Russell, "I had a Secret Friend in my House, and she was
+wonderful because she was so young that she knew nothing. She never
+asked questions, but she thought questions. She knew nothing, she was
+waiting to grow up. She had little colour, only peace and promise. I knew
+she would grow up, but I also knew she would never grow old. I knew she
+would learn much, but I also knew she would never become complete and ask
+no more questions. That voice of hers would always end on a questioning
+note. You see, I have found my Secret Friend, grown-up, grown old enough
+to enjoy and understand a new and more vital youth."
+
+"Shall I find my Friend?" asked Jay.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Russell in a very low voice. "You can find him if you
+look. You can find him, grown very old and ugly and tired. There are
+different ways of growing up, and your Secret Friend was rash in using up
+too great a share of his sum of life in the House by the Sea."
+
+Then Jay was suddenly enormously happy, and the veil of failure fell away
+from the day and from her life. She held in her hand incredible
+coincidences. The angle of the forest, the upright trees upon the sloping
+earth, the bend of the sky, the round bubble shapes of the clouds upon
+their appointed way, the agreement of the young leaves one with another,
+the unfailing pulse of the spring,--all these things seemed to her a
+chance, an unlikely and perfect consummation, that had been reached only
+by the extraordinary cleverness of God. All love and all success were
+pressed into a hair's-breadth, and yet the target was never missed.
+
+"You shall go down to the House by the Sea," said Jay. "You shall go when
+the moon is next full over the sea that drowned our house. You shall come
+from the east, along the rocky path, as you used to come, between the
+foxgloves; you shall play at being a god, coming between the stars and
+the sea. And I will play at being a goddess, as I used to play at being a
+ghost, and I will run to meet you from the west, and the high grasses and
+the ferns shall whip my knees, and the thistles shall bow to me, and the
+sea shall be very calm and say no word, and there shall be no ship in
+sight. And we will go down the steep path to the shore, and we will stand
+where the sand is wet, and look up to where our drowned House used to
+be. And there shall be no facts any more, only the ghosts, and the
+dreams. Oh, surely it has never happened before--this meeting of Secret
+Friends--and surely no friend ever loved her friend as I love you, and
+surely there never was so little room for sin and disappointment in any
+love as there is in ours. Surely there are no tears in the world any
+more, and no Brown Borough, and no War. I don't care if I go hungry every
+day till we meet, I don't care if I have nothing but hated clothes to
+wear in my Secret World. I don't care if there are six changes on the
+journey to the sea, and at every change I miss my connection. I don't
+care if the end lasts only a minute, because the minute will last for
+ever, there are no facts any more. Because of you the little bothers of
+the world are gone, and the big bothers never did exist, because of you.
+Oh, I can say what I mean at last, and if it's nonsense--I don't care,
+because of you...."
+
+Presently she said, "And now I wonder if I am very proud or very much
+ashamed of having spoken."
+
+"You said once," Mr. Russell reminded her, "that life was just a bead
+upon a string. Well, does it much matter whether one bead is the colour
+of pride or the colour of shame? Does one successful bead more or less
+matter, my dear? I think it's all a succession of explanations, more or
+less lucid, and all different and all confusing. A string of beads more
+or less beautiful, and all unvalued. We don't know that any of the
+explanations are true, we don't know that any of the beads have any
+worth. We only know that they are ours...."
+
+"I don't care if I trample my beads in the mud," said Jay. "Now let's go
+home and think."
+
+When she and Chloris got home that evening to Eighteen Mabel Place,
+Chloris barked at a man who was waiting outside the door. He was a young
+man in khaki, with one star; he looked very white, and was reading
+something from his pocket-book.
+
+"Great Scott, Bill," said Jay. "I thought you were busy sapping in
+France. Were you anywhere near Kew?"
+
+I do not know if you will remember the name of young William Morgan. I
+think I have only mentioned him once or twice.
+
+"I got back on leave two hours ago," said Mr. Morgan. "I have been
+waiting here thirty-two minutes. I saw Kew every day last week, and I was
+with him when he died, three hours before I came away yesterday."
+
+Jay was silent. She opened the door, and in the sitting-room she
+placed--very carefully--two chairs looking at each other across
+the table.
+
+"Jay," said William Morgan, "I am deadly afraid of doing this badly. Kew
+and I talked a good deal before it happened, and there was a good deal he
+wanted me to tell you. All the way back in the train and on the boat I
+have been writing notes to remind me what I had to say to you. I hope you
+don't mind. I hope you don't think it callous."
+
+"No," said Jay.
+
+"He was very anxious you should know the truth about it, because he said
+he had never lied to you. He was always sure that if he were shot it
+would be in the back while he was lacing his boots, or at some other
+unromantic moment. And in that case he said he could lie to Anonyma and
+your cousin vicariously through the War Office, which would write to
+them about Glory, and Duty, and Thanks Due. But he wanted me to write to
+you, and tell you how it happened, and tell you that death was just an
+ordinary old thing, no more romantic than anything else, without a
+capital letter, and that one died as one had lived--in a little ordinary
+way--and that there was no such thing as Glory between people who didn't
+lie to each other. I am telling you all this from my notes. I should
+never have thought of any of it for myself, as you know. I hope you
+don't mind."
+
+"No," said Jay. She heard what he said, yet she was not listening. Her
+mind was listening to things heard a very long time ago. She heard
+herself and Kew in confidential chorus, saying those laboriously simple
+prayers that Anonyma used to teach them. She heard again the swishing
+that their feet used to make in the leaves of Kensington Gardens. Kew's
+was the louder swish by right. She thought of him as an admirable big
+brother of eight, with a round face and blunt feet and very hard hands.
+She heard the comfortable roar of the nursery fire, and the comfortable
+sound of autumn rain baffled by the window; she saw the early winter
+breakfast by lamplight, and the red nursery carpet that had an oblong
+track worn away round the table by the frequent game of "Little Men
+Jumping." She heard the voice of Kew clamouring against the voice of Nana
+because he would not eat his bacon-fat. On those days there was a horrid
+resurrection at luncheon of the bacon-fat uneaten at breakfast.
+
+"As it happened," continued Mr. Morgan, no longer white, but very red,
+"he wasn't killed in an advance, or anything grand. He told me to tell
+you, so I am telling you. He was killed by a sniper while he was setting
+a trap of his own invention to catch the rats as they came over the
+parapet. He was shot in the chest very early yesterday morning, and he
+lived about four hours. He was not in much pain, he even laughed a little
+once or twice to think he should have lived and died so consistently. He
+told me that he had never seen a moment's real romantic fighting; he had
+never once felt patriotic or dramatic or dutiful, he said. He wandered a
+little, I think, because he seemed worried about the rats that might be
+caught in the trap he had set. He seemed to mix up the rats and the
+Boches. He said that these creatures didn't know they were vermin, they
+just thought they were honest average animals doing their bit, and then
+suddenly killed by a malignant chaos. My notes are very hurried. I am
+afraid I am repeating myself."
+
+Jay remembered the mouse they once caught, and kept in a bottle for a
+day, and the palace they made for it out of stones and mud and moss, and
+the sun-bath of patted mud they made by the door of the palace. But the
+mouse, when it was installed, flashed straight out of the front door, and
+jumped the sun-bath, and knocked down a daisy, and was never seen again.
+But Jay and Kew used to believe that on moonlit nights it came back to
+the palace, and brought its wife and children, and was grateful to the
+palace builders.
+
+"A few days before he was killed," said Mr. Morgan, "he told me that he
+had lied so successfully all his life that quite a lot of people thought
+him a most admirable young man. He said Anonyma once brought him into a
+book, and when he read that book he saw how lying paid, as long as one
+didn't lie to absolutely everybody. He said if he died Anonyma would
+write something very nice upon his memorial brass about a pure heart or
+everlasting life, and he thought you would smile a little at that. He
+said that he remembered going home with you in a 'bus and seeing on the
+window of the 'bus a text that promised everlasting life on certain
+conditions. He said the remembrance of that text tired him still. He said
+he had had too much of himself, he had known himself too well, and when
+death came, he wanted it to be an honest little death with no frills, and
+after that an everlasting sleep with no dreams. I am putting it all in
+the wrong order. I shall make you despise me. You talk so well yourself."
+
+Jay was remembering the "Coos" they used to have in the big armchair in
+the nursery. When they found that they suddenly loved each other
+unbearably, they had a Coo, they tied themselves up in a little tangle
+together, and sang Coo in soft voices. And then they felt relieved. Jay
+remembered the last Coo. It happened when Kew's voice was breaking ten
+years ago, and he found that he could no longer coo except in a funny
+falsetto. So, rather than become farcical, the Coos ceased.
+
+"I don't know quite why Kew wanted me to tell you all this," said Mr.
+Morgan, "except that he said you knew so much about him that you might as
+well get as near as possible to knowing everything. He never thought he
+would be killed, in fact I gave him a lot of messages of my own to give
+to my mother in case I went. But at the last, when he knew he was dying,
+he was desperately anxious you should know that he did not die a
+'Stranger's death,' as he said. He thought any hint of drama about his
+death would spoil your friendship. He said you knew more than most people
+about friends, and he thought that in this way you could find for him a
+certain 'secret immortality' which would make the soil of France comfier
+for him to sleep in. And then he said, 'If I'm too poetic--like a
+swan--don't report me too accurately.' He seemed to go to sleep for some
+time after that, and every now and then he laughed very faintly in his
+sleep. I had to leave him for a bit, and when I came back he was still
+asleep. The only thing he said after that was: 'This is awfully
+exciting.' He said that about ten minutes before he died. I hope I'm not
+making it too painful for you, dear little Jay.'"
+
+"No," said Jay. Quite irrelevantly, she had found her Secret Friend. She
+found a little dark wood, burnt and broken by fire, in a grey light, and
+there was a wet ditch that skirted the edge of it. She saw the hopeless
+and regretful sky, there was neither night nor morning in it, there was
+neither sun nor moon. These things she noticed, but more than all she saw
+her Secret Friend, lying crouched upon his side close to the ditch, with
+his arms about his face. She saw the slow leaves fall upon him from the
+ruined trees, she saw the damp air settle in beads upon his clothes. His
+feet were in the undergrowth, and above them the dripping net of the
+spider was flung. She had never seen her Friend quite still before. All
+her life her Secret Friend and her Secret Sea had kept her soul awake
+with movement. But her Friend was dead, and there was no more sea. The
+very fine rain blew across her Secret World, and blotted it out. The very
+distant sound of guns--which was not so much a sound as an indescribable
+vacuum of sound--shattered the walls of her bubble enchantment.
+
+"Oh, darling Jay," said Mr. William Morgan, "I wish I could help you. I
+can't go away and leave you like this. I wish I could help you."
+
+She found she had her forehead on the table, and her hands were knotted
+in her lap. And where once the Gate to the House had been, there was only
+London now. No more would the drum of the sea beat in her heart, there
+was nothing left but the throbbing of distant trams.
+
+"So it's all lies ..." she said quietly. "There really is a thing called
+death after all. People die...."
+
+"Jay, darling, don't," sobbed Mr. Morgan. "For God's sake marry me, and
+I'll comfort you. I won't die--I swear I won't. And after all, it's
+Spring. There's no real death in the Spring. Kew can't have died."
+
+"Oh, what's the use of these eternal seasons?" said Jay. "There is
+a thing called death. And death has no romance and no reason. The
+rats died, and Kew died, and the secret world died, and there is
+nothing left...."
+
+  It was young David, lord of sheep and cattle,
+Pursued his Fate, the April fields among,
+Singing a song of solitary battle,
+A loud mad song, for he was very young.
+
+  Vivid the air--and something more than vivid,--
+Tall clouds were in the sky--and something more,--
+The light horizon of the spring was livid
+With a steel smile that showed the teeth of War.
+
+  It was young David mocked the Philistine.
+It was young David laughed beside the river.
+There came his mother--his and yours and mine--
+With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver.
+
+  You never saw so green-and-gold a fairy.
+You never saw such very April eyes.
+She sang him sorrow's song to make him wary,
+She gave him five smooth stones to make him wise.
+
+  The first stone is love, and that shall fail you.
+The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you.
+The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you.
+The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you.
+The fifth stone shall not fail you.
+
+  For what is love, O lovers of my tribe?
+And what is love, O women of my day?
+Love is a farthing piece, a bloody bribe
+Pressed in the palm of God, and thrown away.
+
+  And what is hate, O fierce and unforgiving?
+And what shall hate achieve, when all is said?
+A silly joke, that cannot reach the living,
+A spitting in the faces of the dead.
+
+  And what is knowledge, O young men who tasted
+The reddest fruit on that forbidden tree?
+Knowledge is but a painful effort wasted,
+A bitter drowning in a bitter sea.
+
+  And what is prayer, O waiters for the answer?
+And what is prayer, O seekers of the cause?
+Prayer is the weary soul of Herod's dancer,
+Dancing before blind kings without applause.
+
+  The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David,
+Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss.
+Its heart is lead, and on its face is graved
+A crooked cross, my son, a crooked cross.
+
+  It has no dignity to lend it value;
+No purity--alas--it bears a stain.
+You shall not give it gratitude, nor shall you
+Recall it all your days except with pain.
+
+  Oh, bless your blindness, glory in your groping!
+Mock at your betters with an upward chin!
+And, when the moment has gone by for hoping,
+Sling your fifth stone, O son of mine, and win.
+
+  Grief do I give you--grief and dreadful laughter.
+Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine.
+Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after.
+The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine.
+
+GO FORTH, GO FORTH, AND SLAY THE PHILISTINE!
+
+There were a few very warm days and nights in the west last spring. It
+was at the time of the full moon.
+
+There were so few clouds in the sky that when the sun went down it found
+no canvas on which to paint its picture. So it went down unpictured into
+a bank of grey heat that hid the horizon of the sea, and no one thought
+it worth watching except a man coming alone along the cliff from the
+northeast. The moon came up and filled the quarry with ghosts, and with
+confused and blinded memories. The sea advanced in armies of great smooth
+waves, but under the moon the wind went down, and the waves went down,
+and there was less and less sound in the air.
+
+One man watched the dwindling waves troop into the cove near the quarry.
+There was only one pair of eyes in the whole world that tried that night
+to trace in the air the shape of a drowned house. There was only one
+shadow by the quarry for the moon to cast upon the thyme. There was no
+voice but the voice of the sea. No passing but the peaceful passing of
+the lambs disturbed the thistles and the foxgloves.
+
+The sea rose like a wall across the night, a wall that shut half of life
+away. The sky fell like a curtain on the land, but there was no piece to
+be played, so the curtain was never raised.
+
+One man waited all the night through, like a child waiting for the
+fairies. The sea grew calmer and calmer, the tide went down, and the cove
+spread out its long sands like fingers into the sea. There was a shadow
+on the sands below the quarry, and it may have been the shadow of a
+house. And perhaps when the tide came up at dawn it devoured old
+footprints upon the shore, the prints of feet that will never come back.
+I think that when the moon fled away into oblivion, it was not only the
+moon that fled, but also a bubble world, full of dead secrets.
+
+How foolish to wait for the culmination of a secret story! How foolish
+of a man to wait all night for the redemption of an old promise, for the
+resurrection of a forgotten romance! There are no secret stories, there
+is no secret world, there are no secret friends. The House by the Sea has
+been drowned, and even its ghosts have forgotten it. After all, there was
+nothing to remember. The gate to the House is barred, not by a lock but
+by a laugh. Reality and not adversity has blown the bubble away.
+
+I remember the moment when Jay found four-fifths of her life proved
+false. I remember that she besieged the world with tears; I remember that
+she bruised her hands against the iron gate. How foolish to bruise one's
+hands against nothingness!
+
+
+
+ANTI-CLIMAX
+
+
+"It is well," sighed Anonyma, "that our little Jay has at last found
+Romance. Since first she came to my arms--a toddling sceptic of four--I
+have seen what she lacked, I have prayed that I--who possessed it--might
+perhaps be inspired to give her the Clue.... Yet to young Bill Morgan it
+was given to show her the way ... to unlock the door.... Oh! Russ, we
+grow older and wiser and are left behind. The young reap where we have
+sown.... Is this always to be the end of our youth?"
+
+Mr. Russell laughed a little. "Yes," he said. "This is the end."
+
+The finest fruit God ever made
+Hangs from the Tree of Heaven blue.
+It hangs above the steel sea blade
+That cuts the world's great globe in two.
+
+The keenest eye that ever saw
+Stares out of Heaven into mine,
+Spins out my heart, and seems to draw
+My soul's elastic very fine.
+
+The greatest beacon ever fired
+Stands up on Heaven's Hill to show
+The limit of the thing desired
+Beyond which man may never go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At midnight, when the night did dance
+Along the hours that led to morning,
+I saw a little boat advance
+Towards the great moon's beacon warning.
+
+(The moon, God's Slave, who lights the torch,
+Lest men should slip between the bars,
+And run aground on Heav'n and scorch
+To death upon a bank of stars.)
+
+The little boat, on leaning keel,
+Sang up the mountains of the sea,
+Bearing a man who hoped to steal
+God's Slave from out eternity.
+
+My love, I see you through my tears.
+No pity in your face I see.
+I have sailed far across the years:
+Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me.
+
+My love, I have an island seen,
+So shadowed, God's most piercing star
+Shall never see where we have been,
+Shall never whisper where we are.
+
+There we will wander, you and I,
+Down guilty and delightful ways,
+While palm-trees plait their fingers high
+Against your God's enormous gaze.
+
+For oh--the joy of two and two,
+Your Paradise shall never see
+The ecstasy of me and you,
+The white delight of you and me.
+
+I know the penalty--the clutch
+Of God's great rocks upon my keel.
+Drowned in the ocean of Too Much--
+So ends your thief--yet let me steal....
+
+The Slave of God she froze her face,
+The Slave of God she paid no heed,
+And thund'ring down high Heaven's space
+Loud angels mocked the sailor's greed.
+
+The diamond sun arose, and tossed
+A billion gems across the sea.
+"The Slave of God is lost, is lost,
+The Slave of God is lost to me...."
+
+He grounded on the common beach,
+He trod the little towns of men,
+And God removed from his reach
+The cup of Heaven's passion then,
+And gave him vulgar love and speech,
+And gave him threescore years and ten.
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, This Is the End , by Stella Benson
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: This Is the End 
+
+Author: Stella Benson
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2004  [eBook #11324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS IS THE END ***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+THIS IS THE END
+
+BY STELLA BENSON
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This is the end, for the moment, of all my thinking, this is my
+unfinal conclusion. There is no reason in tangible things, and no
+system in the ordinary ways of the world. Hands were made to grope,
+and feet to stumble, and the only things you may count on are the
+unaccountable things. System is a fairy and a dream, you never find
+system where or when you expect it. There are no reasons except
+reasons you and I don't know.
+
+I should not be really surprised if the policeman across the way grew
+wings, or if the deep sea rose and washed out the chaos of the land. I
+should not raise my eyebrows if the daily press became the Little Sunbeam
+of the Home, or if Cabinet Ministers struck for a decrease of wages. I
+feel no security in facts, precedent seems no protection to me. The
+wisdom you can find in an Encyclopedia, or in Selfridge's Information
+Bureau, seems to me just a transitory adaptation to quicksand
+circumstances.
+
+But if the things which I know in spite of my education were false, if
+the eyes of the sea forgot their secret, or if the accent of the steep
+woods became vulgar, if the fairy adventures that happen in my heart fell
+flat, if the good friends my eyes have never seen failed me,--then indeed
+should I know emptiness, and an astonishment that would kill.
+
+I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is
+not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I
+cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.
+
+She was a person who took nothing in the world for granted, but as she
+had only a slight connection with the world, that is not saying very
+much. Her answer to everything was "Why?" The fundamental facts that you
+and I accept from our youth upwards, like Be Good and You Will Be Happy,
+or Change Your Boots When You Come In Out Of The Wet, or Respect Your
+Elders, or Love Your Neighbour, or Never Cross Your Legs Above The Knee,
+did not impress Jay.
+
+I never knew her as a baby, but I am sure she must have been born a
+propounder of questions, and a smiler at the answers she received. I
+daresay she used to ask questions--without result--long before she could
+talk, but I am quite sure she was not embittered by the lack of result.
+Nothing ever embittered Jay, not even her own pessimism. There is a
+finality about bitterness, and Jay was never final. Her last word was
+always on a questioning note. Her mind was always open, waiting for more.
+"Oh no," she would tell her pillow at night, "there must be a better
+answer than that ..."
+
+Perhaps it is hardly necessary to add that she had quarrelled with her
+Family, and run away from home. Her Family knew neither what she was
+doing nor where she was doing it. Families are incurably conceited, and
+this one supposed that, having broken away from it, Jay was going to
+the bad. On the contrary, she was a 'bus-conductor, but I only tell you
+this in confidence. I repeat the Family did not know it, and does not
+know it yet.
+
+The Family sometimes said that Jay was an idealist, but it did not really
+think so. The Family sometimes said that she was rather mad, but it did
+not know how mad she was, or it would have sent her away to live in a
+doctor's establishment at Margate. It never realised that it had only
+come in contact with about one-fifth of its young relation, and that the
+other four-fifths were shut away from it. Shut away in a shining bubble
+world with only room in it for one--for One, and a shining bubble Story.
+
+I do not know how universal an experience a Secret Story and a Secret
+Friend may be. Perhaps this wonder is a commonplace to you, only you are
+more reticent about it than Jay or I. But to me, even after twenty years'
+intimacy with what I can only describe as a supplementary life that I
+cannot describe, it still seems so very wonderful that I cannot believe I
+share it with every man and woman in the street.
+
+The great advantage of a Secret Story over other stories is that you
+cannot put it into print. So I can only show you the initial letter,
+and you may if you choose look upon it as an imaginary hieroglyphic. Or
+you may not.
+
+Just this, that a bubble world can contain a round and russet horizon of
+high woods which you can attain, and from the horizon a long view of an
+unending sea. You can run down across the dappled fields, you can run
+down into the cove and stroke the sea and hear the intimate minor singing
+of it. And when you feel as strong as the morning, you can shout and run
+against the wind, against the flying sand that never blows above your
+knees. And when you feel as tired as the night, you can climb slowly up
+the cliff path and go into the House, the House you know much better than
+any house your ordinary eyes have seen, and there you will find your
+Secret Friends. The best part about Secret Friends is that they will
+never weary you by knowing you. You share their House, your passing hand
+helps to polish the base of that wooden figure that ends the banisters,
+you know the childish delight of that wide short chimney in the big
+turret room, a chimney so wide and so short that you can stand inside the
+great crooked fireplace and whisper to the birds that look down from the
+edge of the chimney only a yard or two above you. You know how comfy
+those big beds are, you sit at the long clothless table in the brown
+dining-room. With all these things you are intimate, and yet you pass
+through the place as a ghost, your bubble enchantment encloses you, your
+Secret Friends have no knowledge of you, their story runs without you.
+Your unnecessary identity is tactfully ignored, and you know the heaven
+of being dispassionate and detached among things you love.
+
+All these things can a bubble world contain. You have to get inside
+things to find out how limitless they are. And I think if you don't
+believe it all, it is none the less true for that, because in that case
+you are the sort of person who believes a thing less the truer it is.
+
+If Jay's Family did not know she was a 'bus-conductor, and did not know
+she was a story-possessor, what did it know about her? It knew she
+disliked the smell of bananas, and that she had not taken advantage of an
+expensive education, and that she was Stock Size (Small Ladies'), and
+that she was christened Jane Elizabeth, and that she took after her
+father to an excessive extent, and that she was rather too apt to swallow
+this Socialist nonsense. As Families go, it was fairly well informed
+about her.
+
+The Family was a rather promiscuous one. It had more tortuous
+relationships than most families have, although there were only four in
+it, not counting Mr. Russell.
+
+I might as well introduce you to the Family before I settle down to the
+story. From careful study of the press reviews I gather that a story is
+considered a necessary thing in a novel, so this time I am going to try
+and include one.
+
+You may, if you please, meet the Family after breakfast at Mr. Russell's
+house in Kensington, about three months after Jay had run away. There
+were four people in the room. They were Cousin Gustus, Mrs. Gustus, Kew,
+and Mr. Russell.
+
+It behoves me to try and tell you very simply about Mrs. Gustus,
+because she prided herself on simplicity. Spelt with a capital S, it
+constituted her Deity; her heaven was a severe and shadowless
+eternity, and plain words were the flowers that grew in her Elysian
+fields. She had simplified her life and her looks. Even her smile was
+shorn of all accessories like dimples or twinkles. Her hair, which
+was not abundant, was the colour of corn, straight and shining. Her
+eyes were a cold dark grey.
+
+Now to be simple is all very well, but turn it into an active verb and
+you spoil the whole idea. To simplify seems forced, and I think Mrs.
+Gustus struck harder on the note of simplification than that of
+simplicity. I should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin
+Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is
+just possible that he occasionally wished that she would dress herself in
+a more human way--patronise in winter the humble Viyella stripe, for
+instance, or in summer the flippant sprig. But a large proportion of Mrs.
+Gustus's faith was founded on simple strong colours in wide expanses,
+introduced, as it were, one to another by judicious black. Anybody but
+Mrs. Gustus would have been drowned in her clothes. But she was conceived
+on a generous scale, she was almost gorgeous, she barely missed
+exaggeration. In her manner I think she did not miss it. She had
+therefore the gift of coping with colour. It remains for me to add that
+her age was five-and-forty, and that she was a novelist. The recording
+angel had probably noted the fact of her novelism among her virtues, but
+she had an imperceptible earthly public. She wrote laborious books, full
+of short peevish sentences, of such very pure construction that they were
+extremely difficult to understand. She wore spectacles with aggressive
+tortoise-shell rims. She said, "I am short-sighted. I am obliged to wear
+spectacles. Why should I try to conceal the fact? I will not have a pair
+of rimless ghosts haunting my face. I will wear spectacles without
+shame." But the real truth was that the tortoise-shell rims were more
+becoming to her. Mrs. Gustus was known to her husband's family as
+Anonyma. The origin of this habit was an old joke, and I have forgotten
+the point of it.
+
+Cousin Gustus was second cousin once removed to Kew and Kew's sister
+Jay, and had kindly brought them up from childhood. He was now at the
+further end of the sixties, and embittered by many things: an unsuitable
+marriage, the approach of the psalmist's age-limit, incurably modern
+surroundings, an internal complaint, and a haunting wish to relieve the
+Government of the management of the War. These drawbacks were to a
+certain extent linked, they accounted for each other. The complaint
+hindered him from offering his services as Secretary of State; it made
+of him a slave, so he could not pretend to be a master. He cherished his
+slavery, for it happened to be painless, and supplied him with a certain
+dignity which would otherwise have been difficult to secure. During the
+summer the complaint hibernated, and ceased to interest either doctors
+or relations, which was naturally hard to bear. To these trials you may
+add the disgraceful behaviour of his young cousin Jay, and admit that
+Cousin Gustus had every excuse for encouraging pessimism of the most
+pronounced type.
+
+Jay's brother Kew was twenty-five, and from this it follows that he had
+already drunk the surprising beverage of War. His military history
+included a little splinter of hate in the left shoulder, followed by a
+depressing period almost entirely spent in the society of medical boards,
+three months of light duty consisting of weary instruction of fools in an
+East coast town, and now an interval of leave at the end of which the
+battalion to which he had lately been attached hoped to go to France. In
+one way it was a pity he ever joined the Army, for khaki clashed badly
+with most of Mrs. Gustus's colour theories. But he had never noticed
+that: his eye and his ear and his mind were all equally slow to
+appreciate clashings of any kind. He was rather aloof from comparison and
+criticism, but not on principle. He had no principles--at least no
+original ones, just the ordinary stuffy old principles of decency and all
+that. He never turned his eyes inward, as far as the passer-by could see;
+he lived a breezy life outside himself. He never tried to make a fine Kew
+of himself; he never propounded riddles to his Creator, which is the way
+most of us make our reputations.
+
+Mr. Russell, the host and adopted member of the Family, was fifty-two. He
+did not know Jay, having only lately been culled by Mrs. Gustus--that
+assiduous collector--and placed in the bosom of the Family. She had found
+him blossoming unloved in the wilderness of a War Work Committee. He was
+well informed, yet a good listener; perhaps he possessed both these
+virtues to excess. At any rate Mrs. Gustus had decided that he was worthy
+of Family friendship, and, being naturally extravagant, she conferred it
+upon him with both hands. Mr. Russell was married to a woman who had not
+properly realised the fact that she was Mrs. Russell. She spent her life
+in distant lands, helping the world to become better. At present she was
+understood to be propagating peace in the United States, and was never
+mentioned by or to her husband. My first impression of Mr. Russell was
+that he was rather fat, but I never could trace this impression to its
+origin. He had not exactly a double chin, but rather a chin and a half,
+and the rest of him followed this moderate example. His grey hair retired
+in a pronounced estuary over each temple, leaving a beautifully brushed
+peninsula between. He had no sense of humour, but hid this deformity
+skillfully. Hardly anybody knew that he was a poet, except presumably his
+dog. He often talked to his dog; he told it every speakable thought that
+he had. This was his only bad habit. Occasionally his dog was heard to
+reply in a small curious voice proceeding also from Mr. Russell.
+
+These four people looked out at Kensington Gardens, which were rejoicing
+in the very babyhood of the year. The naked trees were like pillars in
+the mist, the grass was grey and whitened to the distance, the world had
+mislaid its horizon, and one's eye slid up without check between the
+trees to where the last word of a daylight moon whispered in the sky.
+
+"I glory in a view that dispenses with colour," said Mrs. Gustus
+severely. She always spoke as though she were sure of the whole of what
+she intended to say. When she did hesitate, it only meant that she was
+seeking for the simplest word, and she would cap her pause with a
+monosyllable as curt as an explosion.
+
+But glory is the right word, I think, for London in some moods. Do you
+know the feeling of a heart beating too high, when you see the great
+cliffs of London under rain or vague sunshine, or rising out of yellow
+air? Do you ever want, as I do, to stand with arms out against the
+London wind, and shout your own unmade poetry on the top of a 'bus?
+With this sort of grotesque glorying does London inspire me, so that I
+spend whole days together feeling that the essential _I_ is too big for
+what encloses it.
+
+Anonyma never felt like this. She often spoke the right word, but she
+nearly always spoke it coldly.
+
+"This morning," said Kew, "when I looked out, I felt the futility of bed,
+so I made an assignation with the Hound when I met it trooping along with
+Russ in single file to the bathroom. Why does your Hound always accompany
+you there, Russ? Dogs must think us awfully irrational beasts, and
+yet--does that Hound really think you could elope for ever and be no more
+seen, with nothing on but pyjamas and a towel? I suppose he thinks 'You
+can't be too careful.' It makes one humble to live with a dog. I always
+blush when I see a dog dreaming, because I'm afraid they give us an
+undignified place in their dreams. Your Hound, Russ, dreams of you
+plunging into the Serpentine after a Canadian Goose, with your topper
+floating behind you, or Anonyma with her tongue hanging out, scratching
+at a little mousehole in Piccadilly. It is humiliating, isn't it? Anyway,
+before breakfast, Russ's Hound and I went and jumped over things in the
+Gardens. The park-keeper mistook us for young lambs."
+
+Russell's Hound was called so by courtesy, in order to lend him a dignity
+which he lacked. He may have been twelve inches high at the shoulder, and
+he thought that he was exactly like a lion, except for a trifling
+difference in size. Dignity is not, of course, incompatible with small
+stature, but I think it was the twinkling gait of Mr. Russell's Hound
+that robbed him of moral weight, and prevented you from attaching great
+importance to his views.
+
+"Young lambs!" exclaimed Mrs. Gustus. "Really, my good Kew, had you
+nothing better to do?"
+
+"Not at that time," replied Kew. "You weren't up." And he sang to drown
+her sigh. Kew was the only person I ever knew who really sang to the tune
+of his moods. He sang Albert Hall sort of music very loudly when he was
+happy, and when he was extremely happy he roared so that his voice broke
+out of tune. When he was silent it was almost always because he was
+asleep, or because some other member of the Family was talking. When, by
+some accident, the whole Family was simultaneously silent, you could not
+help noticing what an oppressively still place London was. The sound of
+Russell's Hound sneezing in the hall was like a bomb.
+
+But at the present moment Kew only sang a few bars of Beethoven in a
+small voice. He was rather sad, because of Jay. He had not realised
+till he came home how very thoroughly Jay had disappeared. He led
+the conversation to Jay. It often happened that Kew led conversations,
+because conversations, like the public, generally follow the loudest
+voice.
+
+"Why so sudden?" asked Kew, apparently of the Round Pond, so loud was his
+voice. "That's what I can't make out. She used to be such a human sort,
+and anybody with half an ear could hear the decisions bubbling about
+under the lid for weeks before they boiled over."
+
+Everybody--even Cousin Gustus--knew that he was talking of Jay. Kew said
+so much that he might be excused for forgetting occasionally what he had
+not said. Besides, he had talked of little else but Jay since he rejoined
+his Family two days before.
+
+"She used to be a good girl," sighed Cousin Gustus. "So few girls
+are good."
+
+Cousin Gustus is an expert pessimist. Vice, accidents, and terrible ends
+are his speciality. All virtue is to him an exception, and by him is
+immediately forgotten. In sudden deaths you cannot catch him out. If you
+were tossed from the horns of a bull into the jaws of a crocodile, and
+died of pneumonia contracted during the flight, you would not surprise
+Cousin Gustus. He is never at a loss for a precedent. The only way you
+could really astonish him would be by living a blameless life without
+adventure, and dying of old age in your bed.
+
+"There were warnings," said Anonyma. "Little disagreements with Gustus."
+
+"She wanted to bring vermin into the house," mourned Cousin Gustus.
+
+Kew suggested: "White mice?"
+
+"Not vermin unattended," Anonyma explained. "She wanted to adopt Brown
+Borough babies. She had been working desultorily in the Brown Borough
+since War broke out."
+
+"That might explain the peculiar and un-Jay-like remark in her letter to
+you--that she would settle in no home except the Perfect Home. I hate
+things in capital letters."
+
+"Why didn't she get married?" grumbled Cousin Gustus. "She was engaged
+for nearly three weeks to young William Morgan, a most respectable young
+man. So few young men--"
+
+"She wrote to me that she couldn't keep up that engagement," said Kew.
+"Not even by looking upon it as War Work. She called him a 'Surface young
+man,' and that again seemed unlike her. She usen't to mind surfaceness.
+The War seems to have turned her upside down. But then, of course, the
+War has turned us all upside down, and in that position you generally get
+a rush of brains to the head. We're all feverish, that's what's the
+matter with us. When I was in hospital I lived for three weeks on the top
+of a high temperature, laughing. I want to laugh now.... It's a damn
+funny world."
+
+"I once knew a man who died of apoplexy while swearing," sniffed
+Cousin Gustus.
+
+"You have been damned unlucky in your friends, Cousin Gustus," said Kew.
+He paused, and then added: "Besides, I hardly ever say Damn without
+saying Un-damn to myself afterwards. It seems a pity to waste a precious
+word on an inadequate cause, and I always retrieve it if I can."
+
+"Before you came down to breakfast this morning, Kew," said Anonyma, "we
+had an idea."
+
+"Only one between you in all that time?" said Kew. "I was half an
+hour late."
+
+"Now, Kew, be an angel and agree with the idea. I've set my heart on it,"
+said Mrs. Gustus.
+
+When Mrs. Gustus talked in a womanly way like this, the change was always
+unmistakable. She was naturally an unnatural talker, and when she
+mentioned such natural things as angels, you knew she was resorting
+deliberately to womanly charm in order to attain her end. There was
+something very cold-blooded about Anonyma's womanly charm.
+
+"Good Lord," said Kew, "I wish angels had never been invented. I never
+am one, only people always tell me to be one. I never get officially
+recognised in heaven. What is the plan?"
+
+"There is Russell's car doing nothing," began Mrs. Gustus.
+
+"Do you mean Christina?" interrupted Kew, shocked at such formality.
+"Don't call her Russell's car, it sounds so cold."
+
+"There is Russell's Christina doing nothing," compromised Anonyma. "And
+petrol isn't so bad as it will be. And it's a beautiful time of year. And
+you are not strong yet, really. And we want Jay back."
+
+"A procession of facts doesn't make a plan," objected Kew.
+
+"It may lead to one, eventually," said Mrs. Gustus. "Oh, Kew, I want to
+go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear
+the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a
+wave of bluebells. I want to forget blood and Belgians and kiss Nature."
+
+"Take a twenty-eight 'bus, and kiss Hampstead Heath," suggested Kew.
+"The Spring has got there all right."
+
+Anonyma, behind the coffee-pot, was jotting down in a notebook the
+salient points in her outburst. She always placed her literary calling
+first. And anyway, I should be rather proud if I could talk like that
+about the Spring without any preparation.
+
+"The idea originally," began Mr. Russell tentatively, "was not only
+formed to allow Mrs. Gustus to enjoy the Spring, but also to make you
+quite strong before you go back to work. And, again, not only that, but
+also to try and trace your sister Jay."
+
+Will you please imagine that continual intercourse with very talkative
+people had made Mr. Russell an adept at vocal compression. He had now
+almost lost the use of his vowels, and if I wrote as he spoke, the effect
+would be like an advertisement for a housemaid during the shortage of
+wood-pulp. I spare you this.
+
+"There are three objections to the plan," said Kew. "First, that
+Anonyma doesn't really want to kiss the Spring; second, that I don't
+really want convalescent treatment; third, that Jay doesn't really want
+to be traced."
+
+When Mrs. Gustus did not know the answer to an objection she left
+it unanswered. This is, of course, the simplest way. She snapped
+her notebook.
+
+"Oh, Kew," she said, "you promised you'd be an angel." The double row of
+semi-detached buttons down her breast trembled with eagerness.
+
+"Angeller and angeller," sighed Kew, "I never committed myself so far."
+
+"I have a clue with which to trace Jay," said Mrs. Gustus. "I had a
+letter from her this morning."
+
+Kew was a satisfactory person to surprise. He is never supercilious.
+
+"You heard from Jay!" he said, in a voice as high as his eyebrows.
+
+The letter which Mrs. Gustus showed to Kew may be quoted here:
+
+"This place has stood since the year twelve something, and its windows
+look down without even the interruption of a sill at the coming and going
+of the tides. It has hardly any garden, and immediately to the right and
+the left of it the green down brims over the top of the cliff like the
+froth of ale over a silver goblet. To-night the tide is low, the sea is
+golden where the shallow waves break upon the sand, and ghostly green in
+the distance. When the tide is high, the sound and the sight of it seem
+to meet and make one thing. The waves press up the cliff then, and fall
+back on each other. Do you know the lines that are written on the face of
+a disappointed wave? To-night the clouds are like castles built on the
+plain of the sea. There is an aeroplane at this moment--dim as a little
+thought--coming between two turrets of cloud. I suppose it is that I can
+hear, but it sounds like the distant singing of the moon. I have come
+here to count up my theories, to count them and pile them up like money,
+in heaps, according to their value. Theories are such beautiful things,
+there must be some use in them. Or perhaps they are like money from a
+distant country, and not in currency here. Yet just as sheer metal, they
+must have some value.... It is wonderful that such happiness should come
+to me, and that it should last. I have the Sea and a Friend; there is
+nothing in the world I lack, and nothing that I regret...."
+
+"What better clue could you want?" asked Mrs. Gustus. "We will take
+Christina round the sea-coast."
+
+"Looking for silver cliffs and a golden sea," sighed Kew.
+
+I don't know if I have mentioned or conveyed to you that Mrs. Gustus was
+a determined woman. At any rate she was, and it would therefore be waste
+of time to describe the gradual defeat of Kew. The final stage was the
+despatch of Kew to call on Nana in the Brown Borough. Jay's letter had
+the Brown Borough postmark, so it had apparently been sent to Nana to
+post. Nana might be described as the Second Clue in the pursuit of Jay.
+She was the Family's only link with Jay. The one drawback of Nana as a
+clue was that she was never to be found. Mrs. Gustus had called six
+times, but had been repulsed on each occasion by a totally dumb front
+door. But then Nana never had liked Anonyma. Nana was simple herself in
+an amateurish, unconscious sort of way, and I expect she disliked
+Anonyma's professional rivalry in the matter of simplicity. But Kew was
+always a favourite.
+
+The 'bus roared up the canyons of the City, and its voice accompanied Kew
+in his tuneful meditations. A 'bus is not really well adapted for
+meditation. On my feet I can stride across unseen miles musing on love,
+in a taxi I can think about to-morrow's dinner, but on a 'bus my thoughts
+will go no further than my eyes can see. So Kew, although he thought he
+was thinking of Jay, was really considering the words in front of him--To
+Stop O'Bus strike Bell at Rear.[Footnote: He must have changed at the
+Bank into a Tilling 'bus.] He deduced from this that it was an Irish
+'bus, and supposed that this accounted for its rather head-long
+behaviour. He spent some moments in imagining the MacBus, child of a
+sterner race, which would run gutturally without skids, and wear a
+different cut of bonnet.
+
+He dismounted into a faint yellow fog diluted with a faint twilight, in
+the Brown Borough. The air was vague, making it not so much an
+impossibility to decipher the features of people approaching as a
+surprise to find it possible. A few rather premature bar row-flares
+adapted Scripture to modern conditions by hiding their light under tin
+substitutes for bushels, in the hope of protecting such valuables as
+cat's meat and bananas from aerial outrage. Kew pranced over prostrate
+children, and curved about the pavement to avoid artificially vivacious
+passers-by, who emerged from the public-houses.
+
+Nana lived in a little alley which was like a fiord of peace running in
+from the shrill storm of the Brown Borough. Here little cottages shrank
+together, passive resisters of the twentieth century. Low crooked windows
+blinked through a mask of dirty creepers. Each little front garden
+contained a shrub, and was guarded by a low railing, although there would
+have been no room for a trespasser in addition to the shrub. Nana's
+house, at the end of the alley, looked along it to the far turmoil of the
+mother-street.
+
+Kew insulted the gate, as usual, by stepping over it, and knocked at the
+door. He held his breath, so that he might more keenly hear the first
+whisperings of the floor upstairs, which would show that Nana was astir.
+
+A gardenful of cats came and told him that his hopes were vain. Cats only
+exist, I think, for the chastening of man. They never come to me except
+to tell me the worst, and to crush me with quiet sarcasm should my
+optimism survive their warning.
+
+But before the cats had finished speaking, there was a most un-Nana-like
+sound of bounding within, and Jay appeared. She threw herself out of the
+darkness of the door on to the twilit Kew.
+
+The cats were ashamed to be seen watching this almost canine display, and
+went away.
+
+"I didn't know you weren't in France," said Jay to Kew.
+
+"I didn't know you weren't in Heaven," said Kew to Jay. "What's all this
+about golden seas and aeroplanes snarling around?"
+
+"Oh, snarling.... That's just what they do," said Jay. "Let's pretend I
+said that."
+
+It seemed as if childhood turned its face to them again after a thousand
+years. These roaring months of War run like a sea between us and our
+peaceful beginnings, so that a catchword flashed across out of our past
+is as beautiful and as incredible as the light in a dream.
+
+When they were little they used to bargain for expressive words. Their
+childhood was full of such hair-splittings as: "If you tell how we said
+Wank-wank to the milkman, you must let me have the old lady who had a
+palpitation and puffocated running after the 'bus."
+
+They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of
+words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of
+overweighting common life with romance. It was perhaps good for them to
+have acquired such a very simple relation by marriage as Anonyma.
+
+"About the sea," said Jay, "I'll tell you later."
+
+"Well, tell me first why you found home so suddenly unbearable. You've
+stood it for eighteen years."
+
+"I've been a child all through those eighteen years. And to a child just
+the fact of grown-upness is so admirable. I wonder why. But under the
+fierce light that beats from the eye of a woman suddenly and violently
+grown old, Cousin Gustus and Anonyma don't--well, Kew, do they?"
+
+The dusk filled the room as water fills a cup, and to look up at the
+light of an outside lamp on the ceiling was like looking up through water
+at the surface. Jay wore a dress of the same colour of the dusk, and her
+round face, faint as a bubble, seemed to float on its background
+unsupported.
+
+"Didn't you think about adopting a baby?" suggested Kew. "That evidently
+put Cousin Gustus's back up."
+
+"I didn't put Cousin Gustus's back up so high as he put mine," answered
+Jay. "Oh, Kew, what are the old that they should check us? What's the use
+of this war of one generation against another? Old people and young
+people reach a deadlock that's as bad as marriage without the possibility
+of divorce. Isn't all forced fidelity wrong?"
+
+"What did you do, tell me, and what are you going to do?"
+
+"Oh well, I felt something like frost in the air, and I couldn't define
+it. Really, it was work waiting to be done. Not work for the poor, but
+work with the poor. At home I talked about work, and Anonyma wrote about
+it, and Cousin Gustus shuddered at it. You were doing it all right, but
+where was I? Three days a week with soldiers' wives. My brow never
+sweated a drop. I thought there must be something better than a
+bird's-eye view of work. So I took a job at a bolster place.... Oh well,
+it doesn't matter now. I earned ten shillings a week, and paid
+half-a-crown for a little basement back. On Saturdays I got my Sunday
+clothes out of pawn, and came to tea with Nana. Do you remember the
+scones and the Welsh Rarebit that Nana used to make? I believe those
+things were worth the terror of the pawnshop. Oh, Kew, those pawnshops!
+Those little secret stalls that put shame into you where none was before.
+The pawn man--why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment
+that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime.
+That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a
+big bright grocers' calendar--the Death of Nelson--and if I could see it
+through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my
+lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches--not fruit jam, you know, but
+raspberry flavour. It wasn't nice, and it used to get fluffy in that air.
+The others sat round and munched and picked their teeth and read Jew
+newspapers. Have you ever noticed that whichever way up you look at a Jew
+newspaper, you always feel as if you could read it better if you were
+standing on your head? My governor was a Jew too. He wasn't bad, but he
+looked wet, and his hair was a horror to me. His voice was tired of
+dealing with fluff--though he didn't deal with it so intimately as we
+did--and it only allowed him to whisper. The forewoman was always cross,
+but always as if she would rather not be so, as if she were being cross
+for a bet, and as if some one were watching her to see she was not kind
+by mistake. She looked terribly ill, because she had worked there for
+three months, which was a record. I stood it five weeks, and then I had a
+hemorrhage--only from the throat, the doctor said. I wanted to go to
+bed, but you can't, because the panel doctors in these parts will not
+come to you. My doctor was half an enormous mile away, and it seemed he
+only existed between seven and nine in the evenings. So I stayed up, so
+as not to get too weak to walk. I went and asked the governor for my
+stamps. I had only five stamps due to me, only five valuable threepences
+had been stopped out of my wages. But I had a silly conviction at that
+time that the Insurance Act was invented to help working people. What an
+absurd idea of mine! I went to the Jew for my card. He said mine was a
+hard case, but I was not entitled to a card; nobody under thirty, he
+said, was allowed by law to have a card. So I said it was only fair to
+tell him I was going to the Factory and Insurance Inspectors about him. I
+told him lots of things, and I was so angry that I cried. He was very
+angry too, and made me feel sick by splashing his wet hair about. He said
+it was unfair for ladies to interfere in things they knew nothing about.
+I said I interfered because I knew nothing about it, but that now I knew.
+I said that ladies and women had exactly the same kind of inside, and it
+was a kind that never thrived on fluff instead of food. I told him how I
+spent my ten shillings. He couldn't interrupt really, because he had no
+voice. Then I fainted, and a friend I have there, called Mrs. Love, came
+in. She had been listening at the door. She was very good to me.
+
+"Then, when I was well again, I found another job, but I shan't tell you
+what it is. As for the Inspectors, I complained, but--what's the use? So
+long as you must put fluff of that pernicious kind into bolsters, just so
+long will you kill the strength and the beauty of women. It looked so
+like a deadlock that it frightened me, and now in this wonderful life I
+lead, my Friend won't let me think of it. A deadlock is a dreadful
+accident, isn't it? because in theory it doesn't exist. I am working for
+a new end now. Isn't it splendid that there is really no Place Called
+Stop? There is always an end beyond the end, always something to love and
+look forward to. Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but
+how delightful!"
+
+"You haven't told me about the sea yet," said Kew.
+
+"Because I don't think you'd believe me. We were always liars, weren't
+we? That's because we're romantic, or if it's not romance, the symptoms
+of the disease are very like. Why can't we get rid of it all as Anonyma
+does? She has no gift except the gift of being able to get rid of
+superfluous romance. She takes that great ease impersonally, her pose
+is, 'It's a gift from Heaven, and an infernal bore.' But I never get
+nearer to joy than I do in this Secret World of mine, and with my
+Secret Friend."
+
+"But what is it? What is he like?"
+
+"I should be guilty of the murder of a secret if I told you. He isn't
+particularly romantic. I have seen him in a poor light; I have watched
+him in a most undignified temper; I have known him when he wanted a
+shave. I don't exist in this World of mine. I am just a column of thin
+air, watching with my soul."
+
+"Then you're really telling lies to Anonyma when you write about it all?
+I'm not reproaching you of course, I only want to get my mind clear."
+
+"I suppose they're lies," assented Jay ruefully, "though it seems
+sacrilege to say so, for I know these things better than I know myself.
+But Truth--or Untruth, what's the use of words like that when miracles
+are in question?"
+
+"Oh, damn this What's the Use Trick," said Kew. "I suppose you
+picked that up in this private Heaven of yours. The whole thing's
+absolutely--My dear little Jay, am I offending you?"
+
+"Yes," said Jay.
+
+Kew sighed.
+
+Chloris sighed too. Chloris had played the thankless part of third in
+this interview. She was Jay's friend, a terrier with a black eye. She
+shared Jay's burning desire to be of use, and, like most embryo
+reformers, she had a poor taste in dress. She wore her tail at an aimless
+angle, without chic; her markings were all lopsided. But her soul was
+ardent, and her life was always directed by some rather inscrutable
+theory or other. As a puppy she had been an inspired optimist, with legs
+like strips of elastic clumsily attached to a winged spirit. Later she
+had adopted a vigorous anarchist policy, and had inaugurated what was
+probably known in her set as the "Bite at Sight Campaign." Cured of this,
+she had become a gentle Socialist, and embraced the belief that all
+property--especially edible property--should be shared. Appetites, she
+argued, were meant to be appeased, and the preservation of game--or
+anything else--in the larder was an offence against the community. Now,
+at the age of five or so, she affected cynicism, pretended temporarily
+that life had left a bitter taste in her mouth, and sighed frequently.
+
+"Kew," said Jay presently, "will you promise not to tell the Family you
+saw me? I don't want it to know about me. After all, theories are driving
+me, and theories don't concern that Family of ours. What's the use of a
+Family? (I'm saying this just to exasperate you.) A Family's just a
+little knot of not necessarily congenial people, with Fate rubbing their
+heads together so as to strike sparks of love. Love--what's the use of
+Love? I'd like to catch that Love and box his ears, making such a fool of
+the world. What's the use?"
+
+"God knows," said Kew. "Cheer up, my friend, I promise I won't tell the
+Family I've seen you, or anything about you." At the same moment he
+remembered the motor tour.
+
+"Promise faithfully?"
+
+"Faithfully."
+
+"It's a lovely word faithful, isn't it?" she said, wriggling in her
+chair. "Yours faithfully is a most beautiful ending to a letter. Why is
+it that faith with a little F is such a perfect thing, and yet Faith,
+grown-up Faith in Church, is so tiring?"
+
+"Perhaps one is overworked and the other isn't," suggested Kew.
+
+As he went out into the darkness the noise of London sprang into his
+ears, and the remote brown room where he had left Jay seemed to become
+divided from him by great distances. The town was like a garden, and he,
+an insect, pressed through its undergrowth. The rare lamps and the stars
+flowered above him.
+
+
+  My yesterday has gone, has gone, and left me tired;
+And now to-morrow comes and beats upon the door;
+So I have built to-day, the day that I desired,
+Lest joy come not again, lest peace return no more,
+Lest comfort come no more.
+
+  So I have built to-day, a proud and perfect day,
+And I have built the towers of cliffs upon the sands.
+The foxgloves and the gorse I planted on my way.
+The thyme, the velvet thyme, grew up beneath my hands,
+Grew pink beneath my hands.
+
+  So I have built to-day, more precious than a dream;
+And I have painted peace upon the sky above;
+And I have made immense and misty seas that seem
+More kind to me than life, more fair to me than love,
+More beautiful than love.
+
+  And I have built a House, a House upon the brink
+Of high and twisted cliffs,--the sea's low singing fills it.
+And there my Secret Friend abides, and there I think
+I'll hide my heart away before to-morrow kills it,
+A cold to-morrow kills it.
+
+  Yes, I have built to-day, a wall against to-morrow,
+So let to-morrow knock, I shall not be afraid,
+For none shall give me death, and none shall give me sorrow,
+And none shall spoil this darling day that I have made.
+No storm shall stir my sea. No night but mine shall shade
+This day that I have made.
+
+
+"We will start on our quest to-morrow," said Anonyma. "To-day I
+must work."
+
+Nobody in Anonyma's circle was ever allowed to forget that she spent
+four hours a week in the service of her country. You would never guess
+how much insight into the souls of the poor, four hours a week can give
+to a person like Anonyma. She had written two books about the Brown
+Borough since the outbreak of War. The provincial Press had been much
+impressed by their vivid picture of slum realities. Anonyma's poor were
+always yearning, yearning to be understood and loved by a ministering
+upper class, yearning for light, for art, for self-expression, for
+novels by high-souled ladies. The atmosphere of Anonyma's fiction was
+thick with yearning.
+
+Anonyma always came home from her Work with what she called
+"word-vignettes" in her notebook. She gave her Family the benefit of
+these during the rest of the week, besides fitting them into her books.
+So that although Cousin Gustus always conscientiously bought a dozen
+copies of each novel as it came out, he really wasted his money, for he
+was obliged to know all his wife's copy by heart before it got into
+print. By speaking each thought as well as writing it, Anonyma rather
+unfairly won a reputation twice over with the same material.
+
+Anonyma produced a vignette now, in order to show how necessary it was
+that she should hurry to her yearning flock.
+
+"I came into the room of one of my sailors' wives last week, and I found
+her with a baby sobbing on her breast, and an empty hearth at her feet. I
+thought of the eternal tragedy of womanhood. I said, 'Will my love help,
+my dear?'"
+
+There was a pause, and Cousin Gustus sighed.
+
+"What did she say?" asked Kew, without expecting an answer from the
+artist. After all, a word-vignette is not intended to have a sequel. It
+is supposed to fall complete with a little splash into your silent
+understanding. I must say Kew was rather tiresome in refusing to be
+content with the splash.
+
+"So few women really understand how to stop a child crying," said Cousin
+Gustus, speaking from bitter and universal experience.
+
+"That's the point," said Kew. "The child had probably swallowed a pin."
+
+It generally breaks my heart to hear a story spoilt, but with Anonyma's
+word-vignettes I did not mind, because they were told as true, and yet
+they did not ring true. I must tell you that Anonyma had married into a
+family of accomplished white liars, and to them the ring of truth was as
+unmistakable as the dinner-bell. Few people could lie successfully to Kew
+or Jay, they knew that art from the inside. White lies are easily
+justified, but almost any lie can be whitewashed. Apart from the mutual
+attitude of Kew and Jay, who possessed something between them that might
+be called good faith, there was hardly any trust included in that family
+relationship. Cousin Gustus distrusted youth. He thought young people
+were always either lying to him or laughing at him, and indeed they often
+were. Only not so often as he thought. He was no prop on which to repose
+confidence, and it was very easy both to tell him lies and not to tell
+him facts.
+
+Mrs. Gustus had no gift of intimacy. She was reserved about everything
+except herself, or what she believed to be herself. The self that she
+shared so generously with others was, however, not founded on fact, but
+modelled on the heroine of all her books. She killed her heroine whenever
+possible--I think she only once married her,--yet still the creature
+remained immortal in Mrs. Gustus's public personality. She concealed or
+transformed everything that did not seem artistic. Her notebook was a
+tangle of self-deceptions. The rest of the Family knew this. They never
+pretended to believe her.
+
+Kew and Jay were skilled romancers, fact was clay in their hands.
+Nobody had ever taught them such a dull lesson as exact truthfulness.
+If they built the bare bones of their structures fairly accurately,
+they placed the whole in an artificial light, altering in some
+effective way the spirit of the facts. Education had impressed the
+importance of technical truthfulness on Kew. But he was a quick
+talker, and in order to keep him in line with his tongue, nature had
+made him quick of wit, quick in argument, and unconsciously quick in
+making and seeing loopholes for escape.
+
+He was at present perfectly comfortable in his anomalous position
+regarding a search round the sea-coast for a Jay he knew to be in the
+Brown Borough.
+
+"If I am going to work, I must go," said Anonyma. "Russ and I will go
+together as far as the Underground."
+
+She looked at herself in the glass. The scarlet bird in her hat had an
+arresting expression. As she was putting on her gloves she said, "I'm
+sorry, Kew, about your disappointment, not finding Nana at home last
+night. But I told you so."
+
+She had no fear of this much-shunned phrase.
+
+"Never mind," said Kew mildly. "We'll put Christina on the track
+to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Russell said a polite Good-bye to his Hound, and accompanied
+his friend Anonyma to the Underground. That was a fateful little
+journey for him.
+
+As he turned from Anonyma's side at the bookstall, he noticed a 'bus
+positively beckoning to him. It had a lady conductor, and she was poised
+expectantly, one hand on the bell and the other beckoning to Mr. Russell.
+His nature was docile, and the 'bus was bound for Chancery Lane, his
+destination. He mounted the 'bus.
+
+I need hardly tell you that a 'bus that makes deliberate advances to the
+public is the rarest sight in London. The self-respecting 'bus looks upon
+the public as dust beneath its tyres. Even a Brigadier-General with red
+tabs, on his way to Whitehall, looks pathetically humble waggling his
+cane at a 'bus. All 'bus-drivers have a kingly look; it comes from their
+proud position. The rest of the world is only worthy to communicate with
+that noble race by means of nods and becks and wreathed smiles.
+
+"Chancery Lane, please," said Mr. Russell. "But why did you stop
+specially for me?"
+
+"I thought your wife hailed me, sir," lied the 'bus-conductor.
+
+Any allusion to his wife mildly annoyed Mr. Russell. "Not my wife," he
+said. "Merely a friend."
+
+"Oh, I _beg_ your pardon, sir," said the 'bus-conductor, and underlined
+the "beg" with the ting of her ticket-puncher. She was rather a darling
+'bus-conductor, because she was also Jay. She had a short, though not a
+fat face, soft eyes, and very soft hair cut short to just below the lobes
+of her ears.
+
+A gentleman with dingy but elaborate boot-uppers hailed and mounted the
+'bus. "Shufftesbury Uvvenue?" he asked. He said it that way, of course,
+because he was a Shakespearian actor. The 'bus-conductor gave him his
+ticket, and then took her stand upon her platform, more or less unaware
+that Mr. Russell and the actor, both next to the door and opposite to
+each other, were looking at her with a pleased look.
+
+Mr. Russell thought for some time, and then he said, "'T's a
+b'tiful day."
+
+"That's what it is," replied the 'bus-conductor. "I wonder if it's wrong
+to enjoy being a 'bus-conductor?"
+
+"I shouldn't think so," said Mr. Russell cautiously. "Why?"
+
+The 'bus-conductor waved her hand towards a State hint that shouted in
+letters six foot high from an opposite wall: "DON'T USE A MOTOR CAR FOR
+PLEASURE." Mr. Russell read it very carefully and said nothing.
+
+"This is a motor car," observed the 'bus-conductor, glancing at her
+inaccessible chauffeur. "And as for pleasure ..."
+
+The high houses rose out of the earth like Alps, and the roar in the
+morning was like large music. She knew she had been an Olympian in a
+recent life, because she found herself familiar with greater and more
+gorgeous speed than any 'bus attains, and with the divine discords that
+high mountains and high cities sing.
+
+"I hope it's not wrong, because I'm going on a motor tour to-morrow,"
+said Mr. Russell. "On business of a sort, and yet also on pleasure. On a
+search, as a matter of fact."
+
+"Oh, any search is pleasure," said the bus-conductor. "Especially if it's
+an abstract search."
+
+"'Tisn't," said Mr. Russell. "'T's a search for a person."
+
+The 'bus-conductor looked at the sky. "And are Anonyma and Kew going
+too?" she thought. You must bear in mind that she had deliberately
+plucked him from the side of Anonyma.
+
+"Perhaps any pleasure is wrong in these days," she said.
+
+"Come, come," said the actor. "Whut's wrung with these days? A German
+ship sunk yesterday. Thut's pleasurable enough."
+
+The 'bus-conductor turned a cold eye upon him.
+
+"I can cheer, but not laugh over such news as that," she said pompously.
+"Doesn't even a German find the sea bitter to drown in? An English woman
+or a German butcher, isn't it all the same when it comes to a Me, with a
+throat full of water? Hasn't a German got a Me?"
+
+The actor looked at his boot-uppers. Mr. Russell thought. Shufftesbury
+Uvvenue arrived soon, and the actor alighted with some relief.
+
+When the 'bus started again, the bus-conductor said, "Don't you think the
+only way you can get pleasure out of it all is by treating life as a bead
+upon a string?"
+
+"That's a sufficient way, surely," said Mr. Russell. "If you can truly
+reach it."
+
+In the Strand he asked, "May I come in this 'bus again?"
+
+"This is a public 'bus," observed the 'bus-conductor.
+
+"This is Monday," said Mr. Russell. "May I gather that during this
+week your 'bus will be passing Kensington Church at half-past eleven
+every morning?"
+
+The 'bus-conductor did not answer. She went to the top of the 'bus to
+say, "Fezz plizz."
+
+Mr. Russell thought so furiously that he was only roused by the sound of
+St. Paul's striking apparently several dozen in his immediate vicinity.
+
+"This is Ludgate Hill. I only paid you as far as Chancery Lane. I owe you
+another halfpenny," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"A penny," said the 'bus-conductor.
+
+As he disappeared she thought, "There is something remarkable about that
+man. I wish I hadn't been so prosy. I wonder where and why Anonyma
+picked him up."
+
+When Mr. Russell came home that evening, he said, "I met--"
+
+"Isn't it wonderful--the people and the things one meets?" said Mrs.
+Gustus. "I met to-day a child with nothing but one garment on, rolling
+like a sparrow in the dust. The one garment, I thought, was the only
+drawback in the scene. Why can't we get back to simplicity?"
+
+Mr. Russell, on second thoughts, was glad he had been interrupted. He did
+not feel discouraged, only he decided not to try again. His Hound jumped
+on to his knee and put a paw into his hand.
+
+"I also persuaded a woman to give up drink," continued Mrs. Gustus. "I
+put it to her on the ground of simplicity. She was in bed, having been
+drunk the night before, and I sat on her bed with my hand on hers. I
+said, 'Dear fellow-woman, there are no essentials in life but bread and
+water and love. Everything else is a sort of skin-disease which has
+appeared on the surface of Nature, a disease which we call civilization.'
+She cried bitterly, and I gathered that she was lacking in all three
+essentials. I went and bought her four loaves of bread, on condition she
+would promise never to touch intoxicants again. I said I would not go
+away until she promised. She promised. I left her still crying."
+
+Cousin Gustus sighed. He never went about himself, and only saw the world
+through his wife's eyes. This did not tend to cure his pessimism.
+
+"It is wonderful how one can reach the bed-rock of life in two hours
+among the poor and simple," said Mrs. Gustus. "By the way, I only put in
+two hours to-day, because I think I can do better work in two hours
+twice a week than in four hours once. So I shall come up for the
+afternoon one day this week from wherever we are by then, and leave you
+three men prostrate on some shore, with your ears to Nature, like a
+child's ear to a shell."
+
+She groped for her notebook.
+
+"I must come up now and then too," said Mr. Russell, and poked his Hound
+secretly in the ribs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can't tell you what countless miles away his 'bus-conductor was by now.
+A certain fraction of her, to be sure, was sitting in the dark room at
+Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown Borough, with fierce hands pinching
+the table-cloth, and a hot forehead on the table. All day long the thirst
+for a secret journey had been in her throat. All day long the elaborate
+tangle of London had made difficult her way, but she had kicked aside the
+snare now, and her free feet were on the step of the House by the Sea.
+
+No voices met her at the door, the hall was empty. The firelight
+pencilled in gold the edges of the wooden figure that presided over the
+stairs. I think I told you about that figure. I never knew whose it
+was--a saint's I think, but her virtuous expression was marred by her
+broken nose, and the finger with which she had once pointed to Heaven was
+also broken. Her figure was rather stiff, and so were her draperies,
+which fell in straight folds to her blocklike feet. Her right hand was
+raised high, and her left was held alertly away from her side and had
+unseparated fingers. She had seen a great procession of generations pass
+her pedestal, but she never saw Jay. Of course not, for Jay was not
+there. Only a column of thin watching air haunted the House.
+
+There are many ghosts that haunt the House by the Sea. Jay is, of
+course, one of them, and for this reason she knows more about ghosts than
+any one I know. Fragments of untold stories are familiar to her. She
+knows how you may hear in the dark a movement by your bed, and fling out
+your hand and feel it grasped, and then feel the grasp slide up from your
+hand to your shoulder, from your shoulder to your throat, from your
+throat to your heart. She knows how you may go between trees in the
+moonlight to meet your friend, and find suddenly that some one is keeping
+pace with you, and how you, mistaking this companion for your friend, may
+say some silly greeting that only your friend understands. And how your
+heart drops as you hear the first breath of the reply. She knows how,
+walking in the mid-day streets of London, you may cross the path of some
+Great One who had a prior right by many thousand years to walk beside the
+Thames. These are the ghost stories that never get told. Few people can
+read them between the lines of press accounts of inquests, or in the
+dignified announcements of the failure of hearts, on the front page of
+the _Morning Post_. But Jay knows, because of her intimacy with the House
+by the Sea. There she meets her fellow-ghosts.
+
+The House, as I told you, has hardly any garden; having the sea, it
+doesn't need one. But there is a little formal place about twenty paces
+across, set, as it were, in the heart of the House. A small prim square,
+bounded on the north, south and east by the House itself, and on the west
+by the cliff and the sea. There is a stone balustrade to divide the
+garden from space. In the middle of the square is a stone basin with
+becalmed water-lilies and of course goldfish. Round the basin the orderly
+ranks of little clipped box hedges manoeuvre. The untamed elements in the
+garden are the climbing things, they sing in gold and yellow and orange
+and red from the walls. The only official way into the garden is a door
+from the House, a bald door without eyebrows, so to speak, like all the
+doors and windows in the House. But there is an unofficial way into the
+garden, and Jay found her Secret Friend there. This is the short cut to
+the sea. In other words, it is a wriggly ladder, one end of which you
+attach to a hook in the wall, and the other you throw over the balustrade
+down the cliff to the sea. It is a long way to walk round the House and
+along the cliff and down to the sea by the path. And just as the
+house-agents always want to be one minute and a half from the church and
+the post-office, so we in the Secret House cannot afford to be more than
+a minute and a half from the sea.
+
+The Secret Friend was there, and he was gazing so earnestly down the
+cliff that his hair was hanging forward most unbeautifully, and he was
+rather red in the face. He was looking at a little boat which was on its
+way towards the foot of the wriggly ladder. A schooner with the low sun
+climbing down her rigging breathed on the breathing sea not far away. The
+tide was high.
+
+The oars of the little boat suddenly wavered and were paralysed. One of
+the rowers made a quick movement with his hand.
+
+"It's the Law," said the Secret Friend, and he tried spasmodically to
+extinguish the sun with his hand. "It's the Law. The man with the tall
+and dewy brow."
+
+The Law, in a fat officious-looking boat, came sneaking round the near
+point of the cliff. The air was so still, and the sea so calm, that you
+could hear the sides of the boat grate against the cliff. And the air was
+so clear that you could see the tall and dewy brow of the Law, as he
+stood up and discovered the wriggly ladder.
+
+"To have a face like that," said the Secret Friend, "is to challenge
+fate. It makes me sick."
+
+"What is this?" asked the Law, although there seemed little doubt that
+the thing was a wriggly ladder. No one answered; so the Law rowed to the
+foot of the thing in question. The Secret Friend jerked it up about six
+feet, and secured it so.
+
+The Law cleared its throat, and looked nervously at the schooner, and at
+the sun, and at the other boat, and at the Secret Friend. The Law likes
+to be argued with. Take away words and where is the Law? Silence always
+annoys it.
+
+Yet there was no silence in the Secret World. I remember how the roses
+sang, and how the sea mourned over the confusion of its gentle dreams.
+The knocking of the slow sea upon the cliff seemed like the ticking of
+the great clock that is our world. It was a night when every horizon had
+heaven calling from the other side.
+
+The Story went on....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Chloris who brought Jay back to Number Eighteen Mabel Place, Brown
+Borough. Chloris gave an unromantic snort and sat with unnecessary
+clumsiness upon Jay's toe. So Jay returned, falling suddenly out of the
+music of the sea into the band-of-hopeful music of distant Boy Scouts on
+the march.
+
+Number Eighteen Mabel Place is not, as a rule, a hopeful place to return
+to. Jay and I know quite well what Satan felt like when he was expelled
+from Heaven.
+
+So Jay, whose refuge from most ills was talk, went to see a friend. She
+had many friends in the Brown Borough, and most of them were what Mrs.
+Gustus would call "undeserving." Mrs. Gustus has a very high mind; she
+and the C.O.S. are dreadfully grown-up institutions, I think; they forget
+what it feels like to have a good rampageous kick against the pricks.
+Nearly everybody in the Brown Borough enjoys a kick once a week (on
+pay-day)--and some of us go on kicking all our lives. At any rate, the
+Brown Borough is peopled with babies young and old, and high minds and
+grown-up institutions are apt to look over heads. Jay had a low mind and
+walked about on the Brown Borough level.
+
+"I have got neuralgia," said Jay to Chloris, "my hat feels too tight.
+My head feels like _tete de veau farcie_. I shall go and talk to Mrs.
+'Ero Edwards."
+
+And so she did, and found that Mrs. 'Ero Edwards had been wanting to
+see her to tell her that the war would be over in June, and that the
+Edwards's nephew knew on the best authority that the Kaser couldn't get
+no kipper to his breakfast any more because Preserdink Wilson was
+a-holding of them up upon the high seas, and that Jimmy Wragge was
+"wanted" for "helping himself," and that young Dusty Morgan, the
+lodger, had gone for a soldier, and his wife had taken his job as
+driver of a van.
+
+"There's only two jobs now," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, "wot you never see
+a woman doin', and one's a burglar, an' the other's a scarecrow."
+
+Jay said, "The lady burglars would be so clever they'd never get into the
+papers, and the lady scarecrows would be so attractive that they'd
+fascinate the birds."
+
+And then Mrs. 'Ero Edwards considered what she would say to an 'Un if she
+had him here, and Jay was called upon to provide 'Unnish replies in the
+'Unnish lingo. Her German was so patriotically rusty that she could think
+of no better retorts than "Nicht hinauslehnen," or "Bitte nicht zu
+rauchen," or "Heisses Wasser, bitte," or "Wacht am Rhein," or "Streng
+verboten." Yet the dramatic effect of the interview was very good indeed,
+and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards's arguments were unanswerable in any tongue.
+
+And then they thought they would make a surprise for young Mrs. Dusty
+Morgan, the lodger, against she come back from work, because she was that
+down'earted. So they went and bought some ribbon to tie up the curtains,
+and some flowers for the table, and put the chairs in happy and new
+attitudes of expectancy, and cleaned the windows, putting a piece of
+white paper on the broken pane instead of the rag, which was rather weary
+of its job. And then Mrs. 'Ero Edwards confided to Jay that young Mrs.
+Dusty wanted very much to find the picture of a real tip-top soldier, so
+that she might look at it and remember how this business was going to
+make a man of young Dusty. And Jay went all the way to the City and could
+find no picture of a tip-top soldier, and then she came back to the Brown
+Borough, and because of the intervention of Providence, found Albrecht
+Duerer's "St. George" second-hand in a Jew-shop. And they hung it up over
+the mantelpiece, and decided that it was rather like Dusty, if it wasn't
+for the uniform. And the general effect was so superb that Jay nearly
+spoilt it all by jumping a hole in the floor, so as to jog Time's elbow
+and bring Mrs. Dusty home quickly to see it all. It was a very delicate
+floor. Jay always jumped when she was impatient. She did everything with
+double fervour, and where you or I would have stamped one foot, she
+stamped two at once.
+
+Mrs. Dusty Morgan came back a little bit drunk. When she saw the Saint
+over the mantelpiece she cried, and blasted the war that made it
+necessary to wear them ... respirators all over (the Saint is in
+armour),--and when she saw the flowers, she laughed, and said it seemed
+like Nothing-on-Earth to have Dusty away.
+
+
+    Oh, bend your eyes, nor send your glance about.
+Oh, watch your feet, nor stray beyond the kerb.
+Oh, bind your heart lest it find secrets out.
+For thus no punishment
+Of magic shall disturb
+Your very great content.
+
+    Oh, shut your lips to words that are forbidden.
+Oh, throw away your sword, nor think to fight.
+Seek not the best, the best is better hidden.
+Thus need you have no fear,
+No terrible delight
+Shall cross your path, my dear.
+
+    Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
+Build up no plan, nor any star pursue.
+Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger.
+Thus nothing Fate can send,
+And nothing Fate can do
+Shall pierce your peace, my friend.
+
+
+Christina the motor car started next morning. She set her tyres on the
+road to the Secret World. For all the clues that Jay provided pointed to
+that region.
+
+"Here is another letter from Jay," said Mrs. Gustus as they started,
+bristling with clues. Odd, under the circumstances, that she writes to
+me so often and so freely. I will read you some of it, but not all, until
+I have thought my suspicions over. She writes:
+
+"... A collision with the Law to-night, under a great sunset. It would
+have been rather silly by common daylight, but under a yellow sky with
+stars in it, I think nothing can live but romance. The tide was coming
+up, and the Law--a man with a tall and dewy brow--rowed up to the foot of
+our little ladder that leads to the sea.... You know those round stone
+balls that sit on the balustrades of formal gardens such as this ... we
+only meant to frighten the Law, a splash was all that we intended, but
+the sun was in my Friend's eyes as he dropped the ball. It struck the bow
+of the boat, which went under like a frightened porpoise. There were two
+men in it, besides the Law itself, and they all came up spitting and
+spouting, and stood up to their necks in water. Oaths bubbled up to us.
+The boat came up badly perforated, and I expect we shall get into
+trouble. It was funny, but the War has rather pacified us peace-time
+belligerents, and made people like me unused to collisions with
+authority. I felt very nervous, but it was all right because ..."
+
+"I will read you no more, but in that much there should be several clues.
+We must keep the western sun in our eyes to begin with."
+
+"We must look out for a householder of irregular--not to say
+murderous--habits," said Cousin Gustus. "Juggling with stone balls is a
+trick that is frequently fatal. Nobody but Jay would encourage it."
+
+"We must comb out all western seaside resorts for local police with tall
+and dewy brows," said Kew.
+
+But Mr. Russell, who preferred not to speak and drive Christina at the
+same time, drew up to the kerb, and removed his gloves, preparatory to
+saying something of importance.
+
+Mr. Russell was at his best in a car, or, to put it another way, he
+was at his worst everywhere else. When he and Christina went out
+together they were only one entity. They were a centaur on wheels; Mr.
+Russell could feel the rushing of the road beneath his tyres, and I
+think if you had stuck a pin into the back seat, Mr. Russell would have
+known it. You could feel now the puzzled growl of Christina's engines
+as Mr. Russell pondered.
+
+"But I remember ..." said Mr. Russell. "Now, did I see it in the
+paper...? I remember.... Half a minute, it is coming back."
+
+"Here's to-day's paper," said Kew, who was getting a little confused. You
+will feel the same when you set out to follow the western sun in search
+of something you know you have left behind you.
+
+Mr. Russell and Christina lingered beside the kerb for quite a minute,
+and then shrugged their shoulders and started again.
+
+So the Family set their faces towards the Secret World, with Mr. Russell
+as their guide, and the morning sun behind them.
+
+London is a friend whom I can leave knowing without doubt that she will
+be the same to me when I return, to-morrow or forty years hence, and
+that, if I do not return, she will sing the same song to inheritors of my
+happy lot in future generations. Always, whether sleeping or waking, I
+shall know that in Spring the sun rides over the silver streets of
+Kensington, and that in the Gardens the shorn sheep find very green
+pasture. Always the plaited threads of traffic will wind about the reel
+of London; always as you go up Regent Street from Pall Mall and look
+back, Westminster will rise with you like a dim sun over the horizon of
+Whitehall. That dive down Fleet Street and up to the black and white
+cliffs of St. Paul's will for ever bring to mind some rumour of romance.
+There is always a romance that we leave behind in London, and always
+London enlocks that flower for us, and keeps it fresh, so that when we
+come back we have our romance again.
+
+Mr. Russell was a lover of London, and that is why he liked his new-found
+'bus-conductor. He was an uncalculating sort of man, and he only thought
+that he had found a flower in London, a very London flower, and he hoped
+that London would show it to him again. He had no instinct either for the
+past or the future. He never looked back over the road he had trod,
+unless he was obliged to, and he never tried to look forward to the end
+of the road he was treading.
+
+Mrs. Gustus, with an iron expression about her chin, kept time to the
+beat of Christina's engine with the throbbing of disagreeable thoughts.
+There was one thing very plain to her in the matter of Jay--that Jay was
+living a life that in a novel is called free, but in a Family--well--you
+know what ... Mrs. Gustus knew all about these Friends with capital F's,
+Friends with hair flopping over their foreheads, Friends who might drop
+stone balls on the Law and still retain their capital F's. She had, in
+fact, written about them with much daring and freedom. But one's young
+relations may never share the privileges of one's heroines. Sympathy with
+such goings on must be confined to the printed page.
+
+"I will keep these things from the others," thought Mrs. Gustus. "They
+have no suspicions, and if we can find Jay I may be able to save her
+reputation yet."
+
+Really she was thinking as much of her own good name as of Jay's. For
+there was a most irritating similarity between Jay's present apparent
+practices and Mrs. Gustus's own much-expressed theories. The beauty of a
+free life of simplicity had filled pages of Anonyma's notebooks, and
+also, to the annoyance of Cousin Gustus, had overflowed into her
+conversation. Cousin Gustus's memory had been constantly busy extracting
+from the past moral tales concerning the disasters attendant on excessive
+simplicity in human relationships. For a time it had seemed as if Cousin
+Gustus's lot had been cast entirely with the matrimonially unorthodox.
+And now Mrs. Gustus, for one impatient minute, wished that the children
+would pay more attention to their elderly and experienced guardian. It
+was too much to ask her--a professional theory-maker--to adapt her
+theories to the young and literal. That was the worst of Jay, she was so
+literal, so unimaginative, so lacking in the simple unpractical quality
+of poetry. However, not a word to the others. Jay's reputation and
+Anonyma's dignity might yet be saved.
+
+"I don't know where we are going," said Anonyma presently. "I have no
+bump of locality."
+
+She always spoke proudly of her failings, as though there were a
+rapt press interviewer at her elbow, anxious to make a word-vignette
+about her.
+
+Mr. Russell was thinking, and Kew was singing, so between them they
+forgot to shape the course of Christina due west. When they got outside
+London, they found themselves going south.
+
+To go out of London was like going out of doors. The beauty of London is
+a dim beauty, and while you are in the middle of it you forget what it is
+like to see things clearly. In London every hour is a hill of adventure,
+and in the country every hour is a dimple in a quiet expanse of time.
+
+The Family went out over the hills of Surrey, and between roadside
+trees they saw the crowned heads of the seaward downs. The horizon
+sank lower around them, the fields and woods circled and squared the
+ribs of the land.
+
+Before sunset they had reached the little town that guards the gate
+in the wall of the Sussex downs. They were welcomed by a thunderstorm,
+and by passionate rain that drove them to the inn. Christina, torn
+between her pride of soul and her pride of paint, was obliged to edge
+herself into a shed which was already occupied by two cows and a red
+and blue waggon.
+
+When the pursuers of Jay set their feet on the uneven floor of the inn,
+they recognised the place immediately as ideal. Its windows squinted, its
+floor made you feel as though you were drunk, its banisters reeled, its
+flights of stairs looked frequently round in an angular way at their own
+beginnings.
+
+"How Arcadian!" said Mrs. Gustus, as she splashed her signature into the
+visitor's book. "One could be content to vegetate for ever here. Isn't it
+pathetic how one spends one's life collecting heart's desires, until one
+suddenly discovers that in having nothing and in desiring nothing lies
+happiness."
+
+But when they had been shown their sitting-room, and had ordered their
+supper--lamb and early peas and gooseberry tart with _tons_ of
+cream--Mrs. Gustus saw the Ring, that great green breast of the country,
+against the broken evening sky, and said, "Now I see heights, and I
+shall never be happy or hungry till I have climbed them. The Lord made
+me so that I am never content until I am as near the sky as possible.
+Silly, no doubt. But what a sky! Blood-red and pale pink, what a unique
+chord of colour."
+
+"Same chord as the livery of the Bank or England," said Kew, who was
+hungry, and had an aching shoulder. He hated beauty talked, just as he
+hated poetry forced into print apropos of nothing. Even to hear the
+Psalms read aloud used to make him blush, before his honest orthodoxy
+hardened him.
+
+Mrs. Gustus asked the lamb and gooseberry tart to delay their coming; she
+placed Cousin Gustus in an arm-chair, first wrapping him up because he
+felt cold, and then unwrapping him again because he felt hot; she kissed
+him good-bye.
+
+"We shan't be more than an hour," she said. When Mrs. Gustus said an
+hour, she meant two. If she had meant an hour, she would have said
+twenty minutes. "You must watch for us to appear on the highest point
+of the Ring."
+
+"Don't watch, but pray," murmured Kew. "There's that thunderstorm just
+working up to another display."
+
+And so it was, but when they reached the ridge of down that led to the
+Ring, they were glad they had come. They were half-drowned, and
+half-blinded, and half-deafened, but there is a reward to every effort.
+There was an enormous sky, and the sunlight spilled between the clouds to
+fall in pools upon the world. There was a chord made by many larks in the
+sky; the valleys held joy as a cup holds water. From the down the
+chalk-pits took great bites; the crinolined trees curtseyed down the
+slopes. The happy-coloured sea cut the world in half; the sight of a
+distant town at the corner of the river and the coast made one laugh for
+pleasure. There was a boat with sunlit sails creeping across the sea. I
+never see a boat on an utterly lonely sea without thinking of the secret
+stories that it carries, of the sun moving round that private world, of
+the shadows upon the deck that I cannot see, of the song of passing seas
+that I cannot hear, of the night coming across a great horizon to devour
+it when I shall have forgotten it. Further off and more suggestive than a
+star, it seems to me.
+
+A gust of sunlight struck the watchers, and passed: they each ran a few
+steps towards the sight that pleased them most. And then they stood so
+long that Mr. Russell's Hound had time to make himself acquainted with
+every smell within twenty yards. He turned over a snail that sat--round
+and striped like a peppermint bull's-eye--on the short grass, he patted a
+little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate
+size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from
+Mr. Russell's pensive hand, he suggested that the pursuit should
+continue. So they walked to the crest of wood that stands at the top of
+the Ring, a compressed tabloid forest, fifty yards from side to side, as
+round as a florin piece.
+
+The slopes rushed away from every side of it. There was a dark secret
+beneath those trees, there was a hint of very ancient love and still more
+ancient hatred. You could feel things beyond understanding, you left
+fact outside under the sky, and went in with a naked soul.
+
+They walked across it in silence, well apart from each other. When they
+came out the other side, Mrs. Gustus said, "We must stay for a little
+while within reach of this. It has something ..."
+
+Mr. Russell swallowed something that he had thought of saying, and
+instead drew his Hound's attention to a yellow square of mustard-field
+which made brilliant the distance.
+
+Kew said nothing, but he felt choked with a lost remembrance of a very
+old childhood. He seemed to taste the quiet taste of youth here, there
+was even a feeling of going home through a damp evening to a nursery tea.
+It was the nursery of all Secret Worlds. Gods had been born there. No
+surprise could live there now, no wonder, no protest. The years like
+minutes fled between those trees, dynasties might fall during the singing
+of a bird. I think the thing that haunted the wood was a thing exactly as
+old and as romantic as the first child that tracked its Secret Friend
+across the floor of a forest.
+
+Oh, friend of childlike mind, what is it that these two years have taken
+from us, what is it that we have lost, oh friend, besides contentment?
+
+All the way home Kew sang very loudly the first tune he ever knew.
+
+When the Family (including Mr. Russell) got back to the inn, the lamb and
+the gooseberry tart and Cousin Gustus were all waiting for them. But they
+were delayed in the hall. A stout young woman with a pleasant face of
+small vocabulary turned from the visitors' book and stopped Mrs. Gustus.
+
+"Are you THE Mrs. Augustus Martin?" she asked.
+
+"I am she," replied Anonyma. Her grammar in moments of emergency always
+impressed Kew.
+
+I cannot say that Mrs. Gustus seemed surprised. She was the sort of
+person to hide even from herself the fact that this thing had never
+happened before. She remained perfectly calm as if repeating a hackneyed
+experience. Kew was astonished. Mr. Russell shared this feeling. Having a
+certain personal admiration for Mrs. Gustus, he had tried on more than
+one occasion to find pleasure in her books, but without success.
+
+The stout young lady said nothing more than "Oh" for the moment, but she
+breathed it in such a manner that Mrs. Gustus saw at once the duty of
+asking her to dine with the Family.
+
+When the admirer was introduced to Cousin Gustus, she said, "Oh, so this
+is your husband ..." and gazed on that melancholy man with eagerness.
+When she saw Mr. Russell's Hound she said, "And this is your dog," and
+was about to crown him with a corresponding halo when Mrs. Gustus
+disclaimed the connection.
+
+"It is wonderful to meet you, of all people, in this romantic place,"
+said the admirer as she pursued her peas. "Do you know, whenever I finish
+one of your books, I feel so romantic I want to kiss everybody I meet.
+Oh, those courtly heroes of yours!"
+
+A heavy silence fell for a moment.
+
+"And your descriptions of nature," continued the admirer. "That sunset
+seen from the west coast of Ireland that you describe in _The Courtship
+of Hartley Casey_. You must know Ireland very well."
+
+"I have never been there," said Mrs. Gustus. "I evolve my scenery. After
+all, Nature lives in the heart of each one of us. I think we all have a
+sort of Secret World of our own, out of which all that is best in us
+comes. One does not need to see with one's outward eyes."
+
+"Oh, goodness me, how true that is," said the admirer. "But you
+must write a book about the downs, won't you? Do you take notes on
+your travels?"
+
+"My notebook is never out of my hand," answered Mrs. Gustus. "I jot down
+whatever occurs to me, wherever I may be. I write by moonlight in the
+night, I have had to pause in the middle of my prayers in Church, I have
+stood transfixed in the full flow of a London street. I always hope that
+people will think I am suddenly remembering that I forgot to order
+to-morrow's dinner."
+
+But really she knew that no one could ever be deceived in the purpose of
+the notebook.
+
+"Oh, mustn't it be wonderful!" breathed the admirer, and Cousin Gustus,
+who was always properly impressed by his wife when the example was set by
+strangers, nodded with a proprietary smile. "And are you writing now?"
+she continued.
+
+"I am always writing," said Mrs. Gustus, who had seldom enjoyed herself
+so much, "my pen never rests. A lifetime is too short to allow of rest.
+But I am not here primarily for inspiration. We are on a quest."
+
+"Oh, how romantic," moaned the admirer.
+
+"It is a quest with a certain amount of romance in it," agreed Anonyma.
+"We are seeking a House By The Sea. We know very little about it except
+that it exists. We know that its windows look west, and that the sun sets
+over the sea. We know that it stands ungardened on the cliff and has a
+great view. We know that it is seven hundred years old, and full of
+inspiration ..."
+
+"We know," continued Kew, "that you can--and often do--drop a
+fishing-line out of the window into the sea when you are tired of playing
+the goldfish in the water-butt. We know that the owner of the house is a
+rotten shot, and that the stone balls from the balustrade are not at this
+moment where they ought to be. We know that aeroplanes as well as
+seagulls nest in those cliffs...."
+
+"We know--" began Mr. Russell, but this was too much for Mrs. Gustus.
+After all, the lady was her admirer.
+
+"What's all this?" said Mrs. Gustus. "What do you people know about it?"
+
+"I just thought I would talk a little now," said Kew. "I get quickly
+tired of hearing other people giving information without help from me."
+
+"At any rate, Russ," continued Mrs. Gustus, "you can't know anything
+whatever about the matter. You have hardly listened when I read
+Jay's letters."
+
+"I told you that I remembered," said Mr. Russell. "I don't know how. I
+remember sitting on a high cliff and seeing three black birds swim in a
+row, and dive in a row, and in a row come up again after I had counted
+hundreds."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Gustus, trying not to appear cross before the
+visitor, "you're thinking of something else. You can see such a sight as
+that at the Zoo any day."
+
+"You all seem to know quite a lot about the place," said the admirer,
+"yet not much of a very practical nature, if I may say so."
+
+"Everything practical is unromantic," said Mrs. Gustus. "There is
+nothing true or beautiful in the world but poetry. If we seek in real
+simplicity of mind, we shall find what we seek, for simplicity is poetry,
+and poetry is truth."
+
+"Also, of course, England has only one west coast," added Kew, "and if we
+don't find the place we shall have found a good many other things by the
+time we have finished."
+
+"It may be in Ireland," suggested the admirer.
+
+"No, because she answers our letters so quickly."
+
+"She?"
+
+"My young cousin, the object of our search."
+
+"Did she run away?" asked the admirer, in a voice strangled with
+excitement.
+
+To admit that a young relation of Anonyma's should run away from her
+would be undignified.
+
+"You mustn't take us too seriously," said Mrs. Gustus lightly. "It isn't
+a case of an elopement, or anything like that. Just an excuse for a
+tour, and a rest from wearisome war work. A wild-goose chase, nothing but
+fun in it."
+
+"Wild goose is a good description of Jay," said Cousin Gustus. It
+was rather.
+
+Next morning the admirer, twittering with excitement, came in upon the
+Family while it was having its breakfast.
+
+"Oh, I had such an idea in the night," she said. "I couldn't sleep, of
+course, after such an exciting day. I believe I have been fated to help
+you in your quest. I know of a house near here, and the more I think of
+it the more sure I feel that it is the place you want."
+
+"Who lives there?"
+
+"A young man with his mother. I forget the name."
+
+"Place we want's west," objected Mr. Russell.
+
+"You never can tell," said Anonyma. "This place may stand on a salient,
+facing west. Our search must be thorough."
+
+"It's such a lovely walk," said the admirer. "I should be so much
+honoured if you would let me show you the way. Oh, I say, do you think me
+very presumptuous?"
+
+Her self-consciousness took the form of a constant repentance. In the
+night she would go over her day and probe it for tender points. "Oh, that
+was a dreadful thing to say," was a refrain that would keep her awake for
+hours, wriggling and giggling in her bed over the dreadfulness of it. She
+had too little egoism. The lack gave her face a look of littleness. A
+lack of altruism has the same outward effect. A complete face should be
+full of something, of gentleness, of vigour, of humour, of wickedness.
+The admirer's face was only half full of anything. All the same there was
+charm about her, the fact that she was an admirer was charming. Mrs.
+Gustus reassured her.
+
+"We shall be most grateful for a guide."
+
+"We should be even more grateful for an excuse to call on this
+inoffensive young man and his mother at eleven o'clock in the morning,"
+objected Kew.
+
+"He ought to be at the Front," was the excuse provided by Cousin Gustus.
+
+"So ought I," sighed Kew.
+
+"Oh, but you're a wounded, aren't you?" asked the admirer. There were
+signs of a possible transfer of admiration, and Mrs. Gustus interposed
+with presence of mind.
+
+"We'll start," she said. "Don't let's be hampered in the beginning of our
+quest by social littleness."
+
+She was conscious that she looked handsome enough for any breach of
+convention. She wore an unusual shaped dress the colour of vanilla ice.
+Instead of doing her hair as usual in one severe penny bun at the back,
+she had constructed a halfpenny bun, so to speak, over each ear. This is
+a very literary way of doing the hair, and the remembrance of the
+admirer, haunting Anonyma's waking thoughts, had inspired the change.
+
+Their way lay through the beechwood that embroiders the hem of the down's
+cloak. There are only two colours in a beechwood after rain, lilac and
+green. A bank of violets is not more pure in colour than a beech trunk
+shining in the sun. The two colours answered one another, fainter and
+fainter, away and away, to the end of one's sight, and there were two
+cuckoos, hidden in the dream, mocking each other in velvet voices. The
+view between the trees was made up of horizons that tilted one's chin.
+The bracken, very young, on an opposite slope, was like a cloud of green
+wings alighting. But the look of their destination disappointed them.
+
+"This house faces south," said Kew.
+
+"I feel sure--" began Mr. Russell, but Mrs. Gustus said:
+
+"As we are here, we might ask. To be sure, the cliff is rather tame."
+
+"But there is an aeroplane," persisted the admirer.
+
+"Now pause, Anonyma," Kew warned her. "Pause and consider what you are
+going to say."
+
+"Consideration only unearths difficulties," laughed Anonyma. "Best go
+forward in faith and fearlessness."
+
+She was under the impression that she constantly laughed in a nicely
+naughty way at Kew's excessive conventionality.
+
+As they drew nearer to the cliff, it grew tamer and tamer. The house,
+too, became dangerously like a villa; a super-villa, to be sure, and
+not in its first offensive youth, but still closely connected with the
+villa tribe. Its complexion was a bilious yellow, and it had
+red-rimmed windows. It was close to the sea, however, and its windows,
+with their blinds drawn down against the sun, looked like eyes downcast
+towards the beach.
+
+There was no lodge, and the Family walked in silence through the gate.
+Mr. Russell's Hound went first with a defiant expression about his tail.
+That expression cost him dear. Inside the gate there stood a large vulgar
+dog, without a tail to speak of. Its parting was crooked, its hair was in
+its eyes. All these personal disadvantages the Family had time to note,
+while the dog gazed incredulously at Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+A Pekinese dog never wears country clothes. It always looks as if it had
+its silk hat and spats on. If I were a country dog, who had never even
+smelt a Piccadilly smell, I should certainly bite all dogs of the type of
+Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+I could hardly describe what followed as a fight. Although I have always
+loved stories of giant-killers, from David downwards, and should much
+like to write one, I cannot in this case pretend that Mr. Russell's Hound
+did anything but call for help. Anonyma's umbrella, Kew's cane, and Mr.
+Russell's stick did all they could towards making peace, but the big dog
+seemed to have set itself the unkind task of mopping up a puddle with Mr.
+Russell's Hound. The process took a considerable time. And it was never
+finished, for the mistress of the house interrupted it.
+
+She was rather a fat person, apparently possessing the gift of authority,
+for the sound of her call reached her dog through the noise of battle. He
+saw that his aim was not one to achieve in the presence of an audience.
+He disengaged his teeth from the mane of Mr. Russell's Hound.
+
+"Is your dog much hurt?" asked the mistress of the house, and handed
+Anonyma a slate.
+
+Anonyma scanned this unexpected gift nervously. She was much more used to
+taking other people aback than to being taken aback herself. But Kew was
+more ready. He dived for the pencil and wrote, "Only a bit punctured," on
+the slate.
+
+"You'd better bring it in and bathe it," suggested the lady, when she had
+studied this.
+
+They followed her in silent single file. Anonyma noticed that her hair
+was apparently done in imitation of a pigeon's nest, also that many hooks
+at the back of her dress had lost their grip of the situation.
+
+The bathroom, whither Mr. Russell's Hound was carried, was suggestive of
+another presence in the house. A boat, called _Golden Mary,_ was
+navigating the bath. There were some prostrate soldiers and chessmen in a
+little heap on the ledge, apparently waiting for a passage.
+
+"I'm getting out my son's things because he is coming home," said the
+lady.
+
+Mr. Russell was bathing his bleeding Hound in the basin, and Anonyma was
+at the window, ostentatiously drinking in the view. Kew took the slate
+and wrote politely on it: "From school?"
+
+"From the War," said the lady.
+
+Kew donned a pleased and interested expression. It seemed to him better
+to do this than to write, "Really!" on the slate.
+
+"He wrote about a fortnight ago," the lady's harsh voice continued, "to
+say he would come to-day. He said he was sick of being grown-up, he told
+me to get out the soldiers and the _Golden Mary_. He wants to launch
+them on the pond again."
+
+Kew nodded. "I have felt like that," he murmured, and the lady seemed to
+see the sense of his words.
+
+"I should think you are six years older than Murray," she said, "and very
+different. Come out into the garden, and I'll show you."
+
+Kew followed her, and Anonyma, after a moment's hesitation, went too. But
+Mr. Russell, who had finished his work of mercy, seemed to think it
+better to linger in the bathroom, explaining to his Hound the subject of
+a Biblical picture which hung over the bath.
+
+"You might think I was rather too old to play things well," the mother
+said to Kew. "But you should see me with Murray. Even my deafness never
+hindered me with him, I could always see what he said. Look, we made this
+road for the soldiers coming down to the wharf. Do you see the way we
+helped nature, by tampering with the roots of the beech. It is a perfect
+wharf, this little flat bit, it is just level with the deck of the boat
+at high tide. The lower wharf is for low tide, but of course we have to
+pretend the tides. That round place is the bandstand, and there the
+pipers play when there is a troop-ship starting. Sometimes only the
+Favourite Piper plays, striding up and down the little bowling-green at
+the top here, but not often, because the work of keeping him going
+interferes with the disembarkation. We never let the Highlanders go
+abroad, because Murray loves them so. He is afraid lest something should
+happen to them. Were the Highlanders your favourites?"
+
+Kew wrote on the slate: "No, the Egyptian Camel Corps."
+
+The lady nodded. "We loved them too, but of course they lived on the
+other side of the pond, and sometimes they and the Sepoys and the
+Soudanese had to insurrect. Somebody had to, you know, but we regretted
+the Egyptian Camel Corps awfully. I hope you don't think us silly....
+Murray was always a childish person. I hope I am too. The bowling-green
+gave us a lot of trouble to make; it is nice and flat, isn't it? We trim
+it with nail-scissors."
+
+It was a good bowling-green, about twelve inches by six. There were some
+marbles on it.
+
+"It has historical associations," said the mother of Murray. "It was
+here that Drake played when the Armada was sighted. Of course that was
+before our time, but sometimes, on a moonlit summer night, we used to lie
+down on our fronts and see his little ghost haunting the green. We used
+to bring our young sailors here, and inspire them with stories about
+Drake. The sailors used to stand on the green, and we put up railings
+made of matches all round, and civilians used to stand in great
+breathless crowds outside the railings watching. Chessmen, of course.
+Murray used to make the civilians arrive in motors, so as to make ruts in
+the road. Somehow it was always rather splendid and real to have ruts in
+the road."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Later on, of course, things got more grown-up. The last time we played
+before the War--when War was already in sight--we shipped an
+unprecedented mass of troops to that peninsula, and had a wonderful
+battle. You can still see the trenches and gun emplacements; I cleared
+them out yesterday. Murray joined the Army in that first August, and
+whenever he came home after that he was somehow ashamed of these things.
+I quite understood that. When I am having tea with the Vicar's wife, or
+cutting out shirts for the soldiers, I sometimes blush a little to think
+how old I am, and to think of the things I do at home with Murray. I am
+sure he felt just the same when he was with other men. But his last
+letter was young again. He wrote that the War should cease the moment he
+set foot inside this gate, and we would have a civilian game, an alpine
+expedition up the mountains. You see the beech-root mountains. There is
+the cave where we put up for the night. There is a wonderful view from
+Bumpy Peak, over the sea, and right away to far-off lands. Murray thought
+that when the expedition had caught a chamois it might turn into
+engineers prospecting for the building of a road up to Bumpy Peak, so
+that the soldiers might march up, and look out over the sea, and
+see--very far off--the fringes of the East that they had conquered, when
+they were young and not tired of War...."
+
+She broke off and looked at Kew.
+
+Anonyma stood a few paces away, gazing at her vanilla-ice reflection
+in the pond.
+
+"I dare say you think us silly," said the lady. "I dare say you would
+think Murray a rotter if you met him. It doesn't matter much. It doesn't
+matter at all. Nothing matters, because he will come home to-night."
+
+Kew fidgeted a moment, and then took the slate and wrote: "I am very much
+afraid that all leave from abroad has been stopped this week."
+
+"Yes, I know," said the mother, "I have been unhappy about that for some
+days. But it doesn't make any difference to Murray now. You see, I heard
+last night that he was killed on Tuesday. That's why I know he will come,
+and I shall be waiting here. Can't you imagine them shouting as they get
+through, as they get through with being grown-up, shouting to each other
+as they run back to their childhood and their old pretences...."
+
+After a moment she added, "That is the only sound that I shall ever hear
+now,--the shouting of Murray to me as he runs home."
+
+It was in a sort of dream that Kew watched Anonyma go forward and take
+both the hands of the mother. I suppose he knew that all that was
+superfluous, and that Murray would come home.
+
+Anonyma said, "I am so sorry. I am so sorry that we intruded. You must
+forgive us."
+
+The mother of Murray did not hear, but she saw that sympathy was
+intended, and she nodded awkwardly, and a little severely. I don't think
+she had known that Anonyma was there.
+
+Kew was not sorry that he had intruded.
+
+At sunset, when the high sea span
+About the rocks a web of foam,
+I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
+Come home.
+I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
+Run from the weariness of War,
+I heard him laughing as he ran
+Across his unforgotten shore.
+The great cliff, gilded by the west,
+Received him as an honoured guest.
+The green sea, shining in the bay,
+Did drown his dreadful yesterday.
+
+Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
+The honest years shall make amends,
+The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
+The everlasting hills your friends.
+And some shall seek their mothers' faces,
+And some shall run to trysting-places,
+And some to towns, and others yet
+Shall find great forests in their debt.
+    Oh, I would siege the golden coasts
+    Of space, and climb high heaven's dome,
+    So I might see those million ghosts
+    Come home.
+
+Next day all the Family, including Mr. Russell and excepting Cousin
+Gustus, came to breakfast with the intention of announcing that he or
+she must go up to London by the next train. Mrs. Gustus, as ever,
+spoke first.
+
+"My conscience is pricking me. My work is calling me. I must go up
+and see my old darlings in the Brown Borough. There is, I see, a
+train at ten."
+
+"I was just going to say something quite different to the same effect,"
+said Kew. "I want to go up and whisper some secrets into the ear of
+Cox. I want to have my hair cut. I want to buy this week's _Punch_. I
+want some brown bootlaces. Life is empty for me unless I go up to town
+this morning."
+
+Mr. Russell, although he had tried the effect of all his excuses on his
+Hound while dressing, was silent.
+
+Mrs. Gustus was never less than half an hour too early for trains. This
+might account for the excellence of her general information. She had
+spent a large portion of her life at railway stations, which are, I
+think, the centre of much wisdom. She and Kew started for the station
+with mouths burnt by hurried coffee and toast-crumbs still unbrushed on
+their waistcoats, forty minutes before the train was due. The protests of
+Kew could be heard almost as far as the station, which was reached by a
+walk of five minutes.
+
+Cousin Gustus, Mr. Russell, and the convalescent Hound went to lie upon
+the downs which climbed up straight from the back doorstep of the inn.
+They were accompanied by a rug, a scarf, a sunshade, an overcoat, the
+blessings of the landlady, and Cousin Gustus's diary. Nobody ever knew
+what sort of matter filled Cousin Gustus's diary, nobody ever wanted to
+know. It gave him grounds for claiming literary tastes, and his literary
+tastes presumably made him marry a literary wife. So the diary had a
+certain importance.
+
+They spread out the rug in a little hollow, like a giant's footprint in
+the downs, and sheep and various small flowers looked over their
+shoulders.
+
+For the first ten minutes Mr. Russell lay on his back listening to the
+busy sound of the bees filling their honeybags, and the sheep filling
+themselves, and Cousin Gustus filling his diary. He watched the rooks
+travel across the varied country of the sky. He watched a little black
+and white bird that danced in the air to the tune of its own very high
+and flippant song. He watched the sun ford a deep and foaming cloud. And
+all the time he remembered many reasons why it would have been nice to go
+up to London. Oddly enough, a 'bus-conductor seemed to stand quite apart
+from these reasons in the back of his mind for several minutes. One would
+hardly have believed that a bus-conductor could have held her own so long
+in the mind of a person like Mr. Russell.
+
+And Providence finally ordained that he should feel in his cigarette case
+and find it empty.
+
+"No cigarettes," said Mr. Russell, after pondering for a moment on this
+disappointment.
+
+"You smoke too much," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew a man who
+over-smoked all his life, and when he got a bullet in his lung in the
+Zulu War he died, simply as the result of his foolishness. No
+recuperative power. They said his lungs were simply leather."
+
+"Should have thought that would've been a protection," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"The train is not even signalled yet," said Cousin Gustus. "You would
+have time to go to the station and tell Kew to get you some cigarettes."
+
+But this was not Providence's intention, as interpreted by Mr.
+Russell. "D'you know, I half believe I'll go up too," he said. "Would
+you be lonely?"
+
+"Not in the least," said Cousin Gustus pathetically; "I'm used to being
+left alone."
+
+As the signals dropped Mr. Russell sprang to his feet and ran down the
+slope. He had country clothes on, and some thistledown and a sprig or two
+of clover were sticking to them. He reached the station in time, and fell
+over a crate of hens. The hens were furious about it, and said so. Mr.
+Russell said nothing, but he felt hurt when the porter who opened the
+door for him asked if the hens were his. After the train had started he
+wished he had had time to tell the porter how impossible it was that a
+man who owned a crate full of hens should fall over it. And then he
+thought that would have been neither witty nor convincing. He was one of
+those lucky people who say so little that they rarely have need to regret
+what they have said.
+
+The business that dragged him so precipitately from the country must, I
+suppose, have been very urgent. It chanced that it lay at Ludgate Circus,
+and it also chanced--not in the least unnaturally--that at half-past
+eleven he was standing at Kensington Church waiting to be beckoned to
+once more by a 'bus-conductor. The only unnatural thing was that several
+'buses bound for Ludgate Circus passed without winning the patronage of
+Mr. Russell.
+
+The conductor came. Mr. Russell saw her round face and squared hair
+appear out of the confusion of the street. He noticed with surprise that
+he had not borne in mind the pleasing way in which the strap of her hat
+tilted her already tilted chin.
+
+Jay had been thinking a little about Mr. Russell, not much. She had been
+wondering who he was. The Family's friends and relations were always much
+talked of in the Family, and much invited, and much met. Mr. Russell had
+not been among them when Jay had last known the Family. An idea was in
+her mind that he might be a private detective, engaged by the Family to
+seek out their fugitive young relation. Mr. Russell had plainly alluded
+to a search. Jay had no experience of private detectives, but she thought
+it quite possible that they might disguise themselves with rather low
+foreheads, and rather frowning eyes, and shut thin mouths, and shut thin
+expressions. She hoped that she would see him to-day. An hour ago a young
+man with a spotty complexion and bulging eyes like a rabbit's had handed
+her a note with his threepence, asking for a "two-and-a-half" in a
+lovelorn voice. She handed him back his halfpenny and his unopened note
+at once, saying, "Your change, sir," in a kind, absent-minded voice. I am
+afraid an incident like this is always a little exciting, though I admit
+it ought to be insulting. That suggestive fare made Jay hope more and
+more that she would meet Mr. Russell to-day. I don't exactly know why,
+except that sentimentality is an infectious complaint.
+
+Mr. Russell got happily into the 'bus. He made the worst entrance
+possible. His hat slipped crooked, he left one leg behind on the road,
+and only retrieved it with the help of the conductor. Jay welcomed him
+with a nod that was almost a bow, a remnant of her unprofessional past.
+
+"Told you I'd come in this 'bus again," said Mr. Russell, sitting down in
+the left-hand seat next to the door. I really don't know what would have
+happened if that seat had been occupied. I suppose Mr. Russell would have
+sat upon the occupier.
+
+"A good many people like this service," said Jay; "it is considered very
+convenient. How is your search going?"
+
+"It hasn't begun yet," said Mr. Russell. "We haven't got within three
+hundred miles of the House we're looking for."
+
+"You know more or less where it is, then?" asked Jay, who sometimes
+wanted to know this herself.
+
+"I do know, but I don't know how I know, nor what I know."
+
+"How funny that you--an Older and Wiser Man--should feel that sort of
+knowledge," said Jay. As an afterthought she called him Sir.
+
+The 'bus grew fuller, and only Jay's bell punctured the silence that
+followed. A lady asked Jay to "set her down at Charing Cross Post
+Office." "The 'bus stops there automatically, Madam," said Jay, and the
+lady told her not to be impertinent.
+
+Jay seemed a little subdued after this, and it was only after she had
+stood for a minute or two on her platform in silence that she said to Mr.
+Russell, "London seems dead to-day, doesn't it? Not even fog, only a
+lifeless light. What's the use of daylight in London to-day? You know, I
+don't live in London."
+
+"No," said Mr. Russell, "where do you live?"
+
+"London," replied Jay. "I mean my heart doesn't live in London mostly. I
+think it lives very far away in the same sort of place as the place you
+know without knowing how you know it. The happy shore of God Knows Where
+must have a great population of hearts. To-day I hate London so that I
+could tear it into pieces like a rag."
+
+"You ought to start your 'bus on the search for the happy shore," said
+Mr. Russell. "You'd find the track of my tyres before you. I b'lieve
+you'd find the place."
+
+"Well, that would be the only perfect Service," said Jay. "But I don't
+believe the public would use the route much. I would go on and on, and
+leave all old ruts behind. I would stop for no fares, even the sea should
+not stop me. I would go on to the horizon to see if that secret look just
+after sunset really means that the stars are just over the brink. Why do
+people end themselves on a note of despair? I would choose that way of
+perpetuating my Perfect Day. The police would see the top seats of the
+'bus sticking out at low tide, and the verdict would be, 'Suicide while
+of even more than usually unsound mind.'"
+
+A 'bus has an unromantic voice. The bass is a snarl, and the treble is
+made up of a shrill rattle. It was curious how this 'bus managed to
+retain withal its fantastic atmosphere.
+
+Mr. Russell asked presently, "Why are you a 'bus-conductor?"
+
+"To get some money," replied the conductor baldly. "I want to find out
+what is the attraction of money. Besides, if one talks such a lot as I
+do, to do anything--however small--saves one from being utterly futile.
+When I get to Heaven, the angels won't be able to say, 'Tush tush, you
+lived on the charity of God.' That's what unearned money is, isn't it?
+And what's the use of charity?"
+
+"Do you ever get a day off?" asked Mr. Russell.
+
+"Occasionally."
+
+"Will you meet me on the steps of St. Paul's next Sunday at ten?"
+
+"No, because I shall be at work next Sunday."
+
+"Will you meet me the Sunday after that?"
+
+"Yes," said Jay. The Family's theories on the bringing up of girls had
+evidently been wasted on her.
+
+"What's the use of looking for this girl?" she asked, after a round of
+duty. "Why not leave her on her happy shore? Do you know, sir, I
+sympathise enormously with that girl."
+
+"I don't expect you would if you knew her," said Mr. Russell. "She must
+be quite different from you, by what I hear from her relations. I think
+she must be an aggressive, suffragetty sort of girl. Girls nowadays seem
+to find running away from home a sufficient profession."
+
+"You say that because you are so dreadfully much Older and Wiser," said
+Jay. "Why are you looking for her, then?"
+
+"I'm not," said Mr. Russell. "She is just a trespasser. I'm looking for
+the place because I know I know it."
+
+"I hope you'll never find it," said Jay crossly. She announced Ludgate
+Circus in a startling voice, and ended the conversation.
+
+She was tired because she had been up all night among distressed friends
+in the Brown Borough. There had been a fight in Tann Street. Mrs.
+O'Rourke had broken the face of little Mrs. Love. Mrs. Love had never
+fought before; her fists were like lamb cutlets, and she had had a good
+mother with non-combatant principles. All these things are drawbacks in
+a Brown Borough argument. But Mrs. Love was a friend of Jay's, and I
+don't think she had found that a drawback. Feverish discussions with
+dreadfully impartial policemen, feverish drying of feverish tears,
+feverish extracting of medicaments from closed chemists, and finally a
+feverish triumph of words with which Jay capped Mrs. O'Rourke's triumph
+of fists were the items in the sum of a feverish night. So Jay was tired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Russell was too early for his business, and he went into St. Paul's
+and sat on a seat far back.
+
+St. Paul was an anti-saint, I think, who very badly needed to get married
+and be answered back now and then. I believe it is possible that he was
+unworthy of that great house called by his name. The gospel of a very
+splendid detachment speaks within its walls, its windows turn inward, its
+music sings to itself. Tossed City sinners go in and out, and pass, and
+penetrate, but still the music dreams, and still the dim gold blinks
+above their heads. A muffled God walks the aisles, and you, in the
+bristling wilderness of chairs, can clutch at His skirts and never see
+His eyes. Nothing comes forward from that altar to meet you. It is as if
+He walked talking to Himself, and as if even His speech were lost in
+those devouring spaces.
+
+Mr. Russell sat near the door, and found only his thoughts and the
+shuffle of seeking feet to keep him company.
+
+"An Older and Wiser Man ..." he thought. "God forgive me for
+letting it pass."
+
+If he had thought it worth while to profess an "ism" at all, he would
+have been a fatalist. He was the victim of an unwitty cynicism, and of a
+heavy irresponsibility. He applied either "It isn't worth while" or "It
+doesn't matter" to everything. He never expressed his thoughts to
+himself--it was not worth while,--but I think he knew within himself
+that life was made of paper, and thrown together in a crackling chaos.
+There was no depth in anything, and a mere thought could slay the
+highest thing in the world. The only thing that ever made his heart
+laugh was the idea of fineness finding place in himself. A dream of
+himself in a heroic light sometimes made him poke himself in the ribs,
+and mock the farce of human vanity. He was like a man in a world that
+lacked mirrors, a man who sees his dark deformed shadow on the sands,
+and thinks it represents him fairly.
+
+He was without self-consciousness, knowing that he was not worth his own
+recognition. At home he often recited little confused poems of his own
+composition to his Hound, and never noticed the surprise of the servants.
+He never knew that in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Gustus and Kew he was
+hardly allowed to utter three consecutive words, although, when he was
+away from them, and especially when he was with the 'bus-conductor, he
+felt a delightful lack of restraint.
+
+As he sat down and looked at the far unanswering altar, he had two dim
+thoughts. One was that a man might get Older and Wiser, without getting
+old enough or wise enough to choose his road. The other was a question as
+to whether it is ever really worth while to read what the signpost says.
+
+From the moment when Mr. Russell left her 'bus, Jay became stupefied by
+an invasion of the Secret World.
+
+She gave the tickets and change with accuracy, she kept count of the
+stream of climbers on to the top of the 'bus, she stilled the angry
+whirlpool of people on the pavement for whom there was no room, she
+dislodged passengers at the corners of their own streets--even that
+gentleman (almost always to be found in an obscure corner of an
+east-going 'bus) who had sunk into a sudden and pathetic sleep just when
+his pennyworth of ride was coming to an end,--she received an unexpected
+inspector with the smile that comes of knowing every passenger to be
+properly ticketed; she even laughed at his joke. She weeded out the
+Whitechapel Jewesses at the Bank, and introduced them to the Mile End
+'buses. She handed out to them their sombre and insolent-looking babies,
+and when one mother thanked her profusely in Yiddish, she replied,
+"Bitte, bitte...." Yet all the while the wind blew to her old
+remembrances of the low chimneys and the bending roofs of the House by
+the Sea, and the smell of the high curving fields, and the shouting of
+the sea. And all the while her hands must grope for the handle of the
+heavy door, and her eyes must fill with blindness because of the
+wonderful promise of distant cliffs with the sun on them, and because the
+sea was so shining. And all the while her ears must strain to hear a
+voice within the house....
+
+It is a very great honour to be given two lives to live.
+
+The monotonous journeys trod on each other's heels. Slowly the day
+consumed itself. It grew dimmer and dimmer for Jay, though I have no
+doubt that habit protected her, and that she behaved herself throughout
+with commonplace correctness.
+
+She found presently that the great weight of copper money was gone from
+her shoulder, and that it was evening, and that Chloris was coming down
+Mabel Place to meet her. Chloris was wagging her whole person from the
+shoulder-blades backwards; she never found adequate the tail that had
+originally been provided for that purpose. Jay stumbled up the step of
+Eighteen Mabel Place, and found at last the path she wanted.
+
+The path was one that had never been touched by a professional
+pathmaker. Feet, not hands, had made it. The rocks impatiently thrust it
+aside every little way, and here and there were steps up and down for no
+reason except that the rock would have it so. The path chose its way so
+that you might see the sea from every inch of it. The thundering
+headlands sprang from Jay's left hand, and she could see the cliffs
+written over with strange lines, and the shadow that they cast upon deep
+water. It was the colour of a great passion, and against that colour pink
+foxgloves bowed dramatically upon the fringe of space. The white gulls
+were in the valleys of the sea. I wish colour could be built by words. I
+wish I could speak colour to myself in the dark. I can never fill my eyes
+full enough of the colour of the sea, nor my ears of the crying of the
+seagulls. I am most greedy of these things, and take no thought for the
+morrow, so that if my morrow dawns darkly I have nothing stored away to
+comfort me.
+
+The path joins the more civilised road almost at the door of the House by
+the Sea. You tumble over a great round rock that still bears the marks
+of the sea's fingers, and you are at the door.
+
+The house was full of sunlight. Great panels of sunlight lay across the
+air. The fingers of the honeysuckle in the rough painted bowl by the
+window caught and held sunlight. In every room of the house you can
+always hear the eternal march of the sea up and down the shore. Nothing
+ever drowns that measured confusion. Sometimes the voices of friends
+thread in and out of it, sometimes the dogs bark, or a coming meal clinks
+in the stone passage, or you can catch the squealing of the children in
+their baths, sometimes your heart stops beating to listen to the speech
+of the ghosts that haunt the house, but no sound ever usurps the throne
+of the sea.
+
+They were all on the stairs, the Secret Friend and the children. They all
+wore untidy clothes, and hard-boiled eggs bulged from their pockets. The
+Secret Friend has red hair, you might call its colour vulgar. But Jay
+likes it very much. He hardly ever sits still, you can never see him
+think, he has a way of answering you almost before you have finished
+speaking. His mind always seems to be exploring among words, and
+sometimes you can hear him telling himself splendid sentences without
+meaning. For this reason everything connected with him has a name, from
+his dog, which is called Trelawney, to the last cigarette he smokes at
+night, which is called Isobel. This trick Jay has imported into her own
+establishment: she has an umbrella called Macdonald, and a little
+occasional pleurisy pain under one rib, which she introduces to the
+Family as Julia.
+
+The children in the house were just those very children that every woman
+hopes, or has hoped, to have for her own.
+
+They were just starting for a walk, and the Secret Friend was
+finishing a story.
+
+"How can you remember things that happened--I suppose--squillions of
+years ago," said the eldest child. "You tell them as if they happened
+yesterday. Doesn't it seem as if all the happiest things happened
+yesterday?"
+
+"To me it seems that they will happen to-morrow," said the Secret Friend.
+"But then there is so little difference between yesterday and to-morrow.
+How can you tell which is which? Only clocks and calendars are silly
+enough to tread on the tail of a little space between sunrise and sunset
+and call it to-day. How do you know which way up time is happening?"
+
+"Because yesterday the sun set, and we went to bed," said the
+youngest child.
+
+"I think to-morrow is a little person in dark clothes watching and
+listening," said the eldest child. "And to-day is Cinderella, all shiny
+and beautiful until twelve o'clock strikes."
+
+"All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening," said the
+Secret Friend. "This is the place where time is without a name. Here the
+beginning comes after the end. To-morrow we shall be born. Yesterday we
+died. To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours.
+And now we will sing the Loud Song."
+
+They were on the rocky path now, and they sang the Loud Song. Both
+that path and that song go on for ever, and the words of the song are
+like this:
+
+There is no house like our house
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no family like our family
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no Country like our Country
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no sea like our sea
+Even in Heaven.
+
+Most families sing this song, more or less, but few could sing it so
+loudly as this family did.
+
+The dog Trelawney ran after the shadows of the seagulls.
+
+  There is the track my feet have worn
+By which my fate may find me:
+From that dim place where I was born
+Those footprints run behind me.
+Uncertain was the trail I left,
+For--oh, the way was stormy;
+But now this splendid sea has cleft
+My journey from before me.
+
+  Three things the sea shall never end,
+Three things shall mock its power:
+My singing soul, my Secret Friend,
+And this my perfect hour.
+
+  And you shall seek me till you reach
+The tangled tide advancing,
+And you shall find upon the beach
+The traces of my dancing,
+And in the air the happy speech
+Of Secret Friends romancing.
+
+For some minutes some one had been knocking on the door. The sound was
+like an intruder in the Secret World, beckoning insistently to Jay. But
+she took no notice of it until a loud voice said: "You need not think you
+are paddling in golden seas and inaccessible to your relations, because
+you are here, and I can see you through the window."
+
+After a moment's confusion, Jay found that this was so, and she got up
+and let Kew in.
+
+"I will just ask you how you are," he said hurriedly. "And how things are
+going in the Other World, and all that. But you needn't answer, because I
+haven't much time, and I want very badly to talk about myself. I never
+get a chance when Anonyma is there, and when I return to France (which is
+likely to happen soon), I shan't find much chance to talk there. I am so
+glad I am going back, I am so sick of hearing other people talk about
+things that are not worth mentioning. Poor dear Anonyma, she meant all
+this recent gaiety as a reward to me for war work dutifully done. But if
+this be jam, give me my next pill unadorned. A motor tour combined with
+Anonyma is tiring. If I were alone with Russ I might enjoy it."
+
+"Who is Russ?"
+
+"The owner of Christina, and Christina is the vehicle which contains us
+during the search for you."
+
+He became aware of the velvet face of Chloris, gazing at him from between
+his knees.
+
+"What does Chloris do while you are week-ending in Heaven. Do you take
+her with you?"
+
+"There is already a dog there, called Trelawney."
+
+"By Jove, that would make a nice little clue for Anonyma. There can be
+only one dog on the sea-coast called Trelawney. We could stop and ask
+every dog we met what its name was. Besides, the name suggests
+Cornwall. What breed is the dog? Look here, will you write the Family
+a letter giving it a few neat clues for Anonyma? After all, we ought to
+give her all the pleasure we can, I sometimes think we are a
+disappointing family for her to have married. We lie to her, she lies
+to us, her enthusiasms make us smile behind our hands, ours make her
+yawn behind her notebook. Send us a good encouraging letter, addressed
+to the house in Kensington. We always wire our address there as we
+move. Give us details about Trelawney, and, if possible, the name of
+the nearest post town. If we must lie, let us give all the pleasure we
+can by doing so. Poor old Anonyma.
+
+"It's getting dark, I must go back to the Family. I am as a babe in the
+hands of Anonyma, and like a babe I promised her I would be back before
+dark. Do you remember how we used to long to be lost after nightfall,
+just for the dramatic effect? Yet we were awfully frightened of the dark.
+Do you remember how we used to dare each other to get out of bed and run
+three times round the night nursery? I have never felt so brave since, as
+I used to feel as I jumped into bed conscious of an ordeal creditably
+over. Why is bed such a safe place? I am not half so brave as I used to
+be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to
+do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the
+innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap
+looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is
+everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the
+danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the
+War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop talking, I am so pleased to be nearly out of
+the clutches of my relations."
+
+"Are you sure you won't be killed?" asked Jay suddenly.
+
+"I can't be," said Kew. "How could I be? I'm me. I'm not brave, and I
+don't go to France with one eye on duty and the other on the
+possibility of never coming back. I go because the crowd goes, and the
+crowd--a rather shrunken crowd--will come back safe. I'm too average a
+man to get killed."
+
+"Don't you think all those million ghosts are thinking, 'What business
+had Death to choose me?'" suggested Jay.
+
+"No," said Kew. "I'm sure they know."
+
+After a few seconds' pause he said, "By Jove, are you in fancy dress?"
+
+"No. Why?"
+
+"Why indeed. Why a kilt and yards of gaiters? Why a hat like a Colonial
+horse marine?"
+
+"Oh, this is the uniform of a bus-conductor," replied Jay.
+
+Kew scanned it with distaste. Presently he said, "Don't you think
+you'd better give it up? Buy a new hat with a day's earnings, and get
+the sack."
+
+"I can't quarrel with my bread and butter," said Jay.
+
+"Surely this is only jam," said Kew. "You've got plenty of money of your
+own for bread and butter."
+
+"I haven't now," answered Jay. "I gave up having money when the
+War started. Perhaps I chucked it into the Serpentine. Perhaps
+not. I forget."
+
+Kew got up slowly. "Well," he said, "sure you're all right? I must be
+going. I don't know when the last train goes."
+
+In London it is impossible to ignore the fact that you are late. The
+self-righteous hands of clocks point out your guilt whichever way you
+look. Your eye and your ear are accused on every side. You long for the
+courteous clocklessness of the country; there, mercifully, the sun
+neither ticks nor strikes, nor cavils at the minutes.
+
+There was a crowd of home-goers at Brown Borough Church, and each 'bus as
+it arrived was like the angel troubling the waters of Bethesda. There was
+no hope for the old or timid. Kew was an expert in the small sciences of
+London. He knew not only how to mount a 'bus, while others of his like
+were trying four abreast to do the same, but also how to stand on a space
+exactly half the size of his boot soles, without holding on. (This is
+done, as you probably know too, by not looking out of the window.)
+
+Kew had given up taxis and cigars in war-time. It was his pretence
+never to do anything on principle, so he would have blushed if anybody
+had commented on this ingenuous economy. The fact that he had joined
+the Army the first day of the War was also, I think, a tender spot in
+the conscience of Kew. A Victoria Cross would have been practically
+unbearable, and even to be mentioned in despatches would have been a
+most upsetting contradiction of that commonplace and unprincipled past
+of which he boasted. He thought he was such a simple soul that he had
+no motives or principles in anything that he did, but really he was
+simpler than that. He was so simple that he did his best without
+thinking about it. It certainly sounds rather a curious way to live in
+the twentieth century.
+
+"'Ere, you're seven standin' inside," said the gentleman 'bus--conductor,
+when, after long sojourn in upper regions, he came down to his basement
+floor. "Five standin' is all I'm supposed to 'ave, an' five standin' is
+all I'll allow. Why should I get myself into trouble for 'avin' more'n
+five standin', if five standin' is all I'm allowed to 'ave?"
+
+In spite of a chorus of nervous assent from all his flock, and the
+blushing disappearance of the two superfluous standers, the
+'bus-conductor continued his lament in this strain. To the man with a
+small but loud grievance, sympathy is a fatal offering.
+
+The 'bus-conductor had a round red nose, and very defective teeth. Kew
+studied him in a new light, for this was Jay's fellow-worker. Somehow it
+seemed very regrettable.
+
+"I wish I hadn't promised not to tell the Family," he thought.
+
+He and Jay never broke their promises to each other, and there was a
+tacit agreement that when they found it necessary to lie to each other,
+they always gave each other warning. Where the rest of the world was
+concerned, I am afraid they used their discretion in this matter.
+
+"It ought to be stopped. The tactful foot of Family authority ought to
+step on it."
+
+He presented his penny angrily to the 'bus-conductor.
+
+"I expect this sort of man asks Jay to walk out with him," he thought,
+and with a cold glance took the ticket offered to him.
+
+"Lucky I'm so utterly selfish," he thought, "or I should be
+devilish worried."
+
+His train was one which boasted a restaurant car, and Kew patronised
+this institution. But when he was in the middle of cold meat, he thought:
+"She is probably trying to live on twopence-halfpenny a week. Continual
+tripe and onions."
+
+So he refused pudding. The pudding, persistent as only a railway pudding
+can be, came back incredulously three times. But Kew pushed it away.
+
+"If I could get anybody outside the Family to use their influence, I
+should be within the letter of the law. But I mostly know subalterns, and
+nobody below a Brigadier would be likely to have much influence with Jay.
+She'd probably talk down even a sergeant-major."
+
+It seems curious that he should deplore the fact that Jay had turned into
+a bus-conductor more deeply than he had deplored her experiments in
+sweated employment. I think that a uniformed sister or wife is almost
+unbearable to most men, except, perhaps, one in the nurse's uniform, of
+which even St. Paul might have approved. The gaiters of the
+'bus-conductor had shaken Kew to his foundations. The thought of the
+skirt still brought his heart into his mouth. He was so lacking in the
+modern mind that he still considered himself a gentleman. No Socialist,
+speaking between clenched teeth in a strangled voice of largely
+groundless protest, had ever gained the ear of Kew. He had never joined a
+society of any sort. He had never attended a public meeting since he gave
+up being a Salvationist at the age of ten.
+
+"It must be stopped," he said, as he got out of the train. "I'll think of
+a way in my bath to-morrow." This was always the moment he looked forward
+to for inspirations.
+
+Anonyma was observable as he walked from the station to the inn, craning
+extravagantly from the sitting-room window. She came downstairs, and met
+him at the door.
+
+"Such a disaster," she said, and handed him a telegram.
+
+Kew stood aghast, as she meant him to. No disaster is ever so great as it
+is before you know what it is. But Kew ought to have known Anonyma's
+disasters by experience.
+
+"Russ's wife has appeared."
+
+"Why should she be introduced as a disaster?" asked Kew, with a sigh of
+relief. "Is she a maniac, or a suffragette, or a Mormon, or just some one
+who has never read any of your books?"
+
+He opened the telegram. It called upon him to rejoin his battalion next
+day at noon.
+
+"Russ went to his house to fetch something this morning and found his
+wife there. He looks quite ill. She insisted on coming here with him, and
+now she wishes to go on the tour with us. As I hear the car is hers, we
+can hardly refuse."
+
+"I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of this disaster," said
+Kew. "But as you evidently don't intend me to, I will not try. Notice,
+however, that I am keeping my head. I have always wondered how I should
+behave in a disaster."
+
+"Wait till you meet her," said Anonyma.
+
+Kew heard Mrs. Russell's melodramatic laughter as he approached the
+sitting-room door, and he trembled. She laughed "Ha-ha-ha" in a concise
+way, and the sound was constant.
+
+"That is her ready sense of fun that you can hear," said Anonyma
+bitterly. "She is teaching Gustus to see the humorous side."
+
+They entered to find poor Cousin Gustus bending like a reed before a
+perfect gale of "Ha-ha-ha's." Mrs. Russell was so much interested in what
+she was saying that she left Kew on her leeward side for the moment,
+hardly looking at him as she shook hands.
+
+"It's enough to make the gods laugh on Olympus," she said, but it did not
+make Cousin Gustus laugh. Noticing this, Mrs. Russell turned to Kew.
+
+"I was telling your cousin about my pacificist efforts in the
+States," she said. "Yes, I can see your eye twinkling; I know a pacifist
+is a funny thing to be. But I'm not one of the--what I call
+dumpy-toad-in-the-hole ones. I do it all joyously. I was telling your
+cousin how very small was the chance that robbed us of success in Ohio."
+
+"What sort of success?" asked Kew.
+
+"Peace," said Mrs. Russell.
+
+"But is Ohio at war?"
+
+Mrs. Russell laughed heartily. Her unnecessarily frank laughter showed
+her gums as well as her teeth, and made one wish that her sense of
+humour were not quite so keen.
+
+"I see you are one of us," she said. "What I call one of the Jolly
+Fraternity. No, Ohio is still enjoying peace. But--if you follow me--from
+the States peace will come; there we must fix our hopes. If we can get
+those millions of brothers and sisters of ours 'across the duck-pond'--as
+I call it--to see its urgency, peace must come. For brothers and sisters
+they are, you know; patriotism will come in time to be considered a vice.
+How can one's soul--if you take my meaning--be affected by the latitude
+and longitude in which one's body was born? From the States the truth
+shall come, salvation shall dawn in the west. Listen to me trying to be
+poetic, it makes me laugh."
+
+One noticed that it did.
+
+"War is so reasonless as to be funny," she said.
+
+"But you haven't told me yet about the little chance that you thought
+would tickle Olympus," said Kew.
+
+"You're laughing at me," said Mrs. Russell. "But I don't mind, for I
+laugh at myself. I like you. Shake."
+
+Kew immediately thought her a nice woman, though peculiar.
+
+Mr. Russell looked in and saw the Shake in progress. He murmured
+something and withdrew hurriedly. For a moment they could hear his
+agitated voice in the passage reciting Milton to his Hound.
+
+"Do listen to my husband, never silent," said Mrs. Russell. "Did you ever
+see a man like him?"
+
+There is no real answer to this sort of question, so Kew said "Yo," which
+is always safe. Then he added, "Do tell me about the little chance."
+
+"This was the little chance," smiled Mrs. Russell. "We ought to have had
+a tremendously successful peace-meeting in a certain town in Ohio. We had
+every reason to expect three thousand people, and we thought of proposing
+the re-naming of the town--calling it Peace. But the little chance was a
+printer's error--the advertisement gave the date wrong. A crowd turned up
+at the empty hall, and two days later, when we arrived, they were so
+tired of us that they booed our demonstration. Just the stupidity of an
+inky printer between us and success."
+
+"Do you mean to say that but for that we should have had peace by now?"
+asked Kew in a reverent voice.
+
+"You never know," said Mrs. Russell. "That meeting might have been the
+match to light the flame of peace all over the world. It's bitterly and
+satirically funny, isn't it, what Fate will do. Ha-ha-ha."
+
+Cousin Gustus laughed hysterically in chorus, and then said that his
+head ached, and that he thought he would go to bed early. Anonyma
+led him away.
+
+"Please don't make peace for a week or two yet," begged Kew. "Let me see
+what I can do first. I am going to-morrow."
+
+"How foolish of you," said Mrs. Russell. "If you like, I believe I have
+enough influence to get you to America instead."
+
+"I think I like France best," said Kew. "I don't feel as if I could be
+content anywhere short of France just now."
+
+"Surely you won't be content anywhere, murdering your fellow-men," said
+Mrs. Russell. "You won't mind my incurable flippancy, will you? I can't
+help treating things lightly."
+
+"Not at all," replied Kew. "But I am often content in the intervals of
+murdering my fellow-men. I play the penny whistle in my dug-out."
+
+"Now tell me," said Mrs. Russell, "what are you all doing here? What
+mischief are you leading my Herbert into?"
+
+When Kew had recovered from a foolish astonishment at hearing that Mr.
+Russell was known to others as Herbert, he said, "We're looking--not very
+seriously--for my sister, who seems to have eloped by herself to the west
+coast, without leaving us her address."
+
+"I know. Herbert told me that much. A place on the sea-front, isn't it?
+But you know, I feel a certain responsibility for Herbert, I have
+neglected him so long. I cannot bear that he should waste his time in
+what I call these stirring days. You mustn't think because I treat life
+as one huge joke that I can never be serious. One can wear a gay mask,
+but--you understand me, don't you? You are one of us."
+
+There was a pause, and then she said, "Ha-ha. Doesn't it seem funny.
+We've only known each other an hour, and here we are intimate...."
+
+Kew obediently allowed himself for a moment to see the humorous side, and
+then said, "What are your plans then, yours and Mr. Russell's?"
+
+"I have neglected him too long, poor old thing," said Mrs. Russell. "I
+must stay with him now, and cheer him up. A cheery heart can bridge any
+gulf, don't you think? You know, I was just what I call a jolly girl when
+I married him, and afterwards I forgot to grow up, I think. Perhaps my
+treatment of him has been rather irresponsible. I must try and make
+up--what I call 'kiss and be friends,' like two jolly little kiddies."
+
+"Then why not join the motor tour?"
+
+"I would rather take Herbert back to our little nest in London. There's
+no place like home, as I always say. From there we might work together
+for the great cause of Peace--what I call 'My Grail.'"
+
+She had crimped hair and a long nose, the tip of which moved when she
+spoke. You would never have given her credit for such influence as she
+claimed in the world's affairs. Only her Homeric laughter, and a pair of
+lorgnettes, reminded you of her greatness.
+
+When Kew finally disentangled himself from the company of this jolly
+creature, it was very late. But the voice of Anonyma arrested him on his
+way to bed. Her face, with a corn-coloured plait on each side of it,
+looked at him cautiously from a dark doorway.
+
+"Kew," said Anonyma, "I won't stand it. We must be rescued."
+
+"Nobody can remove her now without also removing Russ and Christina,"
+said Kew. "The reconciliation has gone too far."
+
+"Then Russ must be sacrificed, and even the car," said Anonyma firmly.
+"Gustus and I can hire if we must. That woman must be removed. The
+jealous cat!"
+
+Kew began to see light. "I'll rescue you, then," he replied. "I'll think
+of a way in my bath."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning a great noise, centring in the bathroom, overflowed through
+the inn. It was the noise of Kew singing joyful extracts from _Peer
+Gynt_. Do you remember the beginning of the end of the Hall of the
+Mountain King? It goes:
+
+"Bomp--chink.... Bomp--chink....
+Tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle-tee.... Bomp-chink, ..."
+etc., etc.
+
+The way in which Kew rendered this passage, notoriously a difficult one
+for a solo voice, would have conveyed to any one who knew him that he had
+solved both his problems.
+
+Anonyma knocked on the bathroom door, and said, "Cousin Gustus's headache
+is still bad."
+
+Kew therefore broke into Anitra's Dance, which is more subdued.
+
+Before breakfast he and Mr. Russell and the Hound walked to the downs.
+The motor tour seemed to have come to a standstill. Cousin Gustus's
+headache could be felt all over the house.
+
+The moment Mr. Russell and Kew were out of earshot of the inn, Kew made
+such a violent resolve to speak that he nearly broke a tooth.
+
+"Russ," he said, "I want to get off my chest for your benefit something
+that has been worrying me awfully."
+
+Mr. Russell made no answer. He had got out of the habit of answering.
+
+"It's about Jay," continued Kew. "I must break to you first that Jay's
+'house on the sea-front,' with all its accessories--gulls, ghosts,
+turrets, aeroplanes, and Friends--is one large and elaborate lie. She and
+I are very much alike. The only difference between us used to be her
+skirt, and now she has gone a good way towards discarding that. She is
+nowhere near the sea. She is in London. Now you, Russ, are what she and I
+used to call an 'Older and Wiser--'"
+
+Mr. Russell jumped violently, but uttered nothing except a little curse
+to his dog, which was almost under his feet.
+
+"--And you are about the only person I could trust, in my absence, to get
+Jay out of an uncommonly silly position. I can't bear her present pose.
+It must stop at once, and if I had time I would stop it myself. I have
+unfortunately sworn not to give her away to the Family, so I come to you.
+She is a 'bus-conductor."
+
+Mr. Russell refrained from jumping. I believe he had expected it. But he
+said, "It would be too funny."
+
+Kew looked at him nervously, fearing for a moment lest Mrs. Russell's
+sense of humour had proved infectious.
+
+Mr. Russell was thinking how funny it would be if the finger of desirable
+coincidence had touched his life. How funny if a nice piece of
+six-shilling fiction should have taken upon itself to make of him its
+hero. Too funny to be true.
+
+But you, I hope, will remember that the coincidence was not so funny as
+he thought, since Jay had beckoned to it with her eyes open.
+
+"Now, I have a prejudice against 'bus-conductors," said Kew.
+
+"Why?" asked Mr. Russell rather indignantly.
+
+"I can't explain it. If I could, it wouldn't be a prejudice, it would be
+an opinion. But--well--just think.... The trousered 'bus-conductors
+probably ask her to walk out with them in Victoria Park on Sundays."
+
+"I see your point," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"You are about double as old as she is--if I may say so--and you are not
+one of the Family, two great advantages. You know, Jay has suffered from
+not meeting enough Older and Wiser people. She has had to worry out
+things too much by herself; she has never been talked to by grown-ups
+whom she could respect. Anonyma never talked with us, though she
+occasionally 'Had a Good Talk.' She never played, but sometimes suggested
+'Having a Good Game.' It's different, somehow. You, Older and Wiser
+without being too old or too wise, might impress Jay a lot, I think,
+because you don't say overmuch. And I want you to tell her something of
+what I feel about it too."
+
+"I never realised before that from your point of view there was any
+advantage in being Older and Wiser," said Mr. Russell.
+
+"You don't mind my saying all this?" said Kew. It was an assumption
+rather than a question.
+
+"Not at all. But I don't understand exactly what you want me to do."
+
+"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London,
+and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let
+the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of
+her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay
+between. I do want it all to come right. I'm going off to-day, and I may
+not see her again. And I know hardly any trustable person but you."
+
+"Right," said Mr. Russell.
+
+He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be
+surprised.
+
+Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.
+
+On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay,
+evidently written for private circulation in the Family.
+
+Dear Kew--I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was
+beautiful. We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of
+a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated
+walnut-shell. The village is grey and white, all its walls are
+whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop
+clinging to them. Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its
+only birds. The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road
+is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded,
+you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became
+aware that you had strayed from the street. But we were not
+absent-minded. We sang Loud Songs all the way. We ran across the grass
+after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky. In
+single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls. Everything
+was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself
+to itself on our horizon. I don't know its name; they say it bears a
+town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true. I
+think that island is an intermittent dream of ours. When you get beyond
+the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and
+such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant
+wall against a giant sea. Only it occasionally defeats its own object,
+because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock
+down. On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its
+eye on Trelawney. It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak. And
+Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do. He ran
+for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge. Well, this is not a
+tragic incident, only an exciting one. Trelawney fell on to a ledge
+about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect
+safety, shrieking for help. My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my
+teeth and Go.'" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan
+childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites
+his teeth and goes. The less you like it, the harder you bite your
+teeth, and it certainly helps. My Friend said: "If we never meet again,
+remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder. It would look
+rather nice stuffed in the hall." The cliff overhangs rather just there,
+and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside
+down, he missed his footing. We heard a yelp from Trelawney. But the
+seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to
+Trelawney's ledge. So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs
+on the scene of the incident.
+
+"I remember--" said Mr. Russell.
+
+"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."
+
+She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the
+plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well. Cousin Gustus also,
+with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had
+come down hopefully to breakfast.
+
+"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell. "The village
+might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy.... Such an intensely
+funny name, Lundy, isn't it? Ha-ha! For some reason it amuses me more
+and more every time I hear it. It reminds me of learning geography with
+the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth. I used to catch my sister's
+eye--just as I'm catching yours now--and laugh ever so much, over Lundy.
+I used to be a terror to my governesses."
+
+"I'm very much afraid that I can't spare much more time for the motor
+tour," said Mr. Russell, and Anonyma was so anxious for the first signs
+of rescue that she actually let him speak. "Business in London. I dare
+say I could get you to Cornwall within the next few days, but some time
+this week I must get back to town."
+
+"I'll come with you," said his wife. "You can't shake me off so easily,
+my dear. Ha-ha!"
+
+"It's too rainy to start to-day," said Cousin Gustus. "I have known
+people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just
+such a deluge as this. We will start to-morrow."
+
+"Wet or fine," added Anonyma.
+
+"The fact remains," said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten
+something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds,
+along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent
+good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of
+anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the
+Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day next month--say at Land's End
+or the Firth of Forth. Otherwise--say forty years hence in Heaven."
+
+"It is very wrong to joke about Death," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew
+a man who died with just such a joke on his lips."
+
+"I hope it was a better joke than that," said Kew. "It can't be wrong to
+laugh at Death. Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little
+wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good."
+
+Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about
+Death and Immortality.
+
+So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain. Mrs. Russell
+was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes. It was
+hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor
+of a rival notebook.
+
+It rained very earnestly. There was no hole in the sky for hope to look
+through. The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the
+force of the rain. You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained
+several times in the Spring of 1916. But this day was a most perfect
+example of its kind.
+
+Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing. I am afraid I have not
+given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus. I ought to have
+told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that
+he loved Kew better than any one else in the world. I might say that the
+departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus's intense grievance against the
+Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose
+that had never been pent up.
+
+Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but
+the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper
+some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.
+
+"The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to
+hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever," said Cousin Gustus.
+"Talk about Iron Crosses--Pish! I should like to have a German here for
+ten minutes. I should say to him: 'My Kew was a good boy, I would almost
+say a clever boy, doing well in his profession: no more thought than that
+dog has of being a soldier till War broke out. Does that look as if we
+were prepared for War?' I should say. 'Doesn't that show where the blame
+lies?' What could he answer?"
+
+Mr. Russell and his Hound were apparently listening, but they could offer
+no suggestions.
+
+"Kew's going has upset me so that my headache has returned, and I cannot
+get any Aspirin here," continued Cousin Gustus. "I know a man who was
+very much addicted to these neuralgic headaches, who committed suicide by
+throwing himself from the bathroom window, solely owing to neuralgia. And
+the rain does nothing towards improving matters. They say the German guns
+bring on the rain. I tell you there is no limit to their guilt. Look at
+this morning's paper: 'The enemy bombarded this section of our front with
+increasing intensity during the day....' I ask you, IS THAT WAR?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Russell absently.
+
+"Nonsense," said Cousin Gustus. "What we ought to do is to shoot every
+German we can catch. Shooting's too good for them. Hang them. That would
+teach them. Any Government but ours would have thought of it long ago.
+Iron Crosses, indeed, Pish!"
+
+Cousin Gustus finds the Iron Cross very useful for the filling up of
+crannies in his edifice of wrath.
+
+Anonyma said: "When I think of those old fairy-like German songs, I feel
+as if I had lost a bit of my heart and shall never find it again. That is
+what I regret most about this War. It is bad art."
+
+"Art, indeed," said Cousin Gustus. "Why, every time they steal a picture
+they get an Iron Cross. I know a man who saw a German wearing a perfect
+rosary of Iron Crosses; the fellow was boasting of having bayoneted more
+babies than any other man in the regiment. Listen to this: 'The enemy
+attacked the outskirts of the village of What D'you Call'em, and engaged
+our troops in hand-to-hand fighting.' Think of it, and we used to say
+they were a civilised race. At the point of the bayonet, it says--isn't
+it atrocious? 'The enemy were finally repulsed at the point of the
+bay--' oh well, of course that may be different. I don't pretend to be
+a military expert...."
+
+"I hate the Germans," said Anonyma, "because they have spoilt my own idea
+of them. I hate having a mistake brought home to me."
+
+"I hate the Germans," began Mr. Russell, "because--"
+
+"I'm going for a walk," said Anonyma. "I am sick of sitting here and
+hearing you two old fogies argue about the War. If War is bad art, it is
+vulgar to refer to it."
+
+I know exactly what Mr. Russell was going to say. He had a vague culinary
+metaphor in his mind. I hate the Germans because they are underdone, they
+are red meat. Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their
+greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been
+roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to
+an extent that seems to us excessive. The reason why some of us dislike
+red meat is that it reminds us too much of what our food originally was.
+As we ourselves, possibly, are rather overcooked by the fire of
+civilisation, this vulgar deficiency in our enemy is very apparent to us.
+This is an elaborate, but not a pleasing analogy, and it was fortunate
+that Mr. Russell was interrupted. Otherwise, I think he might have been
+trying to this day to explain it to an exasperated Cousin Gustus. He
+spoke of it to his Hound, and the idea interested that animal very much.
+
+Mr. Russell, unfortunately, had a cold, and was therefore unable on such
+a wet day to leave the house or Cousin Gustus. But Anonyma went out in a
+mackintosh that gave her the "silhouette" of a Cossack, and a beautiful
+little tarpaulin sou'wester, and high boots, and a skirt short enough to
+give the boots every chance of advertisement. The notebook was safe in a
+water-tight pocket.
+
+She covered with great speed and enthusiasm the few miles to the sea. She
+reached it at a point where the cliff dwindled into flatness, where the
+gentle tide rattled on pebbles instead of on sand, where the tall
+breakwaters contradicted the line of the shore. The furthest breakwater
+had seaweed like hair waving on the water. At intervals it would seem to
+be thrust up between two glassy waves, like a victim beckoning for
+deliverance from the grip of some monster. And then the sea's lips would
+close on it again. The sea was freckled by the rain, the waves were
+beaten into submission. The tide was rather low, and not very far away a
+great company of porpoises bowed each other through the mazes of a slow
+quadrille. There were a few rocks spotted like leopards, and on one of
+these a young brown seagull rested, and allowed itself occasionally to be
+washed gracefully away.
+
+"Lazy Nature!" said Anonyma reprovingly. "To sketch such a scheme in a
+few careless lines."
+
+For the whole world was rain-colour. There was no horizon to the sea, the
+downs were blotted out, the wet shingle reflected its surroundings, the
+waves broke unmarked by foam or shadow. There was nothing but the
+porpoises and the breakwaters and the rocks, and a little bald sand
+dune, sketched on the canvas of that pale day.
+
+Anonyma perpetuated in her notebook her opinion of Nature as an artist.
+On the whole, it was a flattering opinion. Then she sat on the
+breakwater, and thought how fortunate she was to be able to think such
+interesting thoughts about what she saw. How fortunate to enjoy thought
+and to cause thought! How fortunate to feel oneself a member of the
+comforting fellowship of intelligence! "It is much more delightful,"
+Anonyma informed the sea, "to be intelligent than to be beautiful. Why do
+we all try to make our outsides beautiful? There is competition in
+beauty, but there is brotherhood in intelligence. To be clever is to
+share a secret and a smile with all clever people." A vision of the coast
+of the United Kingdom encircled by a ring of consciously clever Anonymas
+sitting on breakwaters, sharing each with all a secret and a smile, came
+vaguely to her.
+
+She put all that she could of her soliloquy into her notebook.
+
+And then she noticed the face of a man, with its eyes upon her,
+appearing stealthily over a breakwater. The face wore the grin that some
+people wear when they are doing anything with great caution. This gave it
+a very empty, bright expression, like the mask that represents comedy in
+a theatre decoration. The face dropped down behind the breakwater, after
+meeting Anonyma's surprised eye for a second or two.
+
+Anonyma kept her head.
+
+First she thought it was the face of a bather, the path to whose clothes
+she was unwittingly barring.
+
+Then she thought it was the face of a picnicker, resentful of her
+intrusion.
+
+Then she thought it was the face of a German spy.
+
+The first two of these three thoughts she rejected because the weather
+reduced their possibility to a minimum. The third she instinctively
+adopted as a certainty. The face at once became obviously German in her
+eyes. It was broader about the chin than about the forehead, it was pink,
+the architecture of the nose was painfully un-English.
+
+She scanned the sea for the periscope of a submarine.
+
+Anonyma remembered that she had written in her notebook, a day or two
+before, an intimate description of the coast as seen from the Ring. She
+also remembered distinctly seeing in the bar of the inn a notice warning
+her to the effect that walls--and probably breakwaters--have ears and
+eyes in these days, and that the German Government has a persistent wish
+to possess itself of private diaries and notebooks.
+
+"I am having an adventure," said Mrs. Gustus. "I must keep cool."
+
+She got up from her breakwater, holding her notebook very tightly, and
+began to walk away. When she looked back, she saw the top of the man's
+head moving behind the breakwater, in a parallel direction to her own
+course. When he reached the point where the breakwater ended and denied
+him cover, he wavered for a moment, and then, with an expression of
+elaborate indifference, followed her.
+
+"I must keep even cooler than this," thought Anonyma. "I must try and
+catch the spy."
+
+She walked across some waste land sown with memories of picnics, and
+reached the main road. The man crossed the waste land behind her. He
+tried in a futile way to look as if he were not doing so.
+
+On the main road, Anonyma turned and waited for him. It seemed useless in
+that empty landscape to sustain the pretence that they were unaware of
+each other.
+
+"Did you wish to speak to me?" she asked, as well as she could for the
+great lump of excitement that beat in her throat. Before her eyes visions
+of headlines danced: "LADY NOVELIST'S PLUCKY CAPTURE OF A SPY."
+
+The man became dark red as she spoke. "Yes," he said. "I wanted to ask
+you what you were writing in that notebook?"
+
+Anonyma paused for a moment, as she decided what she ought to do. Then
+she said in a hoarse voice: "I have detailed military information about
+this coast for twenty miles round in my notebook, with accurate reports
+as to the depth of the water. If you come to my lodgings in D----, I can
+show you a map that I have made."
+
+A tremor ran through the stranger.
+
+"A map?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes, a map," said Anonyma; and then, as he did not move, she added on
+the spur of the moment, "Also a design for a new kind of bomb which I
+bought from a man in London."
+
+"A bomb?" he said.
+
+Anonyma thought that he was evidently a foreigner, though his accent was
+English. He seemed to find English rather difficult to understand.
+
+"Why do you tell me all this?" he asked finally.
+
+"Because I recognise your face as that of a sp--I mean a fellow-worker
+in the great brotherhood of espionage," said Anonyma.
+
+"Come on, then," said the man.
+
+So they walked off together.
+
+"Why did you take up this--calling?" asked the man presently. "Are you
+a German?"
+
+"Well, more or less," said Anonyma. "At least, I have never been a
+Christian. I believe that one must take either War or Christianity
+seriously. Hardly both."
+
+It was a good opportunity for a monologue. Obviously the stranger was
+not one who would resent a monopoly of the conversation.
+
+"After all, men are only minor gods," said Anonyma, "and War is what gods
+were born for. Germany knows that. That's why, under the present
+circumstances, I'd rather take German money than English."
+
+"Are we anywhere near D---- yet?"
+
+Anonyma hoped that he still had no suspicions. His voice was distinctly
+nervous. To reassure him, she said, "Why did you take up espionage
+yourself?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" said the stranger in an ardent voice. "Of course the pay
+was enormous. Twenty thousand francs if I could get an exact chart of the
+South Coast."
+
+"Why francs?" asked Anonyma.
+
+"Not francs. I find these various currencies so confusing, don't you? Of
+course I mean pfennigs."
+
+"Twenty thousand pfennigs?" said Anonyma. "Look here, are you trying to
+be funny?"
+
+"Far from it," said the man. "To tell you the truth, I am awfully
+nervous."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"Yes. No. I mean of discovery."
+
+"You don't seem to be absolutely cut out for your job," said Anonyma.
+
+They walked in silence for a while. Anonyma sought through her mind to
+find something she could say in keeping with her part. She decided
+finally on a rather ambiguous though imposing attitude.
+
+"The Germans have discovered the truth that anything good is belligerent,
+love included. You can't fight properly with any weapon but your life.
+Death is not the only thing that passes by the peace-man. He remains
+alive, but he also remains ignorant. All peace-men are really women in
+disguise, and all women are utterly superfluous to-day. We only know men.
+People who disapprove of War shall have no part in peace. The peace shall
+be ours who suffered for it, and only we have earned it. The only decent
+thing left for the Americans and Quakers to do now is to hold their
+tongues when peace comes. They haven't earned the right to rejoice."
+
+"I am a Quaker," said the stranger.
+
+"I didn't know the Germans allowed Quakers at large."
+
+"I am not a German," said the stranger.
+
+"Then what has happened?" asked Anonyma, standing suddenly still at the
+top of the main street of D----. "Why did you want my notebook?"
+
+"Because I could plainly see you taking notes in it."
+
+"You thought me a spy?"
+
+"You don't leave me much room for doubt."
+
+They guided each other to the gate of the police-station. There they
+stopped again.
+
+"This is where I was bringing you," said Anonyma, as their eyes fell
+simultaneously on the label over the door: "Sussex County Police."
+
+"It seems to me that honours are easy," she added after a pause. "Don't
+you see what has happened?"
+
+The stranger thought for a moment with a look of dawning relief on his
+pink face. "But you couldn't have made up all those dreadful
+opinions," he said.
+
+"I didn't," said Anonyma. "I meant them all--as applied to England."
+
+"Don't you think we'd better take each other in to make sure?" suggested
+her companion. "The Inspector's quite a good sort. I know him well...."
+
+"You may read my notebook if you like to make quite sure," said Anonyma.
+"I'm almost sure the Inspector would have either too much or too little
+sense of humour for the situation."
+
+She was conscious of a certain disappointment. Her adventure had fallen
+flat, she felt no pleasure in the idea of painting a vivid word-vignette
+for the people at home. Even her notebook must never hear of this
+morning's work.
+
+"How foolish of you," she said irritably. "Do I look like a spy?"
+
+"Do I?"
+
+She felt impelled to be angry with him, and seized upon another pretext.
+
+"You are a conscientious objector, I suppose. And what business has a
+conscientious objector to be spy-hunting? Do I understand that you will
+only help your country when you can do it vicariously, through the
+police, with no risk to yourself? It isn't very dignified."
+
+"A spy is outside every pale," said the stranger. "My conscience objects
+to the shedding of blood. Yet it is an English conscience all the same."
+
+"English?" said Anonyma. "If you won't die for England, England isn't
+yours to love. You shall not have that honour."
+
+"If dying for England is the test of a patriot," said the pink Quaker,
+"what about you?"
+
+"I would die for England. I work for England," said Anonyma.
+
+(Four hours a week.)
+
+She went on: "I have told you already that women--in either sex--are
+superfluous to-day. But after all, real women were born to their burden,
+women were born to put up with second bests. And also posterity is mostly
+a woman's job. But you were born a man, with a great heritage of honour.
+You have kicked that honour away. You have sold your birthright."
+
+The Quaker was the sort of man in whose face and mind one could see
+exactly what his mother was like. Some men are like that, and others,
+one would say, could never have been so intimate with a woman as to be
+born of her.
+
+"My soul is greater than I am," said the stranger. "There is no command
+that drowns the command of the soul. I cannot possibly be wrong."
+
+"You could not possibly be right," said Anonyma. "Good-morning."
+
+Anonyma, on her return to the inn, was very generous with
+"word-vignettes" dealing with Nature. Her Family during supper was not
+left in ignorance as to the Peace and Meaning of the Sea, and the
+Parallel between Waves and Generations, and the Miracles of the Mist, and
+the Tranquil Musing of the Beaches, and the Unseen Imminence of the
+Downs. "It would make a wonderful background to a short story," said
+Anonyma, and then she stopped rather abruptly. Her silence after that
+might have struck the Family as strange, had it not coincided with the
+arrival of the evening paper, which turned the listeners' thoughts to
+less beautiful matters.
+
+"Air raid," said Cousin Gustus. "I prophesied quite a long time ago that
+we should have another raid, but nobody ever listens to what I say. Two
+horses killed somewhere in the Eastern Counties."
+
+"I thought Somewhere was a town in France, ha-ha," said Mrs. Russell.
+
+"Was London attacked?" asked Mr. Russell. "I'm rather anxious about--St.
+Paul's...."
+
+Anonyma rose to the surface again. "I had such a wonderful talk with a
+'bus-conductor once about his experiences during a raid. Such an
+intelligent man. I dearly love 'bus conductors, such an interesting and
+vivacious class. I should feel it an honour to be intimate with one. He
+told me in the most vivid terms how a bomb fell in the street in front
+of his 'bus, blowing the preceding 'bus to atoms. He told me how his
+driver turned the 'bus in what he called 'The spice of 'arf a crown,'
+and plunged into a side street. He said that he could see the Zeppelin
+balanced on its searchlights like 'a sausage on stilts,' and when it was
+directly above them, the top of his 'bus was suddenly cleared of people
+as if by magic, except for one man who put up an umbrella and 'sat
+tight.' I pitied the conductor, it must have been a terrible
+experience, his eyes were starting from his head,--bulging like a
+rabbit's,--he said he had a wife and baby up Leyton way, and that he was
+so worried about them that he frequently called out his list of
+destinations the wrong way round."
+
+"Look here," said Mr. Russell, "I think I'd better go up and see
+about--"
+
+"Nonsense," said his wife. "I refuse to go to London until the moon is
+there to protect me, as it were. So comic to look upon a heavenly body as
+a practical protection. I will not allow you to run needlessly into
+danger. Only this morning you were making plans to go to Cornwall,
+naughty boy."
+
+"No, but--"
+
+"Darling, I insist," said Mrs. Russell. "Cornwall it is for the
+present. If you say another word I shall smack you and put you in the
+corner, ha-ha."
+
+Cornwall it was.
+
+The Family drew near to its destination on a misty day. The sun shone not
+at all, but occasionally showed its bare pale outline through a veil of
+cloud. The road in front of Christina was so dim that Mr. Russell could
+people it for himself with imaginations. Now a knight in armour stood at
+the next corner, now a phantom sea gleamed over the curve of the road,
+now he saw great slim ghosts beckoning him on.
+
+There were real sheep every few hundred yards, for a sheep fair was
+taking place somewhere near by. The sheep came out of the mist like
+armies of giants, and shrank as they grew clearer. The roads were rippled
+with the footprints of many sheep. Even when there were no sheep in
+sight, the mist filled their places with ghostly flocks.
+
+Each sheep as it passed examined the wheels of Christina as long as the
+dogs allowed it to do so. Each flock was followed by two men, and
+sometimes a child in ill-fitting clothes on a pony, and sometimes a woman
+with a shawl over her head.
+
+Anonyma's notebook became very restless, and finally Mr. Russell was
+obliged to drive the Family to the point whither the sheep were bound.
+
+So they went to the little town, through which the excitement of the fair
+thrilled like the blast from a trumpet. Bewildered sheep looked in at
+its shop windows; farmers in dog-carts shouted affectionate remarks to
+each other across its village green, and introduced dear friends at a
+great distance to other dear friends with much formality. Dogs argued in
+a professional way about the merits of their sheep. Mr. Russell's Hound,
+who had never before heard the suggestion that dogs were intended for any
+purpose but ornament, looked on breathless with surprise. His morals were
+affected for life by the revolutionary sight of a dog biting the tail of
+a disobedient sheep. "I'll try it in Kensington Gardens," thought Mr.
+Russell's Hound, as he looked nervously at his master.
+
+Christina, the motor-car, found her way to the centre of this activity.
+There the sheep bleated in tight confinement, and to each pen was
+attached the appropriate dog, looking very self-conscious. Dogs who had
+come from great distances to buy sheep were anxiously sniffing up the
+smell of their purchases, so that no mistake might be made on the way
+home. Over the line of pens a two-plank viaduct ran, and it was bent
+continually by the weight of large shepherds balancing their way along
+to take a bird's-eye view of possible bargains. A facetious auctioneer
+with the village policeman's arm round his neck was sitting on the wall
+at the end of the field, addressing everybody very frequently as
+"Gentlemen." Sheep arrived and sheep departed constantly.
+
+"Isn't it terribly slavish, somehow?" said Anonyma. "The sheep
+never being consulted at all. Bought and sold and smelt and spat
+upon as if they had no heart beating beneath that wool. No 'Me,' as
+Jay used to say."
+
+Mr. Russell heard and remembered. There were few doubts left in him as to
+the truth of his too-funny miracle.
+
+He had a little tune, the scaffolding of a poem, in his head, and to the
+sound of it he lived that day, although I don't expect he ever got the
+poem into words.
+
+If you start your idea along an uncertain course, you have to stop and
+start afresh to get it straight. You can never finish it when once it has
+a crooked swing. I gather that motor cyclists occasionally have much the
+same experience with their machines.
+
+But Mr. Russell, with a mind steering a tangled course, asked for
+nothing better. He was very nearly sure of romance for the first time
+in his life.
+
+I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people
+who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share
+it. I think perhaps the same thrill that goes through Mr. Russell and me
+when the ghost of a completed thing begins to be seen, also delights the
+khaki coster who writes his first--and very likely last--love-letter from
+France; and the little old country mother who lies awake composing the In
+Memoriam of her son for a local paper; and the burglar "down 'Oxton" who
+takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is
+a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession,
+and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great
+glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did,
+what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to
+your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts you with your
+limitations.
+
+Mr. Russell and Christina knew well their road through the mist that
+afternoon. There was no difficulty in the world, and no need to see or to
+think. The sign-posts all spoke the names of fated places. It was useless
+for Anonyma to study the map, she found no mention there of the enchanted
+way on which their course was set.
+
+"We will not go through Launceston," said Anonyma. "There must be a
+quicker way to the sea than that."
+
+Mr. Russell cared not for her and cared not for Launceston. The spell was
+cast upon Christina's wheels. There was no escaping the appointed way.
+Launceston reached out its net and caught them. Almost as far as the post
+office, Anonyma was protesting: "We will NOT go through Launceston."
+
+"Launceston was determined to get us," laughed Mrs. Russell. "Ha-ha!
+isn't it humorous the way things happen?"
+
+The sun was setting as they first saw the Cornish sea. The sky was swept
+suddenly clear of mist. The seagulls against the sky were like little
+crucified angels.
+
+The road ran to the shore.
+
+The sun had little delicate clouds across its face, like the islands in
+a Japanese painting. The wet rocks that lay in the sun's path were plated
+with gold, and the tall waves with shadowed faces made of that path a
+ladder. The fields of foam on the sea looked very blue in the pale light.
+
+The sun was like an angel with a flaming sword. The angel dipped his feet
+into the sea.
+
+The sun was like a flaming stage for the comedies of gods. A ship passed
+dramatically across it. One's dazzled eyes saw great phantom ships all
+over the sea.
+
+The sun was like a monster with horns of fire that pierced one's two
+eyes. And gradually it sank.
+
+The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that
+was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it. There was
+suddenly no sun. The little forsaken clouds were like flames for a
+moment, and then they were blown out.
+
+Mr. Russell waved his right hand towards great cliffs like the towers of
+kings behind the village.
+
+"This is the place," he said.
+
+  If I have dared to surrender some imitation of splendour,
+Something I knew that was tender, something I loved that was brave,
+If in my singing I shewed songs that I heard on my road,
+Were they not debts that I owed rather than gifts that I gave?
+
+  If certain hours on their climb up the long ladder of time
+Turned my confusion to rhyme, drove me to dare an attempt,
+If by fair chance I might seem sometimes abreast of my theme,
+Was I translating a dream? Was it a dream that you dreamt?
+
+  High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes;
+All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true.
+Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me;
+Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?
+
+Man ought to feel humble when he reflects upon the fact that he can
+survive, and even thrive on, any distress except distress of the body.
+God can wither his soul, and still he lives. Grief can swallow his heart,
+and still he lives. But his stomach can kill him.
+
+"All is apparently over between me and Peace," thought Jay. "But there
+must be something to take the place of Peace."
+
+There is only one thing that can adequately usurp the place of Peace. But
+its name did not occur to Jay.
+
+She did not know what had happened to her. She felt constantly a little
+mad. Irresponsible wants clamoured in her breast from morning till night,
+and all night the company of her Secret Friend was more glorious than
+ever. She ran to her world as you perhaps run to church, yet even there
+she felt expectant.
+
+When a tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the
+first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness
+seems impossible and at the same time imperative.
+
+So Jay waited, feeling all the time that she could not wait
+another minute.
+
+You shall not hear whence comes my fear.
+You shall not know the name of it.
+But out of strife it came to life,
+And only striving came of it.
+Though for its sake my heart may break,
+Yet worse would I endure for it.
+This thing shall be a God to me,
+I will not seek a cure for it.
+
+She thought a good deal about Mr. Russell. I am sure that he would have
+laughed painfully could he have seen the picture of himself that remained
+with the 'bus-conductor. The picture made him thinner, and his eyes more
+intelligent, and the line of his mouth happier, but it did not make him
+look younger, because Jay liked him to be Older and Wiser. He never came
+into the Secret World; several times she tried to drag him thither, but
+always at the critical moment he got left outside. Yet I cannot say that
+in her Secret World she missed him; the point of the bubble enchantment
+is that there is nothing lacking in it.
+
+'Bus-conducting is a profession that does not engross the mind unduly.
+The eye and the ear and the hand work by themselves. Charing Cross
+whispered in a conductor's ear at the Bank produces a white ticket from
+her hand without any calculation on her part. She becomes a
+penny-in-the-slot machine, with her human brain free for other matters.
+She grows a great hatred for all fares above fourpence, because they need
+special thought.
+
+Jay filled her day with unsatisfactory thinking. She found to her
+surprise that one may love life and yet also think lovingly of death. To
+live is most interesting in an uneasy way, but to die is to forget at
+once all these trivial turbulences, to forget equally the people you have
+loved and the people you have hated, to forget everything you ever knew,
+to be alone, and to be no longer disturbed by unceasing voices.
+
+At this time I think Jay felt more hatred of everybody than love of any
+one person. But then, of course, she had vowed to Chloris after the
+affair with young William Morgan that she would never fall in love again.
+She said, "I have been through love. It is not a sea, as people say. It
+is only a river, and I have waded through it."
+
+"Yet there is certainly something very remarkable about that man," she
+thought. "I don't believe I like him much, I don't want to know him
+better, though I should like him to know me. I believe he is my real next
+of kin. I believe he has a Secret World too."
+
+She was on her last homeward journey, and it was one of her early days.
+The hours of a conductor move up and down the day. Sometimes Jay
+punctured her first ticket at a time when you and I are asleep, and when
+the coster-barrows, waving with ferns and fuchsias, move up the Strand
+like Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane. On those days she was due home at
+half-past four or so. On other days she was able to have a late
+breakfast and to darn her stockings after it, but that meant that she
+did not get home till very late. Some 'buses, I gather, are called
+"single 'buses," but in this case the word does not imply celibacy
+alone. The single 'bus is occupied by one conductor all day Jong for a
+fortnight. The "double 'bus" is shared by two conductors, one presiding
+in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The double state also
+lasts a fortnight; it is arranged as an opportunity for lady
+'bus-conductors to recuperate after the rigours (the more remunerative
+rigours) of service on a single 'bus. These statements of mine are open
+to extensive correction. Jay's hours always struck me as so very
+confusing that it is unlikely I should be able to retail the information
+correctly. However, it doesn't matter very much.
+
+This was one of the early days on a double 'bus, and Jay was on her last
+journey, with several restless waking hours between her and possible
+sleep. Her 'bus was full, but not pressed down and running over. For the
+moment everybody in it was provided with a ticket. Jay was laboriously
+thinking small thoughts because she was tired of thinking of Love and
+Life and other things with capital letters.
+
+She thought of the various indignities to which the public submits its
+'bus-tickets. Some people use the ticket as a toothpick, some put
+spectacles on and read it without understanding, some decorate
+outstanding features of the 'bus with it. But I myself tear it gradually
+into small strips, and grind the strips by means of massage into fine
+powder. If the inspector comes, I am perfectly willing to pour the powder
+into his hand, and yet he often seems annoyed.
+
+Jay reviewed the perspective of faces that lined her 'bus. They were all
+ugly, and not one of them was eager. The British public as a whole
+considers a deaf, dumb, and blind expression the only decent one to wear
+in a public conveyance. We roar through a wonderful and exciting world,
+and all the while we sit with glazed eyes and cotton-wool in our ears,
+and think about ourselves. They were mostly men in Jay's 'bus at that
+moment; they were almost all alike, and all insignificant, but not one of
+them knew it. Such a lot of men could never be loved by women, only found
+expedient.
+
+But there was a sailor, a simple sub-lieutenant, sitting by the door.
+Sailors are a race apart. They have twisty faces, their boots and
+gloves look curiously accidental. In London they are rarely seen
+without a _London Mail_ or a _London Opinion_ in their grasp. There is
+something about a sailor that conduces to sentiment in every passer-by,
+and Jay, who was fleeing from that very feeling, looked hastily at some
+one else. Her seeking eye lit on a lady who had a complete skunk
+climbing up the nape of her neck, and a hat of the approximate size of
+a five-shilling piece worn over her right eyebrow. She looked such a
+fool that Jay concluded that the look was intentional, and indeed I
+suppose it must be, for the worst insult you can offer to young ladies
+of this type is to suggest that they have brains. Jay pondered on this,
+and then turned elsewhere for inspiration. All roads of thought at that
+time led to one destination, so she only allowed herself to go a little
+way along each road.
+
+And presently she reached the end of her journey. She walked home, and
+Chloris was as usual waiting for her just outside the rocking-horse
+factory at the corner. Jay, as she passed that factory every day, watched
+with interest the progress of the grey ghost rocking-horses, eyeless,
+maneless, and tailless, as they ripened hourly into a form more like that
+of the friend of youth.
+
+She smelt the little smell that is always astray in Mabel Place, she
+heard outside in the damp afternoon two rival barrow-men howling a cry
+that sounded like "One pound hoo-ray!" A neighbour in the garden was
+exchanging repartee with a gentleman caller. "Biby, siy Naughty Man,
+Biby, tell 'im what a caution 'e is." But there seemed little hope that
+the baby would. These sounds were provided with the constant Brown
+Borough background of shouts and quarrels and laughter and children
+crying and innumerable noises of work.
+
+"Something has happened," said Jay to Chloris, as they went in. "I feel
+as if I had no friends to-night. Not even a Secret Friend."
+
+Chloris lay on her lap in her usual attitude, bent into a circle like a
+tinned tongue. Chloris knew it was no use worrying about these things.
+
+"Funny," thought Jay. "King David was a healthy man of ruddy countenance,
+and presumably he never lived in the Brown Borough, yet he knew very
+well what it feels like to have a temperature, and a sore heart, and to
+be alone in lodgings. Whenever I am very tired, it is funny how my heart
+quotes those tired Psalms of his, without my brain remembering the words.
+I wonder how David knew."
+
+The little house was empty but for her. I ought perhaps to have told you
+before that Nana had been taken ill a month or so ago, and had gone away
+at Jay's expense to a South Coast Home.
+
+"I'll go round and see Mrs. 'Ero Edwards," said Jay, when she had changed
+into mufti. "Neither Chloris nor David is adequate to the moment."
+
+The ground-floor back room of Mrs. 'Ero Edwards was crowded. The Chap
+from the Top Floor was there, and Mrs. Dusty Morgan, and little Mrs. Love
+from Tann Street, and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards's daughter, Queenie, and several
+people's children. Conversation never wavered as Jay knocked and came in.
+When you find that your entrance no longer fills a Brown Borough room
+with sudden silence, you may be glad and know that you have ceased to be
+a lidy or a toff.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor was talking, and everybody else was there to
+hear him do it, except Mrs. 'Ero Edwards who could hardly bear it,
+because she only liked listening to herself. Jay sat modestly in a corner
+and listened, like the other representatives of her generation.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor was an Older and Wiser Man. His wife could
+not live with him, but he was very kind and fatherly to every one else,
+and Jay was rather fond of him. He was about fifty, and anything but
+beautiful. Also the C.O.S. would not have admired him. But I believe he
+did a good deal of thinking inside that bristly head of his.
+
+"Ow my dear," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, laying a fat hand on Jay's knee.
+"We're all so 'appy. Dusty's wrote to siy 'e's got the sack from the Army
+becos of 'is rheumatics. We're 'avin' a bit of a beano becos of it."
+
+Everybody smiled at Jay, and her heart grew warmer. Some one handed her a
+cup of tea sweetened with half an inch of sugar at the bottom of the
+cup. The spoon had been plunged to its hilt in condensed milk. What
+vulgar tastes she had!
+
+"You can never mike a pal of a woman," said the Chap from the Top Floor,
+continuing an argument for the benefit of an audience of women. "One
+feller an' another--well--a pal's a pal. But women are all either wives
+or--, there ain't no manner of palliness in them."
+
+"'Tain't gentlemanly to talk so, Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards. "Yore
+mother was a woman, an' from 'er comes all you know, I'm thinkin', an'
+all you are. Women is pals with women, an' men is pals with men. It's
+only when men an' women gets assorted-like that palliness drops out."
+
+"'Usbinds an' wives can be pals," said Mrs. Dusty. "Me an' Dusty useter
+'ave a drop an' a jaw together every night for three months after we
+married. Never 'ad a thought apart, we didn't."
+
+"If I ars't Dusty," said the Top Floor Chap, "I don't know but what 'e
+wouldn't tell a different tile."
+
+"'Ere, 'bus-conductor, you can talk, an' you're a suffragette," said
+Mrs. Dusty. "Ain't bein' a pal just as much a woman's job as a man's?"
+
+"What is bein' a pal?" asked Mrs. Love bitterly. "'Avin' some one 'oo
+drinks wiv you until she's sick, and then blacks your eye for you. There
+ain't no pals, men or women."
+
+"I think they're rare," said Jay. "Isn't being a pal just refusing to
+admit a limit? Some people draw the line at a murderer, and some at a
+suffragette, and some at a vegetarian, and some at a lady who wears the
+same dress Sundays and week-days, but a real pal draws no line. Women and
+dogs as well as men can be faithful beyond limit, I think, but it's very
+rare in anybody."
+
+"'Bus-conductors don't know nothink," said the Chap from the Top Floor in
+a loud belligerent voice, illuminated by an amiable smile. "I orfen look
+at 'bus-conductors, an' think, 'Pore devils, they don't know 'arf of
+life, not even a quarter. They only meets the harisocracy wot 'as pennies
+to frow about, they never passes the time of day with a plain walkin'
+feller like me wot ses 'is mind an' never puts on no frills.
+'Bus-conducting oughter be done by belted earls an' suchlike, it ain't a
+real man's job. Pore devils,' I ses, lookin' at 'em bouncin' along, doin'
+the pretty to all the nobs, wivout so much as puttin' their toe in the
+mud. 'Pore devils.'"
+
+"'Ere Elbert, 'old your jaw," said the tactful Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, nervous
+lest Jay should resent this insult to her calling. "Let's all go roun' to
+the Cross'n Beetle, an' see whether that won't stop 'is noise."
+
+"After all, it's Dusty's birfdiy," said Mrs. Dusty with alacrity.
+
+The day was evidently growing in importance every minute.
+
+"You come along too," said little Mrs. Love, suddenly putting her
+hand in Jay's.
+
+"No treatin' nowadiys," said the Top Floor Chap amiably. "But I don't
+mind 'andin' around the price of a drink before we start."
+
+He only extended half-hearted generosity to Jay, because she was, after
+all, a 'bus-conductor, and to that extent a nob. She shook her head and
+laughed, when he held out to her the Law-circumventing coin.
+
+Mrs. 'Ero Edwards only really found scope for her voice out of doors.
+No sooner was she in the street than she seized the arm of the Chap
+from the Top Floor and shouted him down, as she led him towards the
+Cross'n Beetle.
+
+Mrs. Dusty and young Queenie walked arm in arm behind them, and whenever
+they saw a soldier they squeaked loudly, and addressed him invariably as
+"Colonel Mawmajuke."
+
+Jay and little Mrs. Love, both rather confused and unhappy people, walked
+hand in hand a little way behind.
+
+"We needn't go as fur as the Cross'n Beetle, if we don't like," said Mrs.
+Love. "They'll never notice if we 'ook it."
+
+"I don't want to 'ook it," said Jay. "I want to keep very busy listening
+to noisy people. I don't want to hear myself think."
+
+"You're mopey, eh?" asked Mrs. Love gently.
+
+"I'm cold," said Jay. "I believe I've lost something. I believe I've lost
+a friend of mine."
+
+"Friends is always gettin' lost," said Mrs. Love. "I told you so. Let's
+go an' 'ave a look at the pictures. They've got the 'Curse of a Crook' on
+up the street. Fairly mike yer 'air curl."
+
+"I want noise," said Jay, "a much louder noise than that old piano. The
+pictures are so horribly quiet. Just an underfed man turning a handle,
+and an underfed woman hitting an underfed piano. At a play you can at
+least pretend that the actors are having a little fun too, but the
+pictures--there's only two sad people without smiles at the bottom of it
+all. I won't go to the pictures, I'll go and get drunk."
+
+"Come on then," said Mrs. Love. "You won't find no lost friends there,
+but come on. I'll be yer pal for to-night. You've been a pal to me before
+now. We're temp'ary pals right enough, there' ain't no permanent kind.
+You won't find no shivers straying around in the ole Cross'n Beetle.
+Let's 'urry, an' get drunk, and keep 'and in 'and all the time. That's
+wot pals oughter do."
+
+Jay suddenly saw the whole world as a thing running away from its
+thoughts. The crowd that filled the pavement was fugitive, and every man
+felt the hot breath of fear on the back of his neck. One only used one's
+voice for the drowning of one's thoughts; one only used one's feet for
+running away. The whole world was in flight along the endless streets,
+and the lucky ones were in trams and donkey carts that they might flee
+the faster.
+
+"Hurry, hurry," said Jay. And she and little Mrs. Love ran hand in hand.
+
+The Chap from the Top Floor and Mrs. 'Ero Edwards were already leading
+society in the Cross'n Beetle when Jay and Mrs. Love reached it. The
+barman knew Mrs. Edwards too well to think that she was drunk already,
+but you or I, transported suddenly thither, would have supposed that her
+beano was over instead of yet to come.
+
+"'Elbert," said Mrs. 'Ero Edwards, "yo're an 'Un, yo're an internal
+alien, thet's what's the metter with you. I wonder I 'aven't blacked yer
+eye for you many a time and oft."
+
+There was almost enough noise even for Jay, and she and Mrs. Love, each
+armed with a generously topped glass, sat in the background, on the
+shiny seat that lined the wall.
+
+To Jay this evening was an experiment, an experiment born of weariness of
+a well-worn road. She watched Mrs. Love blow some of the superfluous
+froth on to the floor, and did likewise. Directly she had put her lips to
+the thick brim of her glass she knew that here was the stuff of which
+certain dreams are made.
+
+She had, I suppose, the weakest head in the world, and in three minutes
+she was giddy and much comforted. The noise seemed to clothe itself in a
+veil of music, there was hope in the shining brightness that shone from
+the bar. The placards that looked like texts and were advertisements of
+various drinks, seemed like jokes to Jay.
+
+"There are only dreams," she thought very lucidly, "to keep our
+souls alive. We are lucky if we get good dreams. We'll never get
+anything better."
+
+Through the glass between the patriotic posters that darkened the windows
+she could see the morbid colour of London air.
+
+"Apart from dreams," thought this busconducting Omar Khayyam, "there is
+nothing but disappointment. We expected too much. We expected
+satisfaction. There is nothing in the world but second bests, but dreams
+are an excellent second best. Our last attitude must be 'How interesting,
+but how very far from what I wanted....'"
+
+The speed of time, and the hurry of life suddenly rushed upon her again.
+
+"I must hurry," she said. "Or I shan't have lived before I die. I
+must hurry."
+
+"No 'urry, Jine," said Mrs. Love. "Let's keep in the light for a bit."
+
+"Is this the only light left us, after a deluge of War?" thought Jay. "It
+doesn't matter, because of course War is hurrying too. Rushing over our
+heads like the sea over drowned sailors. But it will be over in a minute;
+this new kind of death must be a temporary death for temporary soldiers.
+What do fifty years without friends matter? You can hardly breathe before
+they're done."
+
+She was dazzled and deafened. She had emptied her glass, and she did not
+know what steps she took to fill it again. Only she found it was
+suddenly full.
+
+And in a minute she was on the path to the House by the Sea. She had
+come by a new way.
+
+There was less colour than usual about the sea, a certain air of guilt
+seemed to haunt the path. And it was extraordinarily lonely, there seemed
+to be no promise of a Friend waiting at the other end of the path.
+
+She sang the Loud Song to encourage herself, but she did not sing it
+very loudly.
+
+There is no dream like my dream,
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no Friend like my Friend,
+Even in Heaven.
+There is no life like my life,
+Even in Heaven.
+
+A voice said, "For 'eaven's sike, Jine, don't begin to sing."
+
+Jay laughed. "Treating me as if I were drunk ..." she thought. She did
+not feel giddy any more. She could see the familiar outline of the House
+against an unpretentious sky, and that calm shape steadied her.
+
+No breath of sound came from the House. The sky was grey, the sea was
+grey, there was no hint of sunlight. As Jay came to the door she noticed
+that the honeysuckle in the bowl at the hall window was still there, but
+dead. The wind had strewn the doorstep with leaves and straws and twigs,
+little refugees of the air.
+
+In the hall there was an old woman, dressed in a black dress patterned
+with big red flowers. She was knitting. Her stiff skirts spread out in
+angular folds round her. Jay knew she was a fellow-ghost, because
+their eyes met.
+
+Jay felt swallowed up by the silence. She could not speak, even to
+think, she felt, would be too noisy. The stiff skirt of the old lady
+made no rustle, the knitting needles made no click. But Jay could see
+that she was counting. The House seemed to be full of unmoving time.
+Outside the rain began to fall, and that grey sound enclosed the silence
+of the House.
+
+After a very long time Jay spoke. "Where is my Friend?" she asked.
+
+"Gone to the War," answered the old woman.
+
+"There is no War in this world," said Jay.
+
+"On the contrary," the fellow-ghost replied, "war is, even here, where
+Time is not. War is like air, in every house, in every land, on every
+sea. For ever."
+
+Between her sentences she counted. Unpausing numbers moved her lips.
+
+"On these shores," she said, "time and Life and the sea go up and down.
+Eternity has no logic. There are no reasons, there is no explanation. But
+there is always War. There are fighting sea men in the caves on the
+beach. Haven't you seen them, the dark sea people? Haven't you heard
+their high voices that were tuned to cut through the voice of the sea?
+Haven't you found their very wide, long-toed footprints in the sand? Have
+you walked blind through this world?"
+
+"No," said Jay, "I remember. The women decorate their hair with seaweed,
+pink and green. I have watched them catch fish with their hands. I have
+watched them put their babies to play in the pools among the rocks...."
+
+"On the cliffs," said the fellow-ghost, "men clad in armour share the
+camps of the Englishmen who fought at Cressy, and at Waterloo, and at
+the Marne. On these seas the most ancient pirates sing and laugh in
+chorus with Nelson's drowned sailors, and with men from the North Sea,
+men whose mothers still cry in the night for them. Did you think there
+was any seniority in Eternity?"
+
+"But I don't understand," said Jay. "Time seems to leave itself behind so
+quickly...."
+
+"There is nothing to understand," said the old woman. "There is no
+explanation. Time does not move. Men move." The noise of the rain seemed
+to wash out everything but remembrance, and there was no feeling in Jay
+but a terrible longing to have her Secret Friend with her again, and that
+long secret childhood of theirs, and to wipe out half her days and all
+her knowledge, and to hear once more those songs upon the sands of the
+cove, and to feel the tingling ground of the sunny hills.
+
+"My Friend has never forsaken me before," she said.
+
+She felt a hand press her hand, and she met the eyes of little Mrs. Love.
+
+"Yo're a mousey sort of kid," said Mrs. Love, "sittin' there as if you
+was in church. Shall we go 'ome? The rine's gettin' worse an' worse, an'
+it's no good wytin'. I'll see you 'ome."
+
+When Jay, very wet and dazed, reached Eighteen Mabel Place, she found a
+card pushed under the door. The name on it was Mr. Herbert Russell's, and
+there was a suggestion in a beautiful little handwriting on the back of
+it that she should ring him up next morning and tell him when to come and
+see her, as he had a message from her brother.
+
+"This is the sort of thing that couldn't possibly happen in real life,"
+said Jay. "I must be drunk after all. On no doorstep except Heaven's
+could one find a message so romantic."
+
+She was instinctively disobedient to Older and Wiser people. She never
+entertained the idea of telephoning. She could imagine Mr. Russell
+answering the telephone in a prosaic voice like a double bass. She wrote
+the following letter:
+
+DEAR SIR--Don't you remember, I was to meet you anyway on the steps of
+St. Paul's at ten o'clock next Sunday? I will wait till then for the
+message.--Yours faithfully,
+
+JANE ELIZABETH MARTIN, 'Bus-conductor.
+
+"That letter ought to put two and two together for him," she thought, "if
+he hasn't done it already. It's a complicated little sum, and the result
+is--what?"
+
+She felt hot and feverish when she wrote the letter. And directly she had
+posted it she regretted having done so.
+
+"I forget what I wrote," she said. "It is dangerous to post letters to
+Older and Wiser Men when drunk."
+
+All that night she lay awake and mourned the desertion of her
+Secret Friend.
+
+You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
+You promised true, but we were very blind,
+And very young, and in our ignorance
+We never called to mind
+That truth is seldom kind.
+
+You promised love, immortal as a star.
+You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
+For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
+And, deathless, still we cry,
+Nor hope for a reply.
+
+You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
+You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
+Behold a reaper strode across the field,
+And man of woman born
+Was gathered in as corn.
+
+You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
+You promised true. In joy we trembled lest
+We should be found unworthy when it came;
+But--oh--we never guessed
+The fury of the test.
+
+You promised friends and songs and festivals.
+You promised true. Our friends, who still are young,
+Assemble for their feasting in those halls
+Where speaks no human tongue.
+And thus our songs are sung.
+
+I have very rarely found Sunday in London a successful day. I hate
+idleness without peace, and festivity without beauty, and noise without
+music. I hate to see London people in unnatural clothes. I hate to see a
+city holding its breath.
+
+Jay waited ten minutes on the steps of St. Paul's for Mr. Russell. This
+was not because he was late, but because she was early; and this again
+was not because she was indecently eager, but because she had hit on an
+unexpectedly non-stop 'bus. She felt a fool for ten minutes. And when you
+have waited ten minutes on those enormous steps under the eye of the
+pigeons, you will know why she felt a fool.
+
+Mr. Russell arrived in Christina the motor car, and simultaneously a
+shower fell. From the first moment Jay felt unsuccess in the air of that
+much-anticipated day. She was introduced to Christina, and said, "But we
+can't take that thing into the Cathedral."
+
+"We don't want to," said Mr. Russell, although, as he was a born driver,
+the challenge made him instinctively measure with his eye the depth of
+the steps, and the width of the doorway, from Christina's point of view.
+"We don't want to pray. We want to talk."
+
+Anonyma would have been astonished to hear him say this.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Jay, "I brought Chloris for the same reason."
+
+Chloris was eating the bread which a kind but short-sighted old lady
+believed herself to be giving to the pigeons.
+
+Mr. Russell had hardly been able to imagine his 'bus-conductor in any
+dress but that of her calling. Now that he saw her in unambitious
+London-coloured things, he was glad to notice that her clothes were not
+Sunday clothes, but the sort that you forget about directly you look away
+from them.
+
+This was the sort of day that breaks up delusions, and as Christina the
+motor car started away, Jay discovered that her hat was not adequately
+attached to her head. There are few discoveries more depressing than
+this at the beginning of a day of movement.
+
+The bells of St. Paul's began to sing. Little fairy bells dodged behind
+and about the great notes. But Christina soon swept the sound into the
+forgotten air behind her.
+
+"I've got a lot to talk to you about," said Mr. Russell as he headed
+Christina Hackney-way. He was conscious that he was taking his miracle
+curiously for granted. I don't think he really believed in it yet. For
+Mr. Russell all truth was haunted by the ghost of a clanking lie. He
+discerned deceit on the part of Providence where no deceit was. "I'll
+give you your brother's message first, because it interests me personally
+least. He is gone. There was a sudden move across the Channel last week,
+and he went--I suppose--ten days ago now. The message he hadn't time to
+give you was an appeal to give up 'bus-conducting. He had an absurd idea
+that you walked out with men-conductors in Victoria Park."
+
+"Not at all absurd," said Jay. "Not half so absurd as the idea of driving
+out with a casual fare. I know some delightful conductors and drivers;
+we joke together when the traffic sticks. There is one perfect darling
+called Edward; his only fault is that he drives a mere Steamer. But we
+always bow, and once when a horse fell down and we got hung up for twenty
+minutes in the Strand, he sang me a little song about a star."
+
+Mr. Russell listened to all this very attentively, and then continued:
+"Your brother wants you to go back to your Family. His last words to me
+about it were that if you could manage to be ladylike for three years or
+the duration of War, at the end of that time he and you would go and live
+by your two selves in New Zealand, and if you liked you need wear no
+skirts at all there, but riding breeches all the time."
+
+"Ladylike!" snorted Jay. "What's the use of ladyliquity even for five
+minutes? So Kew sent you as an antidote? I suppose he didn't know you
+were one of my fares?"
+
+"A fare," said Mr. Russell sententiously, "may, I suppose, be a wonderful
+revelation, because you only see your fare's eyes for a second, and the
+things you may see have no limit, and you never know the silly little
+truth about him. Yet even so, there is more than a ticket and a look
+between you and me, and you know it."
+
+"Possibly there is a Secret World between you and me," said Jay. "But
+that's a pretty big thing to divide us."
+
+"Supposing it doesn't divide us?" said Mr. Russell, looking fiercely at
+the road in front of him. "Supposing it showed me how much I love you?"
+
+"How disappointing!" said Jay in the worst of possible taste. (She was
+like that to-day.) "You're ceasing to be an Older and Wiser, and trying
+to become an ordinary Nearah and Dearah."
+
+("Oh, curse," she thought in brackets. "I shall kick myself to-night.")
+
+"That's a horrid thing to say," said Mr. Russell. "But still I do
+love you."
+
+"It sounds very Victorian and nice," said Jay, wondering if he could
+still see her through her veil of bad temper. "But, you know, in spite of
+Secret Worlds, and secret souls, and centuries of secret knowledge, we
+still have to keep up this 1916 farce, and leave something of ourselves
+in sensible London. How do I know you're not married?"
+
+Mr. Russell thought for a very long time indeed, and then said, "I am."
+
+Jay was not very well brought up. She did not stop the car and step
+out with dignity into respectable Hackney. She was just silent for a
+long time.
+
+"As you were," she said to herself, when she found herself able to think
+again. "This is a bad day, but it will be over in something less than a
+hundred years."
+
+"You drive well," she said presently, looking with relief from Mr.
+Russell's face to his hands. Christina the motor car and two 'buses were
+just then indulging in a figure like the opening steps of the Grand
+Chain. "You drive as though driving were poetry and every mile a verse."
+
+"After all," she told herself, "the man loves me, and I must at least
+take an intelligent interest in him."
+
+"Are you a poet?" she added.
+
+Nobody had ever asked Mr. Russell this question before, and not knowing
+the answer to it, he did not answer.
+
+"I have never written a line of poetry," said Jay. "Or rather, I have
+several times written a line, but never another line to fit it. Yet
+because I have a Friend,--I know in what curious and extended order the
+verses come, and how the tunes come first, and the various voices next,
+and the words last, and how a good rhyme warms you like a fire, and how
+the tunes fall away when the thing is finished, and how ready-made it all
+is really, and yet how tired you feel...."
+
+To Mr. Russell it all seemed true, and part of the miracle. He had
+nothing to add, and therefore added nothing.
+
+"Obviously you are a poet," said Jay. "You have a poetic look."
+
+"What look is that?" asked Mr. Russell, much pleased. It was twenty years
+since he had even remembered that he possessed a look of his own.
+
+"A silly sullen look," said Jay. Presently she added: "But it must have
+been disappointing to find yourself a poet in Victorian times. I always
+think of you Olders and Wisers as coming out of your stuffy nineteenth
+century into our nice new age with a sigh of relief."
+
+"Oh no," said Mr. Russell. "You must remember that when we were born
+into it, it became our nice new age, and therefore to us there is no
+age like it."
+
+"It seems incredible," said Jay. "Did Older and Wiser people ever live
+violently, ever work--work hard--until their brains were blind and they
+cried because they were so tired? Did they ever get drowned in seas full
+of foaming ambitions? Did they ever fight without dignity but with joy
+for a cause? Did they ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in
+the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at
+the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"
+
+"We were fools often," said Mr. Russell. "Once, when I was fifteen, I bit
+my hand--and here is the scar--because I thought I had found a new thing
+in life, and I thought I was the first discoverer. But as to jokes, you
+are on very dangerous ground there. One's sense of humour is a more
+tender point than one's heart, especially an Older and Wiser sense of
+humour. You know, we think the jokes of your nice new age not half so
+funny as ours. But as neither you nor I make jokes, that obstacle need
+not come between us."
+
+"Oh, I think difference of date is never in itself an obstacle," said
+Jay. "Time is not important enough to be an obstacle."
+
+"You and I know that," said Mr. Russell.
+
+A little unnoticed knot of Salvationists surprised Jay at a distance by
+singing the tune of a sentimental song popular five years ago, and then
+they surprised her again, as she passed them, and heard the words to
+which the tune was being sung. Brimstone had usurped the place of the
+roses in that song, and the love left in it was not apparently the kind
+of love that Hackney understands.
+
+"Why don't they sing the old hymn tunes?" asked Jay. "Or tunes like
+'Abide with Me'--not very old or very good, but worn down with
+devotion like the steps of an old church? Why do they take the drama
+out of it all?"
+
+Chloris at that moment introduced drama into the drive by jumping out of
+the back seat of Christina. I must, I suppose, admit that Chloris was not
+Really Quite a Lady. On the contrary, motor 'buses were the only motors
+she knew. She mistook the estimable Christina for a deformed motor 'bus,
+and when she smelt Victoria Park, she jumped out. Even for Chloris this
+was an unsuccessful day. A flash of yelping lightning caught the tail of
+Jay's eye, and she looked round to see her dignified dog, upside down,
+skid violently down a steep place into the gutter, and there disappear
+beneath the skirt of a female stranger who was poised upon the kerb.
+Unhurt, but probably blushing furiously beneath her fur over her own
+vulgarity, Chloris was retrieved, and spent the rest of the drive in
+wiping all traces of the accident off her ribs on to the cushions of
+Christina. I am glad that Mr. Russell's Hound was not there to witness
+poor Chloris's unsophisticated confession of caste.
+
+"Where are we going?" asked Jay, when she was calm again.
+
+"God knows where ..." said Mr. Russell.
+
+"I'm always coming across districts of that name," said Jay severely. "I
+often direct my enquiring fares to the region of God Knows Where. It is
+most unsatisfying. Where are we going?"
+
+"On for ever," said Mr. Russell. "Out of the world. To the House
+by the Sea."
+
+"Then will you please set me down at Baker's Arms?" said Jay. "Do you
+know, by the way, that Anonyma always says 'Stay' to a 'bus, if she
+remembers in time not to say 'Hi, stop,' like a common person."
+
+She was talking desperately against failure, but it seemed a doomed day,
+and nothing she could think of seemed worth saying.
+
+"I want to talk to you about your House by the Sea," said Mr. Russell.
+"You know I found it."
+
+"Don't tell me any facts," implored Jay. "Don't tell me you pressed half
+a crown into the palm of the oldest and wisest inhabitant, and found out
+facts about some nasty young man who was born in seventeen something, and
+lived in a place called Atlantic View, and wore curls and a choky stock,
+and fought at Waterloo, and lies in the village church under a stone
+monstrosity. Don't tell me facts, because I know they will bar me for
+ever out of my House by the Sea. Facts are contraband there."
+
+"There is no House by that Sea now," said Mr. Russell. "A slate quarry
+has devoured the headland on which it used to stand. Where the House used
+to be there is air now. I daresay the ghosts you knew still trace out the
+shape of the House in the air."
+
+"The ghosts I know," corrected Jay. "Don't put it in the past."
+
+"It's all in the past," said Mr. Russell. "It's all a dream, and an echo,
+and the ghost of the day before yesterday."
+
+"How do you know?" asked Jay. "How can you tell it's not 1916 that's
+the ghost?"
+
+She had been taught by her Friend to take very few things for granted,
+and time least of all.
+
+"I asked you to tell me no facts," she added.
+
+"I'll only tell you two," persisted Mr. Russell. "One is that they have
+in the church near the quarry a dark wooden figure of a saint, with the
+raised arm broken, and straight draperies. I saw it, and they told me
+what I knew already, that it came out of the hall of a house that was
+drowned in the sea. The other fact is a story that the tobacconist told
+me, about a wriggly ladder, and stone balls, and the Law. In the
+tobacconist's childhood they found the stone balls at the foot of the
+cliff in the sand. That story, too, I knew already. Quite apart from
+your letters, you little secret friend, I knew the face of that sea
+directly I saw it."
+
+"But how did you know? How dared you know?"
+
+"Oh well," said Mr. Russell, "you asked me to tell you no facts."
+
+Mr. Russell was not observant. He was not sufficiently alive to be
+observant. He was much occupied in remembering phantom yesterdays, and I
+do not think he listened very much to what the 'bus-conductor said. He
+only enjoyed the sound of her voice, which he remembered. So he did not
+know that she was unhappy.
+
+They came presently to a separate part of the forest, which is impaled
+upon a straight white road. The earth beneath the trees was caught in a
+mesh of shadows. The trees are high and vaulted there, but the forest is
+very reticent. The detail of its making is so small that you can only
+see it if you lie down on your face. Do this and you can see the green
+threads of the earth's material woven across the skeletons of last year's
+leaves. You can see the little lawns of moss and weeds, too small to
+name, that make the way brilliant for the ants. You can watch the heroic
+armoured beetles defying their world. You can cover with a leaf the great
+open-air public meeting-places of six-legged things. You can see the
+spiders at work on their silver cranes, you can watch the bold elevated
+activities of the caterpillars. You can feel the scattered grasses stroke
+your eyelids, you can hear the low songs of fairies among the roots of
+the trees. All these things you may enjoy if you lie down, but the forest
+does not show them to you. The forest pays you the great compliment of
+ignoring you, and it does not care whether you see its intimate
+possessions or not. I think perhaps no day is really unsuccessful that
+gives you forest earth against your forehead, and forest grass between
+your fingers, and high forest trees to stand between you and the ultimate
+confession of failure.
+
+Jay and Mr. Russell boarded out Christina the motor car for the day at
+an inn, and then they sat and gradually introduced themselves to the
+forest. Showers fell on their hatless heads, and they did not notice. A
+mole rose like a submarine from the waves of the forest earth, and they
+did not notice. The butterflies danced like little tunes in the sunlit
+clearing, and they did not notice. And from a long way off, near the
+swings, holiday shrieks trailed along the wind, and they did not notice.
+
+Jay told Mr. Russell, one by one, small unmattering things that she
+remembered out of her Secret World, and each time when she had told him
+he wondered with regret why he had not remembered it by himself. He had
+never thought it worth while to remember before; his imagination was
+crippled, and needed crutches. He had not thought it worth while to think
+much about the time when he was young, the time when his past had been as
+big and shining as his future. The longer we live, it seems, the less we
+remember, and no men and few women normally possess a secret story after
+thirty. It would not matter so much if you only lost your story, a worse
+fate than loss befalls it--you laugh at it. It is curious how the world
+draws in as one gets older and wiser. The past catches one up, the future
+burns away like a candle. I used to think that growing up was like
+walking from one end of a meadow to the other, I thought that the meadow
+would remain, and one had only to turn one's head to see it all again.
+But now I know that growing up is like going through a door into a little
+room, and the door shuts behind one.
+
+I think Mr. Russell's point of difference from most older and wiser
+people was that he had not forgotten the excitement of writing down
+snatches of his secret story as it came to him, and the passion of
+tearing up the thing that he wrote, and the delight of finding that he
+could not tear it out of his heart. He was a silent person, and a
+rather neglected person, and unbusinesslike, and unsuccessful, and
+uncultured, and unsociable, and unbeautiful. So there was nothing
+worse than emptiness where his secret story used to be. He had not
+found it worth while to fill the space. He had not found it worth
+while to shut the door.
+
+"Do you remember that Christmas," said Jay, "when there was a blizzard,
+and a great sea, and the foam blinded the western windows of the House,
+and the children went out to sing 'Love and joy come to you'? (Those
+aren't real words any more now, are they? only pretty caricatures.) And
+when the children came in with snow and foam plastered up their windward
+sides, do you remember that one of them said, 'Is this what Lot's wife
+felt like?'"
+
+"I can just remember Love and Joy mixed up with the wind at the window,"
+said Mr. Russell. "But always best of all I can remember the way you
+looked on ..."
+
+"Me?" said Jay. "I wasn't there."
+
+"Oh yes you were, and that's what you forget. You were there always, and
+when I was looking for the House I believe it was always you I was
+expecting to find there."
+
+"Me! Me, with this same old face?" gasped Jay. "Oh, excuse me, but you
+lie. You never recognised me in my 'bus."
+
+"I knew without knowing I knew. I remembered without remembering that I
+remembered. We haven't made a psychical discovery, Jay, we have done
+nothing to write a book about. Only you remember so well that you have
+reminded me."
+
+"I don't believe that can be true," said Jay. "I know I wasn't there."
+
+"Why can't you see the truth of it?" asked Mr. Russell, sighing for
+so many words wasted. "In that House by the Sea, who was your
+Secret Friend?"
+
+"My Friend," said Jay, "is young and very full of youth. He is like a
+baby who knows life and yet finds it very amusing, and very new. He is
+without the gift of rest, but then he does not need it, the world in
+which he lives is not so tired and not so muddling as our world. In him
+my only belief and my only colour and my last dregs of romance, and
+certainly my youth survive. We never bother about reserve, and we never
+mind being sentimental in my Secret World. We just live, and we are never
+tortured by the futility of knowledge."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Russell, "I had a Secret Friend in my House, and she was
+wonderful because she was so young that she knew nothing. She never
+asked questions, but she thought questions. She knew nothing, she was
+waiting to grow up. She had little colour, only peace and promise. I knew
+she would grow up, but I also knew she would never grow old. I knew she
+would learn much, but I also knew she would never become complete and ask
+no more questions. That voice of hers would always end on a questioning
+note. You see, I have found my Secret Friend, grown-up, grown old enough
+to enjoy and understand a new and more vital youth."
+
+"Shall I find my Friend?" asked Jay.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Russell in a very low voice. "You can find him if you
+look. You can find him, grown very old and ugly and tired. There are
+different ways of growing up, and your Secret Friend was rash in using up
+too great a share of his sum of life in the House by the Sea."
+
+Then Jay was suddenly enormously happy, and the veil of failure fell away
+from the day and from her life. She held in her hand incredible
+coincidences. The angle of the forest, the upright trees upon the sloping
+earth, the bend of the sky, the round bubble shapes of the clouds upon
+their appointed way, the agreement of the young leaves one with another,
+the unfailing pulse of the spring,--all these things seemed to her a
+chance, an unlikely and perfect consummation, that had been reached only
+by the extraordinary cleverness of God. All love and all success were
+pressed into a hair's-breadth, and yet the target was never missed.
+
+"You shall go down to the House by the Sea," said Jay. "You shall go when
+the moon is next full over the sea that drowned our house. You shall come
+from the east, along the rocky path, as you used to come, between the
+foxgloves; you shall play at being a god, coming between the stars and
+the sea. And I will play at being a goddess, as I used to play at being a
+ghost, and I will run to meet you from the west, and the high grasses and
+the ferns shall whip my knees, and the thistles shall bow to me, and the
+sea shall be very calm and say no word, and there shall be no ship in
+sight. And we will go down the steep path to the shore, and we will stand
+where the sand is wet, and look up to where our drowned House used to
+be. And there shall be no facts any more, only the ghosts, and the
+dreams. Oh, surely it has never happened before--this meeting of Secret
+Friends--and surely no friend ever loved her friend as I love you, and
+surely there never was so little room for sin and disappointment in any
+love as there is in ours. Surely there are no tears in the world any
+more, and no Brown Borough, and no War. I don't care if I go hungry every
+day till we meet, I don't care if I have nothing but hated clothes to
+wear in my Secret World. I don't care if there are six changes on the
+journey to the sea, and at every change I miss my connection. I don't
+care if the end lasts only a minute, because the minute will last for
+ever, there are no facts any more. Because of you the little bothers of
+the world are gone, and the big bothers never did exist, because of you.
+Oh, I can say what I mean at last, and if it's nonsense--I don't care,
+because of you...."
+
+Presently she said, "And now I wonder if I am very proud or very much
+ashamed of having spoken."
+
+"You said once," Mr. Russell reminded her, "that life was just a bead
+upon a string. Well, does it much matter whether one bead is the colour
+of pride or the colour of shame? Does one successful bead more or less
+matter, my dear? I think it's all a succession of explanations, more or
+less lucid, and all different and all confusing. A string of beads more
+or less beautiful, and all unvalued. We don't know that any of the
+explanations are true, we don't know that any of the beads have any
+worth. We only know that they are ours...."
+
+"I don't care if I trample my beads in the mud," said Jay. "Now let's go
+home and think."
+
+When she and Chloris got home that evening to Eighteen Mabel Place,
+Chloris barked at a man who was waiting outside the door. He was a young
+man in khaki, with one star; he looked very white, and was reading
+something from his pocket-book.
+
+"Great Scott, Bill," said Jay. "I thought you were busy sapping in
+France. Were you anywhere near Kew?"
+
+I do not know if you will remember the name of young William Morgan. I
+think I have only mentioned him once or twice.
+
+"I got back on leave two hours ago," said Mr. Morgan. "I have been
+waiting here thirty-two minutes. I saw Kew every day last week, and I was
+with him when he died, three hours before I came away yesterday."
+
+Jay was silent. She opened the door, and in the sitting-room she
+placed--very carefully--two chairs looking at each other across
+the table.
+
+"Jay," said William Morgan, "I am deadly afraid of doing this badly. Kew
+and I talked a good deal before it happened, and there was a good deal he
+wanted me to tell you. All the way back in the train and on the boat I
+have been writing notes to remind me what I had to say to you. I hope you
+don't mind. I hope you don't think it callous."
+
+"No," said Jay.
+
+"He was very anxious you should know the truth about it, because he said
+he had never lied to you. He was always sure that if he were shot it
+would be in the back while he was lacing his boots, or at some other
+unromantic moment. And in that case he said he could lie to Anonyma and
+your cousin vicariously through the War Office, which would write to
+them about Glory, and Duty, and Thanks Due. But he wanted me to write to
+you, and tell you how it happened, and tell you that death was just an
+ordinary old thing, no more romantic than anything else, without a
+capital letter, and that one died as one had lived--in a little ordinary
+way--and that there was no such thing as Glory between people who didn't
+lie to each other. I am telling you all this from my notes. I should
+never have thought of any of it for myself, as you know. I hope you
+don't mind."
+
+"No," said Jay. She heard what he said, yet she was not listening. Her
+mind was listening to things heard a very long time ago. She heard
+herself and Kew in confidential chorus, saying those laboriously simple
+prayers that Anonyma used to teach them. She heard again the swishing
+that their feet used to make in the leaves of Kensington Gardens. Kew's
+was the louder swish by right. She thought of him as an admirable big
+brother of eight, with a round face and blunt feet and very hard hands.
+She heard the comfortable roar of the nursery fire, and the comfortable
+sound of autumn rain baffled by the window; she saw the early winter
+breakfast by lamplight, and the red nursery carpet that had an oblong
+track worn away round the table by the frequent game of "Little Men
+Jumping." She heard the voice of Kew clamouring against the voice of Nana
+because he would not eat his bacon-fat. On those days there was a horrid
+resurrection at luncheon of the bacon-fat uneaten at breakfast.
+
+"As it happened," continued Mr. Morgan, no longer white, but very red,
+"he wasn't killed in an advance, or anything grand. He told me to tell
+you, so I am telling you. He was killed by a sniper while he was setting
+a trap of his own invention to catch the rats as they came over the
+parapet. He was shot in the chest very early yesterday morning, and he
+lived about four hours. He was not in much pain, he even laughed a little
+once or twice to think he should have lived and died so consistently. He
+told me that he had never seen a moment's real romantic fighting; he had
+never once felt patriotic or dramatic or dutiful, he said. He wandered a
+little, I think, because he seemed worried about the rats that might be
+caught in the trap he had set. He seemed to mix up the rats and the
+Boches. He said that these creatures didn't know they were vermin, they
+just thought they were honest average animals doing their bit, and then
+suddenly killed by a malignant chaos. My notes are very hurried. I am
+afraid I am repeating myself."
+
+Jay remembered the mouse they once caught, and kept in a bottle for a
+day, and the palace they made for it out of stones and mud and moss, and
+the sun-bath of patted mud they made by the door of the palace. But the
+mouse, when it was installed, flashed straight out of the front door, and
+jumped the sun-bath, and knocked down a daisy, and was never seen again.
+But Jay and Kew used to believe that on moonlit nights it came back to
+the palace, and brought its wife and children, and was grateful to the
+palace builders.
+
+"A few days before he was killed," said Mr. Morgan, "he told me that he
+had lied so successfully all his life that quite a lot of people thought
+him a most admirable young man. He said Anonyma once brought him into a
+book, and when he read that book he saw how lying paid, as long as one
+didn't lie to absolutely everybody. He said if he died Anonyma would
+write something very nice upon his memorial brass about a pure heart or
+everlasting life, and he thought you would smile a little at that. He
+said that he remembered going home with you in a 'bus and seeing on the
+window of the 'bus a text that promised everlasting life on certain
+conditions. He said the remembrance of that text tired him still. He said
+he had had too much of himself, he had known himself too well, and when
+death came, he wanted it to be an honest little death with no frills, and
+after that an everlasting sleep with no dreams. I am putting it all in
+the wrong order. I shall make you despise me. You talk so well yourself."
+
+Jay was remembering the "Coos" they used to have in the big armchair in
+the nursery. When they found that they suddenly loved each other
+unbearably, they had a Coo, they tied themselves up in a little tangle
+together, and sang Coo in soft voices. And then they felt relieved. Jay
+remembered the last Coo. It happened when Kew's voice was breaking ten
+years ago, and he found that he could no longer coo except in a funny
+falsetto. So, rather than become farcical, the Coos ceased.
+
+"I don't know quite why Kew wanted me to tell you all this," said Mr.
+Morgan, "except that he said you knew so much about him that you might as
+well get as near as possible to knowing everything. He never thought he
+would be killed, in fact I gave him a lot of messages of my own to give
+to my mother in case I went. But at the last, when he knew he was dying,
+he was desperately anxious you should know that he did not die a
+'Stranger's death,' as he said. He thought any hint of drama about his
+death would spoil your friendship. He said you knew more than most people
+about friends, and he thought that in this way you could find for him a
+certain 'secret immortality' which would make the soil of France comfier
+for him to sleep in. And then he said, 'If I'm too poetic--like a
+swan--don't report me too accurately.' He seemed to go to sleep for some
+time after that, and every now and then he laughed very faintly in his
+sleep. I had to leave him for a bit, and when I came back he was still
+asleep. The only thing he said after that was: 'This is awfully
+exciting.' He said that about ten minutes before he died. I hope I'm not
+making it too painful for you, dear little Jay.'"
+
+"No," said Jay. Quite irrelevantly, she had found her Secret Friend. She
+found a little dark wood, burnt and broken by fire, in a grey light, and
+there was a wet ditch that skirted the edge of it. She saw the hopeless
+and regretful sky, there was neither night nor morning in it, there was
+neither sun nor moon. These things she noticed, but more than all she saw
+her Secret Friend, lying crouched upon his side close to the ditch, with
+his arms about his face. She saw the slow leaves fall upon him from the
+ruined trees, she saw the damp air settle in beads upon his clothes. His
+feet were in the undergrowth, and above them the dripping net of the
+spider was flung. She had never seen her Friend quite still before. All
+her life her Secret Friend and her Secret Sea had kept her soul awake
+with movement. But her Friend was dead, and there was no more sea. The
+very fine rain blew across her Secret World, and blotted it out. The very
+distant sound of guns--which was not so much a sound as an indescribable
+vacuum of sound--shattered the walls of her bubble enchantment.
+
+"Oh, darling Jay," said Mr. William Morgan, "I wish I could help you. I
+can't go away and leave you like this. I wish I could help you."
+
+She found she had her forehead on the table, and her hands were knotted
+in her lap. And where once the Gate to the House had been, there was only
+London now. No more would the drum of the sea beat in her heart, there
+was nothing left but the throbbing of distant trams.
+
+"So it's all lies ..." she said quietly. "There really is a thing called
+death after all. People die...."
+
+"Jay, darling, don't," sobbed Mr. Morgan. "For God's sake marry me, and
+I'll comfort you. I won't die--I swear I won't. And after all, it's
+Spring. There's no real death in the Spring. Kew can't have died."
+
+"Oh, what's the use of these eternal seasons?" said Jay. "There is
+a thing called death. And death has no romance and no reason. The
+rats died, and Kew died, and the secret world died, and there is
+nothing left...."
+
+  It was young David, lord of sheep and cattle,
+Pursued his Fate, the April fields among,
+Singing a song of solitary battle,
+A loud mad song, for he was very young.
+
+  Vivid the air--and something more than vivid,--
+Tall clouds were in the sky--and something more,--
+The light horizon of the spring was livid
+With a steel smile that showed the teeth of War.
+
+  It was young David mocked the Philistine.
+It was young David laughed beside the river.
+There came his mother--his and yours and mine--
+With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver.
+
+  You never saw so green-and-gold a fairy.
+You never saw such very April eyes.
+She sang him sorrow's song to make him wary,
+She gave him five smooth stones to make him wise.
+
+  The first stone is love, and that shall fail you.
+The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you.
+The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you.
+The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you.
+The fifth stone shall not fail you.
+
+  For what is love, O lovers of my tribe?
+And what is love, O women of my day?
+Love is a farthing piece, a bloody bribe
+Pressed in the palm of God, and thrown away.
+
+  And what is hate, O fierce and unforgiving?
+And what shall hate achieve, when all is said?
+A silly joke, that cannot reach the living,
+A spitting in the faces of the dead.
+
+  And what is knowledge, O young men who tasted
+The reddest fruit on that forbidden tree?
+Knowledge is but a painful effort wasted,
+A bitter drowning in a bitter sea.
+
+  And what is prayer, O waiters for the answer?
+And what is prayer, O seekers of the cause?
+Prayer is the weary soul of Herod's dancer,
+Dancing before blind kings without applause.
+
+  The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David,
+Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss.
+Its heart is lead, and on its face is graved
+A crooked cross, my son, a crooked cross.
+
+  It has no dignity to lend it value;
+No purity--alas--it bears a stain.
+You shall not give it gratitude, nor shall you
+Recall it all your days except with pain.
+
+  Oh, bless your blindness, glory in your groping!
+Mock at your betters with an upward chin!
+And, when the moment has gone by for hoping,
+Sling your fifth stone, O son of mine, and win.
+
+  Grief do I give you--grief and dreadful laughter.
+Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine.
+Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after.
+The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine.
+
+GO FORTH, GO FORTH, AND SLAY THE PHILISTINE!
+
+There were a few very warm days and nights in the west last spring. It
+was at the time of the full moon.
+
+There were so few clouds in the sky that when the sun went down it found
+no canvas on which to paint its picture. So it went down unpictured into
+a bank of grey heat that hid the horizon of the sea, and no one thought
+it worth watching except a man coming alone along the cliff from the
+northeast. The moon came up and filled the quarry with ghosts, and with
+confused and blinded memories. The sea advanced in armies of great smooth
+waves, but under the moon the wind went down, and the waves went down,
+and there was less and less sound in the air.
+
+One man watched the dwindling waves troop into the cove near the quarry.
+There was only one pair of eyes in the whole world that tried that night
+to trace in the air the shape of a drowned house. There was only one
+shadow by the quarry for the moon to cast upon the thyme. There was no
+voice but the voice of the sea. No passing but the peaceful passing of
+the lambs disturbed the thistles and the foxgloves.
+
+The sea rose like a wall across the night, a wall that shut half of life
+away. The sky fell like a curtain on the land, but there was no piece to
+be played, so the curtain was never raised.
+
+One man waited all the night through, like a child waiting for the
+fairies. The sea grew calmer and calmer, the tide went down, and the cove
+spread out its long sands like fingers into the sea. There was a shadow
+on the sands below the quarry, and it may have been the shadow of a
+house. And perhaps when the tide came up at dawn it devoured old
+footprints upon the shore, the prints of feet that will never come back.
+I think that when the moon fled away into oblivion, it was not only the
+moon that fled, but also a bubble world, full of dead secrets.
+
+How foolish to wait for the culmination of a secret story! How foolish
+of a man to wait all night for the redemption of an old promise, for the
+resurrection of a forgotten romance! There are no secret stories, there
+is no secret world, there are no secret friends. The House by the Sea has
+been drowned, and even its ghosts have forgotten it. After all, there was
+nothing to remember. The gate to the House is barred, not by a lock but
+by a laugh. Reality and not adversity has blown the bubble away.
+
+I remember the moment when Jay found four-fifths of her life proved
+false. I remember that she besieged the world with tears; I remember that
+she bruised her hands against the iron gate. How foolish to bruise one's
+hands against nothingness!
+
+
+
+ANTI-CLIMAX
+
+
+"It is well," sighed Anonyma, "that our little Jay has at last found
+Romance. Since first she came to my arms--a toddling sceptic of four--I
+have seen what she lacked, I have prayed that I--who possessed it--might
+perhaps be inspired to give her the Clue.... Yet to young Bill Morgan it
+was given to show her the way ... to unlock the door.... Oh! Russ, we
+grow older and wiser and are left behind. The young reap where we have
+sown.... Is this always to be the end of our youth?"
+
+Mr. Russell laughed a little. "Yes," he said. "This is the end."
+
+The finest fruit God ever made
+Hangs from the Tree of Heaven blue.
+It hangs above the steel sea blade
+That cuts the world's great globe in two.
+
+The keenest eye that ever saw
+Stares out of Heaven into mine,
+Spins out my heart, and seems to draw
+My soul's elastic very fine.
+
+The greatest beacon ever fired
+Stands up on Heaven's Hill to show
+The limit of the thing desired
+Beyond which man may never go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At midnight, when the night did dance
+Along the hours that led to morning,
+I saw a little boat advance
+Towards the great moon's beacon warning.
+
+(The moon, God's Slave, who lights the torch,
+Lest men should slip between the bars,
+And run aground on Heav'n and scorch
+To death upon a bank of stars.)
+
+The little boat, on leaning keel,
+Sang up the mountains of the sea,
+Bearing a man who hoped to steal
+God's Slave from out eternity.
+
+My love, I see you through my tears.
+No pity in your face I see.
+I have sailed far across the years:
+Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me.
+
+My love, I have an island seen,
+So shadowed, God's most piercing star
+Shall never see where we have been,
+Shall never whisper where we are.
+
+There we will wander, you and I,
+Down guilty and delightful ways,
+While palm-trees plait their fingers high
+Against your God's enormous gaze.
+
+For oh--the joy of two and two,
+Your Paradise shall never see
+The ecstasy of me and you,
+The white delight of you and me.
+
+I know the penalty--the clutch
+Of God's great rocks upon my keel.
+Drowned in the ocean of Too Much--
+So ends your thief--yet let me steal....
+
+The Slave of God she froze her face,
+The Slave of God she paid no heed,
+And thund'ring down high Heaven's space
+Loud angels mocked the sailor's greed.
+
+The diamond sun arose, and tossed
+A billion gems across the sea.
+"The Slave of God is lost, is lost,
+The Slave of God is lost to me...."
+
+He grounded on the common beach,
+He trod the little towns of men,
+And God removed from his reach
+The cup of Heaven's passion then,
+And gave him vulgar love and speech,
+And gave him threescore years and ten.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS IS THE END ***
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