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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Leonora, by Arnold Bennett
+
+
+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: Leonora
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2004  [eBook #13723]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONORA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Michael Wymann-Boni, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LEONORA
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+Author of _The Grand Babylon Hotel_, _The Gates of Wrath_,
+_Anna of the Five Towns_, etc.
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I.    THE HOUSEHOLD AT HILLPORT
+II.   MESHACH AND HANNAH
+III.  THE CALL
+IV.   AN INTIMACY
+V.    THE CHANCE
+VI.   COMIC OPERA
+VII.  THE DEPARTURE
+VIII. THE DANCE
+IX.   A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
+X.    IN THE GARDEN
+XI.   THE REFUSAL
+XII.  IN LONDON
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE HOUSEHOLD AT HILLPORT
+
+
+She was walking, with her customary air of haughty and rapt leisure,
+across the market-place of Bursley, when she observed in front of her,
+at the top of Oldcastle Street, two men conversing and gesticulating
+vehemently, each seated alone in a dog-cart. These persons, who had met
+from opposite directions, were her husband, John Stanway, the
+earthenware manufacturer, and David Dain, the solicitor who practised at
+Hanbridge. Stanway's cob, always quicker to start than to stop, had been
+pulled up with difficulty, drawing his cart just clear of the other one,
+so that the two portly and middle-aged talkers were most uncomfortably
+obliged to twist their necks in order to see one another; the attitude
+did nothing to ease the obvious asperity of the discussion. She thought
+the spectacle undignified and silly; and she marvelled, as all women
+marvel, that men who conduct themselves so magisterially should
+sometimes appear so infantile. She felt glad that it was Thursday
+afternoon, and the shops closed and the streets empty.
+
+Immediately John Stanway caught sight of her he said a few words to the
+lawyer in a somewhat different key, and descended from his vehicle. As
+she came up to them Mr. Dain saluted her with bashful abruptness, and
+her proud face broke as if by the loosing of a spell into a generous and
+captivating smile; Mr. Dain blushed, the vision was too much for his
+composure; he moved his horse forward a yard or two, and then jerked it
+back again, gruffly advising it to stand still. Stanway turned to her
+bluntly, unceremoniously, as to a creature to whom he owed nothing. She
+noticed once more how the whole character of his face was changed under
+annoyance.
+
+'Here, Nora!' he said, speaking with the raw anger of a man with a
+new-born grievance, 'run this home for me. I'm going over to Hanbridge
+with Mr. Dain.'
+
+'Very well,' she agreed with soothing calmness, and taking the reins she
+climbed up to the high driving-seat.
+
+'And I say, Nora--Wo-_back_!' he flamed out passionately to the
+impatient cob, 'where're your manners, you idiot? I say, Nora, I doubt I
+shall be late for tea--half-past six. Tell Milly she must be in. The
+others too.' He gave these instructions in a lower tone, and emphasised
+them by a stormy and ominous frown. Then with an injured 'Now, Dain!' he
+got into the equipage of his legal adviser and departed towards
+Hanbridge, trailing clouds of vexation.
+
+Leonora drove smartly but cautiously down the steep slope of Oldcastle
+Street; she could drive as well as a woman may. A group of clay-soiled
+girls lounging in the archway of a manufactory exchanged rude but
+admiring remarks about her as she passed. The paces of the cob, the
+dazzle of the silver-plated harness, the fine lines of the cart, the
+unbending mien of the driver, made a glittering cynosure for envy. All
+around was grime, squalor, servitude, ugliness; the inglorious travail
+of two hundred thousand people, above ground and below it, filled the
+day and the night. But here, as it were suddenly, out of that earthy and
+laborious bed, rose the blossom of luxury, grace, and leisure, the final
+elegance of the industrial district of the Five Towns. The contrast
+between Leonora and the rough creatures in the archway, between the
+flower and the phosphates which nourished it, was sharp and decisive:
+and Leonora, in the September sunshine, was well aware of the contrast.
+She felt that the loud-voiced girls were at one extremity of the scale
+and she at the other; and this arrangement seemed natural, necessary,
+inevitable.
+
+She was a beautiful woman. She had a slim perfect figure; quite simply
+she carried her head so high and her shoulders so square that her back
+seemed to be hollowed out, and no tightness on the part of a bodice
+could hide this charming concavity. Her face was handsome with its large
+regular features; one noticed the abundant black hair under the hat, the
+thick eyebrows, the brown and opaque skin, the teeth impeccably white,
+and the firm, unyielding mouth and chin. Underneath the chin, half
+muffling it, came a white muslin bow, soft, frail, feminate, an
+enchanting disclaimer of that facial sternness and the masculinity of
+that tailor-made dress, a signal at once provocative and wistful of the
+woman. She had brains; they appeared in her keen dark eyes. Her judgment
+was experienced and mature. She knew her world and its men and women.
+She was not too soon shocked, not too severe in her verdicts, not the
+victim of too many illusions. And yet, though everything about her
+witnessed to a serene temperament and the continual appeasing of mild
+desires, she dreamed sadly, like the girls in the archway, of an
+existence more distinguished than her own; an existence brilliant and
+tender, where dalliance and high endeavour, virtue and the flavour of
+sin, eternal appetite and eternal satisfaction, were incredibly united.
+Even now, on her fortieth birthday, she still believed in the
+possibility of a conscious state of positive and continued happiness,
+and regretted that she should have missed it.
+
+The imminence and the arrival of this dire birthday, this day of wrath
+on which the proudest woman will kneel to implacable destiny and beg a
+reprieve, had induced the reveries natural to it--the self-searching,
+the exchange of old fallacies for new, the dismayed glance forward, the
+lingering look behind. Absorbed though she was in the control of the
+sensitive steed, the field of her mind's eye seemed to be entirely
+filled by an image of the woman of forty as imagined by herself at the
+age of twenty. And she was that woman now! But she did not feel like
+forty; at thirty she had not felt thirty; she could only accept the
+almanac and the rules of arithmetic. The interminable years of her
+marriage rolled back, and she was eighteen again, ingenuous and
+trustful, convinced that her versatile husband was unique among his
+sex. The fading of a short-lived and factitious passion, the descent of
+the unique male to the ordinary level of males, the births of her three
+girls and their rearing and training: all these things seemed as trifles
+to her, mere excrescences and depressions in the vast tableland of her
+monotonous and placid career. She had had no career. Her strength of
+will, of courage, of love, had never been taxed; only her patience. 'And
+my life is over!' she told herself, insisting that her life was over
+without being able to believe it.
+
+As the dog-cart was crossing the railway bridge at Shawport, at the foot
+of the rise to Hillport, Leonora overtook her eldest daughter. She drew
+up. From the height of the dog-cart she looked at her child; and the
+girlishness of Ethel's form, the self-consciousness of newly-arrived
+womanhood in her innocent and timid eyes, the virgin richness of her
+vitality, made Leonora feel sad, superior, and protective.
+
+'Oh, mother! Where's father?' Ethel exclaimed, staring at her, struck
+with a foolish wonder to see her mother where her father had been an
+hour before.
+
+'What a schoolgirl she is! And at her age I was a mother twice over!'
+thought Leonora; but she said aloud: 'Jump up quickly, my dear. You
+know Prince won't stand.'
+
+Ethel obeyed, awkwardly. As she did so the mother scrutinised the rather
+lanky figure, the long dark skirt, the pale blouse, and the straw hat,
+in a single glance that missed no detail. Leonora was not quite
+dissatisfied; Ethel carried herself tolerably, she resembled her mother;
+she had more distinction than her sisters, but her manner was often
+lackadaisical.
+
+'Your father was very vexed about something,' said Leonora, when she had
+recounted the meeting at the top of Oldcastle Street. 'Where's Milly?'
+
+'I don't know, mother--I think she went out for a walk.' The girl added
+apprehensively: 'Why?'
+
+'Oh, nothing!' said Leonora, pretending not to observe that Ethel had
+blushed. 'If I were you, Ethel, I should let that belt out one hole ...
+not here, my dear child, not here. When you get home. How was Aunt
+Hannah?'
+
+Every day one member or another of John Stanway's family had to pay a
+visit to John's venerable Aunt Hannah, who lived with her brother, the
+equally venerable Uncle Meshach, in a little house near the parish
+church of St. Luke's. This was a social rite the omission of which
+nothing could excuse. On that day it was Ethel who had called.
+
+'Auntie was all right. She was making a lot of parkin, and of course I
+had to taste it, all new, you know. I'm simply stodged.'
+
+'Don't say "stodged."'
+
+'Oh, mother! You won't let us say _anything_,' Ethel dismally protested;
+and Leonora secretly sympathised with the grown woman in revolt.
+
+'Oh! And Aunt Hannah wishes you many happy returns. Uncle Meshach came
+back from the Isle of Man last night. He gave me a note for you. Here it
+is.'
+
+'I can't take it now, my dear. Give it me afterwards.'
+
+'I think Uncle Meshach's a horrid old thing!' said Ethel.
+
+'My dear girl! Why?'
+
+'Oh! I do. I'm glad he's only father's uncle and not ours. I do hate
+that name. Fancy being called Meshach!'
+
+'That isn't uncle's fault, anyhow,' said Leonora.
+
+'You always stick up for him, mother. I believe it's because he flatters
+you, and says you look younger than any of us.' Ethel's tone was half
+roguish, half resentful.
+
+Leonora gave a short unsteady laugh. She knew well that her age was
+plainly written beneath her eyes, at the corners of her mouth, under her
+chin, at the roots of the hair above her ears, and in her cold,
+confident gaze. Youth! She would have forfeited all her experience, her
+knowledge, and the charm of her maturity, to recover the irrecoverable!
+She envied the woman by her side, and envied her because she was
+lightsome, thoughtless, kittenish, simple, unripe. For a brief moment,
+vainly coveting the ineffable charm of Ethel's immaturity, she had a
+sharp perception of the obscure mutual antipathy which separates one
+generation from the next. As the cob rattled into Hillport, that
+aristocratic and plutocratic suburb of the town, that haunt of
+exclusiveness, that retreat of high life and good tone, she thought how
+commonplace, vulgar, and petty was the opulent existence within those
+tree-shaded villas, and that she was doomed to droop and die there,
+while her girls, still unfledged, might, if they had the sense to use
+their wings, fly away.... Yet at the same time it gratified her to
+reflect that she and hers were in the picture, and conformed to the
+standards; she enjoyed the admiration which the sight of herself and
+Ethel and the expensive cob and cart and accoutrements must arouse in
+the punctilious and stupid breast of Hillport.
+
+She was picking flowers for the table from the vivid borders of the
+lawn, when Ethel ran into the garden from the drawing-room. Bran, the
+St. Bernard, was loose and investigating the turf.
+
+'Mother, the letter from Uncle Meshach.'
+
+Leonora took the soiled envelope, and handing over the flowers to Ethel,
+crossed the lawn and sat down on the rustic seat, facing the house. The
+dog followed her, and with his great paw demanded her attention, but she
+abruptly dismissed him. She thought it curiously characteristic of Uncle
+Meshach that he should write her a letter on her fortieth birthday; she
+could imagine the uncouth mixture of wit, rude candour, and wisdom with
+which he would greet her; his was a strange and sinister personality,
+but she knew that he admired her. The note was written in Meshach's
+scraggy and irregular hand, in three lines starting close to the top of
+half a sheet of note paper. It ran: 'Dear Nora, I hear young Twemlow is
+come back from America. You had better see as your John looks out for
+himself.' There was nothing else, no signature.
+
+As she read it, she experienced precisely the physical discomfort which
+those feel who travel for the first time in a descending lift. Fifteen
+quiet years had elapsed since the death of her husband's partner
+William Twemlow, and a quarter of a century since William's wild son,
+Arthur, had run away to America. Yet Uncle Meshach's letter seemed to
+invest these far-off things with a mysterious and disconcerting
+actuality. The misgivings about her husband which long practice and
+continual effort had taught her how to keep at bay, suddenly overleapt
+their artificial barriers and swarmed upon her.
+
+The long garden front of the dignified eighteenth-century house, nearly
+the last villa in Hillport on the road to Oldcastle, was extended before
+her. She had played in that house as a child, and as a woman had
+watched, from its windows, the years go by like a procession. That house
+was her domain. Hers was the supreme intelligence brooding creatively
+over it. Out of walls and floors and ceilings, out of stairs and
+passages, out of furniture and woven stuffs, out of metal and
+earthenware, she had made a home. From the lawn, in the beautiful
+sadness of the autumn evening, any one might have seen and enjoyed the
+sight of its high French windows, its glowing sun-blinds, its
+faintly-tinted and beribboned curtains, its creepers, its glimpses of
+occasional tables, tall vases, and dressing-mirrors. But Leonora, as she
+sat holding the letter in her long white hand, could call up and see
+the interior of every room to the most minute details. She, the
+housemistress, knew her home by heart. She had thought it into
+existence; and there was not a cabinet against a wall, not a rug on a
+floor, not a cushion on a chair, not a knicknack on a mantelpiece, not a
+plate in a rack, but had come there by the design of her brain. Without
+possessing much artistic taste, Leonora had an extraordinary talent for
+domestic equipment, organisation, and management. She was so interested
+in her home, so exacting in her ideals, that she could never reach
+finality; the place went through a constant succession of improvements;
+its comfort and its attractiveness were always on the increase. And the
+result was so striking that her supremacy in the woman's craft could not
+be challenged. All Hillport, including her husband, bowed to it. Mrs.
+Stanway's principles, schemes, methods, even her trifling dodges, were
+mentioned with deep respect by the ladies of Hillport, who often
+expressed their astonishment that, although the wheels of Mrs. Stanway's
+household revolved with perfect smoothness, Mrs. Stanway herself
+appeared never to be doing anything. That astonishment was Leonora's
+pride. As her brain marshalled with ease the thousand diverse details of
+the wonderful domestic machine, she could appreciate, better than any
+other woman in Hillport, without vanity and without humility, the
+singular excellence of her gifts and of the organism they had perfected.
+And now this creation of hers, this complex structure of mellow
+brick-and-mortar, and fine chattels, and nice and luxurious habit,
+seemed to Leonora to tremble at the whisper of an enigmatic message from
+Uncle Meshach. The foreboding caused by the letter mingled with the
+menace of approaching age and with the sadness of the early autumn, and
+confirmed her mood.
+
+Millicent, her youngest, ran impulsively to her in the garden. Millicent
+was eighteen, and the days when she went to school and wore her hair in
+a long plait were still quite fresh in the girl's mind. For this reason
+she was often inordinately and aggressively adult.
+
+'Mamma! I'm going to have my tea first thing. The Burgesses have asked
+me to play tennis. I needn't wait, need I? It gets dark so soon.' As
+Millicent stood there, ardently persuasive, she forgot that adult
+persons do not stand on one leg or put their fingers in their mouths.
+
+Leonora looked fondly at the sprightly girl, vain, self-conscious, and
+blonde and pretty as a doll in her white dress. She recognised all
+Millicent's faults and shortcomings, and yet was overcome by the charm
+of her presence.
+
+'No, Milly, you must wait.' Throned on the rustic seat, inscrutable and
+tyrannous Leonora, a wistful, wayward atom in the universe, laid her
+command upon the other wayward atom; and she thought how strange it was
+that this should be.
+
+'But, Ma----'
+
+'Father specially said you must be in for tea. You know you have far too
+much freedom. What have you been doing all the afternoon?'
+
+'I haven't been doing anything, Ma.'
+
+Leonora feared for the strict veracity of her youngest, but she said
+nothing, and Milly retired full of annoyance against the inconceivable
+caprices of parents.
+
+At twenty minutes to seven John Stanway entered his large and handsome
+dining-room, having been driven home by David Dain, whose residence was
+close by. Three languorous women and the erect and motionless
+parlourmaid behind the door were waiting for him. He went straight to
+his carver's chair, and instantly the women were alert, galvanised into
+vigilant life. Leonora, opposite to her husband, began to pour out the
+tea; the impassive parlourmaid stood consummately ready to hand the
+cups; Ethel and Millicent took their seats along one side of the table,
+with an air of nonchalance which was far from sincere; a chair on the
+other side remained empty.
+
+'Turn the gas on, Bessie,' said John. Daylight had scarcely begun to
+fail; but nevertheless the man's tone announced a grievance, that, with
+half-a-dozen women in the house, he the exhausted breadwinner should
+have been obliged to attend to such a trifle. Bessie sprang to pull the
+chain of the Welsbach tap, and the white and silver of the tea-table
+glittered under the yellow light. Every woman looked furtively at John's
+morose countenance.
+
+Neither dark nor fair, he was a tall man, verging towards obesity, and
+the fulness of his figure did not suit his thin, rather handsome face.
+His age was forty-eight. There was a small bald spot on the crown of his
+head. The clipped brown beard seemed thick and plenteous, but this
+effect was given by the coarseness of the hairs, not by their number;
+the moustache was long and exiguous. His blue eyes were never still, and
+they always avoided any prolonged encounter with other eyes. He was a
+personable specimen of the clever and successful manufacturer. His
+clothes were well cut, the necktie of a discreet smartness. His
+grandfather had begun life as a working potter; nevertheless John
+Stanway spoke easily and correctly in a refined variety of the broad
+Five Towns accent; he could open a door for a lady, and was noted for
+his neatness in compliment.
+
+It was his ambition always to be calm, oracular, weighty; always to be
+sure of himself; but his temperament was incurably nervous, restless,
+and impulsive. He could not be still, he could not wait. Instinct drove
+him to action for the sake of action, instinct made him seek continually
+for notice, prominence, comment. These fundamental appetites had urged
+him into public life--to the Borough Council and the Committee of the
+Wedgwood Institution. He often affected to be buried in cogitation upon
+municipal and private business affairs, when in fact his attention was
+disengaged and watchful. Leonora knew that this was so to-night. The
+idea of his duplicity took possession of her mind. Deeps yawned before
+her, deeps that swallowed up the solid and charming house and the
+comfortable family existence, as she glanced at that face at once
+strange and familiar to her. 'Is it all right?' she kept thinking. 'Is
+John all that he seems? I wonder whether he has ever committed murder.'
+Yes, even this absurd thought, which she knew to be absurd, crossed her
+mind.
+
+'Where's Rose?' he demanded suddenly in the depressing silence of the
+tea-table, as if he had just discovered the absence of his second
+daughter.
+
+'She's been working in her room all day,' said Leonora.
+
+'That's no reason why she should be late for tea.'
+
+At that moment Rose entered. She was very tall and pale, her dress was a
+little dowdy. Like her father and Millicent, she carried her head
+forward and had a tendency to look downwards, and her spine seemed
+flaccid. Ethel was beautiful, or about to be beautiful; Millicent was
+pretty; Rose plain. Rose was deficient in style. She despised style, and
+regarded her sisters as frivolous ninnies and gadabouts. She was the
+serious member of the family, and for two years had been studying for
+the Matriculation of London University.
+
+'Late again!' said her father. 'I shall stop all this exam work.'
+
+Rose said nothing, but looked resentful.
+
+When the hot dishes had been partaken of, Bessie was dismissed, and
+Leonora waited for the bursting of the storm. It was Millicent who drew
+it down.
+
+'I think I shall go down to Burgesses, after all, mamma. It's quite
+light,' she said with audacious pertness.
+
+Her father looked at her.
+
+'What were you doing this afternoon, Milly?'
+
+'I went out for a walk, pa.'
+
+'Who with?'
+
+'No one.'
+
+'Didn't I see you on the canal-side with young Ryley?'
+
+'Yes, father. He was going back to the works after dinner, and he just
+happened to overtake me.'
+
+Milly and Ethel exchanged a swift glance.
+
+'Happened to overtake you! I saw you as I was driving past, over the
+canal bridge. You little thought that I saw you.'
+
+'Well, father, I couldn't help him overtaking me. Besides----'
+
+'Besides!' he took her up. 'You had your hand on his shoulder. How do
+you explain that?'
+
+Millicent was silent.
+
+'I'm ashamed of you, regularly ashamed ... You with your hand on his
+shoulder in full sight of the works! And on your mother's birthday too!'
+
+Leonora involuntarily stirred. For more than twenty years it had been
+his custom to give her a kiss and a ten-pound note before breakfast on
+her birthday, but this year he had so far made no mention whatever of
+the anniversary.
+
+'I'm going to put my foot down,' he continued with grieved majesty. 'I
+don't want to, but you force me to it. I'll have no goings-on with Fred
+Ryley. Understand that. And I'll have no more idling about. You
+girls--at least you two--are bone-idle. Ethel shall begin to go to the
+works next Monday. I want a clerk. And you, Milly, must take up the
+housekeeping. Mother, you'll see to that.'
+
+Leonora reflected that whereas Ethel showed a marked gift for
+housekeeping, Milly was instinctively averse to everything merely
+domestic. But with her acquired fatalism she accepted the ukase.
+
+'You understand,' said John to his pert youngest.
+
+'Yes, papa.'
+
+'No more carrying-on with Fred Ryley--or any one else.'
+
+'No, papa.'
+
+'I've got quite enough to worry me without being bothered by you girls.'
+
+Rose left the table, consciously innocent both of sloth and of light
+behaviour.
+
+'What are you going to do now, Rose?' He could not let her off
+scot-free.
+
+'Read my chemistry, father.'
+
+'You'll do no such thing.'
+
+'I must, if I'm to pass at Christmas,' she said firmly. 'It's my weakest
+subject.'
+
+'Christmas or no Christmas,' he replied, 'I'm not going to let you kill
+yourself. Look at your face! I wonder your mother----'
+
+'Run into the garden for a while, my dear,' said Leonora softly, and the
+girl moved to obey.
+
+'Rose,' he called her back sharply as his exasperation became fidgetty.
+'Don't be in such a hurry. Open the window--an inch.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ethel and Millicent disappeared after the manner of young fox-terriers;
+they did not visibly depart; they were there, one looked away, they were
+gone. In the bedroom which they shared, the door well locked, they threw
+oft all restraints, conventions, pretences, and discussed the world, and
+their own world, with terrible candour. This sacred and untidy
+apartment, where many of the habits of childhood still lingered, was a
+retreat, a sanctuary from the law, and the fastness had been ingeniously
+secured against surprise by the peculiar position of the bedstead in
+front of the doorway.
+
+'Father is a donkey!' said Ethel.
+
+'And ma never says a word!' said Milly.
+
+'I could simply have smacked him when he brought in mother's birthday,'
+Ethel continued, savagely.
+
+'So could I.'
+
+'Fancy him thinking it's you. What a lark!'
+
+'Yes. I don't mind,' said Milly.
+
+'You are a brick, Milly. And I didn't think you were, I didn't really.'
+
+'What a horrid pig you are, Eth!' Milly protested, and Ethel laughed.
+
+'Did you give Fred my note all right?' Ethel demanded.
+
+'Yes,' answered Milly. 'I suppose he's coming up to-night?'
+
+'I asked him to.'
+
+'There'll be a frantic row one day. I'm sure there will,' Milly said
+meditatively, after a pause.
+
+'Oh! there's bound to be!' Ethel assented, and she added: 'Mother does
+trust us. Have a choc?'
+
+Milly said yes, and Ethel drew a box of bonbons from her pocket.
+
+They seemed to contemplate with a fearful joy the probable exposure of
+that life of flirtations and chocolate which ran its secret course side
+by side with the other life of demure propriety acted out for the
+benefit of the older generation. If these innocent and inexperienced
+souls had been accused of leading a double life, they would have denied
+the charge with genuine indignation. Nevertheless, driven by the
+universal longing, and abetted by parental apathy and parental lack of
+imagination, they did lead a double life. They chafed bitterly under the
+code to which they were obliged ostensibly to submit. In their moods of
+revolt, they honestly believed their parents to be dull and obstinate
+creatures who had lost the appetite for romance and ecstasy and were
+determined to mortify this appetite in others. They desired heaps of
+money and the free, informal companionship of very young men. The
+latter--at the cost of some intrigue and subterfuge--they contrived to
+get. But money they could not get. Frequently they said to each other
+with intense earnestness that they would do anything for money; and they
+repeated passionately, 'anything.'
+
+'Just look at that stuck-up thing!' said Milly laughing. They stood
+together at the window, and Milly pointed her finger at Rose, who was
+walking conscientiously to and fro across the garden in the gathering
+dusk.
+
+Ethel rapped on the pane, and the three sisters exchanged friendly
+smiles.
+
+'Rosie will never pass her exam, not if she lives to be a hundred,'
+said Ethel. 'And can you imagine father making me go to the works? Can
+you imagine the sense of it?'
+
+'He won't let you walk up with Fred at nights,' said Milly, 'so you
+needn't think.'
+
+'And your housekeeping!' Ethel exclaimed. 'What a treat father will have
+at meals!'
+
+'Oh! I can easily get round mother,' said Milly with confidence. 'I
+_can't_ housekeep, and ma knows that perfectly well.'
+
+'Well, father will forget all about it in a week or two, that's one
+comfort,' Ethel concluded the matter. 'Are you going down to Burgesses
+to see Harry?' she inquired, observing Milly put on her hat.
+
+'Yes,' said Milly. 'Cissie said she'd come for me if I was late. You'd
+better stay in and be dutiful.'
+
+'I shall offer to play duets with mother. Don't you be long. Let's try
+that chorus for the Operatic before supper.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, after the girls had kissed them and gone to bed, John and
+Leonora remained alone together in the drawing-room. The first fire of
+autumn was burning in the grate, and at the other end of the long room
+dark curtains were drawn across the French window. Shaded candles
+lighted the grand piano, at which Leonora was seated, and a single gas
+jet illuminated the region of the hearth, where John, lounging almost at
+full length in a vast chair, read the newspaper; otherwise the room was
+in shadow. John dropped the 'Signal,' which slid to the hearthrug with a
+rustle, and turned his head so that he could just see the left side of
+his wife's face and her left hand as it moved over the keys of the
+piano. She played with gentle monotony, and her playing seemed
+perfunctory, yet agreeable. John watched the glinting of the four rings
+on her left hand, and the slow undulations of the drooping lace at her
+wrist. He moved twice, and she knew he was about to speak.
+
+'I say, Leonora,' he said in a confidential tone.
+
+'Yes, my dear,' she responded, complying generously with his appeal for
+sympathy. She continued to play for a moment, but even more softly; and
+then, as he kept silence, she revolved on the piano-stool and looked
+into his face.
+
+'What is it?' she asked in a caressing voice, intensifying her
+femininity, forgiving him, excusing him, thinking and making him think
+what a good fellow he was, despite certain superficial faults.
+
+'You knew nothing of this Ryley business, did you?' he murmured.
+
+'Oh, no. Are you sure there's anything in it? I don't think there is for
+an instant.' And she did not. Even the placing of Milly's hand on Fred
+Ryley's shoulder in full sight of the street, even this she regarded
+only as the pretty indiscretion of a child. 'Oh! there's nothing in it,'
+she repeated.
+
+'Well, there's _got_ to be nothing in it. You must keep an eye on 'em. I
+won't have it.'
+
+She leaned forward, and, resting her elbows on her knees, put her chin
+in her long hands. Her bangles disappeared amid lace.
+
+'What's the matter with Fred?' said she. 'He's a relation; and you've
+said before now that he's a good clerk,'
+
+'He's a decent enough clerk. But he's not for our girls.'
+
+'If it's only money----' she began.
+
+'Money!' John cried. 'He'll have money. Oh! he'll have money right
+enough. Look here, Nora, I've not told you before, but I'll tell you
+now. Uncle Meshach's altered his will in favour of young Ryley.'
+
+'Oh! Jack!'
+
+John Stanway stood up, gazing at his wife with an air of martyrised
+virtue which said: 'There! what do you think of that as a specimen of
+the worries which I keep to myself?'
+
+She raised her eyebrows with a gesture of deep concern. And all the time
+she was asking herself: 'Why did Uncle Meshach alter his will? Why did
+he do that? He must have had some reason.' This question troubled her
+far more than the blow to their expectations.
+
+John's maternal grandfather had married twice. By his first wife he had
+had one son, Shadrach; and by his second wife two daughters and a son,
+Mary (John's mother), Hannah, and Meshach. The last two had never
+married. Shadrach had estranged all his family (except old Ebenezer) by
+marrying beneath him, and Mary had earned praise by marrying rather
+well. These two children, by a useful whim of the eccentric old man, had
+received their portions of the patrimony on their respective
+wedding-days. They were both dead. Shadrach, amiable but incompetent,
+had died poor, leaving a daughter, Susan, who had repeated, even more
+reprehensibly, her father's sin of marrying beneath her. She had married
+a working potter, and thus reduced her branch of the family to the
+status from which old Ebenezer had originally raised himself. Fred
+Ryley, now an orphan, was Susan's only child. As an act of charity John
+Stanway had given Fred Ryley a stool in the office of his manufactory;
+but, though Fred's mother was John's first cousin, John never
+acknowledged the fact. John argued that Fred's mother and Fred's
+grandfather had made fools of themselves, and that the consequences were
+irremediable save by Fred's unaided effort. Such vicissitudes of blood,
+and the social contrasts resulting therefrom, are common enough in the
+history of families in democratic communities.
+
+Old Ebenezer's will left the residue of his estate, reckoned at some
+fifteen thousand pounds, to Meshach and Hannah as joint tenants with the
+remainder absolutely to the survivor of them. By this arrangement, which
+suited them excellently since they had always lived together, though
+neither could touch the principal of their joint property during their
+joint lives, the survivor had complete freedom to dispose of everything.
+Both Meshach and Hannah had made a will in sole favour of John.
+
+'Yes,' John said again, 'he's altered it in favour of young Ryley. David
+Dain told me the other day. Uncle told Dain he might tell me.'
+
+'Why has he altered it?' Leonora asked aloud at last.
+
+John shook his head. 'Why does Uncle Meshach do anything?' He spoke
+with sarcastic irritation. 'I suppose he's taken a sudden fancy for
+Susan's child, after ignoring him all these years.'
+
+'And has Aunt Hannah altered her will, too?'
+
+'No. I'm all right in that quarter.'
+
+'Then if your Aunt Hannah lives longest, you'll still come in for
+everything, just as if your Uncle Meshach hadn't altered his will?'
+
+'Yes. But Aunt Hannah won't live for ever. And Uncle Meshach will. And
+where shall I be if she dies first?' He went on in a different tone. 'Of
+course one of 'em's bound to die soon. Uncle's sixty-four if he's a day,
+and the old lady's a year older. And I want money.'
+
+'Do you, Jack, really?' she said. Long ago she had suspected it, though
+John never stinted her. Once more the solid house and their comfortable
+existence seemed to shiver and be engulfed.
+
+'By the way, Nora,' he burst out with sudden bright animation, 'I've
+been so occupied to-day I forgot to wish you many happy returns. And
+here's the usual. I hadn't got it on me this morning.'
+
+He kissed her and gave her a ten-pound note.
+
+'Oh! thanks, Jack!' she said, glancing at the note with a factitious
+curiosity to hide her embarrassment.
+
+'You're good-looking enough yet!' he exclaimed as he gazed at her.
+
+'He wants something out of me. He wants something out of me,' she
+thought as she gave him a smile for his compliment. And this idea that
+he wanted something, that circumstances should have forced him into the
+position of an applicant, distressed her. She grieved for him. She saw
+all his good qualities--his energy, vitality, cleverness, facile
+kindliness, his large masculinity. It seemed to her, as she gazed up at
+him from the music-stool in the shaded solitude or the drawing-room,
+that she was very intimate with him, and very dependent on him; and she
+wished him to be always flamboyant, imposing, and successful.
+
+'If you are at all hard up, Jack----' She made as if to reject the note.
+
+'Oh! get out!' he laughed. 'It's not a tenner that I'm short of. I tell
+you what you _can_ do,' he went on quickly and lightly. 'I was thinking
+of raising a bit temporarily on this house. Five hundred, say. You
+wouldn't mind, would you?'
+
+The house was her own property, inherited from an aunt. John's
+suggestion came as a shock to her. To mortgage her house: this was what
+he wanted!
+
+'Oh yes, certainly, if you like,' she acquiesced quietly. 'But I
+thought--I thought business was so good just now, and----'
+
+'So it is,' he stopped her with a hint of annoyance. 'I'm short of
+capital. Always have been.'
+
+'I see,' she said, not seeing. 'Well, do what you like.'
+
+'Right, my girl. Now--roost!' He extinguished the gas over the
+mantelpiece.
+
+The familiar vulgarity of some of his phrases always vexed her, and
+'roost' was one of these phrases. In a flash he fell from a creature
+engagingly masculine to the use-worn daily sharer of her monotonous
+existence.
+
+'Have you heard about Arthur Twemlow coming over?' she demanded, half
+vindictively, as he was preparing to blow out the last candle on the
+piano. He stopped.
+
+'Who's Arthur Twemlow?'
+
+'Mr. Twemlow's son, of course,' she said. 'From America.'
+
+'Oh! Him! Coming over, did you say? I wonder what he looks like. Who
+told you?'
+
+'Uncle Meshach. And he said I was to say you were to look out for
+yourself when Arthur Twemlow came. I don't know what he meant. One of
+his jokes, I expect.' She tried to laugh.
+
+John looked at her, and then looked away, and immediately blew out the
+last candle. But she had seen him turn pale at what Uncle Meshach had
+said. Or was that pallor merely the effect on his face of raising the
+coloured candle-shade as he extinguished the candle? She could not be
+sure.
+
+'Uncle Meshach ought to be in the lunatic asylum, I think,' John's voice
+came majestically out of the gloom as they groped towards the door.
+
+'We shall have to be polite to Arthur Twemlow, when he comes, if he is
+coming,' said John after they had gone upstairs. 'I understand he's
+quite a reformed character.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Because she fancied she had noticed that the window at the end of the
+corridor was open, she came out of the bedroom a few minutes later, and
+traversed the dark corridor to satisfy herself, and found the window
+wide open. The night was cloudy and warm, and a breeze moved among the
+foliage of the garden. In the mysterious diffused light she could
+distinguish the forms of the poplar trees. Suddenly the bushes
+immediately beneath her were disturbed as though by some animal.
+
+'Good night, Ethel.'
+
+'Good night, Fred.'
+
+She shook with violent agitation as the amazing adieu from the garden
+was answered from the direction of her daughter's window. But the
+secondary effect of those words, so simply and affectionately whispered
+in the darkness, was to bring a tear to her eye. As the mother
+comprehended the whole staggering situation, the woman envied Ethel for
+her youth, her naughty innocence, her romance, her incredibly foolish
+audacity in thus risking the disaster of parental wrath. Leonora heard
+cautious footsteps on the gravel, and the slow closing of a window. 'My
+life is over!' she said to herself. 'And hers beginning. And to think
+that this afternoon I called her a schoolgirl! What romance have I had
+in my life?'
+
+She put her head out of the window. There was no movement now, but above
+her a radiance streaming from Rose's dormer showed that the serious girl
+of the family, defying commands, plodded obstinately at her chemistry.
+As Leonora thought of Rose's ambition, and Ethel's clandestine romance,
+and little Millicent's complicity in that romance, and John's sinister
+secrets, and her own ineffectual repining--as she thought of these five
+antagonistic preoccupied souls and their different affairs, the pathos
+and the complexity of human things surged over her and overwhelmed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MESHACH AND HANNAH
+
+
+The little old bachelor and spinster were resting after dinner in the
+back-parlour of their house near the top of Church Street. In that abode
+they had watched generations pass and manners change, as one list
+hearthrug succeeded another in the back-parlour. Meshach had been born
+in the front bedroom, and he meant to die there; Hannah had also been
+born in the front bedroom, but it was through the window of the back
+bedroom that the housewife's soul would rejoin the infinite. The house,
+which Meshach's grandfather, first of his line to emerge from the grey
+mass of the proletariat, had ruined himself to build, was a six-roomed
+dwelling of honest workmanship in red brick and tile, with a beautiful
+pillared doorway and fanlight in the antique taste. It had cost two
+hundred pounds, and was the monument of a life's ambition. Mortgaged by
+its hard-pressed creator, and then sold by order of the mortgagee, it
+had ultimately been bought again in triumph by Meshach's father, who
+made thirty thousand pounds out of pots without getting too big for it,
+and left it unspoilt to Meshach and Hannah. Only one alteration had ever
+been made in it, and that, completed on Meshach's fiftieth birthday,
+admirably exemplified his temperament. Because he liked to observe the
+traffic in Church Street, and liked equally to sit in the back-parlour
+near the hob, he had, with an oriental grandeur of self-indulgence,
+removed the dividing wall between the front and the back parlours and
+substituted a glass partition: so that he could simultaneously warm the
+fire and keep an eye on the street. The town said that no one but
+Meshach could have hit on such a scheme, or would have carried it out
+with such an object: it crowned his reputation.
+
+John Stanway's maternal uncle was one of those individuals whose
+character, at once strong, egotistic, and peculiar, so forcibly
+impresses the community that by contrast ordinary persons seem to be
+without character; such men are therefore called, distinctively,
+'characters'; and it is a matter of common experience that, whether
+through the unconscious prescience of parents or through that felicitous
+sense of propriety which often guides the hazards of destiny, they
+usually bear names to match their qualities. Meshach Myatt! Meshach
+Myatt! What piquant curious syllables to roll glibly off the tongue, and
+to repeat for the pleasure of repetition! And what a vision of Meshach
+their utterance conjured up! At sixty-four, stereotyped by age, fixed
+and confirmed in singularity, Meshach's figure answered better than ever
+to his name. He was slight of bone and spare in flesh, with a hardly
+perceptible stoop. He had a red, seamed face. Under the small, pale blue
+eyes, genial and yet frigid, there showed a thick, raw, red selvedge of
+skin, and below that the skin was loose and baggy; the wrinkled eyelids,
+instead of being shaped to the pupil, came down flat and perpendicular.
+His nose and chin were witch-like, the nostrils large and elastic; the
+lips, drawn tight together, curved downwards, indifferently captious; a
+short white beard grew sparsely on the chin; the skin of the narrow neck
+was fantastically drawn and creased. His limbs were thin, the knees and
+elbows sharpened to a fine point; the hands very long, with blue, corded
+veins. As a rule his clothes were a distressing combination of black and
+dark blue; either the coat, the waistcoat, or the trousers would be
+black, the rest blue; the trousers had the old-fashioned flap-pockets,
+like a sailor's, with a complex apparatus of buttons. He wore loose
+white cuffs that were continually slipping down the wrist, a starched
+dickey, a collar of too lenient flexure, and a black necktie with a
+'made' bow that was fastened by means of a button and button-hole under
+the chin to the right; twenty times a day Meshach had to secure this
+precarious cravat. Lastly, the top and bottom buttons of his waistcoat
+were invariably loose.
+
+He was of that small and lonely minority of men who never know ambition,
+ardour, zeal, yearning, tears; whose convenient desires are capable of
+immediate satisfaction; of whom it may be said that they purchase a
+second-rate happiness cheap at the price of an incapacity for deep
+feeling. In his seventh decade, Meshach Myatt could look back with calm
+satisfaction at a career of uninterrupted nonchalance and idleness. The
+favourite of a stern father and of fate, he had never done a hard day's
+work in his life. When he and Hannah came into their inheritance, he
+realised everything except the house and invested the proceeds in
+Consols. With a roof, four hundred a year from the British Empire, a
+tame capable sister, and notoriously good health, he took final leave of
+care at the age of thirty-two. He wanted no more than he had. Leisure
+was his chief luxury; he watched life between meals, and had time to
+think about what he saw. Being gifted with a vigorous and original mind
+that by instinct held formulas in defiance, he soon developed a
+philosophy of his own; and his reputation as a 'character' sprang from
+the first diffident, wayward expressions of this philosophy. Perceiving
+that the town not unadmiringly deemed him odd, he cultivated oddity.
+Perceiving also that it was sometimes astonished at the extent of his
+information about hidden affairs, he cultivated mystery, the knowledge
+of other people's business, and the trick of unexpected appearances. At
+forty his fame was assured; at fifty he was an institution; at sixty an
+oracle.
+
+'Meshach's a mixture,' ran the local phrase; but in this mixture there
+was a less tedious posturing and a more massive intellect than usually
+go to the achievement of a provincial renown such as Meshach's. The
+man's externals were deceptive, for he looked like a local curiosity who
+might never have been out of Bursley. Meshach, however, travelled
+sometimes in the British Isles, and thereby kept his ideas from
+congealing. And those who had met him in trains and hotels knew that
+porters, waiters, and drivers did not mistake his shrewdness for that of
+a simpleton determined not to be robbed; that he wanted the right things
+and had the art to get them; in short, that he was an expert in travel.
+Like many old provincial bachelors, while frugal at home he could be
+profuse abroad, exercising the luxurious freedom of the bachelor. In the
+course of years it grew slowly upon his fellow pew-holders at the big
+Sytch Chapel that he was worldly-minded and possibly contemptuous of
+their codes; some, who made a specialty of smelling rats, accused him of
+gaiety.
+
+'You'd happen better get something extra for tea, sister,' said Meshach,
+rousing himself.
+
+'Why, brother?' demanded Hannah.
+
+'Some sausage, happen,' Meshach proceeded.
+
+'Is any one coming?' she asked.
+
+'Or a bit of fish,' said Meshach, gazing meditatively at the fire.
+
+Hannah rose and interrogated his face. 'You ought to have told me
+before, brother. It's past three now, and Saturday afternoon too!' So
+saying, she hurried anxiously into the kitchen and told the servant to
+put her hat on.
+
+'Who is it that's coming, brother?' she inquired later, with timid,
+ravenous curiosity.
+
+'I see you'll have it out of me,' said Meshach, who gave up mysteries as
+a miser parts with gold. 'It's Arthur Twemlow from New York; and let
+that stop your mouth.'
+
+Thus, with the utterance of this name in the prim, archaic, stuffy
+little back-parlour, Meshach raised the curtain on the last act of a
+drama which had slumbered for fifteen years, since the death of William
+Twemlow, and which the principal actors in it had long thought to be
+concluded or suppressed.
+
+The whole matter could be traced back, through a series of situations
+which had developed one out of another, to the character of old Twemlow;
+but the final romantic solution was only rendered possible by the
+peculiarities of Meshach Myatt. William Twemlow had been one of those
+men in whom an unbridled appetite for virtue becomes a vice. He loved
+God with such virulence that he killed his wife, drove his daughter into
+a fatuous marriage, and quarrelled irrevocably with his son. The too
+sensitive wife died for lack of joy; Alice escaped to Australia with a
+parson who never accomplished anything but a large family; and Arthur,
+at the age of seventeen, precociously cursed his father and sought in
+America a land where there were fewer commandments. Then old Twemlow
+told his junior partner, John Stanway, that the ways of Providence were
+past finding out. Stanway sympathised with him, partly from motives of
+diplomacy, and partly from a genuine misunderstanding of the case; for
+Twemlow, mild, earnest, and a generous supporter of charities, was much
+respected in the town, and his lonely predicament excited compassion;
+most people looked upon young Arthur as a godless and heartless
+vagabond.
+
+Alice's husband was a fool, impulsive and vain; and, despite
+introductions, no congregation in Australia could be persuaded to listen
+to his version of the gospel; Alice gave birth to more children than bad
+sermons could keep alive, and soon the old man at Bursley was regularly
+sending remittances to her. Twemlow desired fervently to do his duty,
+and moreover the estrangement from his son increased his satisfaction in
+dealing handsomely with his daughter; the son would doubtless learn from
+the daughter how much he had lost by his impiety. Seven years elapsed
+so, and then the parson gave up his holy calling and became a
+tea-blender in Brisbane. Twemlow was shocked at this defection, which
+seemed to him sacrilegious, and a chance phrase in a letter of Alice's
+requesting capital for the new venture--a too assured demand, an
+insufficient gratitude for past benefits, Alice never quite knew
+what--brought about a second breach in the Twemlow family. The paternal
+purse was closed, and perhaps not too early, for the improvidence of the
+tea-blender and Alice's fecundity were a gulf whose depth no munificence
+could have plumbed. Again John Stanway sympathised with the now
+enfeebled old man. John advised him to retire, and Twemlow decided to
+do so, receiving one-third of the net profits of the partnership
+business during life. In two years he was bedridden and the miserable
+victim of a housekeeper; but, though both Alice and Arthur attempted
+reconciliation, some fine point of conscience obliged him to ignore
+their overtures. John Stanway, his last remaining friend, called often
+and chatted about business, which he lamented was far from being what it
+ought to be. Twemlow's death was hastened by a fire at the works; it
+happened that he could see the flames from his bedroom window; he
+survived the spectacle five days. Before entering into his reward, the
+great pietist wrote letters of forgiveness to Alice and Arthur, and made
+a will, of which John Stanway was sole executor, in favour of Alice. The
+town expressed surprise when it learnt that the estate was sworn at less
+than a thousand pounds, for the dead man's share in the profits of
+Twemlow & Stanway was no secret, and Stanway had been living in
+splendour at Hillport for several years. John, when questioned by
+gossips, referred sadly to Alice's husband and to the depredations of
+housekeepers. In this manner the name and memory of the Twemlows were
+apparently extinguished in Bursley.
+
+But Meshach Myatt had witnessed the fire at the works; he had even
+remained by the canal side all through that illuminated night; and an
+adventure had occurred to him such as occurs only to the Meshach Myatts
+of this world. The fire was threatening the office, and Meshach saw his
+nephew John running to a place of refuge with a drawer snatched out of
+an American desk; the drawer was loaded with papers and books, and as
+John ran a small book fell unheeded to the ground. Meshach cried out to
+John that he had dropped something, but in the excitement and confusion
+of the fire his rather high-pitched voice was not heard. He left the
+book lying where it fell; half-an-hour afterwards he saw it again,
+picked it up, and put it in his pocket. It contained some interesting
+informal private memoranda of the annual profits of the firm. Now
+Meshach did not return the book to its owner. He argued that John
+deserved to suffer for his carelessness in losing it, that John ought to
+have heard his call, and that anyhow John would surely inquire for it
+and might then be allowed to receive it with a few remarks upon the need
+of a calm demeanour at fires; but John never did inquire for it.
+
+When William Twemlow's will was proved a few weeks later, Meshach Myatt
+made no comment whatever. From time to time he heard news of Arthur
+Twemlow: that he had set up in New York as an earthenware and glassware
+factor, that he was doing well, that he was doing extremely well, that
+his buyer had come over to visit the more aristocratic manufactories at
+Knype and Cauldon, that some one from Bursley had met Arthur at the
+Leipzig Easter Fair and reported him stout, taciturn, and Americanised.
+Then, one morning in Lord Street, Liverpool, fifteen years after the
+death of old Twemlow and the misappropriation of the little book,
+Meshach encountered Arthur Twemlow himself; Meshach was returning from
+his autumn holiday in the Isle of Man, and Arthur had just landed from
+the 'Servia.' The two men were mutually impressed by each other's skill
+in nicely conducting an interview which ninety-nine people out of a
+hundred would have botched; for they had last met as boy of seventeen
+and man of forty. They lunched richly at the Adelphi, and gave news for
+news. Arthur's buyer, it seemed, was dead, and after a day or two in
+London Arthur was coming to the Five Towns to buy a little in person.
+Meshach inquired about Alice in Australia, and was told that things were
+in a specially bad way with the tea-blender. He said that you couldn't
+cure a fool, and remarked casually upon the smallness of the amount left
+by old Twemlow. Arthur, unaware that Meshach Myatt was raising up an
+idea which for fifteen years had been buried but never forgotten in his
+mind, answered with nonchalance that the amount certainly was rather
+small. Arthur added that in his dying letter of forgiveness to Alice the
+old man had stated that his income from the works during the last years
+of his life had been less than two hundred per annum. Meshach worked his
+shut thin lips up and down and then began to discuss other matters. But
+as they parted at Lime Street Station the observer of life said to
+Arthur with presaging calm: 'You'll be i' th' Five Towns at the end of
+the week. Come and have a cup o' tea with me and Hannah on Saturday
+afternoon. The old spot, you know it, top of Church Street. I've
+something to show you as 'll interest you.' There was a pause and an
+interchange of glances. 'Right!' said Arthur Twemlow. 'Thank you! I'll
+be there at a quarter after four or thereabouts.' 'It's like as if what
+must be!' Meshach murmured to himself with almost sad resignation, in
+the enigmatic idiom of the Five Towns. But he was highly pleased that
+he, the first of all the townsfolk, should have seen Arthur Twemlow
+after twenty-five years' absence.
+
+When Hannah, in silk, met the most interesting and disconcerting
+American stranger in the lobby, the sound and the smell of Bursley
+sausage frizzling in the kitchen added a warm finish to her confused
+welcome. She remembered him perfectly, 'Eh! Mr. Arthur,' she said, 'I
+remember you that _well_....' And that was all she could say, except:
+'Now take off your overcoat and do make yourself at home, Mr. Arthur.'
+
+'I guess I know _you_,' said Twemlow, touched by the girlish shyness,
+the primeval innocence, and the passionate hospitality of the little
+grey-haired thing.
+
+As he took off his glossy blue overcoat and hung it up he seemed to fill
+the narrow lobby with his large frame and his quiet but penetrating
+attractive American accent. He probably weighed fourteen stone, but the
+elegance of his suit and his boots, the clean-shaven chin, the fineness
+of the lines of the nose, and the alert eyes set back under the temples,
+redeemed him from grossness. He looked under rather than over forty; his
+brown hair was beginning to recede from the forehead, but the heavy
+moustache, which entirely hid his mouth and was austerely trimmed at the
+sides, might have aroused the envy of a colonel of hussars.
+
+'Come in, wut,'[1] cried Meshach impatiently from the hob, 'come in and
+let's be pecking a bit,' and as Arthur and Hannah entered the parlour,
+he added: 'She's gotten sausages for you. She would get 'em, though I
+told her you'd take us as you found us. I told her that. But
+women--well, you know what they are!'
+
+  [1] _Wut_ = wilt.
+
+'Eh, Meshach, Meshach!' the old damsel protested sadly, and escaped into
+the kitchen.
+
+And when Meshach insisted that the guest should serve out the sausages,
+and Hannah, passing his tea, said it was a shame to trouble him, Twemlow
+slipped suddenly back into the old life and ways and ideas. This
+existence, which he thought he had utterly forgotten, returned again and
+triumphed for a time over all the experiences of his manhood; it alone
+seemed real, honest, defensible. Sensations of his long and restless
+career in New York flashed through his mind as he impaled Hannah's
+sausages in the curious parlour--the hysteric industry of his
+girl-typist, the continuous hot-water service in the bedroom of his
+glittering apartment at the Concord House, youthful nights at Coster and
+Bial's music-hall, an insanely extravagant dinner at Sherry's on his
+thirtieth birthday, a difficulty once with an emissary of Pinkerton, the
+incredible plague of flies in summer. And during all those racing years
+of clangour and success in New York, the life of Bursley,
+self-sufficient and self-contained, had preserved its monotonous and
+slow stolidity. Bursley had become a museum to him; he entered it as he
+might have entered the Middle Ages, and was astonished to find that
+beautiful which once he had deemed sordid and commonplace. Some of the
+streets seemed like a monument of the past, a picturesque survival; the
+crate-floats, drawn by swift shaggy ponies and driven by men who
+balanced themselves erect on two thin boards while flying round corners,
+struck him as the quaintest thing in the world.
+
+'And what's going on nowadays in old Bosley, Miss Myatt?' he asked
+expansively, trying to drop his American accent and use the dialect.
+
+'Eh, bless us!' exclaimed Hannah, startled. 'Nothing ever happens here,
+Mr. Arthur.'
+
+He felt that nothing did happen there.
+
+'Same here as elsewhere,' said Meshach. 'People living, and getting
+childer to worry 'em, and dying. Nothing'll cure 'em of it seemingly. Is
+there anything different to that in New York? Or can they do without
+cemeteries?'
+
+Twemlow laughed, and again he had the illusion of having come back to
+reality after a long, hurried dream. 'Nothing seems to have changed
+here,' he remarked idly.
+
+'Nothing changed!' said Meshach. 'Nay, nay! We're up in the world. We've
+got the steam-car. And we've got public baths. We wash oursen nowadays.
+And there's talk of a park, and a pond with a duck on it. We're moving
+with the times, my lad, and so's the rates.'
+
+It gave him pleasure to be called 'my lad' by old Meshach. It was
+piquant to him that the first earthenware factor in New York, the
+Jupiter of a Fourteenth Street office, should be addressed as a
+stripling. 'And where is the park to be?' he suavely inquired.
+
+'Up by the railway station, opposite your father's old works as
+was--it's a row of villas now.'
+
+'Well,' said Twemlow. 'That sounds pretty nice. I believe I'll get you
+to come around with me and show off the sights. Say!' he added suddenly,
+'do you remember being on that works one day when my poor father was on
+to me like half a hundred of bricks, and you said, "The boy's all right,
+Mr. Twemlow"? I've never forgotten that. I've thought of it scores of
+times.'
+
+'Nay!' Meshach answered carelessly, 'I remember nothing o' that.'
+
+Twemlow was dashed by this oblivion. It was his memory of the minute
+incident which more than anything else had encouraged him to respond so
+cordially to Meshach's advances in Liverpool; for he was by no means
+facile in social intercourse. And Meshach had rudely forgotten the
+affecting scene! He felt diminished, and saw in the old bachelor a
+personification of the blunt independent spirit of the Five Towns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Milly's late to-day,' said Hannah to her brother, timorously breaking
+the silence which ensued.
+
+'Milly?' questioned Twemlow.
+
+'Millicent her proper name is,' Hannah said quickly, 'but we call her
+Milly. My nephew's youngest.'
+
+'Yes, of course,' Twemlow commented, when the Myatt family-tree had been
+sketched for him by the united effort of brother and sister, 'I
+recollect now you told me in Liverpool that Mr. Stanway was married. Who
+did he marry?'
+
+Meshach Myatt pushed back his chair and stood up. 'John catched on to
+Knight's daughter, the doctor at Turnhill,' he said, reaching to a
+cigar-cabinet on the sideboard. 'Best thing he ever did in his life.
+John's among the better end of folk now. People said it were a
+come-down for her, but Leonora isn't the sort that comes down. She's got
+blood in her. _That_!' He snapped his fingers. 'She's a good bred 'un.
+Old Knight's father came from up York way. Ah! She's a cut above Twemlow
+& Stanway, is Leonora.'
+
+Twemlow smiled at this persistence of respect for caste.
+
+'Have a weed,' said Meshach, offering him a cigar. 'You'll find it all
+right; it's a J.S. Murias. Yes,' he resumed, 'maybe you don't remember
+old Knight's sister as had that far house up at Hillport? When she died
+she left it to Leonora, and they've lived there this dozen year and
+more.'
+
+'Well, I guess she's got a handsome name to her,' Twemlow remarked
+perfunctorily, rising and leaving Hannah alone at the table.
+
+'And she's the handsomest woman in the Five Towns: that I do know,' said
+Meshach as, in the grand manner of a connoisseur, he lighted his cigar.
+'And her was forty, day afore yesterday,' he added with caustic
+emphasis.
+
+'Meshach!' cried Hannah, 'for shame of yourself!' Then she turned to
+Twemlow smiling and blushing a little. 'Oughtn't he? Eh, but Mrs. John's
+a great favourite of my brother's. And I'm sure her girls are very good
+and attentive. Not a day but one or another of them calls to see me, not
+a day. Eh, if they missed a day I should think the world was coming to
+an end. And I'm expecting Milly to-day. What's made the dear child so
+late----'
+
+'I will say this for John,' asserted Meshach, as though the little
+housewife had not been speaking, 'I will say this for John,' he
+repeated, settling himself by the hob. 'He knew how to pick up a d----d
+fine woman.'
+
+'Meshach!' Hannah expostulated again.
+
+Something in the excellence of Meshach's cigars, in his way of calling a
+woman fine, in the dry, aloof masculinity of his attitude towards
+Hannah, gave Twemlow to reflect that in the fundamental deeps of
+experience New York was perhaps not so far ahead of the old Five Towns
+after all.
+
+There was a fluttering in the lobby, and Millicent ran into the parlour,
+hurriedly, negligently.
+
+'I can't stay a minute, auntie,' the vivacious girl burst out in the
+unmistakable accents of condescending pertness, and then she caught
+sight of the well-dressed, good-looking man in the corner, and her
+bearing changed as though by a conjuring trick. She flushed sensitively,
+stroked her blue serge frock, composed her immature features to the
+mask of the finished lady paying a call, and summoned every faculty to
+aid her in looking her best. 'So this chit is the daughter of our
+admired Leonora,' thought Twemlow.
+
+'I suppose you don't remember old Mr. Twemlow, my dear?' said Hannah
+after she had proudly introduced her niece.
+
+'Oh, auntie! how silly you are! Of course I remember him quite well. I
+really can't stay, auntie.'
+
+'You'll stay and drink this cup of tea with me,' Hannah insisted firmly,
+and Milly was obliged to submit. It was not often that the old lady
+exercised authority; but on that afternoon the famous New York visitor
+was just as much an audience for Hannah as for Hannah's greatniece.
+
+Twemlow could think of nothing to say to this pretty pouting creature
+who had rushed in from a later world and dissipated the atmosphere of
+mediaevalism, and so he addressed himself to Meshach upon the eternal
+subject of the staple trade. The women at the table talked quietly but
+self-consciously, and Twemlow saw Milly forced to taste parkin after
+three refusals. Even while still masticating the viscid unripe parkin,
+Milly rose to depart. She bent down and dutifully grazed with her lips
+the cheek of the parkin-maker. 'Good-bye, auntie; good-bye, uncle.' And
+in an elegant, mincing tone, 'Good afternoon, Mr. Twemlow.'
+
+'I suppose you've just got to be on time at the next place?' he said
+quizzically, smiling at her vivid youth in spite of himself. 'Something
+very important?'
+
+'Oh, very important!' she laughed archly, reddening, and then was gone;
+and Aunt Hannah followed her to the door.
+
+'What th' old folks lose,' murmured Meshach, apparently to the fire, as
+he put his half-consumed cigar into a meerschaum holder, 'goes to the
+profit of young Burgess, as is waiting outside the Bank at top o' th'
+Square.'
+
+'I see,' said Twemlow, and thought primly that in his day such laxities
+were not permitted.
+
+Hannah and the servant cleared the tea-table, and the two men were left
+alone, each silently reducing an J.S. Murias to ashes. Meshach seemed to
+grow smaller in his padded chair by the hob, to become torpid, and to
+lose that keen sense of his own astuteness which alone gave zest to his
+life. Arthur stared out of the window at the confined backyard. The
+autumn dusk thickened.
+
+Suddenly Meshach sprang up and lighted the gas, and as he adjusted the
+height of the flame, he remarked casually: 'So your sister Alice is as
+poorly off as ever?'
+
+Twemlow assented with a nod. 'By the way,' he said, 'you told me on
+Wednesday you had something interesting to show me.'
+
+Meshach made no answer, but picked up the poker and struck several times
+a large pewter platter on the mantelpiece.
+
+'Do you want anything, brother?' said Hannah, hastening into the room.
+
+'Go up into my bedroom, sister, and in the left-hand pigeon-hole in the
+bureau you'll see a little flat tissue-paper parcel. Bring it me. It's
+marked J.S.'
+
+'Yes, brother,' and she departed.
+
+'You said as your father had told your sister as he never got no more
+than two hundred a year from th' partnership after he retired.'
+
+'Yes,' Twemlow replied. 'That's what she wrote me. In fact she sent me
+the old chap's letter to read. So I reckoned it cost him most all he got
+to live.'
+
+'Well,' the old man said, and Hannah returned with the parcel, which he
+carefully unwrapped. 'That'll do, sister.' Hannah disappeared. 'Sithee!'
+He mysteriously drew Arthur's attention to a little green book whose
+cover still showed traces of mud and water.
+
+'And what's this?' Twemlow asked with assumed lightness.
+
+Meshach gave him the history of his adventure at the fire, and then
+laboriously displayed and expounded the contents of the book, peering
+into the yellow pages through the steel-rimmed spectacles which he had
+put on for the purpose.
+
+'And you've kept it all this time?' said Twemlow.
+
+'I've kept it,' answered the old man grimly, and Twemlow felt that that
+was precisely what Meshach Myatt might have been expected to do.
+
+'See,' said Meshach, and their heads were close together,' that's the
+year before your father's death--eight hundred and ninety-two pounds.
+And year afore that--one thousand two hundred and seven pounds. And year
+afore that--bless us! Have I turned o'er two pages at once?' And so he
+continued.
+
+Twemlow's heart began to beat heavily as Meshach's eyes met his. He
+seemed to see his father as a pathetic cheated simpleton, and to hear
+the innumerable children of his sister crying for food; he remembered
+that in the old Bursley days he had always distrusted John Stanway, that
+conceited fussy imposing young man of twenty-two whom his father had
+taken into partnership and utterly believed in. He forgot that he had
+hated his father, and his mind was obsessed by a sentimental and pure
+passion for justice.
+
+'Say! Mr. Myatt,' he exclaimed with sudden gruffness, 'do you suggest
+that John Stanway didn't do my father right?'
+
+'My lad, I'm doing no suggesting.... You can keep the book if you've a
+mind to. I've said nothing to no one, and if I had not met you in
+Liverpool, and you hadn't told me that your sister was poorly off again,
+happen I should ha' been mum to my grave. But that's how things turn
+out.'
+
+'He's your own nephew, you know,' said Twemlow.
+
+'Ay!' said the old man, 'I know that. What by that? Fair's fair.'
+
+Meshach's tone, frigidly jocular, almost frightened the American.
+
+'According to you,' said he, determined to put the thing into words,
+'your nephew robbed my father each year of sums varying from one to
+three hundred pounds--that's what it comes to.'
+
+'Nay, not according to me--according to that book, and what your father
+told your sister Alice,' Meshach corrected.
+
+'But why should he do it? That's what I want to know.'
+
+'Look here,' said Meshach quietly, resuming his chair. 'John's as good a
+man of business as you'd meet in a day's march. But never sin' he
+handled money could he keep off stocks and shares. He speculates, always
+has, always will. And now you know it--and 'tisn't everybody as does,
+either.'
+
+'Then you think----'
+
+'Nay, my lad, I don't,' said Meshach curtly.
+
+'But what ought I to do?'
+
+Meshach cackled in laughter. 'Ask your sister Alice,' he replied, 'it's
+her as is interested, not you. You aren't in the will.'
+
+'But I don't want to ruin John Stanway,' Twemlow protested.
+
+'Ruin John!' Meshach exclaimed, cackling again. 'Not you! We mun have no
+scandals in th' family. But you can go and see him, quiet-like, I
+reckon. Dost think as John'll be stuck fast for six or seven hundred, or
+eight hundred? Not John! And happen a bit of money'll come in handy to
+th' old parson tea-blender, by all accounts.'
+
+'Suppose my father--made some mistake--forgot?'
+
+'Ay!' said Meshach calmly. 'Suppose he did. And suppose he didna'.'
+
+'I believe I'll go and talk to Stanway,' said Twemlow, putting the book
+in his pocket. 'Let me see. The works is down at Shawport?'
+
+'On th' cut,'[2] said Meshach.
+
+  [2] Cut = canal.
+
+'I can say Alice had asked me to look at the accounts. Oh! Perhaps I can
+straighten it out neat----' He spoke cheerfully, then stopped. 'But it's
+fifteen years ago!'
+
+'Fifteen!' said Meshach with gravity.
+
+'I'm d----d if I can make you out!' thought Twemlow as he walked along
+King Street towards the steam-tram for Knype, where he was staying at
+the Five Towns Hotel. Hannah had sped him, with blushings, and rustlings
+of silk, from Meshach's door. 'I'm d----d if I can make you out,
+Meshach.' He said it aloud. And yet, so complex and self-contradictory
+is the mind's action under certain circumstances, he could make out
+Meshach perfectly well; he could discern clearly that Meshach had been
+actuated partly by the love of chicane, partly by a quasi-infantile
+curiosity to see what he should see, and partly by an almost biblical
+sense of justice, a sense blind, callous, cruel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CALL
+
+
+It was the Trust Anniversary at the Sytch Chapel, and two sermons were
+to be delivered by the Reverend Dr. Simon Quain; during fifteen years
+none but he had preached the Trust sermons. Even in the morning, when
+pillars of the church were often disinclined to assume the attitude
+proper to pillars, the fane was almost crowded. For it was impossible to
+ignore the Doctor. He was an expert geologist, a renowned lecturer, the
+friend of men of science and sometimes their foe, a contributor to the
+'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and the author of a book of travel. He did
+not belong to the school of divines who annihilated Huxley by asking
+him, from the pulpit, to tell them, if protoplasm was the origin of all
+life, what was the origin of protoplasm. Dr. Quain was a man of genuine
+attainments, at which the highest criticism could not sneer; and when he
+visited Bursley the facile agnostics of the town, the young and
+experienced who knew more than their elders, were forced to take cover.
+Dr. Quain, whose learning exceeded even theirs--so the elders
+sarcastically ventured to surmise--was not ashamed to believe in the
+inspiration of the Old Testament; he could reconcile the chronology of
+the earth's crust with the first chapter of Genesis; he had a
+satisfactory explanation of the Johannine gospel; and his mere existence
+was an impregnable fortress from which the adherents of the banner of
+belief could not be dislodged. On this Sunday morning he offered a
+simple evangelical discourse, enhanced by those occasional references to
+palaeozoic and post-tertiary periods which were expected from him, and
+which he had enough of the wisdom of the serpent to supply. His grave
+and assured utterances banished all doubts, fears, misgivings,
+apprehensions; and the timid waverers smiled their relief at being
+freed, by the confidence of this illustrious authority, from the
+distasteful exertion of thinking for themselves.
+
+The collection was immense, and, in addition to being immense, it
+provided for the worshippers an agreeable and legitimate excitement of
+curiosity; for the plate usually entrusted to Meshach Myatt was passed
+from pew to pew, and afterwards carried to the communion rails, by a
+complete stranger, a man extremely self-possessed and well-attired,
+with a heavy moustache, a curious dimple in his chin, and melancholy
+eyes, a man obviously of considerable importance somewhere. 'Oh, mamma,'
+whispered Milly to her mother, who was alone with her in the Stanway
+pew, 'do look; that's Mr. Twemlow.' Several men in the congregation knew
+his identity, and one, a commercial traveller, had met him in New York.
+Before the final hymn was given out, half the chapel had pronounced his
+name in surprise. His overt act of assisting in the offertory was
+favourably regarded; it was thought to show a nice social feeling on his
+part; and he did it with such distinction! The older people remembered
+that his father had always been a collector; they were constrained now
+to readjust their ideas concerning the son, and these ideas, rooted in
+the single phrase, _ran away from home_, and set fast by time, were
+difficult of adjustment. The impressiveness of Dr. Quain's sermon was
+impaired by this diversion of interest.
+
+The members of the Stanway family, in order to avoid the crush in the
+aisles and portico, always remained in their pew after service, until
+the chapel had nearly emptied itself; and to-day Leonora chose to sit
+longer than usual. John had been too fatigued to rise for breakfast;
+Rose was struck down by a sick headache; and Ethel had stayed at home
+to nurse Rose, so far as Rose would allow herself to be nursed. Leonora
+felt no desire to hurry back to the somewhat perilous atmosphere of
+Sunday dinner, and moreover she shrank nervously from the possibility of
+having to make the acquaintance of Mr. Twemlow. But when she and Milly
+at length reached the outer vestibule, a concourse of people still
+lingered there, and among them Arthur was just bidding good-bye to the
+Myatts. Hannah, rather shortsighted, did not observe Leonora and Milly;
+Meshach gave them his curt quizzical nod, and the aged twain departed.
+Then Millicent, proud of her acquaintance with the important stranger,
+and burning to be seen in converse with him, left her mother's side and
+became an independent member of society.
+
+'How do you do, Mr. Twemlow?' she chirped.
+
+'Ah!' he replied, recognising her with a bow the sufficiency of which
+intoxicated the young girl. 'Not in such a hurry this morning?'
+
+'Oh! no!' she agreed with smiling effusion, and they both glanced with
+furtive embarrassed swiftness at Leonora. 'Mamma, this is Mr. Twemlow.
+Mr. Twemlow my mother.' The dashing modish air of the child was
+adorable. Having concluded her scene she retired from the centre of the
+stage in a glow.
+
+Arthur Twemlow's manner altered at once as he took Leonora's hand and
+saw the sudden generous miracle which happened in her calm face when she
+smiled. He was impressed by her beautiful maturity, by the elegance born
+of a restrained but powerful instinct transmitted to her through
+generations of ancestors. His respect for Meshach rose higher. And she,
+as she faced the self-possessed admiration in Arthur's eyes, was
+conscious of her finished beauty, even of the piquancy of the angle of
+her hat, and the smooth immaculate whiteness of her gloves; and she was
+proud, too, of Millicent's gracile, restless charm. They walked down the
+steps side by side, Leonora in the middle, watched curiously from above
+and below by little knots of people who still lingered in front of the
+chapel.
+
+'You soon got to work here, Mr. Twemlow,' said Leonora lightly.
+
+He laughed. 'I guess you mean that collecting box. That was Mr. Myatt's
+game. He didn't do me right, you know. He got me into his pew, and then
+put the plate on to me.'
+
+Leonora liked his Americanism of accent and phrase; it seemed romantic
+to her; it seemed to signify the quick alertness, the vivacious and
+surprising turns, of existence in New York, where the unexpected and
+the extraordinary gave a zest to every day.
+
+'Well, you collected perfectly,' she remarked.
+
+'Oh, yes you did, really, Mr. Twemlow,' echoed Millicent.
+
+'Did I?' he said, accepting the tribute with frank satisfaction. 'I used
+to collect once at Talmage's Church in Brooklyn--you've heard Talmage
+over here of course.' He faintly indicated contempt for Talmage. 'And
+after my first collection he sent for me into the church parlour, and he
+said to me: "Mr. Twemlow, next time you collect, put some snap into it;
+don't go shuffling along as if you were dead." So you see this morning,
+although I haven't collected for years, I thought of that and tried to
+put some snap into it.'
+
+Milly laughed obstreperously, Leonora smiled.
+
+At the corner they could see Mrs. Burgess's carriage waiting at the
+vestry door in Mount Street. The geologist, escorted by Harry Burgess,
+got into the carriage, where Mrs. Burgess already sat; Harry followed
+him, and the stately equipage drove off. Dr. Quain had married a cousin
+of Mrs. Burgess's late husband, and he invariably stayed at her house.
+All this had to be explained to Arthur Twemlow, who made a point of
+being curious. By the time they had reached the top of Oldcastle Street,
+Leonora felt an impulse to ask him without ceremony to walk up to
+Hillport and have dinner with them. She knew that she and Milly were
+pleasing him, and this assurance flattered her. But she could not summon
+the enterprise necessary for such an unusual invitation; her lips would
+not utter the words, she could not force them to utter the words.
+
+He hesitated, as if to leave them; and quite automatically, without
+being able to do otherwise, Leonora held her hand to bid good-bye; he
+took it with reluctance. The moment was passing, and she had not even
+asked him where he was staying: she had learnt nothing of the man of
+whom Meshach had warned her husband to beware.
+
+'Good morning,' he said, 'I'm very glad to have met you. Perhaps----'
+
+'Won't you come and see us this afternoon, if you aren't engaged?' she
+suggested quickly. 'My husband will be anxious to meet you, I know.'
+
+He appeared to vacillate.
+
+'Oh, do, Mr. Twemlow!' urged Milly, enchanted.
+
+'It's very good of you,' he said, 'I shall be delighted to call. It's
+quite a considerable time since I saw Mr. Stanway.' He laughed. This was
+his first reference to John.
+
+'I'm so glad you asked him, ma,' said Milly, as they walked down
+Oldcastle Street.
+
+'Your father said we must be polite to Mr. Twemlow,' her mother replied
+coldly.
+
+'He's frightfully rich, I'm sure,' Milly observed.
+
+At dinner Leonora told John that Arthur Twemlow was coming.
+
+'Oh, good!' he said: nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the afternoon the mother and her eldest and youngest, supine and
+exanimate in the drawing-room, were surprised into expectancy by the
+sound of the front-door bell before three o'clock.
+
+'He's here!' exclaimed Milly, who was sitting near Leonora on the long
+Chesterfield. Ethel, her face flushed by the fire, lay like a curving
+wisp of straw in John's vast arm-chair. Leonora was reading; she put
+down the magazine and glanced briefly at Ethel, then at the aspect of
+the room. In silence she wished that Ethel's characteristic attitudes
+could be a little more demure and sophisticated. She wondered how often
+this apparently artless girl had surreptitiously seen Fred Ryley since
+the midnight meeting on Thursday, and she was amazed that a child of
+hers, so kindly disposed, could be so naughty and deceitful. The door
+opened and Ethel sat up with a bound.
+
+'Mr. Burgess,' the parlourmaid announced. The three women sank back,
+disappointed and yet relieved.
+
+Harry Burgess, though barely of age, was one of the acknowledged dandies
+of Hillport. Slim and fair, with a frank, rather simple countenance, he
+supported his stylistic apparel with a natural grace that attracted
+sympathy. Just at present he was achieving a spirited effect by always
+wearing an austere black necktie fastened with a small gold safety-pin;
+he wore this necktie for weeks to a bewildering variety of suits, and
+then plunged into a wild polychromatic debauch of neckties. Upon all the
+niceties of masculine dress, the details of costume proper to a
+particular form of industry or recreation or ceremonial, he was a
+genuine authority. His cricketing flannels--he was a fine cricketer and
+lawn-tennis player of the sinuous oriental sort--were the despair of
+other dandies and the scorn of the sloven; he caused the material,
+before it was made up, to be boiled for many hours by the Burgess
+charwoman under his own superintendence. He had extraordinary aptitudes
+for drawing corks, lacing boots, putting ferrules on walking-sticks,
+opening latched windows from the outside, and rolling cigarettes; he
+could make a cigarette with one hand, and not another man in the Five
+Towns, it was said, could do that. His slender convex silver
+cigarette-case invariably contained the only cigarettes worthy of the
+palate of a connoisseur, as his pipes were invariably the only pipes fit
+for the combustion of truly high-class tobacco. Old women, especially
+charwomen, adored him, and even municipal seigniors admitted that Harry
+was a smart-looking youth. Fatherless, he was the heir to a tolerable
+fortune, the bulk of which, during his mother's life, he could not touch
+save with her consent; but his mother and his sister seemed to exist
+chiefly for his convenience. His fair hair and his facile smile
+vanquished them, and vanquished most other people also; and already,
+when he happened to be crossed, there would appear on his winning face
+the pouting, hard, resentful lines of the man who has learnt to accept
+compliance as a right. He had small intellectual power, and no ambition
+at all. A considerable part of his prospective fortune was invested in
+the admirable shares of the Birmingham, Sheffield and District Bank, and
+it pleased him to sit on a stool in the Bursley branch of this bank,
+since he wanted, _pro tempore_, a dignified avocation without either the
+anxieties of trade or the competitive tests of a profession. He was a
+beautiful bank clerk; but he had once thrown a bundle of cheques into
+the office fire while aiming at a basket on the mantelpiece; the whole
+banking world would have been agitated and disorganised had not another
+clerk snatched the bundle from peril at the expense of his own fingers:
+the incident, still legendary behind the counter of the establishment at
+the top of St. Luke's Square, kept Harry awake to the seriousness of
+life for several weeks.
+
+'Well, Harry,' said Leonora with languid good nature. He paid his homage
+in form to the mistress of the house; raised his eyebrows at Milly, who
+returned the gesture; smiled upon Ethel, who feebly waved a hand as if
+too exhausted to do more; and then sat down on the piano-stool,
+carefully easing the strain on his trousers at the knees and exposing an
+inch of fine wool socks above his American boots. He was a familiar of
+the house, and had had the unconditional _entree_ since he and the
+Stanway girls first went to the High Schools at Oldcastle.
+
+'I hope I haven't disturbed your beauty sleep--any of you,' was his
+opening remark.
+
+'Yes, you have,' said Ethel.
+
+He continued: 'I just came in to seek a little temporary relief from
+the excellent Quain. Quain at breakfast, Quain at chapel, Quain at
+dinner.... I got him to slumber on one side of the hearth and mother on
+the other, and then I slipped away in case they awoke. If they do, I've
+told Cissie to say that I've gone out to take a tract to a sick
+friend--back in five minutes.'
+
+'Oh, Harry, you are silly!' Millicent laughed. Every one, including the
+narrator, was amused by this elaborate fiction of the managing of those
+two impressive persons, Mrs. Burgess and the venerable Christian
+geologist, by a kind, indulgent, bored Harry. Leonora, who had resumed
+her magazine, looked up and smiled the guarded smile of the mother.
+
+'I'm afraid you're getting worse,' she murmured, and his candid
+seductive face told her that while he was on no account not to be
+regarded as a gay dog, and a sad dog, and a worldly dog, yet
+nevertheless he and she thoroughly appreciated and understood each
+other. She did indeed like him, and she found pleasure in his presence;
+he gratified the eye.
+
+'I wish you'd sing something, Milly,' he began again after a pause.
+
+'No,' said Milly, 'I'm not going to sing now.'
+
+'But do. Can't she, Mrs. Stanway?'
+
+'Well, what do you want me to sing?'
+
+'Sing "Love is a plaintive song," out of the second act.'
+
+Harry was the newly appointed secretary of the Bursley Amateur Operatic
+Society, of which both Ethel and Millicent were members. In a few weeks'
+time the Society was to render _Patience_ in the Town Hall for the
+benefit of local charities, and rehearsals were occurring frequently.
+
+'Oh! I'm not Patience,' Milly objected stiffly; she was only Ella.
+'Besides, I mayn't, may I, mamma?'
+
+'Your father might not like it,' said Leonora.
+
+'The dad has taken Bran out for a walk, so it won't trouble him,' Ethel
+interjected sleepily under her breath.
+
+'Well, but look here, Mrs. Stanway,' said Harry conclusively, 'the
+organist at the Wesleyan chapel actually plays the sextet from
+_Patience_ for a voluntary. What about that? If there's no harm in
+that----' Leonora surrendered. 'Come on, Mill,' he commanded. 'I shall
+have to return to my muttons directly,' and he opened the piano.
+
+'But I tell you I'm not Patience.'
+
+'Come _on_! You know the music all right. Then we'll try Ella's bit in
+the first act. I'll play.'
+
+Millicent arose, shook her hair, and walked to the piano with the mien
+of a prima donna who has the capitals of Europe at her feet, exultant in
+her youth, her charm, her voice, revelling unconsciously in the vivacity
+of her blood, and consciously in her power over Harry, which Harry
+strove in vain to conceal under an assumed equanimity.
+
+And as Millicent sang the ballad Leonora was beguiled, by her singing,
+into a mood of vague but overpowering melancholy. It seemed tragic that
+that fresh and pure voice, that innocent vanity, and that untested
+self-confidence should change and fade as maturity succeeded adolescence
+and decay succeeded maturity; it seemed intolerable that the ineffable
+charm of the girl's youth must be slowly filched away by the thefts of
+time. 'I was like that once! And Jack too!' she thought, as she gazed
+absently at the pair in front of the piano. And it appeared incredible
+to her that she was the mother of that tall womanly creature, that the
+little morsel of a child which she had borne one night had become a
+daughter of Eve, with a magic to mesmerise errant glances and desires.
+She had a glimpse of the significance of Nature's eternal iterance. Then
+her mood developed a bitterness against Millicent. She thought cruelly
+that Millicent's magic was no part of the girl's soul, no talent
+acquired by loving exertion, but something extrinsic, unavoidable, and
+unmeritorious. Why was it so? Why should fate treat Milly like a
+godchild? Why should she have prettiness, and adorableness, and the
+lyric gift, and such abounding confident youth? Why should circumstances
+fall out so that she could meet her unacknowledged lover openly at all
+seasons? Leonora's eyes wandered to the figure of Ethel reclining with
+shut eyes in the arm-chair. Ethel in her graver and more diffident
+beauty had already begun to taste the sadness of the world. Ethel might
+not stand victoriously by her lover in the midst of the drawing-room,
+nor joyously flip his ear when he struck a wrong note on the piano.
+Ethel, far more passionate than the active Milly, could only dream of
+her lover, and see him by stealth. Leonora grieved for Ethel, and envied
+her too, for her dreams, and for her solitude assuaged by clandestine
+trysts. Those trysts lay heavy on Leonora's mind; although she had
+discovered them, she had done nothing to prevent them; from day to day
+she had put off the definite parental act of censure and interdiction.
+She was appalled by the serene duplicity of her girls. Yet what could
+she say? Words were so trivial, so conventional. And though she
+objected to the match, wishing with ardour that Ethel might marry far
+more brilliantly, she believed as fully in the honest warm kindliness of
+Fred Ryley as in that of Ethel. 'And what else matters after all?' she
+tried to think.... Her reverie shifted to Rose, unfortunate Rose, victim
+of peculiar ambitions, of a weak digestion, and of a harsh temperament
+that repelled the sympathy it craved but was too proud to invite. She
+felt that she ought to go upstairs and talk to the prostrate Rose in the
+curt matter-of-fact tone that Rose ostensibly preferred, but she did not
+wish to talk to Rose. 'Ah well!' she reflected finally with an inward
+sigh, as though to whisper the last word and free herself of this
+preoccupation, 'they will all be as old as me one day.'
+
+'Mr. Twemlow,' said the parlourmaid.
+
+Milly deliberately lengthened a high full note and then stopped and
+turned towards the door.
+
+'Bravo!' Arthur Twemlow answered at once the challenge of her whole
+figure; but he seemed to ignore the fact that he had caused an
+interruption, and there was something in his voice that piqued the
+cantatrice, something that sent her back to the days of short frocks.
+She glanced nervously aside at Harry, who had struck a few notes and
+then dropped his hands from the keyboard. Twemlow's demeanour towards
+the blushing Ethel when Leonora brought her forward was much more
+decorous and simple. As for Harry, to whom his arrival was a surprise,
+at first rather annoying, Twemlow treated the young buck as one man of
+the world should treat another, and Harry's private verdict upon him was
+extremely favourable. Nevertheless Leonora noticed that the three young
+ones seemed now to shrink into themselves, to become passive instead of
+active, and by a common instinct to assume the character of mere
+spectators.
+
+'May I choose this place?' said Twemlow, and sat down by Leonora in the
+other corner of the Chesterfield and looked round. She could see that he
+was admiring the spacious room and herself in her beautiful afternoon
+dress, and the pensive and the sprightly comeliness of her daughters.
+His wandering eyes returned to hers, and their appreciation pleased her
+and increased her charm.
+
+'I am expecting my husband every minute,' she said.
+
+'Papa's gone out for a walk with Bran,' Milly added.
+
+'Oh! Bran!' He repeated the word in a voice that humorously appealed for
+further elucidation, and both Ethel and Harry laughed.
+
+'The St. Bernard, you know,' Milly explained, annoyed.
+
+'I wouldn't be surprised if that was a St. Bernard out there,' he said
+pointing to the French window. 'What a fine fellow! And what a fine
+garden!'
+
+Bran was to be seen nosing low down at the window; and alternately
+lifting two huge white paws in his futile anxiety to enter the room.
+
+'Then I dare say John is in the garden,' Leonora exclaimed, with sudden
+animation, glad to be able to dismiss the faint uneasy suspicion which
+had begun to form in her mind that John meant after all to avoid Arthur
+Twemlow. 'Would you like to look at the garden?' she demanded, half
+rising, and lifting her brows to a pretty invitation.
+
+'Very much indeed,' he replied, and he jumped up with the impulsiveness
+of a boy.
+
+'It's quite warm,' she said, and thanked Harry for opening the window
+for them.
+
+'A fine severe garden!' he remarked enthusiastically outside, after he
+had descanted to Bran on Bran's amazing perfections, and the dog had
+greeted his mistress. 'A fine severe garden!' he repeated.
+
+'Yes,' she said, lifting her skirt to cross the lawn. 'I know what you
+mean. I wouldn't have it altered for anything, but many people think
+it's too formal. My husband does.'
+
+'Why! It's just English. And that old wall! and the yew trees! I tell
+you----'
+
+She expanded once more to his appreciation, which she took to herself;
+for none but she, and the gardener who was also the groom, and worked
+under her, was responsible for the garden. But as she displayed the
+African marigolds and the late roses and the hardy outdoor
+chrysanthemums, and as she patted Bran, who dawdled under her hand, she
+looked furtively about for John. She hoped he might be at the stables,
+and when in their tour of the grounds they reached the stables and he
+was not there, she hoped they would find him in the drawing-room on
+their return. Her suspicion reasserted itself, and it was strengthened,
+against her reason, by the fact that Arthur Twemlow made no comment on
+John's invisibility. In the dusk of the spruce stable, where an
+enamelled name-plate over the manger of a loose box announced that
+'Prince' was its pampered tenant, she opened the cornbin, and, entering
+the loose-box, offered the cob a handful of crushed oats. And when she
+stood by the cob, Twemlow looking through the grill of the door at this
+picture which suggested a beast-tamer in the cage, she was aware of her
+beauty and the beauty of the animal as he curved his neck to her
+jewelled hand, and of the ravishing effect of an elegant woman seen in a
+stable. She smiled proudly and yet sadly at Twemlow, who was pulling his
+heavy moustache. Then they could hear an ungoverned burst of Milly's
+light laughter from the drawing-room, and presently Milly resumed her
+interrupted song. Opposite the outer door of the stable was the window
+of the kitchen, whence issued, like an undertone to the song, the
+subdued rattle of cups and saucers; and the glow of the kitchen fire
+could be distinguished. And over all this complex domestic organism,
+attractive and efficient in its every manifestation, and vigorously
+alive now in the smooth calm of the English Sunday, she was queen; and
+hers was the brain that ruled it while feigning an aloof quiescence. 'He
+is a romantic man; he understands all that,' she felt with the certainty
+of intuition. Aloud she said she must fasten up the dog.
+
+When they returned to the drawing-room there was no sign of John.
+
+'Hasn't your father come in?' she asked Ethel in a low voice; Milly was
+still singing.
+
+'No, mother, I thought he was with you in the garden.' The girl seemed
+to respond to Leonora's inquietude.
+
+Milly finished her song, and Twemlow, who had stationed himself behind
+her to look at the music, nodded an austere approval.
+
+'You have an excellent voice,' he remarked, 'and you can use it.' To
+Leonora this judgment seemed weighty and decisive.
+
+'Mr. Twemlow,' said the girl, smiling her satisfaction, 'excuse me
+asking, but are you married?'
+
+'No,' he answered, 'are you?'
+
+'_Mr._ Twemlow!' she giggled, and turning to Ethel, who in anticipation
+blushed once again: 'There! I told you.'
+
+'You girls are very curious,' Leonora said perfunctorily.
+
+Bessy came in and set a Moorish stool before the Chesterfield, on the
+stool an inlaid Sheraton tray with china and a copper kettle droning
+over a lamp, and near it a cakestand in three storeys. And Leonora,
+manoeuvring her bangles, commenced the ritual of refection with Harry as
+acolyte. 'If he doesn't come--well, he doesn't come,' she thought of her
+husband, as she smiled interrogatively at Arthur Twemlow, holding a lump
+of sugar aloft in the tongs.
+
+'The Reverend Simon Quain asked who you were, at dinner to-day,' said
+Harry. During the absence of Leonora and her guest, Harry had evidently
+acquired information concerning Arthur.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Twemlow!' Milly appealed quickly, 'do tell Harry and Ethel what
+Dr. Talmage said to you. I think it's so funny--I can't do the accent.'
+
+'What accent?' he laughed.
+
+She hesitated, caught. 'Yours,' she replied boldly.
+
+'Very amusing!' Harry said judicially, after the episode of the Brooklyn
+collection had been related. 'Talmage must be a caution.... I suppose
+you're staying at the Five Towns Hotel?' he inquired, with an
+implication in his voice that there was no other hotel in the district
+fit for the patronage of a man of the world. Twemlow nodded.
+
+'What! At Knype?' Leonora exclaimed. 'Then where did you dine to-day?'
+
+'I had dinner at the Tiger, and not a bad dinner either,' he said.
+
+'Oh dear!' Harry murmured, indicating an august sympathy for Arthur
+Twemlow in affliction.
+
+'If I had only known--I don't know what I was thinking of not to ask you
+to come here for dinner,' said Leonora. 'I made sure you would be
+engaged somewhere.'
+
+'Fancy you eating all alone at the Tiger, on Sunday too!' remarked
+Milly.
+
+'Tut! tut!' Twemlow protested, with a farcical exactness of
+pronunciation; and Ethel laughed.
+
+'What are you laughing at, my dear?' Leonora asked mildly.
+
+'I don't know, mother--really I don't.' Whereupon they all laughed
+together and a state of absolute intimacy was established.
+
+'I hadn't the least notion of being at Bursley to-day,' Twemlow
+explained. 'But I thought that Knype wasn't much of a place--I always
+did think that, being a native of Bursley. I wouldn't be surprised if
+you've noticed, Mrs. Stanway, how all the five Five Towns kind of sit
+and sniff at each other. Well, I felt dull after breakfast, and when I
+saw the advertisement of Dr. Quain at the old chapel, I came right away.
+And that's all, except that I'm going to sup with a man at Knype
+to-night.'
+
+There were sounds in the hall, and the door of the drawing-room opened;
+but it was only Bessie coming to light the gas.
+
+'Is that your master just come in?' Leonora asked her.
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'At last,' said Leonora, and they waited. With noiseless precision
+Bessie lit the gas, made the fire, drew the curtains, and departed. Then
+they could hear John's heavy footsteps overhead.
+
+Leonora began nervously to talk about Rose, and Twemlow showed a polite
+interest in Rose's private trials; Ethel said that she had just visited
+the patient, who slept. Harry asseverated that to remain a moment longer
+away from his mother's house would mean utter ruin for him, and with
+extraordinary suddenness he made his adieux and went, followed to the
+front door by Millicent. The conversation in the room dwindled to
+disconnected remarks, and was kept alive by a series of separate little
+efforts. Footsteps were no longer audible overhead. The clock on the
+mantelpiece struck five, emphasising a silence, and amid growing
+constraint several minutes passed. Leonora wanted to suggest that John,
+having lost the dog, must have been delayed by looking for him, but she
+felt that she could not infuse sufficient conviction into the remark,
+and so said nothing. A thousand fears and misgivings took possession of
+her, and, not for the first time, she seemed to discern in the gloom of
+the future some great catastrophe which would swallow up all that was
+precious to her.
+
+At length John came in, hurried, fidgetty, nervous, and Ethel slipped
+out of the room.
+
+'Ah! Twemlow!' he broke forth, 'how d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see
+you. Hadn't given me up, had you? How d'ye do?'
+
+'Not quite,' said Twemlow gravely as they shook hands.
+
+Leonora took the water-jug from the tray and went to a chrysanthemum in
+the farthest corner of the room, where she remained listening, and
+pretending to be busy with the plant. The men talked freely but vapidly
+with the most careful politeness, and it seemed to her that Twemlow was
+annoyed, while Stanway was determined to offer no explanation of his
+absence from tea. Once, in a pause, John turned to Leonora and said that
+he had been upstairs to see Rose. Leonora was surprised at the change in
+Twemlow's demeanour. It was as though the pair were fighting a duel and
+Twemlow wore a coat of mail. 'And these two have not seen each other for
+twenty-five years!' she thought. 'And they talk like this!' She knew
+then that something lay between them; she could tell from a peculiar
+well-known look in her husband's eyes.
+
+When she summoned decision to approach them where they stood side by
+side on the hearthrug, both tall, big, formal, and preoccupied, Twemlow
+at once said that unfortunately he must go; Stanway made none but the
+merest perfunctory attempt to detain him. He thanked Leonora stiffly for
+her hospitality, and said good-bye with scarcely a smile. But as John
+opened the door for him to pass out, he turned to glance at her, and
+smiled brightly, kindly, bowing a final adieu, to which she responded.
+She who never in her life till then had condescended to such a device
+softly stepped to the unlatched door and listened.
+
+'This one yours?' she heard John say, and then the sound of a hat
+bouncing on the tiled floor.
+
+'My fault entirely,' said Twemlow's voice. 'By the way, I guess I can
+see you at your office one day soon?'
+
+'Yes, certainly,' John answered with false glib lightness. 'What about?
+Some business?'
+
+'Well, yes--business,' drawled Twemlow.
+
+They walked away towards the outer hall, and she heard no more, except
+the indistinct murmur of a sudden brief dialogue between the visitor and
+the two girls, who must have come in from the garden. Then the front
+door banged heavily. He was gone. The vast and arid tedium of her life
+closed in upon her again; she seemed to exist in a colourless void
+peopled only by ominous dim elusive shapes of disaster.
+
+But as involuntarily she clenched her hands the formidable thought
+swept through her brain that Arthur Twemlow was not so calm, nor so
+impassive, nor so set apart, but that her spell over him, if she chose
+to exert it, might be a shield to the devious man her husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AN INTIMACY
+
+
+'Does father really mean it about me going to the works to-morrow?'
+Ethel asked that night.
+
+'I suppose so, my dear,' replied Leonora, and she added: 'You must do
+all you can to help him.'
+
+Ethel's clear gift of interpreting even the most delicate modulations in
+her mother's voice, instantly gave her the first faint sense of alarm.
+
+'Why, mamma! what do you mean?'
+
+'What I say, dear,' Leonora murmured with neutral calm. 'You must do all
+you can to help him. We look on you as a woman now.'
+
+'You don't, you don't!' Ethel thought passionately as she went upstairs.
+'And you never will. Never!'
+
+The profound instinctive sympathy which existed between her mother and
+herself was continually being disturbed by the manifest insincerity of
+that assertion contained in Leonora's last sentence. The girl was in
+arms, without knowing it, against a whole order of things. She could
+scarcely speak to Millicent in the bedroom. She was disgusted with her
+father, and she was disgusted with Leonora for pretending that her
+father was sagacious and benevolent, for not admitting that he was
+merely a trial to be endured. She was disgusted with Fred Ryley because
+he was not as other young men were--Harry Burgess for instance. The
+startling hint from Leonora that perhaps all was not well at the works
+exasperated her. She held the works in abhorrence. With her sisters, she
+had always regarded the works as a vague something which John Stanway
+went to and came away from, as the mysterious source of food, raiment,
+warmth. But she was utterly ignorant of its mechanism, and she wished to
+remain ignorant. That its mechanism should be in danger of breaking
+down, that it should even creak, was to her at first less a disaster
+than a matter for resentment. She hated the works as one is sometimes
+capable of unreasonably hating a benefactor.
+
+On Monday morning, rising a little earlier than usual, she was surprised
+to find her mother alone at a disordered breakfast-table.
+
+'Has dad finished his breakfast already?' she inquired, determined to be
+cheerful. Sleep, and her fundamental good-nature, had modified her
+mood, and for the moment she meant to play the role of dutiful daughter
+as well as she could.
+
+'He has had to go off to Manchester by the first train,' said Leonora.
+'He'll be away all day. So you won't begin till to-morrow.' She smiled
+gravely.
+
+'Oh, good!' Ethel exclaimed with intense momentary relief.
+
+But now again in Leonora's voice, and in her eye, there was the soft
+warning, which Ethel seized, and which, without a relevant word spoken,
+she communicated to her sisters. John Stanway's young women began to
+reflect apprehensively upon the sudden irregularities of his recent
+movements, his conferences with his lawyer, his bluffing air; a hundred
+trifles too insignificant for separate notice collected themselves
+together and became formidable. A certain atmosphere of forced and false
+cheerfulness spread through the house.
+
+'Not gone to bed!' said Stanway briskly, when he returned home by the
+late train and discovered his three girls in the drawing-room. They
+allowed him to imagine that his jaunty air deceived them; they were
+jaunty too; but all the while they read his soul and pitied him with the
+intolerable condescension of youth towards age.
+
+The next day Ethel had a further reprieve of several hours, for Stanway
+said that he must go over to Hanbridge in the morning, and would come
+back to Hillport for dinner, and escort Ethel to the works immediately
+afterwards. None asked a question, but everyone knew that he could only
+be going to Hanbridge to consult with David Dain. This time the
+programme was in fact executed. At two o'clock Ethel found herself in
+her father's office.
+
+As she took off her hat and jacket in the hard sinister room, she looked
+like a violet roughly transplanted and bidden to blossom in the mire.
+She knew that amid that environment she could be nothing but incapable,
+dull, stupid, futile, and plain. She knew that she had no brains to
+comprehend and no energy to prevail. Every detail repelled her--the
+absence of fire-irons in the hearth, the business almanacs on the
+discoloured walls, the great flat table-desk, the dusty samples of
+tea-pots in the window, the vast green safe in the corner, the glimpses
+of industrial squalor in the yard, the sound of uncouth voices from the
+clerks' office, the muffled beat of machinery under the floor, and the
+strange uninhabited useless appearance of a small room seen through a
+half-open door near the safe. She would have given a year of life, in
+that first moment, to be helping her mother in some despised monotonous
+household task at Hillport.
+
+She felt that she was being outrageously deprived of a natural right,
+hitherto enjoyed without let, to have the golden fruits of labour
+brought to her in discreet silence as to their origin.
+
+Stanway struck a bell with determination, and the manager appeared, a
+tall, thin, sandy-haired man of middle age, who wore a grey tailed-coat
+and a white apron.
+
+'Ha! Mayer! That you?'
+
+'Yes, sir.... Good afternoon, miss.'
+
+'Good afternoon,' Ethel simpered foolishly, and she had it in her to
+have slain both men because she felt such a silly schoolgirl.
+
+'I wanted Ryley. Where is he?'
+
+'He's somewhere on the bank,[3] sir--speaking to the mouldmaker, I
+think.'
+
+  [3] Bank = earthenware manufactory. But here the word is used in a
+      limited sense, meaning the industrial, as distinguished from the
+      bureaucratic, part of the manufactory.
+
+'Well, just bring me in that letter from Paris that came on Saturday,
+will you?' Stanway requested.
+
+'I've several things to speak to you about,' said Mr. Mayer, when he had
+brought the letter.
+
+'Directly,' Stanway answered, waving him away, and then turning to
+Ethel: 'Now, young lady, I want this letter translating.' He placed it
+before her on the table, together with some blank paper.
+
+'Yes, father,' she said humbly.
+
+Three hours a week for seven years she had sat in front of French
+manuals at the school at Oldcastle; but she knew that, even if the
+destiny of nations turned on it, she could not translate that letter of
+ten lines. Nevertheless she was bound to make a pretence of doing so.
+
+'I don't think I can without a dictionary,' she plaintively murmured,
+after a few minutes.
+
+'Oh! Here's a French dictionary,' he replied, producing one from a
+drawer, much to her chagrin; she had hoped that he would not have a
+dictionary.
+
+Then Stanway began to look through a pile of correspondence, and to
+scribble in a large saffron-coloured diary. He went out to Mr. Mayer;
+Mr. Mayer came in to him; they called to each other from room to room.
+The machinery stopped beneath and started again. A horse fell down in
+the yard, and Stanway, watching from the window, exclaimed: 'Tsh! That
+carter!'
+
+Various persons unceremoniously entered and asked questions, all of
+which Stanway answered with equal dryness and certainty. At intervals he
+poked the fire with an old walking-stick, Ethel never glanced up. In a
+dream she handled the dictionary, the letter, the blank paper, and wrote
+unfinished phrases with the thick office pen.
+
+'Done it?' he inquired at last.
+
+'I--I--can't make out the figures,' she stammered. 'Is that a 5 or a 7?'
+She pushed the letter across.
+
+'Oh! That's a French 7,' he replied, and proceeded to make shots at the
+meaning of sentences with a _flair_ far surpassing her own skill, though
+it was notorious that he knew no French whatever. She had a sudden
+perception of his cleverness, his capacity, his force, his mysterious
+hold on all kinds of things which eluded her grasp and dismayed her.
+
+'Let's see what you've done,' he demanded. She sighed in despair,
+hesitating to give up the paper.
+
+'Mr. Twemlow, by appointment,' announced a clerk, and Arthur Twemlow
+walked into the office.
+
+'Hallo, Twemlow!' said Stanway, meeting him gaily. 'I was just expecting
+you. My new confidential clerk. Eh?' He pointed to Ethel, who flushed to
+advantage. 'You've plenty of them over there, haven't you--girl-clerks?'
+
+Twemlow assented, and remarked that he himself employed a 'lady
+secretary.'
+
+'Yes,' Stanway eagerly went on. 'That's what I mean to do. I mean to buy
+a type-writer, and Miss shall learn shorthand and type-writing.'
+
+Ethel was astounded at the glibness of invention which could instantly
+bring forth such an idea. She felt quite sure that until that moment her
+father had had no plan at all in regard to her attendance at the office.
+
+'I'm sure I can't learn,' she said with genuine modesty, and as she
+spoke she became very attractive to Twemlow, who said nothing, but
+smiled at her sympathetically, protectively. She returned the smile. By
+a swift miracle the violet was back again in its native bed.
+
+'You can go in there and finish your work, we shall disturb you,' said
+her father, pointing to the little empty room, and she meekly
+disappeared with the letter, the dictionary, and the piece of paper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Well, how's business, Twemlow? By the way, have a cigar.'
+
+Ethel, at the dusty table in the little room, could just see her
+father's broad back through the door which, in her nervousness, she had
+forgotten to close. She felt that the door ought to have been latched,
+but she could not find courage deliberately to get up and latch it now.
+
+'Thanks,' said Arthur Twemlow. 'Business is going right along.'
+
+She heard the striking of a match, and the pleasant twang of cigar-smoke
+greeted her nostrils. The two men seemed splendidly masculine,
+important, self-sufficient. The triviality of feminine atoms like
+herself, Rose, and Millicent, occurred to her almost as a new fact, and
+she was ashamed of her existence.
+
+'Buying much this trip?' asked Stanway.
+
+'Not much, and not your sort,' said Twemlow. 'The truth is, I'm fixing
+up a branch in London.'
+
+'But, my dear fellow, surely there's no American business done through
+London in English goods?'
+
+'No, perhaps not,' said Twemlow. 'But that don't say there isn't going
+to be. Besides, I've got a notion of coming in for a share of your
+colonial shipping trade. And let me tell you there's a lot of business
+done through London between the United States and the Continent, in
+glass and fancy goods.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I know there is,' Stanway conceded. 'And so you think you're
+going to teach the old country a thing or two?'
+
+'That depends.'
+
+'On what?'
+
+'On whether the old country's made up her mind yet to sit down and
+learn.' He laughed.
+
+Ethel saw by the change of colour in her father's neck that the
+susceptibilities of his patriotism had been assailed.
+
+'What do you mean?' Stanway asked pugnaciously.
+
+'I mean that you are falling behind here,' said Twemlow with cold,
+nonchalant firmness. 'Every one knows that. You're getting left. Look
+how you're being cut out in cheap toilet stuff. In ten years you won't
+be shipping a hundred dollars' worth per annum of cheap toilet to the
+States.'
+
+'But listen, Twemlow,' said Stanway impressively.
+
+Twemlow continued, imperturbable: 'You in the Five Towns stick to
+old-fashioned methods. You can't cut it fine enough.'
+
+'Old-fashioned? Not cut it fine enough?' Stanway exclaimed, rising.
+
+Twemlow laughed with real mirth. 'Yes,' he said.
+
+'Give me one instance--one instance,' cried Stanway.
+
+'Well,' said Twemlow, 'take firing. I hear you still pay your firemen
+by the oven, and your placers by the day, instead of settling all
+oven-work by scorage.'
+
+'Tell me about that--the Trenton system. I'd like to hear about that.
+It's been mentioned once or twice,' said Stanway, resuming his chair.
+
+'Mentioned!'
+
+Ethel perceived vaguely that the forceful man who held her in the hollow
+of his hand had met more than his match. Over that spectacle she
+rejoiced like a small child; but at the same time Arthur Twemlow's
+absolute conviction that the Five Towns was losing ground frightened
+her, made her feel that life was earnest, and stirred faint longings for
+the serious way. It seemed to her that she was weighed down by knowledge
+of the world, whereas gay Millicent, and Rose with her silly
+examinations.... She plunged again into the actuality of the letter from
+Paris....
+
+'I called really to speak to you about my father's estate.'
+
+Ethel was startled into attention by the sudden careful politeness in
+Arthur Twemlow's manner and by a quivering in his voice.
+
+'What of it?' said Stanway. 'I've forgotten all the details. Fifteen
+years since, you know.'
+
+'Yes. But it's on behalf of my sister, and I haven't been over before.
+Besides, it wasn't till she heard I was coming to England that
+she--asked me.'
+
+'Well,' said Stanway. 'Of course I was the sole executor, and it's my
+duty----'
+
+'That's it,' Twemlow broke in. 'That's what makes it a little awkward.
+No one's got the right to go behind you as executor. But the fact is, my
+sister--we--my sister was surprised at the smallness of the estate. We
+want to know what he did with his money, that is, how much he really
+received before he died. Perhaps you won't mind letting me look at the
+annual balance-sheets of the old firm, say for 1875, 6, and 7. You
+see----'
+
+Twemlow stopped as Stanway half-turned to look at the door between the
+two rooms.
+
+'Go on, go on,' said Stanway in his grandiose manner. 'That's all
+right.'
+
+Ethel knew in a flash that her father would have given a great deal to
+have had the door shut, and equally that nothing on earth would have
+induced him to shut it.
+
+'That's all right,' he repeated. 'Go on.'
+
+Twemlow's voice regained steadiness. 'You can perhaps understand my
+sister's feelings.' Then a long pause. 'Naturally, if you don't care to
+show me the balance-sheets----'
+
+'My dear Twemlow,' said John stiffly, 'I shall be delighted to show you
+anything you wish to see.'
+
+'I only want to know----'
+
+'Certainly, certainly. Quite justifiable and proper. I'll have them
+looked up.'
+
+'Any time will do.'
+
+'Well, we're rather busy. Say a week to-day--if you're to be here that
+long.'
+
+'I guess that'll suit me,' said Twemlow.
+
+His tone had a touch of cynical cruel patience.
+
+The intangible and shapeless suspicions which Ethel had caught from
+Leonora took a misty form and substance, only to be immediately
+dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of
+Milly's voice: 'We've called to take Ethel home, papa--oh, mother,
+here's Mr. Twemlow!'
+
+In another moment the office was full of chatter and scent, and Milly
+had run impulsively to Ethel: 'What _has_ father given you to do?'
+
+'Oh dear!' Ethel sighed, with a fatigued gesture of knowing nothing
+whatever.
+
+'It's half-past five,' said Leonora, glancing into the inner room, after
+she had spoken to Mr. Twemlow.
+
+Three hours and a half had Ethel been in thrall! It was like a century
+to her. She could have dropped into her mother's arms.
+
+'What have you come in, Nora?' asked Stanway, 'the trap?'
+
+'No, the four-wheeled dog-cart, dear.'
+
+'Well, Twemlow, drive up and have tea with us. Come along and have a
+Five Towns high-tea.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Twemlow, do!' said Milly, nearly drowning Leonora's murmured
+invitation.
+
+Arthur hesitated.
+
+'Come _along_,' Stanway insisted genially. 'Of course you will.'
+
+'Thank you,' was the rather feeble answer. 'But I shall have to leave
+pretty early.'
+
+'We'll see about that,' said Stanway. 'You can take Mr. Twemlow and the
+girls, Nora, and I'll follow as quick as I can. I must dictate a letter
+or two.'
+
+The three women, Twemlow in the midst, escaped like a pretty cloud out
+of the rude, dingy office, and their bright voices echoed _diminuendo_
+down the stair. Stanway rang his bell fiercely. The dictionary and the
+letter and Ethel's paper lay forgotten on the dusty table of the inner
+room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arthur Twemlow felt that he ought to have been annoyed, but he could do
+no more than keep up a certain reserve of manner. Neither the memory of
+his humiliating clumsy lies about his sister in broaching the matter of
+his father's estate to Stanway, nor his clear perception that Stanway
+was a dishonest and a frightened man, nor his strong theoretical
+objection to Stanway's tactics in so urgently inviting him to tea, could
+overpower the sensation of spiritual comfort and complacency which
+possessed him as he sat between Leonora and Ethel at Leonora's
+splendidly laden table. He fought doggedly against this sensation. He
+tried to assume the attitude of a philosopher observing humanity, of a
+spider watching flies; he tried to be critical, cold, aloof. He listened
+as one set apart, and answered in monosyllables. But despite his own
+volition the monosyllables were accompanied by a smile that destroyed
+the effect of their curtness. The intimate charm of the domesticity
+subdued his logical antipathies. He knew that he was making a good
+impression among these women, that for them there was something romantic
+and exciting about his history and personality. And he liked them all.
+He liked even Rose, so pale, strange, and contentious. In regard to
+Milly, whom he had begun by despising, he silently admitted that a girl
+so vivacious, supple, sparkling, and pretty, had the right to be as
+pertly foolish as she chose. He took a direct fancy to Ethel. And he
+decided once for ever that Leonora was a magnificent creature.
+
+In the play of conversation on domestic trifles, the most ordinary
+phrases seemed to him to be charged with a peculiar fascination. The
+little discussions about Milly's attempts at housekeeping, about the
+austere exertions of Rose, Ethel's first day at the office, Bran's new
+biscuits, the end of the lawn-tennis season, the propriety of hockey for
+girls, were so mysteriously pleasant to his ears that he felt it a sort
+of privilege to have been admitted to them. And yet he clearly perceived
+the shortcomings of each person in this little world of which the
+totality was so delightful. He knew that Ethel was languidly futile,
+Rose cantankerous, Milly inane, Stanway himself crafty and meretricious,
+and Leonora often supine when she should not be. He dwelt specially on
+the more odious aspects of Stanway's character, and swore that, had
+Stanway forty womenfolk instead of four, he, Arthur Twemlow, should
+still do his obvious duty of finishing what he had begun. In chatting
+with his host after tea, he marked his own attitude with much care, and
+though Stanway pretended not to observe it, he knew that Stanway
+observed it well enough.
+
+The three girls disappeared and returned in street attire. Rose was
+going to the science classes at the Wedgwood Institution, Ethel and
+Millicent to the rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic Society. Again, in
+this distribution of the complex family energy, there reappeared the
+suggestion of a mysterious domestic charm.
+
+'Don't be late to-night,' said Stanway severely to Millicent.
+
+'Now, grumbler,' retorted the intrepid child, putting her gloved hand
+suddenly over her father's mouth; Stanway submitted. The picture of the
+two in this delicious momentary contact remained long in Twemlow's mind;
+and he thought that Stanway could not be such a brute after all.
+
+'Play something for us, Nora,' said the august paterfamilias, spreading
+at ease in his chair in the drawing-room, when the girls were gone.
+Leonora removed her bangles and began to play 'The Bees' Wedding.' But
+she had not proceeded far before Milly ran in again.
+
+'A note from Mr. Dain, pa.'
+
+Milly had vanished in an instant, and Leonora continued to play as if
+nothing had happened, but Arthur was conscious of a change in the
+atmosphere as Stanway opened the letter and read it.
+
+'I must just go over the way and speak to a neighbour,' said Stanway
+carelessly when Leonora had struck the final chord. 'You'll excuse me,
+I know. Sha'n't be long.'
+
+'Don't mention it,' Arthur replied with politeness, and then, after
+Stanway had gone, leaving the door open, he turned to Leonora at the
+piano, and said: 'Do play something else.'
+
+Instead of answering, she rose, resumed her jewellery, and took the
+chair which Stanway had left. She smiled invitingly, evasively,
+inscrutably at her guest.
+
+'Tell me about American women,' she said: 'I've always wanted to know.'
+
+He thought her attitude in the great chair the most enchanting thing he
+had ever seen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonora had watched Twemlow's demeanour from the moment when she met him
+in her husband's office. She had guessed, but not certainly, that it was
+still inimical at least to John, and the exact words of Uncle Meshach's
+warning had recurred to her time after time as she met his reluctant,
+cautious eyes. Nevertheless, it was by the sudden uprush of an instinct,
+rather than by a calculated design, that she, in her home and surrounded
+by her daughters, began the process of enmeshing him in the web of
+influences which she spun ceaselessly from the bright threads of her own
+individuality. Her mind had food for sombre preoccupation--the lost
+battle with Milly during the day about Milly's comic-opera housekeeping;
+the tale told by John's nervous, effusive, guilty manner; and especially
+the episode of the letter from Dain and John's disappearance: these
+things were grave enough to the mother and wife. But they receded like
+negligible trifles into the distance as she rose so suddenly and with
+such a radiant impulse from the piano. In the new enterprise of
+consciously arousing the sympathy of a man, she had almost forgotten
+even the desperate motive which had decided her to undertake it should
+she get the chance.
+
+'Tell me about American women,' she said. All her person was a
+challenge. And then: 'Would you mind shutting the door after Jack?' She
+followed him with her gaze as he crossed and recrossed the room.
+
+'What about American women?' he said, dropping all his previous reserve
+like a garment. 'What do you want to know?'
+
+'I've never seen one. I want to know what makes them so charming.'
+
+The fresh desirous interest in her voice flattered him, and he smiled
+his content.
+
+'Oh!' he drawled, leaning back in his chair, which faced hers by the
+fire. 'I never noticed they were so specially charming. Some of them
+are pretty nice, I expect, but most of the young ones put on too much
+lugs, at any rate for an Englishman.'
+
+'But they're always marrying Englishmen. So how do you explain that? I
+did think you'd be able to tell me about the American women.'
+
+'Perhaps I haven't met enough of just the right sort,' he said.
+
+'You're too critical,' she remarked, as though his case was a peculiarly
+interesting one and she was studying it on its merits.
+
+'You only say that because I'm over forty and unmarried, Mrs. Stanway.
+I'm not at all critical.'
+
+'Over forty!' she exclaimed, and left a pause. He nodded. 'But you are
+too critical,' she went on. 'It isn't that women don't interest
+you--they do----'
+
+'I should think they did,' he murmured, gratified.
+
+'But you expect too much from them.'
+
+'Look here!' he said, 'how do you know?'
+
+She smiled with an assumption of the sadness of all knowledge; she made
+him feel like a boy again: 'If you didn't expect too much from them, you
+would have married long ago. It isn't as if you hadn't seen the world.'
+
+'Seen the world!' he repeated. 'I've never seen anything half so
+charming as your home, Mrs. Stanway.'
+
+Both were extremely well satisfied with the course of the conversation.
+Both wished that the interview might last for indefinite hours, for they
+had slipped, as into a socket, into the supreme topic, and into
+intimacy. They were happy and they knew it. The egotism of each tingled
+sensitively with eager joy. They felt that this was 'life,' one of the
+justifications of existence.
+
+She shook her head slowly.
+
+'Yes,' he continued, 'it's you who stay quietly at home that are to be
+envied.'
+
+'And you, a free bachelor, say that! Why, I should have thought----'
+
+'That's just it. You're quite wrong, if you'll let me say so. Here am I,
+a free bachelor, as you call it. Can do what I like. Go where I like.
+And yet I would sell my soul for a home like this. Something ... you
+know. No, you don't. People say that women understand men and what men
+feel, but they can't--they can't.'
+
+'No,' said Leonora seriously, 'I don't think they can--still, I have a
+notion of what you mean.' She spoke with modest sympathy.
+
+'Have you?' he questioned.
+
+She nodded. For a fraction of an instant she thought of her husband,
+stolid with all his impulsiveness, over at David Dain's.
+
+'People say to me, "Why don't you get married?"' Twemlow went on, drawn
+by the subtle invitation of her manner. 'But how can I get married? I
+can't get married by taking thought. They make me tired. I ask them
+sometimes whether they imagine I keep single for the fun of the
+thing.... Do you know that I've never yet been in love--no, not the
+least bit.'
+
+He presented her with this fact as with a jewel, and she so accepted it.
+
+'What a pity!' she said, gently.
+
+'Yes, it's a pity,' he admitted. 'But look here. That's the worst of me.
+When I get talking about myself I'm likely to become a bore.'
+
+Offering him the cigarette cabinet she breathed the old, effective,
+sincere answer: 'Not at all, it's very interesting.'
+
+'Let me see, this house belongs to you, doesn't it?' he said in a
+different casual tone as he lighted a cigarette.
+
+Shortly afterwards he departed. John had not returned from Dain's, but
+Twemlow said that he could not possibly stay, as he had an appointment
+at Hanbridge. He shook hands with restrained ardour. Her last words to
+him were: 'I'm so sorry my husband isn't back,' and even these ordinary
+words struck him as a beautiful phrase. Alone in the drawing-room, she
+sighed happily and examined herself in the large glass over the
+mantelpiece. The shaded lights left her loveliness unimpaired; and yet,
+as she gazed at the mirror, the worm gnawing at the root of her
+happiness was not her husband's precarious situation, nor his
+deviousness, nor even his mere existence, but the one thought: 'Oh! That
+I were young again!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Mother, whatever do you think?' cried Millicent, running in eagerly in
+advance of Ethel at ten o'clock. 'Lucy Turner's sister died to-day, and
+so she can't sing in the opera, and I am to have her part if I can learn
+it in three weeks.'
+
+'What is her part?' Leonora asked, as though waking up.
+
+'Why, mother, you know! Patience, of course! Isn't it splendid?'
+
+'Where are father and Mr. Twemlow? Ethel inquired, falling into a chair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CHANCE
+
+
+Leonora was aware that she had tamed one of the lions which menaced her
+husband's path; she could not conceive that Arthur Twemlow, whatever his
+mysterious power over John, would find himself able to exercise it now;
+Twemlow was a friend of hers, and so disarmed. She wished to say proudly
+to John: 'I neither know nor wish to know the nature of the situation
+between you and Arthur Twemlow. But be at ease. He is no longer
+dangerous. I have arranged it.' The thing was impossible to be said; she
+was bound to leave John in ignorance; she might not even hint.
+Nevertheless, Leonora's satisfaction in this triumph, her pleasure in
+the mere memory of the intimate talk by the fire, her innocent joyous
+desire to see Twemlow again soon, emanated from her in various subtle
+ways, and the household was thereby soothed back into a feeling of
+security about John. Leonora ignored, perhaps deliberately, that
+Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that
+he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain
+continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him
+nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to
+his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a
+strange determined impulse to be happy and gay.
+
+An episode at an extra Monday night rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic
+Society seemed to point to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours
+about Stanway's condition. Milly, inspired by dreams of the future, had
+learnt her part perfectly in five days. She sang and acted with
+magnificent assurance, and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke
+enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus. Harry Burgess
+lost his air of fatigued worldliness, and went round naively demanding
+to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle. Even the conductor
+was somewhat moved.
+
+'She'll do, by gad!' said that man of few illusions to his crony the
+accompanist.
+
+But it is not to be imagined that such a cardinal event as the elevation
+of a chit like Millicent Stanway to the principal role could achieve
+itself without much friction and consequent heat. Many ladies of the
+chorus thought that the committee no longer deserved the confidence of
+the society. At least three suspected that the conductor had a private
+spite against themselves. And one, aged thirty-five, felt convinced that
+she was the victim of an elaborate and scandalous plot. To this maid had
+been offered Milly's old part of Ella; it was a final insult--but she
+accepted it. In the scene with Angela and Bunthorne in the first act,
+the new Ella made the same mistake three times at the words, 'In a
+doleful train,' and the conductor grew sarcastic.
+
+'May I show you how that bit goes, Miss Gardner?' said Milly afterwards
+with exquisite pertness.
+
+'No, thank you, Milly,' was the freezing emphasised answer; 'I dare say
+I shall be able to manage without _your_ assistance.'
+
+'Oh, ho!' sang Milly, delighted to have provoked this exhibition, and
+she began a sort of Carmen dance of disdain.
+
+'Girls grow up so quick nowadays!' Miss Gardner exclaimed, losing
+control of herself; 'who are _you_, I should like to know!' and she
+proceeded with her irrelevant inquiries: 'who's _your_ father? Doesn't
+every one know that he'll have gone smash before the night of the
+show?' She was shaking, insensate, brutal.
+
+Millicent stood still, and went very white.
+
+'Miss Gardner!'
+
+'_Miss_ Stanway!'
+
+The rival divas faced each other, murderous, for a few seconds, and then
+Milly turned, laughing, to Harry Burgess, who, consciously secretarial,
+was standing near with several others.
+
+'Either Miss Gardner apologises to me at once,' she said lightly, 'at
+_once_, or else either she or I leave the Society.'
+
+Milly tapped her foot, hummed, and looked up into Miss Gardner's eyes
+with serene contempt. Ethel was not the only one who was amazed at the
+absolute certitude of victory in little Millicent's demeanour. Harry
+Burgess spoke apart with the conductor upon this astonishing
+contretemps, and while he did so Milly, still smiling, hummed rather
+more loudly the very phrase of Ella's at which Miss Gardner had
+stumbled. It was a masterpiece of insolence.
+
+'We think Miss Gardner should withdraw the expression,' said Harry after
+he had coughed.
+
+'Never!' said Miss Gardner. 'Good-bye all!'
+
+Thus ended Miss Gardner's long career as an operatic artist--and not
+without pathos, for the ageing woman sobbed as she left the room from
+which she had been driven by a pitiless child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+According to custom Harry Burgess set out from the National School,
+where the rehearsals were held, with Ethel and Milly for Hillport. But
+at the bottom of Church Street Ethel silently fell behind and joined a
+fourth figure which had approached. The two couples walked separately to
+Hillport by the field-path. As Harry and Milly opened the wicket at the
+foot of Stanway's long garden, Ethel ran up, alone again.
+
+'That you?' cried a thin voice under the trees by the gate. It was Rose,
+taking late exercise after her studies.
+
+'Yes, it's us,' replied Harry. 'Shall you give me a whisky if I come
+in?'
+
+And he entered the house with the three girls.
+
+'I'm certain Rose saw you with Fred in the field, and if she did she's
+sure to split to mother,' Milly whispered as she and Ethel ran upstairs.
+They could hear Harry already strumming on the piano.
+
+'I don't care!' said Ethel callously, exasperated by three days of
+futility at the office, and by the manifest injustice of fate.
+
+'My dear, I want to speak to you,' said Leonora to Ethel, when the
+informal supper was over, and Harry had buckishly departed, and Rose and
+Milly were already gone upstairs. Not a word had been mentioned as to
+the great episode of the rehearsal.
+
+'Well, mother?' Ethel answered in a tone of weary defiance.
+
+Leonora still sat at the supper-table, awaiting John, who was out at a
+meeting; Ethel stood leaning against the mantelpiece like a boy.
+
+'How often have you been seeing Fred Ryley lately?' Leonora began with a
+gentle, pacific inquiry.
+
+'I see him every day at the works, mother.'
+
+'I don't mean at the works; you know that, Ethel.'
+
+'I suppose Rose has been telling you things.'
+
+'Rose told me quite innocently that she happened to see Fred in the
+field to-night.'
+
+'Oh, yes!' Ethel sneered with cold irony. 'I know Rose's innocence!'
+
+'My dear girl,' Leonora tried to reason with her. 'Why will you talk
+like that? You know you promised your father----'
+
+'No, I didn't, ma,' Ethel interrupted her sharply. 'Milly did; I never
+promised father anything.'
+
+Leonora was astonished at the mutinous desperation in Ethel's tone. It
+left her at a loss.
+
+'I shall have to tell your father,' she said sadly.
+
+'Well, of course, mother,' Ethel managed her voice carefully. 'You tell
+him everything.'
+
+'No, I don't, my dear,' Leonora denied the charge like a girl. 'A week
+last night I heard Fred Ryley talking to you at your window. And I have
+said nothing.'
+
+Ethel flushed hotly at this disclosure.
+
+'Then why say anything now?' she murmured, half daunted and half daring.
+
+'Your father must know. I ought to have told him before. But I have been
+wondering how best to act.'
+
+'What's the matter with Fred, mother?' Ethel demanded, with a catch in
+her throat.
+
+'That isn't the point, Ethel. Your father has distinctly said that he
+won't permit any'--she stopped because she could not bring herself to
+say the words; and then continued: 'If he had the slightest suspicion
+that there was anything between _you_ and Fred Ryley he would never have
+allowed you to go to the works at all.'
+
+'Allowed me to go! I like that, mother! As if I wanted to go to the
+works! I simply hate the place--father knows that. And yet--and yet----'
+She almost wept.
+
+'Your father must be obeyed,' Leonora stated simply.
+
+'Suppose Fred _is_ poor,' Ethel ran on, recovering herself. 'Perhaps he
+won't be poor always. And perhaps we shan't be rich always. The things
+that people are saying----' She hesitated, afraid to proceed.
+
+'What do you mean, dear?'
+
+'Well!' the girl exclaimed, and then gave a brief account of the Gardner
+incident.
+
+'My child,' was Leonora's placid comment, 'you ought to know that
+Florence Gardner will say anything when she is in a temper. She is the
+worst gossip in Bursley. I only hope Milly wasn't rude. And really this
+has got nothing to do with what we are talking about.'
+
+'Mother!' Ethel cried hysterically, 'why are you always so calm? Just
+imagine yourself in my place--with Fred. You say I'm a woman, and I am,
+I am, though you don't think so, truly. Just imagine----No, you can't!
+You've forgotten all that sort of thing, mother.' She burst into gushing
+tears at last. 'Father can kill me if he likes! I don't care!'
+
+She fled out of the room.
+
+'So I've forgotten, have I!' Leonora said to herself, smiling faintly,
+as she sat alone at the table waiting for John.
+
+She was not at all hurt by Ethel's impassioned taunt, but rather amused,
+indulgently amused, that the girl should have so misread her. She felt
+more maternal, protective, and tender towards Ethel than she had ever
+felt since the first year of Ethel's existence. She seemed perfectly to
+comprehend, and she nobly excused, the sudden outbreak of violence and
+disrespect on the part of her languid, soft-eyed daughter. She thought
+with confidence that all would come right in the end, and vaguely she
+determined that in some undefined way she would help Ethel, would yet
+demonstrate to this child of hers that she understood and sympathised.
+The interview which had just terminated, futile, conflicting, desultory,
+muddled, tentative, and abrupt as life itself, appeared to her in the
+light of a positive achievement. She was not unhappy about it, nor about
+anything. Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to
+disturb her.
+
+'I want to tell you something, Jack,' she began, when her husband at
+length came home.
+
+'Who's been drinking whisky?' was Stanway's only reply as he glanced at
+the table.
+
+'Harry brought the girls home. I dare say he had some. I didn't
+notice,' she said.
+
+'H'm!' Stanway muttered gloomily, 'he's young enough to start that
+game.'
+
+'I'll see it isn't offered to him again, if you like,' said Leonora.
+'But I want to tell you something, Jack.'
+
+'Well?' He was thoughtlessly cutting a piece of cheese into small
+squares with the silver butter-knife.
+
+'Only you must promise not to say a word to a soul.'
+
+'I shall promise no such thing,' he said with uncompromising bluntness.
+
+She smiled charmingly upon him. 'Oh yes, Jack, you will, you must.'
+
+He seemed to be taken unawares by her sudden smile. 'Very well,' he said
+gruffly.
+
+She then told him, in the manner she thought best, of the relations
+between Ethel and Fred Ryley, and she pointed out to him that, if he had
+reflected at all upon the relations between Harry Burgess and Millicent,
+he would not have fallen into the error of connecting Milly, instead of
+her sister, with Fred.
+
+'What relations between Milly and young Burgess?' he questioned
+stolidly.
+
+'Why, Jack,' she said, 'you know as much as I do. Why does Harry come
+here so often?'
+
+'He'd better not come here so often. What's Milly? She's nothing but a
+child.'
+
+Leonora made no attempt to argue with him. 'As for Ethel,' she said
+softly, 'she's at a difficult age, and you must be careful----'
+
+'As for Ethel,' he interrupted, 'I'll turn Fred Ryley out of my office
+to-morrow.'
+
+She tried to look grave and sympathetic, to use all her tact. 'But won't
+that make difficulties with Uncle Meshach? And people might say you had
+dismissed him because Uncle Meshach had altered his will.'
+
+'D----n Fred Ryley!' he swore, unable to reply to this. 'D----n him!'
+
+He walked to and fro in the room, and all his secret, profound
+resentment against Ryley surged up, loose and uncontrolled.
+
+'Wouldn't it be better to take Ethel away from the works?' Leonora
+suggested.
+
+'No,' he answered doggedly. 'Not for a moment! Can't I have my own
+daughter in my own office because Fred Ryley is on the place? A pretty
+thing!'
+
+'It is awkward,' she admitted, as if admitting also that what puzzled
+his sagacity was of course too much for hers.
+
+'Fred Ryley!' he repeated the hateful syllables bitterly. 'And I only
+took him out of kindness! Simply out of kindness! I tell you what,
+Leonora!' He faced her in a sort of bravado. 'It would serve 'em d----n
+well right if Uncle Meshach died to-morrow, and Aunt Hannah the day
+after. I should be safe then. It would serve them d----n well right, all
+of 'em--Ryley and Uncle Meshach; yes, and Aunt Hannah too! She hasn't
+altered her will, but she'd no business to have let uncle alter his.
+They're all in it. She's bound to die first, and they know it.... Well,
+well!' He was a resigned martyr now, and he turned towards the hearth.
+
+'Jack!' she exclaimed, 'what's the matter?'
+
+'Ruin's the matter,' he said. 'That's what's the matter. Ruin!'
+
+He laughed sourly, undecided whether to pretend that he was not quite
+serious, or to divulge his real condition.
+
+Her calm confident eyes silently invited him to relieve his mind, and he
+could not resist the temptation.
+
+'You know that mortgage on the house,' he said quickly. 'I got it all
+arranged at once. Dain was to have sent the deed in last Tuesday night
+for you to sign, but he sent in a letter instead. That's why I had to
+go over and see him. There was some confounded hitch at the last moment,
+a flaw in the title----'
+
+'A flaw in the title!' It was the phrase only that alarmed her.
+
+'Oh! It's all _right_,' said Stanway, wondering angrily why women should
+always, by the trick of seizing on trifles, destroy the true perspective
+of a business affair. 'The title's all right, at least it will be put
+right. But it means delay, and I can't wait. I must have money at once,
+in three days. Can you understand that, my girl?'
+
+By an effort she conquered the impulses to ask why, and why, and why;
+and to suggest economy in the house. Something came to her mysteriously
+out of her memory of her own father's affairs, a sudden inspiration; and
+she said:
+
+'Can't you deposit my deeds at the bank and get a temporary advance?'
+She was very proud of this clever suggestion.
+
+He shook his head: 'No, the bank won't.'
+
+The fact was that the bank had long been pressing him to deposit
+security for his over-draft.
+
+'I tell you what might be done,' he said, brightening as her idea gave
+birth to another one in his mind. 'Uncle Meshach might lend some money
+on the deeds. You shall go down to-morrow morning and ask him, Nora.'
+
+'Me!' She was scared at this result.
+
+'Yes, you,' he insisted, full of eagerness. 'It's your house. Ask him to
+let you have five hundred on the house for a short while. Tell him we
+want it. You can get round him easily enough.'
+
+'Jack, I can't do it, really.'
+
+'Oh yes, you can,' he assured her. 'No one better. He likes you. He
+doesn't like me--never did. Ask him for five hundred. No, ask him for a
+thousand. May as well make it a thousand. It'll be all the same to him.
+You go down in the morning, and do it for me.'
+
+Stanway's animation became quite cheerful.
+
+'But about the title--the flaw?' she feebly questioned.
+
+'That won't frighten uncle,' said Stanway positively. 'He knows the
+title is good enough. That's only a technical detail.'
+
+'Very well,' she agreed, 'I'll do what I can, Jack.'
+
+'That's good,' he said.
+
+And even now, the resolve once made, she did not lose her sense of
+tranquil optimism, her mild happiness, her widespreading benevolence.
+The result of this talk with John aroused in her an innocent vanity,
+for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see
+a way out of his difficulties?
+
+They soon afterwards dismissed the subject, put it with care away in a
+corner; and John finished his supper.
+
+'Is Mr. Twemlow still in the district?' she asked vivaciously.
+
+'Yes,' said John, and there was a pause.
+
+'You're doing some business together, aren't you, Jack?' she hazarded.
+
+John hesitated. 'No,' he said, 'he only wanted to see me about old
+Twemlow's estate--some details he was after.'
+
+'I felt it,' she mused. 'I felt all the time it was that that was wrong.
+And John is worrying over it! But he needn't--he needn't--and he doesn't
+know!'
+
+She exulted.
+
+She could read plainly the duplicity in his face. She knew that he had
+done some wicked thing, and that all his life was a maze of more or less
+equivocal stratagems. But she was so used to the character of her
+husband that this aspect of the situation scarcely impressed her. It was
+her new active beneficent interference in John's affairs that seemed to
+occupy her thoughts.
+
+'I told you I wouldn't say anything about Ethel's affair,' said John
+later, 'and I won't.' He was once more judicial and pompous. 'But, of
+course, you will look after it. I shall leave it to you to deal with.
+You'll have to be firm, you know.'
+
+'Yes,' she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not till after breakfast the next day did Leonora realise the utter
+repugnance with which she shrank from the mission to Uncle Meshach. She
+had declined to look the project fairly in the face, to examine her own
+feelings concerning it. She had said to herself when she awoke in the
+dark: 'It is nothing. It is a mere business matter. It isn't like
+begging.' But the idea, the absurd indefensible idea, of its similarity
+to begging was precisely what troubled her as the moment approached for
+setting forth. She pondered, too, upon the intolerable fact that such a
+request as she was about to prefer to Uncle Meshach was a tacit
+admission that John, with all his ostentations, had at last come to the
+end of the tether. She felt that she was a living part of John's
+meretriciousness. She had the fancy that she should have dressed for the
+occasion in rusty black. Was it not somehow shameful that she, a
+suppliant for financial aid, should outrage the ugly modesty of the
+little parlour in Church Street by the arrogant and expensive perfection
+of her beautiful skirt and street attire?
+
+Moreover, she would fail.
+
+The morning was fine, and with infantile pusillanimity she began to hope
+that Uncle Meshach would be taking his walks abroad. In order to give
+him every chance of being out she delayed her departure, upon one
+domestic excuse or another, for quite half an hour. 'How silly I am!'
+she reflected. But she could not help it, and when she had started down
+the hill towards Bursley she felt sick. She had a suspicion that her
+feet might of their own accord turn into a by-road and lead her away
+from Uncle Meshach's. 'I shall never get there!' she exclaimed. She
+called at the fishmonger's in Oldcastle Street, and was delighted
+because the shop was full of customers and she had to wait. At last she
+was crossing St. Luke's Square and could distinguish Uncle Meshach's
+doorway with its antique fanlight. She wished to stop, to turn back, to
+run, but her traitorous feet were inexorable. They carried her an
+unwilling victim to the house. Uncle Meshach, by some strange accident,
+was standing at the window and saw her. 'Ah!' she thought, 'if he had
+not been at the window, if he had not caught sight of me, I should have
+walked past!' And that chance of escape seemed like a lost bliss.
+
+Uncle Meshach himself opened the door.
+
+'Come in, lass,' he said, looking her up and down through his glasses.
+'You're the prettiest thing I've seen since I saw ye last. Your aunt's
+out, with the servant too; and I'm left here same as a dog on the chain.
+That's how they leave me.'
+
+She was thankful that Aunt Hannah was out: that made the affair simpler.
+
+'Well, uncle,' she said, 'I haven't seen you since you came back from
+the Isle of Man, have I?'
+
+Some inspiration lent her a courage which rose far beyond embarrassment.
+She saw at once that the old man was enchanted to have her in the house
+alone, and flattered by the apparatus of feminine elegance which she
+always displayed for him at its fullest. These two had a sort of cult
+for each other, a secret sympathy, none the less sincere because it
+seldom found expression. His pale blue eyes, warmed by her presence,
+said: 'I'm an old man, and I've seen the world, and I keep a few of my
+ideas to myself. But you know that no one understands a pretty woman
+better than I do. A glance is enough.' And in reply to this challenge
+she gave the rein to her profoundest instincts. She played the simple
+feminine to his masculine. She dared to be the eternal beauty who rules
+men, and will ever rule them, they know not why.
+
+'My lass,' he said in a tone that granted all requests in advance, after
+they had talked a while, 'you're after something.'
+
+His wrinkled features, ironic but benevolent, intimated that he knew she
+wished to take an unfair advantage of the gifts which Nature had
+bestowed on her, and that he did not object.
+
+She allowed herself to smile mysteriously, provocatively at him.
+
+'Yes,' she admitted frankly, 'I am.'
+
+'Well?' He waited indulgently for the disclosure.
+
+She paused a moment, smiling steadily at him. The contrast of his
+wizened age made her feel deliciously girlish.
+
+'It's about my house, at Hillport,' she began with assurance. 'I want
+you----'
+
+And she told him, with no more than a sufficiency of detail, what she
+wanted. She did not try to conceal that the aim was to help John, that,
+in crude fact, it was John who needed the money. But she emphasised
+'_my_ house,' and '_I_ want you to lend _me_.' The thing was well done,
+and she knew it was well done, and felt satisfied accordingly. As for
+Meshach, he was decidedly caught unawares. He might, perhaps, have
+suspected from the beginning that she was only an emissary of John's,
+but the form and magnitude of her proposal were a violent surprise to
+him. He hesitated. She could see clearly that he sought reasons by which
+to justify himself in acquiescence.
+
+'It's your affair?' he questioned meditatively.
+
+'Quite my own,' she assured him.
+
+'Let me see----'
+
+'I shall get it!' she said to herself, and she was astounded at the
+felicitous event of the enterprise. She could scarcely believe her good
+luck, but she knew beyond any doubt that she was not mistaken in the
+signs of Meshach's demeanour. She thought she might even venture to ask
+him for an explanation of his warning letter about Arthur Twemlow.
+
+At that moment Aunt Hannah and the middle-aged servant re-entered the
+house, and the servant had to pass through the parlour to reach the
+kitchen. The atmosphere which Meshach and Leonora had evolved in
+solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly.
+The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition,
+its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah
+uttering fatuous, affectionate exclamations of pleasure.
+
+Leonora's heart was pierced by a sudden stab of doubt, as she waited for
+the result.
+
+'Sister,' said Meshach, 'what dost think? Here's your nephew been
+speculating in stocks and shares till he can't hardly turn round----'
+
+'Uncle!' Leonora exclaimed horrified, 'I never said such a thing!'
+
+'Sh!' said Hannah in an awful whisper, as she shut the kitchen door.
+
+'Till he can't hardly turn round,' Meshach continued; 'and now he wants
+Leonora here to mortgage her house to get him out of his difficulties.
+Haven't I always told you as John would find himself in a rare fix one
+of these days?'
+
+Few human beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach
+dominated his sister. But here, for Leonora's undoing, was just a case
+where, without knowing it, Hannah influenced her brother. He had a
+reputation to keep up with Hannah, a great and terrible reputation, and
+in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have damaged
+it. A few minutes later, and he would have been committed both to the
+loan and to the demonstration of his own consistency in the humble eyes
+of Hannah; but the old spinster had arrived too soon. The spell was
+broken. Meshach perceived the danger of his position, and retired.
+
+'Nay, nay!' Hannah protested. 'That's very wrong of John. Eh, this
+speculation!'
+
+'But, really, uncle,' Leonora said as convincingly as she could. 'It's
+capital that John wants.'
+
+She saw that all was lost.
+
+'Capital!' Meshach sarcastically flouted the word, and he turned with a
+dubious benevolence to Leonora. 'No, my lass, it isn't,' he said,
+pausing. 'John'll get out of this mess as he's gotten out of many
+another. Trust him. He's your husband, and he's in the family, and I'm
+saying nothing against him. But trust him for that.'
+
+'No,' Hannah inserted, 'John's always been a good nephew.... If it
+wasn't----'
+
+Meshach quelled her and proceeded: 'I'll none consent to John raising
+money on your property. It's not right, lass. Happen this'll be a lesson
+to him, if anything will be.'
+
+'Five hundred would do,' Leonora murmured with mad foolishness.
+
+Of what use to chronicle the dreadful shame which she endured before she
+could leave the house, she who for a quarter of an hour had been a queen
+there, and who left as the pitied wife of a wastrel nephew?
+
+'You're not _short_, my dear?' Hannah asked at the end in an anxious
+voice.
+
+'Not he!' Uncle Meshach testily ejaculated, fastening the button of that
+droll necktie of his.
+
+'Oh dear no!' said Leonora, with such dignity as she could assume.
+
+As she walked home she wondered what 'speculation' really was. She could
+not have defined the word. She possessed but a vague idea of its
+meaning. She had long apprehended, ignorantly and indifferently and
+uneasily, that John was in the habit of tampering with dangerous things
+called stocks and shares. But never before had the vital import of these
+secret transactions been revealed to her. The dramatic swiftness of the
+revelation stunned her, and yet it seemed after all that she only knew
+now what she had always known.
+
+When she reached home John was already in the hall, taking off his
+overcoat, though the hour of one had not struck. Was this a coincidence,
+or had he been unable to control his desire to learn what she had done?
+
+In silence she smiled plaintively at him, shaking her head.
+
+'What do you mean?' he asked harshly.
+
+'I couldn't arrange it,' she said. 'Uncle Meshach refused.'
+
+John gave a scarcely perceptible start. 'Oh! That!' he exclaimed.
+'That's all right. I've fixed it up.'
+
+'This morning?'
+
+'Eh? Yes, this morning.'
+
+During dinner he showed a certain careless amiability.
+
+'You needn't go to the works any more to-day,' he said to Ethel.
+
+To celebrate this unexpected half-holiday, Ethel and Millicent decided
+that they would try to collect a scratch team for some hockey practice
+in the meadow.
+
+'And, mother, you must come,' said Millicent. 'You'll make one more
+anyway.'
+
+'Yes,' John agreed, 'it will do your mother good.'
+
+'He will never know, and never guess, and never care, what I have been
+through!' she thought.
+
+Before leaving for the works John helped the girls to choose some
+sticks.
+
+When he reached his office, the first thing he did was to build up a
+good fire. Next he looked into the safe. Then he rang the bell, and
+Fred Ryley responded to the summons.
+
+This family connection, whom he both hated and trusted, was a rather
+thickset, very neatly dressed man of twenty-three, who had been mature,
+serious, and responsible for eight years. His fair, grave face, with its
+short thin beard, showed plainly his leading qualities of industry,
+order, conscientiousness, and doggedness. It showed, too, his mild
+benevolence. Ryley was never late, never neglectful, never wrong; he
+never wasted an hour either of his own or his employer's time. And yet
+his colleagues liked him, perhaps because he was unobtrusive and
+good-natured. At the beginning of each year he laid down a programme for
+himself, and he was incapable of swerving from it. Already he had
+acquired a thorough knowledge of both the manufacturing and the business
+sides of earthenware manufacture, and also he was one of the few men, at
+that period, who had systematically studied the chemistry of potting. He
+could not fail to 'get on,' and to win universal respect. His chances of
+a truly striking success would have been greater had he possessed
+imagination, humour, or any sort of personal distinction. In appearance,
+he was common, insignificant; to be appreciated, he 'wanted knowing';
+but he was extremely sensitive and proud, and he could resent an
+affront like a Gascon. He had apparently no humour whatever. The sole
+spark of romance in him had been fanned into a small steady flame by his
+passion for Ethel. Ryley was a man who could only love once for all.
+
+'Did you find that private ledger for me out of the old safe?' Stanway
+demanded.
+
+'Yes,' said Ryley, 'and I put it in your safe, at the front, and gave
+you the key back this morning.'
+
+'I don't see it there,' Stanway retorted.
+
+'Shall I look?' Ryley suggested quietly, approaching the safe, of which
+the key was in the lock.
+
+'Never mind, now! Never mind, now!' Stanway stopped him. 'I don't want
+to be bothered now. Later on in the afternoon, before Mr. Twemlow
+comes.... Did you write and ask him to call at four thirty?'
+
+'Yes,' said Ryley, departing without a sign on his face, the model
+clerk.
+
+'Fool!' whispered Stanway. It would have been impossible for Ryley to
+breathe without irritating his employer, and the fact that his plebeian
+cousin's son was probably the most reliable underling to be got in the
+Five Towns did not in the slightest degree lessen Stanway's dislike of
+him; it increased it.
+
+Stanway had been perfectly aware that the little ledger was in his
+safe, and as soon as Ryley had shut the door he jumped up, unlatched the
+safe, removed the book, and after tearing it in two stuck first one half
+and then the other into the midst of the fire.
+
+'That ends it, anyhow!' he thought, when the leaves were consumed.
+
+Then he selected some books of cheque counterfoils, a number of
+prospectuses of companies, some share certificates (exasperating relic
+of what rich dreams!), and a lot of letters. All these he burnt with
+much neatness and care, putting more coal on the fire so as to hide
+every trace of their destruction. Then he opened a drawer in the desk,
+and took out a revolver which he unloaded and loaded again.
+
+'I'm pretty cool,' he flattered himself.
+
+He was the sort of flamboyant man who keeps a loaded revolver in
+obedience to the theory that a loaded revolver is a necessary and proper
+part of the true male's outfit, like a gold watch and chain, a gold
+pencil case, a razor for every day in the week, and a cigar-holder with
+a bit of good amber to it. He had owned that revolver for years, with no
+thought of utilising the weapon. But in justice to him, it must be said
+that when any of his contemporaries--Titus Price, for instance--had
+made use of revolvers or ropes in a particular way, he had always
+secretly justified and commended them.
+
+He put the revolver in his hip-pocket, the correct location, and donned
+his 'works' hat. He did not reflect. Memories of his past life did not
+occur to him, nor visions of that which was to come. He did not feel
+solemn. On the contrary he felt cross with everyone, and determined to
+pay everyone out; in particular he was vexed, in a mean childish way,
+with Uncle Meshach, and with himself for having fancied for a moment
+that an appeal to Uncle Meshach could be successful. One other idea
+struck him forcibly by reason of its strangeness: namely, that the works
+was proceeding exactly as usual, raw material always coming in, finished
+goods always going out, the various shops hot and murmurous with toil,
+money tinkling in the petty cash-box, the very engine beneath his floor
+beating its customary monotonous stroke; and his comfortable home was
+proceeding exactly as usual, the man hissing about the stable yard, the
+servants discreetly moving in the immaculate kitchens, Leonora elegant
+with sovereigns in her purse, the girls chattering and restless; not a
+single outward sign of disaster; and yet he was at the end, absolutely
+at the end at last. There was going to be a magnificent and
+unparalleled sensation in the town of Bursley ... He seemed for an
+instant dimly to perceive ways, or incomplete portions of ways, by which
+he might still escape ... Then with a brusque gesture he dismissed such
+futile scheming and yielded anew to the impulse which had suddenly and
+piquantly seized him, three hours before, when Leonora said: 'Uncle
+Meshach won't,' and he replied, 'I've fixed it up.' His dilemma was too
+complicated. No one, not even Dain, was aware of its intricacies; Dain
+knew a lot, Leonora a little, and sundry other persons odd fragments.
+But he himself could scarcely have drawn the outlines of the whole
+sinister situation without much reference to books and correspondence.
+No, he had finished. He was bored, and he was irritable. The impulse
+hurried him on.
+
+'In half an hour that ass Twemlow will be here,' he thought, looking at
+the office dial over the mantelpiece.
+
+And then he left his room, calling out to the clerks' room as he passed:
+'Just going on to the bank. I shall be back in a minute or two.'
+
+At the south-western corner of the works was a disused enamel-kiln which
+had been built experimentally and had proved a failure. He walked
+through the yard, crept with some difficulty into the kiln, and closed
+the iron door. A pale silver light came down the open chimney. He had
+decided as he crossed the yard that he should place the mouth of the
+revolver between his eyes, so that he had nothing to do in the kiln but
+to put it there and touch the trigger. The idea of this simple action
+preoccupied him. 'Yes,' he reflected, taking the revolver from his
+pocket, 'that is where I must put it, and then just touch the trigger.'
+He thought neither of his family, nor of his sins, nor of the grand
+fiasco, but solely of this physical action. Then, as he raised the
+revolver, the fear troubled him that he had not burnt a particular
+letter from a Jew in London, received on the previous day. 'Of course I
+burnt it,' he assured himself. 'Did I, though?' He felt that a
+mysterious volition over which he had no control would force him to
+return to his office in order to make sure. He gave a weary curse at the
+prospect of having to put back the revolver, leave the kiln, enter the
+kiln again, and once more raise the revolver.
+
+As he passed by the archway near the packing house the afternoon postman
+appeared and gave him a letter. Without thinking he halted on the spot
+and opened it. It was written in haste, and ran: 'My Dear Stanway,--I am
+called away to London and _may_ have to sail for New York at once.
+Sorry to have to break the appointment. We must leave that affair over.
+In any case it could only be a mere matter of form. As I told you, I was
+simply acting on behalf of my sister. My kindest regards to your wife
+and your daughters. Believe me, yours very truly,--ARTHUR TWEMLOW.'
+
+He read the letter a second time in his office, standing up against the
+shut door. Then his eye wandered to the desk and he saw that an envelope
+had been placed with mathematical exactitude in the middle of his
+blotting-pad. 'Ryley!' he thought. This other letter was marked private,
+and as the envelope said 'John Stanway, Esq.,' without an address, it
+must have been brought by special messenger. It was from David Dain, and
+stated that the difficulty as to the title of the house had been
+settled, that the mortgage would be sent in for Mrs. Stanway to sign
+that night, and that Stanway might safely draw against the money
+to-morrow.
+
+'My God!' he exclaimed, pushing his hat back from his brow. 'What a
+chance!'
+
+In five minutes he was drawing cheques, and simultaneously planning how
+to get over the disappearance of the old private ledger in case Twemlow
+should after all, at some future date, ask to see original documents.
+
+'What a chance!' The thought ran round and round in his brain.
+
+As he left the works by the canal side, he paused under Shawport Bridge
+and furtively dropped the revolver into the water. 'That's done with!'
+he murmured.
+
+He saw now that his preparations for departure, which at the moment he
+had deemed to be so well designed and so effective, were after all
+ridiculous. No amount of combustion could have prevented the disclosure
+at an inquest of the ignominious facts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During tea he laughed loudly at Milly's descriptions of the hockey
+match, which had been a great success. Leonora had kept goal with
+distinction, and admitted that she rather enjoyed the game.
+
+'So it is arranged?' said Leonora, with a hint of involuntary surprise,
+when he handed her the mortgage to sign.
+
+'Didn't I tell you so this morning?' he answered loftily. There is
+always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed
+into a truth.
+
+He insisted on retiring early that night. In the bedroom he remarked:
+'Your friend Twemlow's had to go to London to-day, and may return
+straight from there to New York. I had a note from him. He sent you his
+kindest regards and all that sort of thing.'
+
+'Then we mayn't see him again?' she said, delicately fingering her hair
+in front of the pier-glass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+COMIC OPERA
+
+
+Early one evening a few weeks later, Leonora, half attired for the gala
+night of the operatic performance, was again delicately fingering her
+hair in that large bedroom whose mirrors daily reflected the leisured
+process of her toilette. Her black skirt trimmed with yellow made a
+sudden sharp contrast with the pale tints of her corset and her long
+bare arms. The bodice lay like a trifling fragment on the blue-green
+eiderdown of her bed, a pair of satin shoes glistened in front of the
+fire, and two chairs bore the discarded finery of the day. The
+dressing-table was littered with silver and ivory. A faint and charming
+odour of violets mingled mysteriously with the warmth of the fire as
+Leonora moved away from the pier-glass between the two curtained windows
+where the light was centred, and with accustomed hands picked up the
+bodice apparently so frail that a touch might have ruined it.
+
+The door was brusquely opened, and some one entered.
+
+'Not dressed, Rose?' said Leonora, a little startled. 'We ought to be
+going in ten minutes.'
+
+'Oh, mother! I mustn't go. I mustn't really!'
+
+The tall slightly-stooping girl, with her flat figure, her plain shabby
+serge frock, her tired white face, and the sinister glance of the
+idealist in her great, fretful eyes, seemed to stand there and accuse
+the whole of Leonora's existence. Utterly absorbed in the imminent
+examination, her brain a welter of sterile facts, Rose found all the
+seriousness of life in dates, irregular participles, algebraic symbols,
+chemical formulas, the altitudes of mountains, and the areas of inland
+seas. To the cruelty of the too earnest enthusiast she added the cruelty
+of youth, and it was with a merciless justice that she judged everyone
+with whom she came into opposition.
+
+'But, my dear, you'll be ill if you keep on like this. And you know what
+your father said.'
+
+Rose smiled, bitterly superior, at the misguided creature whose horizons
+were bounded by domesticity on one side and by dress on the other.
+
+'I shall not be ill, mother,' she said firmly, sniffing at the scent in
+the room. 'I can't help it. I must work at my chemistry again to-night.
+Father knows perfectly well that chemistry is my weak point. I must
+work. I just came in to tell you.'
+
+She departed slowly, as it were daring her mother to protest further.
+
+Leonora sighed, overpowered by a feeling of impotence. What could she
+do, what could any person do, when challenged by an individuality at
+once so harsh and so impassioned? She finished her toilette with minute
+care, but she had lost her pleasure in it. The sense of the contrariety
+of things deepened in her. She looked round the circle of her
+environment and saw hope and gladness nowhere. John's affairs were
+perhaps running more smoothly, but who could tell? The shameful fact
+that the house was mortgaged remained always with her. And she was
+intimately conscious of a soilure, a moral stain, as the result of her
+recent contacts with the man of business in her husband. Why had she not
+been able to keep femininely aloof from those puzzling and repellent
+matters, ignorant of them, innocent of them? And Ethel, too! Twelve days
+of the office had culminated for Ethel in a slight illness, which Doctor
+Hawley described as lack of tone. Her father had said airily that she
+must resume her clerkship in due season, but the entire household well
+knew that she would not do so, and that the experiment was one of the
+failures which invariably followed John's interference in domestic
+concerns. As for Milly's housekeeping, it was an admitted absurdity.
+Millicent had lived of late solely for the opera, and John resented any
+preoccupation which detached the girls' interest from their home. When
+Ethel recovered in the nick of time to attend the final rehearsals, he
+grew sarcastic, and irrelevantly made cutting remarks about the letter
+from Paris which Ethel had never translated and which she thought he had
+forgotten. Finally he said he probably could not go to the opera at all,
+and that at best he might look in at it for half an hour. He was careful
+to disclaim all interest in the performance.
+
+Carpenter had driven the two girls to the Town Hall at seven o'clock,
+and at a quarter to eight he returned to fetch his mistress. Enveloped
+in her fur cloak, Leonora climbed silently into the cart.
+
+'I did hear,' said Carpenter, respectfully gossiping, 'as Mr. Twemlow
+was gone back to America; but I seed him yesterday as I was coming back
+from taking the mester to that there manufacturers' meeting at Knype....
+Wonderful like his mother he is, mum.'
+
+'Oh, indeed!' said Leonora.
+
+Her first impatient querulous thought was that she would have preferred
+Mr. Twemlow to be in America.
+
+The illuminated windows of the Town Hall, and the knot of excited people
+at the principal portico, gave her a sort of preliminary intimation that
+the eternal quest for romance was still active on earth, though she
+might have abandoned it. In the corridor she met Uncle Meshach, wearing
+an antique frock-coat. His eye caught hers with quiet satisfaction.
+There was no sign in his wrinkled face of their last interview.
+
+'Your aunt's not very well,' he answered her inquiry. 'She wasn't equal
+to coming, she said. I bid her go to bed. So I'm all alone.'
+
+'Come and sit by me,' Leonora suggested. 'I have two spare tickets.'
+
+'Nay, I think not,' he faintly protested.
+
+'Yes, do,' she said, 'you must.'
+
+As his trembling thin hands stole away her cloak, disclosing the
+perfection and dark magnificence of her toilette, and as she perceived
+in his features the admiration of a connoisseur, and in the eyes of
+other women envy and astonishment, she began to forget her
+despondencies. She lived again. She believed again in the possibility of
+joy. And perhaps it was not strange that her thought travelled at once
+to Ethel--Ethel whom she had not questioned further about her lover,
+Ethel whom till then she had figured as the wretched victim of love,
+but whom now she saw wistfully as love's elect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The front seats of the auditorium were filled with all that was dashing,
+and much that was solidly serious, in Bursley. Hoarded wealth, whose
+religion was spotless kitchens and cash down, sat side by side with
+flightiness and the habit of living by credit on rather more than one's
+income. The members of the Society had exerted themselves in advance to
+impress upon the public mind that the entertainment would be nothing if
+not fashionable and brilliant; and they had succeeded. There was not a
+single young man, and scarcely an old one, but wore evening-dress, and
+the frocks of the women made a garden of radiant blossoms. Supreme among
+the eminent dandies who acted as stewards in that part of the house was
+Harry Burgess, straight out of Conduit Street, W., with a mien plainly
+indicating that every reserved seat had been sold two days before. From
+the second seats the sterling middle classes, half envy and half
+disdain, examined the glittering ostentation in front of them; they had
+no illusions concerning it; their knowledge of financial realities was
+exact. Up in the gloom of the balcony the crowded faces of the
+unimportant and the obscure rose tier above tier to the organ-loft. Here
+was Florence Gardner, come incognito to deride; here was Fred Ryley,
+thief of an evening's time; and here were sundry dressmakers who
+experienced the thrill of the creative artist as they gazed at their
+confections below.
+
+The entire audience was nervous, critical, and excited: partly because
+nearly every unit of it boasted a relative or an intimate friend in the
+Society, and partly because, as an entity representing the town, it had
+the trepidations natural to a mother who is about to hear her child say
+a piece at a party. It hoped, but it feared. If any outsider had
+remarked that the youthful Bursley Operatic Society could not expect
+even to approach the achievements of its remarkable elder sister at
+Hanbridge, the audience would have chafed under that invidious
+suggestion. Nevertheless it could not believe that its native talent
+would be really worth hearing. And yet rumours of a surprising
+excellence were afloat. The excitement was intensified by the tuning of
+instruments in the orchestra, by certain preliminary experiments of a
+too anxious gasman, and most of all by a delay in beginning.
+
+At length the Mayor entered, alone; the interesting absence of the
+Mayoress had some connection with a silver cradle that day ordered from
+Birmingham as a civic gift.
+
+'Well, Burgess,' the Mayor whispered benevolently, 'what sort of a show
+are we to have?'
+
+'You will see, Mr. Mayor,' said Harry, whose confident smile expressed
+the spirit of the Society.
+
+Then the conductor--the man to whom twenty instrumentalists and thirty
+singers looked for guidance, help, encouragement, and the nullifying of
+mistakes otherwise disastrous; the man on whose nerve and animating
+enthusiasm depended the reputation of the Society and of Bursley--tapped
+his baton and stilled the chatter of the audience with a glance. The
+footlights went up, the lights of the chandelier went down, and almost
+before any one was aware of the fact the overture had commenced. There
+could be no withdrawal now; the die was cast; the boats were burnt. In
+the artistic history of Bursley a decisive moment had arrived.
+
+In a very few seconds people began to realise, slowly, timidly, but
+surely, that after all they were listening to a real orchestra. The mere
+volume of sound startled them; the verve and decision of the players
+filled them with confidence; the bright grace of the well-known airs
+laid them under a spell. They looked diffidently at each other, as if
+to say: 'This is not so bad, you know.' And when the finale was reached,
+with its prodigious succession of crescendos, and its irresistible
+melody somehow swimming strongly through a wild sea of tone, the
+audience forgot its pose of critical aloofness and became unaffectedly
+human. The last three bars of the overture were smothered in applause.
+
+The conductor, as pale as though he had seen a ghost, turned and bowed
+stiffly. 'Put that in your pipe and smoke it,' his unrelaxing features
+said to the audience; and also: 'If you have ever heard the thing better
+played in the Five Towns, be good enough to inform me where!'
+
+There was a hesitation, the brief murmur of a hidden voice, and the
+curtains of the fit-up stage swung apart and disclosed the roseate
+environs of Castle Bunthorne, ornamented by those famous maidens who
+were dying for love of its aesthetic owner. The audience made no attempt
+to grasp the situation of the characters until it had satisfactorily
+settled the private identity of each. That done, it applied itself to
+the sympathetic comprehension of the feelings of a dozen young women who
+appeared to spend their whole existence in statuesque poses and
+plaintive but nonsensical lyricism. It failed, honestly; and even when
+the action descended from song to banal dialogue, it was not reassured.
+'Silly' was the unspoken epithet on a hundred tongues, despite the
+delicate persuasion of the music, the virginal charm of the maidens, and
+the illuminated richness of costumes and scene. The audience understood
+as little of the operatic convention as of the aestheticism caricatured
+in the roseate environs of Castle Bunthorne. A number of people present
+had never been in a theatre, either for lack of opportunity or from a
+moral objection to theatres. Many others, who seldom missed a melodrama
+at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal, avoided operas by virtue of the
+infallible instinct which caused them to recoil from anything exotic
+enough to disturb the calm of their lifelong mental lethargy. As for the
+minority which was accustomed to opera, including the still smaller
+minority which had seen _Patience_ itself, it assumed the right that
+evening critically to examine the convention anew, to reconsider it
+unintimidated by the crushing prestige of the Savoy or of D'Oyly Carte's
+No. 1 Touring Company. And for the most part it found in the convention
+small basis of common sense.
+
+Then Patience appeared on the eminence. She was a dairymaid, and she
+could not understand the philosophy prevalent in the roseate environs of
+Castle Bunthorne. The audience hailed her with joy and relief. The
+dairymaid and her costume were pretty in a familiar way which it could
+appreciate. She was extremely young, adorably impudent, airy, tripping,
+and supple as a circus-rider. She had marvellous confidence. 'We are
+friends, are we not, you and I?' her gestures seemed to say to the
+audience. And with the utmost complacency she gazed at herself in the
+eyes of the audience as in a mirror. Her opening song renewed the
+triumph of the overture. It was recognisably a ballad, and depended on
+nothing external for its effectiveness. It gave the bewildered listeners
+something to take hold of, and in return for this gift they acclaimed
+and continued to acclaim. Milly glanced coolly at the conductor, who
+winked back his permission, and the next moment the Bursley Operatic
+Society tasted the delight of its first encore. The pert fascinations of
+the heroine, the bravery of the Colonel and his guards, the clowning of
+Bunthorne, combined with the continuous seduction of the music and the
+scene, very quickly induced the audience to accept without reserve this
+amazing intrigue of logical absurdities which was being unrolled before
+it. The opera ceased to appear preposterous; the convention had won,
+and the audience had lost. Small slips in delivery were unnoticed, big
+ones condoned, and nervousness encouraged to depart. The performance
+became a homogeneous whole, in which the excellence of the best far more
+than atoned for the clumsy mediocrity of the worst. When the curtains
+fell amid storms of applause and cut off the stage, the audience
+perceived suddenly, like a revelation, that the young men and women whom
+it knew so well in private life had been creating something--an
+illusion, an ecstasy, a mood--which transcended the sum total of their
+personalities. It was this miracle, but dimly apprehended perhaps, which
+left the audience impressed, and eager for the next act.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'That madam will go her own road,' said Uncle Meshach under cover of the
+clapping.
+
+Leonora's smile was embarrassed. 'What do you mean?' she asked him.
+
+He bent his head towards her, looking into her face with a sort of
+generous cynicism.
+
+'I mean she'll go her own road,' he repeated.
+
+And then, observing that most of the men were leaving their seats, he
+told Leonora that he should step across to the Tiger if she would let
+him. As he passed out, leaning forward on a stick lightly clutched in
+the left hand, several people demanded his opinion about the spectacle.
+'Nay, nay----' he replied again and again, waving one after another out
+of his course.
+
+In the bar-parlour of the Tiger, the young blades, the genuine fast men,
+the deliberate middle-aged persons who took one glass only, and the
+regular nightly customers, mingled together in a dense and noisy crowd
+under a canopy of smoke. The barmaid and her assistant enjoyed their
+brief minutes of feverish contact with the great world. Behind the
+counter, walled in by a rampart of dress-shirts, they conjured with
+bottles, glasses, and taps, heard and answered ten men at once, reckoned
+change by a magic beyond arithmetic, peered between shoulders to catch
+the orders of their particular friends, and at the same time acquired
+detailed information as to the progress of the opera. Late comers who,
+forcing a way into the room, saw the multitude of men drinking and
+smoking, and the unapproachable white faces of these two girls distantly
+flowering in the haze and the odour, had that saturnalian sensation of
+seeing life which is peculiar to saloons during the entr'actes of
+theatrical entertainments. The success of the opera, and of that chit
+Millicent Stanway, formed the staple of the eager conversation, though
+here and there a sober couple would be discussing the tramcars or the
+quinquennial assessment exactly as if Gilbert and Sullivan had never
+been born. It appeared that Milly had a future, that she was the best
+Patience yet seen in the district amateur _or_ professional, that any
+burlesque manager would jump at her, that in five years, if she liked,
+she might be getting a hundred a week, and that Dolly Chose, the idol of
+the Tivoli and the Pavilion, had not half her style. It also appeared
+that Milly had no brains of her own, that the leading man had taught her
+all her business, that her voice was thin and a trifle throaty, that she
+was too vulgar for the true Savoy tradition, and that in five years she
+would have gone off to nothing. But the optimists carried the argument.
+Sundry men who had seen Meshach in the second row of the stalls
+expressed a keen desire to ask the old bachelor point-blank what he
+thought of his nephew's daughter; but Meshach did not happen to come
+into the Tiger.
+
+When the crowd had thinned somewhat, Harry Burgess entered hurriedly and
+called for a whisky and potass, which the barmaid, who fancied him,
+served on the instant.
+
+'I wanted to get a wreath,' he confided to her. 'But Pointon's is
+closed.'
+
+'Why, Mr. Burgess,' she said smiling, 'there's a lot of flowers in the
+coffee-room, and with them and the leaves off that laurel down the yard,
+and a bit of wire, I could make you one in no time.'
+
+'Can you?' He seemed doubtful.
+
+'Can I!' she exclaimed. 'I should think I could, and a beauty! As soon
+as these gentleman are gone----'
+
+'It's awfully kind of you,' said Harry, brightening. 'Can you send it
+round to me at the artists' entrance in half an hour?'
+
+She nodded, beaming at the prospect. The manufacture of that wreath
+would be a source of colloquial gratification to her for days.
+
+Harry politely responded to such remarks as 'Devilish good show,
+Burgess,' drank in one gulp another whisky and potass, and hastened
+away. The remainder of the company soon followed; the barmaid
+disappeared from the bar, and her assistant was left languidly to watch
+a solitary pair of topers who would certainly not leave till the clock
+showed eleven.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The auditorium during the entr'acte was more ceremonious, but not less
+noisy, than the bar-parlour of the Tiger. The pleasant warmth, the
+sudden increase of light after the fall of the curtain, the certainty of
+a success, and the consciousness of sharing in the brilliance of that
+success--all these things raised the spirits, and produced the loquacity
+of an intoxication. The individuality of each person was set free from
+its customary prison and joyously displayed its best side to the
+company. The universal chatter amounted to a din.
+
+But Leonora, cut off by empty seats on either hand, sat silent. She was
+glad to be able to do so. She would have liked to be at home in
+solitude, to think. For she was, if not unhappy, at any rate disturbed
+and dubious. She felt embarrassed amid this glare and this bright murmur
+of conversation, as though she were being watched, discussed, and
+criticised. She was the mother of the star, responsible for the star,
+guilty of all the star's indiscretions. And it was a timorous, reluctant
+pride which she took in her daughter's success. The truth was that Milly
+had astonished and frightened her. When Ethel and Milly were allowed to
+join the Society, the possible results of the permission had not been
+foreseen. Both Leonora and John had thought of the girls as modest
+members of the chorus in an affair unmistakably and confessedly amateur.
+Ethel had kept within the anticipation. But here was Milly an actress,
+exploiting herself with unconstrained gestures and arch glances and
+twirlings of her short skirt, to a crowded and miscellaneous audience.
+Leonora did not like it; her susceptibilities were outraged. She blushed
+at this amazing public contradiction of Milly's bringing-up. It seemed
+to her as if she had never known the real Milly, and knew her now for
+the first time. What would the other mothers think? What would all
+Hillport think secretly, and say openly behind the backs of the
+Stanways? The girl was as innocent as a fawn, she had the free grace of
+extreme youth; no one could utter a word against her. But she was
+rouged, her lips were painted, several times she had shown her knees,
+and she seemed incapable of shyness. She was at home on the stage, she
+faced a thousand people with a pert, a brazen attitude, and said, 'Look
+at me; enjoy me, as I enjoy your fervent glances; I am here to tickle
+your fancy.' Patience! She was no more Patience than she was Sister Dora
+or a heroine of Charlotte Yonge's. She was the eternal unashamed doll,
+who twists 'men' round her little finger, and smiles on them, always
+with an instinct for finance.
+
+'Quite a score for Milly!' said a polite voice in Leonora's ear. It was
+Mrs. Burgess, who sat in the next row.
+
+'Do you think so?' Leonora replied, perceptibly reddening.
+
+'Oh, yes!' said Mrs. Burgess with smooth insistence. 'And dear Ethel is
+very sweet in the chorus, too.'
+
+Leonora tried to fix her thoughts on the grateful figure of mild,
+nervous, passionate Ethel, the child of her deepest affection.
+
+She turned sharply. Arthur Twemlow was standing in the shadow of the
+side-aisle near the door. She knew he was there before her eyes saw him.
+He was evidently rather at a loss, unnoticed, and irresolute. He caught
+sight of her and bowed. She said to herself that she wished to be alone
+in her embarrassment, that she could not bear to talk to any one;
+nevertheless, she raised her finger, and beckoned to him, while striving
+hard to refrain from doing so. He approached at once. 'He is not in
+America,' she reflected in sudden agitation, 'He is here, actually here.
+In an instant we shall speak.'
+
+'I quite understood you had gone back to New York,' she said, looking at
+him, as he stood in front of her, with the upward feminine appealing
+gesture that men love.
+
+'What!' he exclaimed. 'Without saying good-bye? No! And how are you all?
+It seems just about a year since I saw you last.'
+
+'All well, thanks,' she said, smiling. 'Won't you sit here? It's John's
+seat, but he isn't coming.'
+
+'Then you are alone?' He seemed to apologise for the rest of his sex.
+
+She told him that Uncle Meshach was with her, and would return directly.
+When he asked how the opera was going, and she learnt that, being
+detained at Knype, he had not seen the first act, she was relieved. He
+would make the discovery concerning Millicent gradually, and by her
+side; it was better so, she thought--less disconcerting. In a slight
+pause of their talk she was startled to feel her heart beating like a
+hammer against her corsage. Her eyes had brightened. She conversed
+rapidly, pleased to be talking, pleased at his sympathetic
+responsiveness, ignoring the audience, and also forgetting the uneasy
+preoccupations of her recent solitude. The men returned from the Tiger
+and elsewhere, all except Uncle Meshach. The lights were lowered. The
+conductor's stick curtly demanded silence and attention. She sank back
+in her seat.
+
+'A peremptory conductor!' remarked Twemlow in a whisper.
+
+'Yes,' she laughed. And this simple exchange of thought, effected, as it
+were, surreptitiously in the gloom and contrary to the rules, gave her a
+distinct sensation of joy.
+
+Then began, in Bursley Town Hall, a scene similar to the scenes which
+have rendered famous the historic stages of European capitals. The verve
+and personal charm of a young _debutante_ determined to triumph, and the
+enthusiasm of an audience proudly conscious that it was making a
+reputation, reacted upon and intensified each other to such a degree
+that the atmosphere became electric, delirious, magical. Not a soul in
+the auditorium or on the stage but what lived consummately during those
+minutes--some creatively, like the conductor and Millicent; some
+agonised with jealousy, like Florence Gardner and a few of the chorus;
+one maternally in tumultuous distress of spirit; and the great naive
+mass yielding with rapture to a sensuous spell.
+
+The outstanding defect in the libretto of _Patience_ is the
+decentralisation of interest in the second act. The alert ones who
+remembered that in that act the heroine has only one song, and certain
+passages of dialogue not remarkable for dramatic force, had predicted
+that Millicent would inevitably lose ground as the evening advanced.
+They were, however, deceived. Her delivery of the phrase 'I am miserable
+beyond description' brought the house down by its coquettish
+artificiality; and the renowned ballad, 'Love is a plaintive song,'
+established her unforgettably in the affections of the audience. Her
+'exit weeping' was a tremendous stroke, though all knew that she meant
+them to see that these tears were simply a delightful pretence. The
+opera came to a standstill while she responded to an imperative call.
+She bowed, laughing, and then, suddenly affecting to cry again, ran off,
+with the result that she had to return.
+
+'D----n it! She hasn't got much to learn, has she?' the conductor
+murmured to the first violin, a professional from Manchester.
+
+But her greatest efforts she reserved for the difficult and critical
+prose conversations which now alone remained to her, those dialogues
+which seem merely to exist for the purpose of separating the numbers
+allotted to all the other principals. It was as though, during the
+entr'acte, surrounded by the paint-pots, the intrigues, and the wild
+confusion of the dressing-room, Millicent had been able to commune with
+herself, and to foresee and take arms against the peril of an
+anti-climax. By sheer force, ingenuity, vivacity, flippancy, and
+sauciness, she lifted her lines to the level, and above the level, of
+the rest of the piece. She carried the audience with her; she knew it;
+all her colleagues knew it, and if they chafed they chafed in secret.
+The performance went better and better as the end approached. The
+audience had long since ceased to notice defects; only the conductor,
+the leader, and a few discerning members of the troupe were aware that a
+catastrophe had been escaped by pure luck two minutes before the descent
+of the curtains.
+
+And at that descent the walls of the Town Hall, which had echoed to
+political tirades, the solemn recitatives of oratorios, the mercantile
+uproar of bazaars, the banal compliments of prize-givings, the arid
+utterances of lecturers on science and art, and the moans of sinners
+stricken with a sense of guilt at religious revivals--those walls
+resounded to a gay and frenzied ovation which is memorable in the town
+for its ungoverned transports of approval. The Operatic Society as a
+whole was first acclaimed, all the performers posing in rank on the
+stage. Then, as the deafening applause showed no sign of diminution, the
+curtains were drawn back instead of being raised again, and the
+principals, beginning with the humblest, paraded in pairs in front of
+the footlights. Milly and her fortunate cavalier came last. The cavalier
+advanced two paces, took Milly's hand, signed to her to cross over, and
+retired. The child was left solitary on the stage--solitary, but
+unabashed, glowing with delight, and smiling as pertly as ever. The
+leader of the orchestra stood up and handed her a wreath, which she
+accepted like an oath of fealty; and the wreath, hurriedly manufactured
+by the barmaid of the Tiger out of some cut flowers and the old laurel
+tree in the Tiger yard, became, when Milly grasped it, a mysterious and
+impressive symbol. Many persons in the audience wanted to cry as they
+beheld this vision of the proud, confident, triumphant child holding the
+wreath, while the fierce upward ray of the footlights illuminated her
+small chin and her quivering nostrils. She tripped off backwards, with a
+gesture of farewell. The applause continued. Would she return? Not if
+the ferocious jealousies behind could have paralysed her as she
+hesitated in the wings. But the world was on her side that night; she
+responded again, she kissed her hands to her world, and disappeared
+still kissing them; and the evening was finished.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Well,' said Twemlow calmly, 'I guess you've got an actress in the
+family.'
+
+Leonora and he remained in their seats, waiting till the press of people
+in the aisles should have thinned, and also, so far as Leonora was
+concerned, to avoid the necessity of replying to remarks about Milly.
+The atmosphere was still charged with excitement, but Leonora observed
+that Arthur Twemlow did not share it. Though he had applauded
+vigorously, there had been no trace of emotional transport in his
+demeanour. He spoke at once, immediately the lights were turned up,
+giving her no chance to collect herself.
+
+'But do you think so?' she said. She remembered she had made the same
+foolish reply to Mrs. Burgess. With Twemlow she wished to be
+unconventional and sincere, but she could not succeed.
+
+'Don't you?' He seemed to regard the situation as rather amusing.
+
+'You surely can't mean that she would _do_ for the stage?'
+
+'Ask any one here whether she isn't born for it,' he answered.
+
+'This is only an amateurs' affair,' Leonora argued.
+
+'And she's only an amateur. But she won't be an amateur long.'
+
+'But a girl like Milly can't be clever enough----'
+
+'It depends on what you call clever. She's got the gift of making the
+audience hug itself. You'll see.'
+
+'See Milly on the stage?' Leonora asked uneasily. 'I hope not.'
+
+'Why, my dear lady? Isn't she built for it? Doesn't she enjoy it? Isn't
+she at home there? What's the matter with the stage anyhow?'
+
+'Her father would never hear of such a thing,' said Leonora. Towards
+the close of the opera she had seen John, in morning attire, propped
+against a side-wall and peering at the stage and his daughter with a
+bewildered, bored, unsympathetic air.
+
+'Ah!' Twemlow ejaculated grimly.
+
+A moment later, as he was putting her cloak over her shoulders, he said
+in a different, kinder, more soothing tone: 'I guess I know just how you
+feel.'
+
+She looked at him, raising her eyebrows, and smiling with melancholy
+amusement.
+
+In the corridor, Stanway came hurrying up to them, obviously excited.
+
+'Oh, you're here, Nora!' he burst out. 'I've been hunting for you
+everywhere. I've just been told that a messenger came for Uncle Meshach
+a the interval to say that Aunt Hannah was ill. Do you know anything
+about it?'
+
+'No,' she said. 'Uncle only told me that aunt wasn't equal to coming. I
+wondered where uncle had got to.'
+
+'Well,' Stanway continued, 'you'd better go to Church Street at once,
+and see after things.'
+
+Leonora seemed to hesitate.
+
+'As quick as you can,' he said with irritation and increasing
+excitement. 'Don't waste a moment. It may be serious. I'll drive the
+girls home, and then I'll come and fetch you.'
+
+'If Mrs. Stanway cares, I will walk down with her,' said Arthur Twemlow.
+
+'Yes, do, Twemlow, there's a good chap,' he welcomed the idea. And with
+that he wafted them impulsively into the street.
+
+Then Stanway stood waiting by his equipage for Ethel and Milly. He spoke
+to no one, but examined the harness critically, and put some curt
+question to Carpenter about the breeching. It was a chilly night, and
+the glare of the lamps showed that Prince steamed a little under his
+rug. Ten minutes elapsed before Ethel came.
+
+'Here we are, father,' she said with pleasant satisfaction. 'Where's
+mother?'
+
+'I should think so!' he returned. 'The horse taking cold, and me waiting
+and waiting. Your mother's had to go to Aunt Hannah's. What's become of
+Milly?' He was losing his temper.
+
+Milly had to traverse the whole length of the corridor. The Mayor
+heartily congratulated her. The middle-aged violinist from Manchester
+spoke to her amiably as one public artist to another, and the conductor,
+who was with him, told her, in an unusual and indiscreet mood of
+candour, that she had simply made the show. Others expressed the same
+thought in more words. Near the entrance stood Harry Burgess, patently
+expectant. He was flushed, and looked handsomely dandiacal and rakish as
+he rolled a cigarette in those quick fingers of his. He meant to explain
+to her that the happy idea of the wreath was his own.
+
+He accosted her unceremoniously, confidently, but she drew away, with a
+magnificent touch of haughtiness.
+
+'Good-night, Harry,' she said coldly, and passed on.
+
+The rash and conceited boy had not divined, as he should have done, that
+a prima donna is a prima donna, whether on the stage in a brilliant
+costume, or traversing a dingy corridor in the plain blue serge and
+simple hat of a manufacturer's daughter aged eighteen. Offering no reply
+to her formal salutation, he remained quite still for a moment, and then
+swaggered off to the Tiger.
+
+'Look here, my girl,' said Stanway furiously to his youngest. 'Do you
+suppose we're going to wait for you all night? Jump in.'
+
+Milly's lips did not move, but she faced the rude blusterer with a
+frigid, angry, insolent gaze. And her girlish eyes said: 'You've got me
+under your thumb now, you horrid beast! But never mind! Long after you
+are dead and buried and rotten, I shall be famous and pretty and rich,
+and if you are remembered it will only be because you were my father. Do
+your worst, odious man; you can't kill me!'
+
+And all the way home the cruel, just, unmerciful thoughts of insulted
+youth mingled with the generous and beautiful sensations of her triumph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Nay, it's all over,' said Meshach when Twemlow and Leonora entered.
+
+'What!' Leonora exclaimed, glancing quickly at Arthur Twemlow as if for
+support in a crisis.
+
+'Doctor's gone but just this minute. Her's gotten over it.'
+
+For a moment she had thought that Aunt Hannah was dead. John's anxious
+excitement had communicated itself to her; she had imagined the worst
+possibilities. Now the sensation of relief took her unawares, and she
+was obliged to sit down suddenly.
+
+In the little parlour wizened Meshach sat by the hob as he always sat,
+warming one hand at the fire, and looking round sideways at the tall
+visitors in their rich evening attire. Leonora heard Twemlow say
+something about a heart attack, and the thick hard veins on Aunt
+Hannah's wrist.
+
+'Ay!' Meshach went on, employing the old dialect, a sign with him of
+unusual agitation. 'I brought Dr. Hawley with me, he was at yon show.
+And when us got here Hannah was lying on th' floor, just there, with her
+head on this 'ere hearthrug. Susan, th' woman, told us as th' missis
+said she felt as if she were falling down, and then down her falls. She
+was staring hard at th' ceiling, with eyes fit to burst, and her face as
+white as a sheet. Doctor lifts her up and puts her in a chair. Bless us!
+How her did gasp! And her lips were blue. "Hannah!" I says. Her heard
+but her couldna' answer. Her limbs were all of a tremble. Then her
+sighed, and fetched up a long breath or two. "Where am I, Meshach?" her
+says, "what's amiss?" Doctor told her for stick her tongue out, and her
+could do that, and he put a candle to her eyes. Her's in bed now.
+Susan's sitting with her.'
+
+'I'll go up and see if I can do anything,' said Leonora, rising.
+
+'No,' Meshach stopped her. 'You'll happen excite her. Doctor said her
+was to go to sleep, and he's to send in a soothing draught. There's no
+danger--not now--not till next time. Her mun take care, mun Hannah.'
+
+'Then it is the heart?' Leonora asked.
+
+'Ay! It's the heart.'
+
+Twemlow and Leonora sat silent, embarrassed in the little parlour with
+its antimacassars, its stiff chairs, its high mantelpiece, and the glass
+partition which seemed to swallow up like a pit the rays from the
+hissing gas-jet over the table. The image of the diminutive frail
+creature concealed upstairs obsessed them, and Leonora felt guilty
+because she had been unwittingly absorbed in the gaiety of the opera
+while Aunt Hannah was in such danger.
+
+'I doubt I munna' tap that again,' Meshach remarked with a short dry
+plaintive laugh, pointing to the pewter platter on the mantelpiece by
+means of which he was accustomed to summon his sister when he wanted
+her.
+
+The visitors looked at each other; Leonora's eyes were moist.
+
+'But isn't there anything I can do, uncle?' she demanded.
+
+'I'll see if her's asleep. Sit thee still,' said Meshach, and he crept
+out of the room, and up the creaking stair.
+
+'Poor old fellow!' Twemlow murmured, glancing at his watch.
+
+'What time is it?' she asked, for the sake of saying something. 'It's no
+use me staying.'
+
+'Five to eleven. If I run off at once I can catch the last train.
+Good-night. Tell Mr. Myatt, will you?'
+
+She took his hand with a feeling of intimacy.
+
+It seemed to her that they had shared many emotions that night.
+
+'I'll let you out,' she suggested, and in the obscurity of the narrow
+lobby they came into contact and shook hands again; she could not at
+first find the upper latch of the door.
+
+'I shall be seeing you all soon,' he said in a low voice, on the step.
+She nodded and closed the door softly.
+
+She thought how simple, agreeable, reliable, honest, good-natured, and
+sympathetic he was.
+
+'Her's sleeping like a babby,' Meshach stated, returning to the parlour.
+He lighted his pipe, and through the smoke looked at Leonora in her dark
+magnificent dress.
+
+Then John arrived, pompous and elaborately calm; but he had driven
+Prince to Hillport and back in twenty-five minutes. John listened to the
+recital of events.
+
+'You're sure there's no danger now?' He could disguise neither his
+present relief nor his fear for the future.
+
+'Thou'rt all right yet, nephew,' said Meshach with an ironic inflection,
+as he gazed into the dying fire. 'Her may live another ten year. And I
+might flit to-morrow. Thou'rt too anxious, my lad. Keep it down.'
+
+John, deeply offended, made no reply.
+
+'Why shouldn't I be anxious?' he exclaimed angrily as they drove home.
+'Whose fault is it if I am? Does he expect me not to be?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DEPARTURE
+
+
+As I approach the crisis in Leonora's life, I hesitate, fearing lest by
+an unfit phrase I should deprive her of your sympathies, and fearing
+also that this fear may incline me to set down less than the truth about
+her.
+
+She was possessed by a mysterious sensation of content. She wished to
+lie supine--except in her domestic affairs--and to dream that all was
+well or would be well. It was as though she had determined that nothing
+could extinguish or even disturb the mild flame of happiness which
+burned placidly within her. And yet the anxieties of her existence were
+certainly increasing again. On the morning after the opera, John had
+departed on one of his sudden flying visits to London; these journeys,
+formerly frequent, had been in abeyance for a time, and their resumption
+seemed to point to some renewal of his difficulties. He had called at
+Church Street on his way to Knype, and Carpenter had brought back word
+that Miss Myatt was wonderfully better; but when Leonora herself called
+at Church Street later in the morning and at last saw Aunt Hannah, she
+was impressed by the change in the old creature, whose nervous system
+had the appearance of being utterly disorganised. Then there was the
+difficult case of Ethel and Fred Ryley, in which Leonora had done
+nothing whatever; and there was the case of Rose, whose alienation from
+the rest of the household became daily more marked. Finally there was
+the new and portentous case of Millicent, probably the most
+disconcerting of the three. Nevertheless, amid all these solicitudes,
+Leonora remained equable, optimistic, and quietly joyous. Her state of
+mind, so miraculously altered in a few hours, gave her no surprise. It
+seemed natural; everything seemed natural; she ceased for a period to
+waste emotion in the futile desire for her lost youth.
+
+On the second day after the opera she was sitting at her Sheraton desk
+in the small nondescript room which opened off the dining-room. In front
+of her lay a large tablet with innumerable names of things printed on it
+in three columns; opposite each name a little hole had been drilled, and
+in many of the holes little sticks of wood stood upright. Leonora
+uprooted a stick, exiling it to a long horizontal row of holes at the
+top of the tablet, and then wrote in a pocket-book; she uprooted
+another stick and wrote again, so continuing till only a few sticks were
+left in the columns; these she spared. Then she rang the bell for the
+parlourmaid and relinquished to her the tablet; the peculiar rite was
+over.
+
+'Is dinner ready?' she asked, looking at the small clock which she
+usually carried about with her from room to room.
+
+'Yes 'm.'
+
+'Then ring the gong. And tell Carpenter I shall want the trap at a
+quarter past two, for two. I'm going to shop in Hanbridge and then to
+meet Mr. Stanway at Knype. We shall be in before four. Have some tea
+ready. And don't forget the eclairs to-day, Bessie.' She smiled.
+
+'No 'm. Did you think on to write about them new dog-biscuits, ma'am?'
+
+'I'll write now,' said Leonora, and she turned to the desk.
+
+The gong sounded; the dinner was brought in. Through the doorway between
+the two rooms--there was no door, only a portiere--Leonora heard Ethel's
+rather heavy footsteps. 'I don't think mother will want you to wait
+to-day, Bessie,' Ethel's voice said. Then followed, after the maid's
+exit, the noise of a dish-cover being lifted and dropped, and Ethel's
+exclamation: 'Um!' And then the voices of Rose and Millicent
+approached, in altercation.
+
+'Come along, mother,' Ethel called out.
+
+'Coming,' answered Leonora, putting the note in an envelope.
+
+'The idea!' said Rose's voice scornfully.
+
+'Yes,' retorted Milly's voice. 'The idea.'
+
+Leonora listened as she wrote the address.
+
+'You always were a conceited thing, Milly, and since this wonderful
+opera you're positively ridiculous. I almost wish I'd gone to it now,
+just to see what you _were_ like.'
+
+'Ah well! You just didn't, and so you don't know.'
+
+'No indeed! I'd got something better to do than watch a pack of
+amateurs----' There was a pause for silent contempt.
+
+'Well? Keep it up, keep it up.'
+
+'Anyhow I'm perfectly certain father won't let you go.'
+
+'I shall go.'
+
+'And besides, _I_ want to go to London, and you may be absolutely
+certain, my child, that he won't let two of us go.'
+
+'I shall speak to him first.'
+
+'Oh no, you won't.'
+
+'Shan't I? You'll see.'
+
+'No, you won't. Because it just happens that I spoke to him the night
+before last. And he's making inquiries and he'll tell me to-night. So
+what do you think of that?'
+
+Leonora drew aside the portiere.
+
+'My dear girls!' she protested benevolently, standing there.
+
+The feud, always apt thus to leap into a perfectly Corsican fury of
+bitterness, sank back at once to its ordinary level of passive mutual
+repudiation. Rose and Millicent were not bereft of the finer feelings
+which distinguish humanity from the beasts of the jungle; sometimes they
+could be almost affectionate. There were, however, moments when to all
+appearance they hated each other with a tigerish and crouching hatred
+such as may be found only between two opposing feminine temperaments
+linked together by the family tie.
+
+'What's this about your going to London, Rosie?' Leonora asked in a
+voice soothing but surprised, when the meal had begun.
+
+'You know, mamma. I mentioned it to you the other day.' The girl's tone
+implied that what she had said to Leonora perhaps went in at one ear and
+out at the other.
+
+Leonora remembered. Rose had in fact casually told her that a school
+friend in Oldcastle who was studying for the same examination as
+herself had gone to London for six weeks' final coaching under what
+Rose called a 'lady-crammer.'
+
+'But you didn't tell me that you wanted to go as well,' Leonora said.
+
+'Yes, mother, I did,' Rose affirmed with calm. 'You forget. I'm sure I
+shan't pass if I don't go. So I asked father while you were all at this
+opera affair.'
+
+'And what did he say?' Ethel demanded.
+
+'He said he would make inquiries this morning and see.'
+
+Ethel gave a laugh of good-natured derision. 'Yes,' she exclaimed, 'and
+you'll see, too!'
+
+In response to this oracular utterance, Rose merely bent lower over her
+plate.
+
+Millicent, conscious of a brilliant vocation and of an impassioned
+resolve, refrained from the discussion, and the sense of her ineffable
+superiority bore hard on that lithe, mercurial youthfulness. The
+'Signal,' in praising Millicent's performance at the opera, had
+predicted for her a career, and had thoughtfully quoted instances of
+well-born amateurs who had become professionals and made great names on
+the stage. Millicent knew that all Bursley was talking about her. And
+yet the family life was unaltered; no one at home seemed to be much
+impressed, not even Ethel, though Ethel's sympathy could be depended
+upon; Milly was still Milly, the youngest, the least important, the chit
+of a thing. At times it appeared to her as though the triumph of that
+ecstatic and glorious night was after all nothing but an illusion, and
+that only the interminable dailiness of family life was real. Then the
+ruthless and calculating minx in her shut tight those pretty lips and
+coldly determined that nothing should stand against ambition.
+
+'I do hope you will pass,' said Leonora cordially to Rose. 'You
+certainly deserve to.'
+
+'I know I shan't, unless I get some outside help. My brain isn't that
+sort of brain. It's another sort. Only one has to knuckle down to these
+wretched exams first.'
+
+Leonora did not understand her daughter. She knew, however, that there
+was not the slightest chance of Rose being allowed to go to London alone
+for any lengthened period, and she wondered that Rose could be so blind
+as not to perceive this. As for Millicent's vague notions, which the
+child had furtively broached during her father's absence, the more
+Leonora thought upon them, the more fantastically impossible they
+seemed. She changed the subject.
+
+The repast, which had commenced with due ceremony, degenerated into a
+feminine mess, hasty, informal, counterfeit. That elaborate and irksome
+pretence that a man is present, with which women when they are alone
+always begin to eat, was gradually dropped, and the meal ended abruptly,
+inconclusively, like a bad play.
+
+'Let's go for a walk,' said Ethel.
+
+'Yes,' said Milly, 'let's.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Mamma!' Milly called from the drawing-room window.
+
+Leonora was walking about the misty garden, where little now remained
+that was green, save the yews, the cypresses, and the rhododendrons;
+Bran, his white-and-fawn coat glittering with minute drops of water,
+plodded heavily and content by her side along the narrow damp paths. She
+was dressed for driving, and awaited Carpenter with the trap.
+
+In reply to Leonora's gesture of attention, Milly, instead of speaking
+from the window, ran quickly to her across the sodden lawn. And Milly's
+running was so girlish, simple, and unaffected, that Leonora seemed by
+means of it to have found her daughter again, the daughter who had
+disappeared in the adroit and impudent creature of the footlights. She
+was glad of the reassurance.
+
+'Here's Mr. Twemlow, mamma,' said Milly, with a rather embarrassed air;
+and they looked at each other, while Bran frowned in glancing upwards.
+
+At the same moment, Arthur Twemlow and Ethel entered the garden
+together. The social atmosphere was rendered bracing by this invasion of
+the masculine; every personality awoke and became vigilantly itself.
+
+'We met Mr. Twemlow on the marsh, mother, walking from Oldcastle to
+Bursley,' said Ethel, after the ritual of greeting, 'and so we brought
+him in.'
+
+As Leonora was on the point of leaving the house, the situation was
+somewhat awkward, and a slight hesitation on her part showed this.
+
+'You're going out?' he said.
+
+'Oh, mamma,' Milly cried quickly, 'do let me go and meet father instead
+of you. I want to.'
+
+'What, alone?' Leonora exclaimed in a kind of dream.
+
+'I'll go too,' said Ethel.
+
+'And suppose you have the horse down?'
+
+'Well then, we'll take Carpenter,' Milly suggested. 'I'll run and tell
+him to put his overcoat on and put the back-seat in.' And she scampered
+off.
+
+Twemlow was fondling the dog with an air of detachment.
+
+In the fraction of an instant, a thousand wild and disturbing thoughts
+swept through Leonora's brain. Was it possible that Arthur Twemlow had
+suggested this change of plan to the girls? Or had the girls already
+noticed with the keen eyes of youth that she and Arthur Twemlow enjoyed
+each other's society, and naively wished to give her pleasure? Would
+Arthur Twemlow, but for the accidental encounter on the Marsh, have
+passed by her home without calling? If she remained, what conclusion
+could not be drawn? If she persisted in going, might not he want to come
+with her? She was ashamed of the preposterous inward turmoil.
+
+'And my shopping?' she smiled, blushing.
+
+'Give me the list, mater,' said Ethel, and took the morocco book out of
+her hand.
+
+Never before had Leonora felt so helpless in the sudden clutch of fate.
+She knew she was a willing prey. She wished to remain, and politeness to
+Arthur Twemlow demanded that this wish should not be disguised. Yet what
+would she not have given even to have felt herself able to disguise it?
+
+'How incredibly stupid I am!' she thought.
+
+No sooner had the two girls departed than Twemlow began to laugh.
+
+'I must tell you,' he said, with candid amusement, 'that this is a
+plant. Those two daughters of yours calculated to leave you and me here
+alone together.'
+
+'Yes?' she murmured, still constrained.
+
+'Miss Milly wants me to talk you round about her going in for the stage.
+When I met them on the Marsh, of course I began to pay her compliments,
+and I just happened to say I thought she was a born _comedienne_, and
+before I knew it T was blindfolded, handcuffed, and carried off, so to
+speak.'
+
+This was the simple, innocent explanation! 'Oh, how incredibly stupid,
+stupid, stupid, I was!' she thought again, and a feeling of exquisite
+relief surged into her being. Mingled with that relief was the deep joy
+of realising that Ethel and Milly fully shared her instinctive
+predilection for Arthur Twemlow. Here indeed was the supreme security.
+
+'I must say my daughters get more and more surprising every day,' she
+remarked, impelled to offer some sort of conventional apology for her
+children's unconventional behaviour.
+
+'They are charming girls,' he said briefly.
+
+On the surface of her profound relief and joy there played like a flying
+fish the thought: 'Was he meaning to call in any case? Was he on his way
+here?'
+
+They talked about Aunt Hannah, whom Twemlow had seen that morning and
+who was improving rapidly. But he agreed with Leonora that the old
+lady's vitality had been irretrievably shattered. Then there was a
+pause, followed by some remarks on the weather, and then another pause.
+Bran, after watching them attentively for a few moments as they stood
+side by side near the French window, rose up from off his haunches, and
+walked gloomily away.
+
+'Bran, Bran!' Twemlow cried.
+
+'It's no use,' she laughed. 'He's vexed. He thinks he's being neglected.
+He'll go to his kennel and nothing will bring him out of it, except
+food. Come into the house. It's going to rain again.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Well,' the visitor exclaimed familiarly.
+
+They were seated by the fire in the drawing-room. Leonora was removing
+her gloves.
+
+'Well?' she repeated. 'And so you still think Milly ought to be allowed
+to go on the stage?'
+
+'I think she _will_ go on the stage,' he said.
+
+'You can't imagine how it upsets me even to think of it.' Leonora seemed
+to appeal for his sympathy.
+
+'Oh, yes, I can,' he replied. 'Didn't I tell you the other night that I
+knew exactly how you felt? But you've got to get over that, I guess.
+You've got to get on to yourself. Mr. Myatt told me what he said to
+you----'
+
+'So Uncle Meshach has been talking about it too?' she interrupted.
+
+'Why, yes, certainly. Of course he's quite right. Milly's bound to go
+her own way. Why not make up your mind to it, and help her, and
+straighten things out for her?'
+
+'But----'
+
+'Look here, Mrs. Stanway,' he leaned forward; 'will you tell me just why
+it upsets you to think of your daughter going on the stage?'
+
+'I don't know. I can't explain. But it does.'
+
+She smiled at him, smoothing out her gloves one after the other on her
+lap.
+
+'It's nothing but superstition, you know,' he said gently, returning her
+smile.
+
+'Yes,' she admitted. 'I suppose it is.'
+
+He was silent for a moment, as if undecided what to say next. She
+glanced at him surreptitiously, and took in all the details of his
+attire--the high white collar, the dark tweed suit obviously of American
+origin, the thin silver chain that emerged from beneath his waistcoat
+and disappeared on a curve into the hip pocket of his trousers, the
+boots with their long pointed toes. His heavy moustache, and the smooth
+bluish chin, struck her as ideally masculine.
+
+'No parents,' he burst out, 'no parents can see things from their
+children's point of view.'
+
+'Oh!' she protested. 'There are times when I feel so like my daughters
+that I _am_ them.'
+
+He nodded. 'Yes,' he said, abandoning his position at once, 'I can
+believe that. You're an exception. If I hadn't sort of known all the
+time that you were, I wouldn't be here now talking like this.'
+
+'It's so accidental, the whole business,' she remarked, branching off to
+another aspect of the case in order to mask the confusion caused by the
+sincere flattery in his voice. 'It was only by chance that Milly had
+that particular part at all. Suppose she hadn't had it. What then?'
+
+'Everything's accidental,' he replied. 'Everything that ever happened is
+accidental, in a way--in another it isn't. If you look at your own life,
+for instance, you'll find it's been simply a series of coincidences. I'm
+sure mine has been. Sheer chance from beginning to end.'
+
+'Yes,' she said thoughtfully, and put her chin in the palm of her left
+hand.
+
+'And as for the stage, why, nearly every one goes on the stage by
+chance. It just occurs, that's all. And moreover I guarantee that the
+parents of fifty per cent. of all the actresses now on the boards began
+by thinking what a terrible blow it was to them that _their_ daughters
+should want to do _that_. Can't you see what I mean?' He emphasised his
+words more and more. 'I'm certain you can.'
+
+She signified assent. It seemed to her, as he continued to talk, that
+for the first time she was listening to natural convincing common sense
+in that home of hers, where existence was governed by precedent and by
+conventional ideas and by the profound parental instinct which meets all
+requests with a refusal. It seemed to her that her children, though to
+outward semblance they had much freedom, had never listened to anything
+but 'No,' 'No, dear,' 'Of course you can't,' 'I think you had better
+not,' and 'Once for all, I forbid it.' She wondered why this should have
+been so, and why its strangeness had not impressed her before. She had a
+distant fleeting vision of a household in which parents and children
+behaved like free and sensible human beings, instead of like the
+virtuous and the martyrised puppets of a terrible system called 'acting
+for the best.' And she thought again what an extraordinary man Arthur
+Twemlow was, strong-minded, clear-headed, sympathetic, and delightful.
+She enjoyed intensely the sensation of their intimacy.
+
+'Jack will never agree,' she said, when she could say nothing else.
+
+'Ah! "Jack!"' He slightly imitated her tone. 'Well, that remains to be
+seen.'
+
+'Why do you take all this trouble for Milly?' she asked him. 'It's very
+good of you.'
+
+'Because I'm a fool, a meddling ass,' he replied lightly, standing up
+and stroking his clothes.
+
+'You aren't,' her eyes said, 'you are a dear.'
+
+'No,' he went on, in a serious tone, 'Milly just wanted me to speak to
+you, and after all I didn't see why I shouldn't. It's no earthly
+business of mine, but--oh, well! Good-bye, I must be getting along.'
+
+'Have you got an appointment to keep?' she questioned him.
+
+'No--not an appointment.'
+
+'Well then, you will stay a little longer. The trap will be back quite
+soon.' Her voice seemed playfully to indicate that, as she had submitted
+to his domination, so he must submit now to hers. 'And if you will
+excuse me one moment, I will go and take off this thick jacket.'
+
+Up in the bedroom, as she removed her coat in front of the pier-glass,
+she smiled at her image timorously, yet in full content. Milly's
+prospects did not appear to her to have been practically improved, nor
+could she piece out of Arthur Twemlow's conversation a definite
+argument; nevertheless she felt that he had made her see something more
+clearly than heretofore, that he had induced in her, not by logic but by
+persuasiveness, a mood towards her children which was brighter, more
+sanguine, and even more loving, than any in her previous experience. She
+was glad that she had left him alone for a minute, because such familiar
+treatment of him somehow established definitely his status as a friend
+of the house.
+
+'Listen, Twemlow,' said Stanway loudly, 'I meant to run down to the
+office for an hour this afternoon, but if you'll stay, I'll stay. That's
+a bargain, eh?'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John had returned from London blusterously cheerful, and Twemlow stood
+in the centre of his vehement noisy hospitality as in the centre of a
+typhoon. He consented to stay, because the two girls, with hair blown
+and still in their wet macintoshes, took him by the arm and said he
+must. He was not the first guest in that house whom the apparent
+heartiness of the host had failed to convince. Always there was
+something sinister, insincere, and bullying in the invitations which
+John gave, and in his reception of visitors. Hence it was, perhaps, that
+visitors did not abound under his roof, despite the richness of the
+table and the ordered elegance of every appointment. Women paid calls;
+the girls, unlike Leonora, had their intimates, including Harry; but men
+seldom came; and it was not often that the principal meals of the day
+were shared by an outsider of either sex.
+
+Arthur's presence on a second occasion was therefore the more
+stimulating. It affected the whole house, even to the kitchen, which,
+indeed, usually vibrates in sympathy with the drawing-room. In Bessie's
+vivacious demeanour as she served the high-tea at six o'clock might be
+observed the symptoms of the agreeable excitation which all felt. Even
+Rose unbent, and Leonora thought how attractive the girl could be when
+she chose. But towards the end of the meal, it became evident that Rose
+was preoccupied. Leonora, Ethel, and Millicent passed into the
+drawing-room. John pulled out his immense cigar-case, and the two men
+began to smoke.
+
+'Come along,' said Stanway, speaking thickly with the cigar in his
+mouth.
+
+'Papa,' said Rose ominously, just as he was following Twemlow out of the
+door. She spoke with quiet, cold distinctness.
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'Did you inquire about that?'
+
+He paused. 'Oh yes, Rose,' he answered rapidly.' I inquired. She seemed
+a very clever woman, I must say. But I've been thinking it over, and
+I've come to the conclusion that it won't do for you to go. I don't like
+the idea of it--you in London for six weeks or more alone. You must do
+what you can here. And if you fail this time you must try again.'
+
+'But I can stay in the same lodgings as Sarah Fuge. The house is kept by
+her cousin or some relation.'
+
+'And then there's the expense,' he proceeded.
+
+'Father, I told you the other night I didn't want to put you to any
+expense. I've got thirty-seven pounds of my own, and I will pay; I
+prefer to pay.'
+
+'Oh, no, no!' he exclaimed.
+
+'Well, why can't I go?' she demanded bluntly.
+
+'I'll think it over again--but I don't like it, Rose, I don't like it.'
+
+'But there isn't a day to waste, father!' she complained.
+
+Bessie entered to clear the table.
+
+'Hum! Well! I'll think it over again.' He breathed out smoke, and
+departed. Rose set her lips hard. She was seen no more that evening.
+
+In the drawing-room, Stanway found Twemlow and Millicent talking in low
+voices on the hearthrug. Ethel lounged on the sofa. Leonora was not
+present, but she came in immediately.
+
+'Let's have a game at solo,' John suggested. And because five was a
+convenient number they all played. Twemlow and Milly were the best
+performers; Milly's gift for card-playing was notorious in the family.
+
+'Do you ever play poker?' Twemlow asked, when the other three had been
+beggared of counters.
+
+'No,' said John, cautiously. 'Not here.'
+
+'It's lots of fun,' Twemlow went on, looking at the girls.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Twemlow,' Milly cried. 'It's awfully gambly, isn't it? Do teach
+us.'
+
+In a quarter of an hour Milly was bluffing her father with success. She
+said that in future she should never want to play at any other game. As
+for Leonora, though she lost and gained counters with happy equanimity,
+she did not like the game; it frightened her. When Milly had shown a
+straight flush and scooped the kitty she sent the child out of the room
+with a message to the kitchen concerning coffee and sandwiches.
+
+'Won't Milly sing?' Twemlow asked.
+
+'Certainly, if you wish,' Leonora responded.
+
+'Ay! Let's have something,' said Stanway, lazily.
+
+And when Millicent returned, she was told that she must sing before
+eating. She sang 'Love is a Plaintive Song,' to Ethel's inert
+accompaniment, and she gave it exactly as though she had been on the
+stage, with all the dramatic action, all the freedom, all the
+allurements, which she had lavished on the audience in the Town Hall.
+
+'Very good,' said her father. 'I like that. It's very pretty. I didn't
+hear it the other night.' Twemlow merely thanked the artist. Leonora was
+silently uncomfortable.
+
+After coffee both the girls disappeared. Twemlow looked round, and then
+spoke to Stanway.
+
+'I've been very much impressed by your daughter's talent,' he said. His
+tone was extremely serious. It implied that, now the children were gone,
+the adults could talk with freedom.
+
+Stanway was a little startled, and more than a little flattered.
+
+'Really?' he questioned.
+
+'Really,' said Twemlow, emphasising still further his seriousness. 'Has
+she ever been taught?'
+
+'Only by a local teacher up here at Hillport,' Leonora told him.
+
+'She ought to have lessons from a first-class master.'
+
+'Why?' asked Stanway abruptly.
+
+'Well,' Twemlow said, 'you never know----'
+
+'You honestly think her voice is worth cultivating?' John demanded,
+impelled to participate in Twemlow's gravity.
+
+'I do. And not only her voice----'
+
+'Ah,' Stanway mused, 'there's no first-class masters in this district.'
+
+'Why, I met a man from Manchester at the Five Towns Hotel last night,'
+said Twemlow, 'who comes down to Knype once a week to give lessons. He
+used to sing in opera. They say he's the best man about, and that he's
+taught a lot of good people. I forget his name.'
+
+'I expect you mean Cecil Corfe,' Leonora said cheerfully. She had been
+amazed at the compliance of John's attitude.
+
+'Yes, that's it.'
+
+At the same moment there was a faint noise at the French window. John
+went to investigate. As soon as his back was turned, Twemlow glanced at
+Leonora with eyes full of a private amusement which he invited her to
+share. 'Can't I just handle him?' he seemed to say. She smiled, but
+cautiously, less she should disclose too fully her intense appreciation
+of his personality.
+
+'Why, it's the dog!' Stanway proclaimed, 'and wet through! What's he
+doing loose? It's raining like the devil.'
+
+'I'm afraid I didn't fasten him up this afternoon. I forgot,' said
+Leonora. 'Oh! my new rug!'
+
+Bran plunged into the room with a glad deafening bark, his tail
+thwacking the furniture like the flat of a sword.
+
+'Get out, you great brute!' Stanway ordered, and then, on the step, he
+shouted into the darkness for Carpenter.
+
+Twemlow rose to look on.
+
+'I can't let you walk to the station to-night, Twemlow,' said Stanway,
+still outside the room. 'Carpenter shall drive you. Yes, he shall, so
+don't argue. And while he's about it he may as well take you straight to
+Knype. You can go in the buggy--there's a hood to it.'
+
+When the time came for departure, John insisted on lending to Twemlow a
+large driving overcoat. They stood in the hall together, while Twemlow
+fumbled with the complicated apparatus of buttons. Stanway whistled.
+
+'By the way,' he said, 'when are you coming in to look through those old
+accounts?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' Twemlow answered, somewhat taken by surprise.
+
+'I tell you what I'll do--I'll send you copies of them, eh?'
+
+'I think you needn't trouble,' said Twemlow, carelessly. 'I guess I
+shall write to my sister, and tell her I can't see any use in trying to
+worry out the old man's finances at this time of day.'
+
+'However,' Stan way repeated, 'I'll send you the copies all the same.
+And when you write to your sister, will you give her my kindest
+regards?'
+
+The whole family, except Rose, came into the porch to bid him
+good-night. In the darkness and the heavy rain could dimly be seen the
+rounded form of the buggy; the cob's flanks shone in the glittering ray
+of the lamps; Carpenter was hidden under the hood; his mysterious hand
+raised the apron, and Twemlow stepped quickly in.
+
+'Good-night,' said Ethel.
+
+'Good-night, Mr. Twemlow,' said Milly. 'Be good.'
+
+'You'll see us again before you leave, Twemlow?' said John's imperious
+voice.
+
+'You aren't going back to America just yet, are you?' Leonora asked,
+from the back.
+
+No reply came from within the hood.
+
+'Mother says you aren't going back to America just yet, are you, Mr.
+Twemlow?' Milly screamed in her treble.
+
+Arthur Twemlow showed his face. 'No, not yet, I think,' he called. 'See
+you again, certainly.... And thanks once more.'
+
+'Tchick!' said Carpenter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next evening, after tea, John, Leonora, and Rose were in the
+drawing-room. Milly had run down to see her friend Cissie Burgess,
+having with fine cruelty chosen that particular night because she
+happened to know that Harry would be out. Ethel was invisible. Rose had
+returned with bitter persistence to the siege of her father's obstinacy.
+
+'I should have six weeks clear,' she was saying.
+
+John consulted his pocket-calendar.
+
+'No,' he corrected her, 'you would only have a month. It isn't worth
+while.'
+
+'I should have six weeks,' she repeated. 'The exam isn't till January
+the seventh.'
+
+'But Christmas, what about Christmas? You must be here for Christmas.'
+
+'Why?' demanded Rose.
+
+'Oh, Rosie!' Leonora protested.' You can't be away for Christmas!'
+
+'Why not?' the girl demanded again, coldly.
+
+Both parents paused.
+
+'Because you can't,' said John angrily. 'The idea's absurd.'
+
+'I don't see it,' Rose persevered.
+
+'Well, I do,' John delivered himself. 'And let that suffice.'
+
+Rose's face indicated the near approach of tears.
+
+It was at this juncture that Bessie opened the door and announced Mr.
+Twemlow.
+
+'I just called to bring back that magnificent great-coat,' he said.
+'It's hanging up on its proper hook in the hall.'
+
+Then he turned specially to Leonora, who sat isolated near the fire. She
+was not surprised to see him, because she had felt sure that he would at
+once return the overcoat in person; she had counted on him doing so. As
+he came towards her she languorously lifted her arm, without rising, and
+the two bangles which she wore slipped tinkling down the wide sleeve.
+They shook hands in silence, smiling.
+
+'I hope you didn't take cold last night?' she said at length.
+
+'Not I,' he replied, sitting down by her side.
+
+He was quick to detect the disturbance in the social atmosphere, and
+though he tried to appear unconscious of it, he did not succeed in the
+impossible. Moreover, Rose had evidently decided that despite his
+presence she would finish what she had begun.
+
+'Very well, father,' she said. 'If you'll let me go at once I'll come
+down for two days at Christmas.'
+
+'Yes,' John grumbled, 'that's all very well. But who's to take you? You
+can't go alone. And you know perfectly well that I only came back
+yesterday.' He recited this fact precisely as though it constituted a
+grievance against Rose.
+
+'As if I couldn't go alone!' Rose exclaimed.
+
+'If it's London you're talking about,' Twemlow said, 'I will be going up
+to-morrow by the midday flyer, and could look after any lady that
+happened to be on that train and would accept my services.' He glanced
+pleasantly at Rose.
+
+'Oh, Mr. Twemlow!' the girl murmured. It was a ludicrously inadequate
+expression of her profound passionate gratitude to this knight; but she
+could say no more.
+
+'But can you be ready, my dear?' Leonora inquired.
+
+'I am ready,' said Rose.
+
+'It's understood then,' Twemlow said later. 'We shall meet at the depot.
+I can't stop another moment now. I've got a cab waiting outside.'
+
+Leonora wished to ask him whether, notwithstanding his partial
+assurance of the previous evening, his journey would really end at
+Euston, or whether he was not taking London _en route_ for New York. But
+she could not bring herself to put the question. She hoped that John
+might put it; John, however, was taciturn.
+
+'We shall see Rose off to-morrow, of course,' was her last utterance to
+Twemlow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonora and her three daughters stood in the crowd on the platform of
+Knype railway station, waiting for Arthur Twemlow and for the London
+express. John had brought them to the station in the waggonette, had
+kissed Rose and purchased her ticket, and had then driven off to a
+creditors' meeting at Hanbridge. All the women felt rather mournful amid
+that bustle and confusion. Leonora had said to herself again and again
+that it was absurd to regard this absence of Rose for a few weeks as a
+break in the family existence. Yet the phrase, 'the first break, the
+first break,' ran continually in her mind. The gentle sadness of her
+mood noticeably affected the girls. It was as though they had all
+suddenly discovered a mutual unsuspected tenderness. Milly put her hand
+on Rose's shoulder, and Rose did not resent the artless gesture.
+
+'I hope Mr. Twemlow isn't going to miss it,' said Ethel, voicing the
+secret apprehension of all.
+
+'I shan't miss it, anyhow,' Rose remarked defiantly.
+
+Scarcely a minute before the train was due, Milly descried Twemlow
+coming out of the booking office. They pressed through the crowd towards
+him.
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed genially. 'Here you are! Baggage labelled?'
+
+'We thought you weren't coming, Mr. Twemlow,' Milly said.
+
+'You did? I was kept quite a few minutes at the hotel. You see I only
+had to walk across the road.'
+
+'We didn't really think any such thing,' said Leonora.
+
+The conversation fell to pieces.
+
+Then the express, with its two engines, its gilded luncheon-cars, and
+its post-office van, thundered in, shaking the platform, and seeming to
+occupy the entire station. It had the air of pausing nonchalantly,
+disdainfully, in its mighty rush from one distant land of romance to
+another, in order to suffer for a brief moment the assault of a puny and
+needlessly excited multitude.
+
+'First stop Willesden,' yelled the porters.
+
+'Say, conductor,' said Twemlow sharply, catching the luncheon-car
+attendant by the sleeve, 'you've got two seats reserved for
+me--Twemlow?'
+
+'Twemlow? Yes, sir.'
+
+'Come along,' he said, 'come along.'
+
+The girls kissed at the steps of the car: 'Good-bye.'
+
+'Well, good-bye all!' said Twemlow. 'I hope to see you again some time.
+Say next fall.'
+
+'You surely aren't----' Leonora began.
+
+'Yes,' he resumed quickly, 'I sail Saturday. Must get back.'
+
+'Oh, Mr. Twemlow!' Ethel and Milly complained together.
+
+Rose was standing on the steps. Leonora leaned and kissed the pale girl
+madly, pressing her lips into Rose's cheek. Then she shook hands with
+Arthur Twemlow.
+
+'Good-bye!' she murmured.
+
+'I guess I shall write to you,' he said jauntily, addressing all three
+of them; and Ethel and Milly enthusiastically replied: 'Oh, do!'
+
+The travellers penetrated into the car, and reappeared at a window, one
+on either side of a table covered with a white cloth and laid for two
+persons.
+
+'Oh, don't I wish I was going!' Milly exclaimed, perceiving them.
+
+Rose was now flushed with triumph. She looked at Twemlow, her lips
+moved, she smiled. She was a woman in the world. Then they nodded and
+waved hands.
+
+The guard unfurled his green flag, the engine gave a curt, scornful
+whistle, and lo! the luncheon-car was gliding away from Leonora, Ethel,
+and Milly! Lo! the station was empty!
+
+'I wonder what he will talk to her about,' thought Leonora.
+
+They had to cross the station by the under-ground passage and wait
+twenty minutes for a squalid, shambling local train which took them to
+Shawport, at the foot of the rise to Hillport.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE DANCE
+
+
+About three months after its rendering of _Patience_, the Bursley
+Amateur Operatic Society arranged to give a commemorative dance in the
+very scene of that histrionic triumph. The fete was to surpass in
+splendour all previous entertainments of the kind recorded in the annals
+of the town. It was talked about for weeks in advance; several
+dressmakers nearly died of it; and as the day approached the difficulty
+of getting one's self invited became extreme.
+
+'You know, Mrs. Stanway,' said Harry Burgess when he met Leonora one
+afternoon in the street, 'we are relying on you to be the best-dressed
+woman in the place.'
+
+She smiled with a calmness which had in it a touch of gentle cynicism.
+'You shouldn't,' she answered.
+
+'But you're coming, aren't you?' he inquired with eager concern. Of
+late, owing to the capricious frigidity of Millicent's attitude towards
+him, he had been much less a frequenter of Leonora's house, and he was
+no longer privy to all its doings.
+
+'Oh, yes,' she said, 'I suppose I shall come.'
+
+'That's all right,' he exclaimed. 'If you come you conquer.' They passed
+on their ways.
+
+Leonora's existence had slipped back into its old groove since the
+departure of Twemlow, and the groove had deepened. She lived by the
+force of habit, hoping nothing from the future, but fearing more than a
+little. She seemed to be encompassed by vague and sinister portents.
+After another brief interlude of apparent security, John's situation was
+again disquieting. Trade was good in the Five Towns; at least the
+manufacturers had temporarily forgotten to complain that it was very
+bad, and the Monday afternoon football-matches were magnificently
+attended. Moreover, John had attracted favourable attention to himself
+by his shrewd proposals to the Manufacturers' Association for reform in
+the method of paying firemen and placers; his ability was everywhere
+recognised. At the same time, however, the Five Towns looked askance at
+him. Rumour revived, and said that he could not keep up his juggling
+performance for ever. He was known to have speculated heavily for a rise
+in the shares of a great brewery which had falsified the prophecies of
+its founders when they benevolently sold it to the investing public.
+Some people wondered how long John could hold those shares in a falling
+market. Leonora had no definite knowledge of her husband's affairs,
+since neither John nor any other person breathed a word to her about
+them. And yet she knew, by certain vibrations in the social atmosphere
+as mysterious and disconcerting as those discovered by Roentgen in the
+physical, that disaster, after having been repelled, was returning from
+afar. Money flowed through the house as usual; nevertheless often, as
+she drove about Bursley, consciously exciting the envy and admiration
+which a handsome woman behind a fast cob is bound to excite, her shamed
+fancy pictured the day when Prince should belong to another and she
+should walk perforce on the pavement in attire genteelly preserved from
+past affluence. Only women know the keenest pang of these secret
+misgivings, at once desperate and helpless.
+
+Nor did she find solace in her girls. One Saturday afternoon Ethel came
+back from the duty-visit to Aunt Hannah and said as it were
+confidentially to Leonora: 'Fred called in while I was there, mother,
+and stayed for tea.' What could Leonora answer? Who could deny Fred the
+right to visit his great-aunt and his great-uncle, both rapidly ageing?
+And of what use to tell John? She desired Ethel's happiness, but from
+that moment she felt like an accomplice in the furtive wooing, and it
+seemed to her that she had forfeited both the confidence of her husband
+and the respect of her daughter. Months ago she had meant by force of
+some initiative to regularise this idyll which by its stealthiness
+wounded the self-respect of all concerned. Vain aspiration! And now the
+fact that Fred Ryley had begun to call at Church Street appeared to
+indicate between him and Uncle Meshach a closer understanding which
+could only be detrimental to the interests of John.
+
+As for Rose, that child of misfortune did well during the first four
+days of the examination, but on the fifth day one of her chronic
+sick-headaches had in two hours nullified all the intense and ceaseless
+effort of two years. It was precisely in chemistry that she had failed.
+She arrived from London in tears, and the tears were renewed when the
+formal announcement of defeat came three weeks later by telegraph and
+John added gaiety to the occasion by remarking: 'What did I tell you?'
+The girl's proud and tenacious spirit, weakened by the long strain, was
+daunted at last. She lounged in the house and garden, listless, supine,
+torpid, instinctively waiting for Nature's recovery.
+
+Millicent alone in the house was unreservedly cheerful and
+light-hearted. She had the advantage of Mr. Corfe's instruction for two
+hours every Wednesday, and expressed herself as well satisfied with his
+methods. Her own intimate friends knew that she quite intended to go on
+the stage, but they were enjoined to say nothing. Consequently John
+Stanway was one of the few people in Bursley unaware of the definiteness
+of Milly's private plans; Leonora was another. Leonora sometimes felt
+that Milly's assertive and indestructible vivacity must be due to some
+specific cause, but Mr. Cecil Corfe's reputation for seriousness and
+discretion precluded the idea that he was encouraging the girl to dream
+dreams without the consent of her parents.
+
+Leonora might have questioned Milly, but she perceived the futility of
+doing so. It became more and more clear to her that she did not possess
+the confidence of her daughters. They loved her and they admired her;
+and she for her part made a point of trusting them; but their confidence
+was withheld. Under the influence of Arthur Twemlow she had tried to
+assuage the customary asperities of home life, so far as possible, by a
+demeanour of generous quick acquiescence, and she had not entirely
+failed. Yet the girls, with all the obtuseness and insensibility of
+adolescence, never thought of giving her the one reward which she
+desired. She sought tremulously to win their intimacy, but she sought
+too late. Rose and Milly simply ignored her diffident advances, and even
+Ethel was not responsive. Leonora had trained up her children as she
+herself had been trained. She saw her error only when it could not be
+retrieved. The dear but transient vision of four women who had no
+secrets from each other, who understood each other, was finally
+dissolved.
+
+Amid the secret desolation of a life which however was not without love,
+amid her vain regrets for an irrecoverable youth and her horror of the
+approach of age, amid the empty lassitudes which apparently were all
+that remained of the excitement caused by Arthur Twemlow's presence,
+Leonora found a mournful and sweet pleasure in imagining that she had a
+son. This son combined the best qualities of Harry Burgess and Fred
+Ryley. She made him tall as herself, handsome as herself, and like
+herself elegant. Shrewd, clever, and passably virtuous, he was
+nevertheless distinctly capable of follies; but he told her everything,
+even the worst, and though sometimes she frowned he smiled away the
+frown. He adored her; he appreciated all the feminine in her; he
+yielded to her whims; he kissed her chin and her wrist, held her
+sunshade, opened doors for her, allowed her to beat him at tennis, and
+deliciously frightened her by driving her very fast round corners in a
+very high dog-cart. And if occasionally she said, 'I am not as young as
+I was, Gerald,' he always replied: 'Oh rot, mater!'
+
+When Ethel or Milly remarked at breakfast, as they did now and then,
+that Mr. Twemlow had not fulfilled his promise of writing, Leonora would
+answer evenly, 'No, I expect he's forgotten us.' And she would go and
+live with her son for a little.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She summoned this Gerald--and it was for the last time--as she stood
+irresolutely waiting for her husband at the door of the ladies'
+cloak-room in the Town Hall. She was dressed in black mousseline de
+soie. The corsage, which fitted loosely except at the waist and the
+shoulders, where it was closely confined, was not too low, but it
+disclosed the beautiful diminutive rondures above the armpits, and,
+behind, the fine hollow of her back. The sleeves were long and full with
+tight wrists, ending in black lace. A band of pale pink silk, covered
+with white lace, wandered up one sleeve, crossed her breast in strict
+conformity with the top of the corsage, and wandered down the other
+sleeve; at the armpits, below the rondures, this band was punctuated
+with a pink rose. An extremely narrow black velvet ribbon clasped her
+neck. From the belt, which was pink, the full skirt ran down in a
+thousand perpendicular pleats. The effect of the loose corsage and of
+the belt on Leonora's perfect figure was to make her look girlish,
+ingenuous, immaculate, and with a woman's instinct she heightened the
+effect by swinging her programme restlessly on its ivory-tinted cord.
+
+They had arrived somewhat late, owing partly to John's indecision and
+partly to an accident with Rose's costume. On reaching the Town Hall,
+not only Ethel and Milly, but Rose also, had deserted Leonora eagerly,
+impatiently, as ducklings scurry into a pond; they passed through the
+cloak-room in a moment, Rose first; Rose was human that evening. Leonora
+did not mind; she anticipated the dance with neither joy nor melancholy,
+hoping nothing from it in her mood of neutral calm. John was talking
+with David Dain at the entrance to the gentlemen's cloak-room, further
+down the corridor. Presently, old Mr. Hawley, the doctor at Hillport,
+joined the other two, and then Dain moved away, leaving John and the
+doctor in conversation. Dain approached and saluted his client's wife
+with characteristic sheepishness.
+
+'Large company, I believe,' he said awkwardly. In evening dress he was
+always particularly awkward.
+
+She smiled kindly on him, thinking the while what a clumsy and
+objectionable fat little man he was. She knew he admired her, and would
+have given much to dance with her; but she did not care for his heavy
+eyes, and she despised him because he could not screw himself up to
+demand a place on her programme.
+
+'Yes, very large company, I believe,' he said again, moving about
+nervously on his toes.
+
+'Do you know how many invitations?' she asked.
+
+'No, I don't.'
+
+'Dain!' John called out, 'come and listen to this.' And the lawyer
+escaped from her presence like a schoolboy running out of school.
+
+'What men!' she thought bitterly, standing neglected with all her charm
+and all her distinction. 'What chivalry! What courtliness! What style!'
+Her son belonged to a different race of beings.
+
+Down the corridor came Harry Burgess deep in converse with a male
+friend; the two were walking quickly. She did not choose to greet them
+waiting there alone, and so she deliberately turned and put her head
+within the curtains of the cloak-room as if to speak to some one inside.
+
+'Twemlow was saying----'
+
+It seemed to her that Harry in passing had uttered that phrase to his
+companion. She flushed, and shook from head to foot. Then she reflected
+that Twemlow was a name common to dozens of people in the Five Towns.
+She bit her lip, surprised and angered at her own agitation. At the same
+time she remembered--and why should she remember?--some gossip of John's
+to the effect that Harry Burgess was under a cloud at the Bank because
+he had gone to London by a day-trip on the previous Thursday without
+leave. London ... perhaps....
+
+'Am I forty--or fourteen?' she contemptuously asked herself.
+
+She heard John and Dain laugh loudly, and the jolly voice of the old
+doctor: 'Come along into the refreshment-room for a minute.' Determined
+not to linger another moment for these boors, she moved into the
+corridor.
+
+At the end of the vista of red carpet and gas-jets rose the grand
+staircase, and on the lowest stair stood Arthur Twemlow. She had begun
+to traverse the corridor and she could not stop now, and fifty feet lay
+between them.
+
+'Oh!' her heart cried in the intolerable spasm of a swift and
+mysterious convulsion. 'Why do you thus torture me?' Every step was an
+agony.
+
+He moved towards her, and she noticed that he was extremely pale. They
+met. His hand found hers. Then it was that she perceived, with a
+passionate gratitude, how heaven had been watching over her. If John had
+not hesitated about coming, if her daughters had not deserted her in the
+cloak-room, if the old doctor had not provided himself with a new supply
+of naughty stories, if indeed everything had not occurred exactly as it
+had occurred--she would have been forced to undergo in the presence of
+witnesses the shock which she had just experienced; and she would have
+died. She felt that in those seconds she had endured emotion to the last
+limit of her capacity. She traced a providence even in Harry's chance
+phrase, which had warned her and so broken the force of the stroke.
+
+'Why, cruel one, did you play this trick on me? Can you not see what I
+suffer!' It was her sad glittering eyes that reproachfully appealed to
+him.
+
+'Did I know what would happen?' his answered. 'Am I not equally a
+victim?'
+
+She smiled pensively, and her lips murmured: 'Well, wonders will never
+cease.'
+
+Such were the first words.
+
+'I found I had to come back to London,' he was soon explaining. 'And I
+met young Burgess at the Empire on Thursday night, and he told me about
+this affair and gave me a ticket, and so I thought as I had been at the
+opera I might as well----' He hesitated.
+
+'Have you seen the girls?' she inquired.
+
+He had not.
+
+On the flower-bordered staircase her foot slipped; she felt like a
+convalescent trying to walk after a long illness. Arthur with a silent
+questioning gesture offered his arm.
+
+'Yes, please,' she said, gladly. She wished not to say it, but she said
+it, and the next instant he was supporting her up the steps. Anything
+might happen now, she thought; the most impossible things might come to
+pass.
+
+At the top of the staircase they paused. They could hear the music
+faintly through closed doors. They had the precious illusion of being
+aloof, apart, separated from the world, sufficient to themselves and
+gloriously sufficient. Then some one opened the doors from within; the
+sound of the music, suddenly freed, rushed out and smote them; and they
+entered the ball-room. She was acutely conscious of her beauty, and of
+the distinction of his blanched, stern face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The floor was thronged by entwined couples who, under the rhythmic
+domination of the music, glided and revolved in the elaborate pattern of
+a mazurka. With their rapt gaze, and their rigid bodies floating
+smoothly over a hidden mechanism of flying feet, they seemed to be the
+victims of some enchantment, of which the music was only a mode, and
+which led them enthralled through endless curves of infallible beauty
+and grace. Form, colour, movement, melody, and the voluptuous galvanism
+of delicate contacts were all combined in this unique ritual of the
+dance, this strange convention whose significance emerged from one
+mystery deeper than the fundamental notes of the bass-fiddle, and lost
+itself in another more light than the sudden flash of a shirt-front or
+the tremor of a lock of hair. The goddess reigned. And round about the
+hall, the guardians of decorum, the enemies of Aphrodite, enchanted too,
+watched with the simplicity of doves the great Aphrodisian festival,
+blind to the eternal verities of a satin slipper, a drooping eyelash, a
+parted lip.
+
+The music ceased, the spell was lifted for a time. And while old
+alliances were being dissolved and new ones formed in the eager
+promiscuity of this interval, all remarked proudly on the success of the
+evening; in the gleam of every eye the sway of the goddess was
+acknowledged. Romance was justified. Life itself was justified. The
+shop-girl who had put ten thousand stitches into the ruching of her
+crimson skirt well symbolised the human attitude that night. As leaning
+heavily on a man's arm she crossed the floor under the blazing
+chandelier, she secretly exulted in each stitch of her incredible
+labour. Two hours, and she would be back in the cold, celibate bedroom,
+littered with the shabby realities of existence; and the spotted glass
+would mirror her lugubrious yawn! Eight hours, and she would be in the
+dreadful shop, tying on the black apron! The crimson skirt would never
+look the same again; such rare blossoms fade too soon! And in exchange
+for the toil, the fatigue, and the distressing reaction, what had she
+won? She could not have said what she had won, but she knew that it was
+worth the ruinous cost--this bright fallacy, this fleeting chimera, this
+delusive ecstasy, this shadow and counterfeit of bliss which the goddess
+vouchsafed to her communicants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So thick and confused was the crowd that Leonora and Arthur, having
+inserted themselves into a corner near the west door, escaped the
+notice of any of their friends. They were as solitary there as on the
+landing outside. But Leonora saw quite near, in another corner, Ethel
+talking to Fred Ryley; she noticed how awkward Fred looked in his new
+dress-suit, and she liked him for his awkwardness; it seemed to her that
+Ethel was very beautiful. Arthur pointed out Rose, who was standing up
+with the lady member of the School Board. Then Leonora caught sight of
+Millicent in the distance, handing her programme to the conductor of the
+opera; she recalled the notorious boast of the conductor that he never
+knowingly danced with a bad dancer, whatever her fascinations. Always
+when they met at a ball the conductor would ask Leonora for a couple of
+waltzes, and would lead her out with an air of saying to the company:
+'Now see what fine dancing is!' Like herself, he danced with the
+frigidity of a professor. She wondered whether Arthur could dance really
+well.
+
+The placard by the orchestra said, 'Extra.'
+
+'Shall we?' Arthur whispered.
+
+He made a way for her through the outer fringe of people to the middle
+space where the couples were forming. Her last thoughts as she gave him
+her hand were thoughts half-pitiful and half-scornful of John, David
+Dain, and the doctor, brutishly content in the refreshment-room.
+
+There stole out, troubling the expectant air, softly, alluringly,
+invocatively, the first warning notes of that unique classic of the
+ball-room, that extraordinary composition which more than any other work
+of art unites all western nations in a common delight, which is adored
+equally by profound musicians and by the lightest cocottes, and which,
+unscathed and splendid, still miraculously survives the deadly ordeal of
+eternal perfunctory reiterance: the masterpiece of Johann Strauss.
+
+'Why,' Leonora exclaimed, her excitement straining impatiently in the
+leash, 'The Blue Danube!'
+
+He laughed, quietly gay.
+
+While the chords, with tantalising pauses and deliberation, approached
+the magic moment of the waltz itself, she was conscious that his hold of
+her became firmer and more assertive, and she surrendered to an
+overmastering influence as one surrenders to chloroform, desperately,
+but luxuriously.
+
+And when at the invitation of the melody the whole company in the centre
+of the floor broke into movement, and the spell was resumed, she lost
+all remembrance of that which had passed, and all apprehension of that
+which was to come. She lived, passionately and yet languorously, in the
+vivid present. Her eyes were level with his shoulder, and they looked
+with an entranced gaze along his arm, seeing automatically the faces,
+the lights, and the colours which swam in a rapid confused procession
+across their field of vision. She did not reason nor recognise. These
+fleeting images, appearing and disappearing on the horizon of Arthur's
+elbow, produced no effect on her. She had no thoughts. Her entire being
+was absorbed in a transport of obedience to the beat of the music, and
+to Arthur's directing pressures. She was happy, but her bliss had in it
+that element of stinging pain, of intolerable anticipation, which is
+seldom absent from a felicity too intense. 'Surely I shall sink down and
+die!' said her heart, seeming to faint at the joyous crises of the
+music, which rose and fell in tides of varying rapture. Nevertheless she
+was determined to drink the cup slowly, to taste every drop of that
+sweet and excruciating happiness. She would not utterly abandon herself.
+The fear of inanition was only a wayward pretence, after all, and her
+strong nature cried out for further tests to prove its fortitude and its
+power of dissimulation. As the band slipped into the final section of
+the waltz, she wilfully dragged the time, deepening a little the curious
+superficial languor which concealed her secrets, and at the same time
+increasing her consciousness of Arthur's control. She dreaded now that
+what had been intolerable should cease; she wished ardently to avert the
+end. The glare of lights, the separate sounds of the instruments, the
+slurring of feet on the smooth floor, the lineaments of familiar faces,
+all the multitudinous and picturesque detail of gyrating humanity around
+her--these phenomena forced themselves on her unwilling perception; and
+she tried to push them back, and to spend every faculty in savouring the
+ecstasy of that one physical presence which was so close, so enveloping,
+and so inexplicably dear. But in vain, in vain! The band rioted through
+the last bars of the waltz, a strange, disconcerting silence and inertia
+supervened, and Arthur loosed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she sat down on the cane chair which Arthur had found, Leonora's
+characteristic ease of manner deserted her. She felt conspicuous and
+embarrassed, and she could neither maintain her usual cold nonchalant
+glance in examining the room, nor look at Arthur in a natural way. She
+had the illusion that every one must be staring at her with amazed
+curiosity. Yet her furtive searching eye could not discover a single
+person except Arthur who seemed to notice her existence. All were
+preoccupied that night with immediate neighbours.
+
+'Will you come down into the refreshment-room?' Arthur asked. She
+observed with annoyance that he too was confused, nervous, and still
+very pale.
+
+She shook her head, without meeting his gaze. She wished above all
+things to behave simply and sincerely, to speak in her ordinary voice,
+and to use familiar phrases. But she could not. On the contrary she was
+seized with a strong impulse to say to him entreatingly: 'Leave me,' as
+though she were a person on the stage. She thought of other phrases,
+such as 'Please go away,' and 'Do you mind leaving me for a while?' but
+her tongue, somehow insisting on the melodramatic, would not utter
+these.
+
+'Leave me!' She was frightened by her own words, and added hastily, with
+the most seductive smile that her lips had ever-framed: 'Do you mind?'
+
+'I shall call to-morrow,' he said anxiously, almost gruffly. 'Shall you
+be in?'
+
+She nodded, and he left her; she did not watch him depart.
+
+'May I have the honour, gracious lady?'
+
+It was the conductor of the opera who addressed her in his even,
+apparently sarcastic tones.
+
+'I'm afraid I must rest a bit,' she said, smiling quite naturally. 'I've
+hurt my foot a little--Oh, it's nothing, it's nothing. But I must sit
+still for a bit.'
+
+She could not comprehend why, unintentionally and without design, she
+should have told this stupid lie, and told it so persuasively. She
+foresaw how the tedious consequences of the fiction might continue
+throughout the evening. For a moment she had the idea of announcing a
+sprained ankle and of returning home at once. But the thought of old Dr.
+Hawley's presence in the building deterred her. She perceived that her
+foot must get gradually better, and that she must be resigned.
+
+'Oh, mamma!' cried Rose, coming up to her. 'Just fancy Mr. Twemlow being
+back again! But why did you let him leave?'
+
+'Has he gone?'
+
+'Yes. He just saw me on the stairs, and told me he must catch the last
+car to Knype.'
+
+'Our dance, I think, Miss Rose,' said a young man with a gardenia, and
+Rose, flushed and sparkling, was carried off. The ball proceeded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John Stanway had a singular capacity for not enjoying himself on those
+social occasions when to enjoy one's self is a duty to the company. But
+this evening, as the hour advanced, he showed the symptoms of a sharp
+attack of gaiety such as visited him from time to time. He and Dr.
+Hawley and Dain formed an ebullient centre of high spirits, and they
+upheld the ancient traditions; they professed a liking for old-fashioned
+dances, and for old-fashioned ways of dancing the steps which modern
+enthusiasm for the waltz had not extinguished. And they found an
+appreciable number of followers. The organisers of the ball, the
+upholders of correctness, punctilio, and the mode, fretted and fought
+against the antagonistic influence. 'Ass!' said the conductor of the
+opera bitterly when Harry Burgess told him that Stanway had suggested
+Sir Roger de Coverley for an extra, 'I wonder what his wife thinks of
+him!' Sir Roger de Coverley was not danced, but twenty or thirty late
+stayers, with Stanway and Dain in charge, crossed hands in a circle and
+sang 'Auld Lang Syne' at the close. It was one of those incredible
+things that can only occur between midnight and cock-crow. During this
+revolting rite, the conductor and his friends sought sanctuary in the
+refreshment-room. Leonora, Ethel, and Milly were also there, but Rose
+and the lady-member of the School Board had remained upstairs to sing
+'Auld Lang Syne.'
+
+'Now, girls,' said Stanway with loud good humour, invading the select
+apartment with his followers, 'time to go. Carpenter's been waiting
+half-an-hour. Your foot all right again, Nora?'
+
+'Quite,' she replied. 'Are you really ready?'
+
+She had so interminably waited that she could not believe the evening to
+be at length actually finished.
+
+They all exchanged adieux, Stanway and his cronies effusively, the
+opposing and outraged faction with a certain fine acrimony. 'Good-night,
+Fred,' said John, throwing a backward patronising glance at Ryley, who
+had strolled uneasily into the room. The young man paused before
+replying. 'Good-night,' he said stiffly, and his demeanour indicated:
+'Do not patronise me too much.' Fred could not dance, but he had
+audaciously sat out four dances with Ethel, at this his first ball, and
+the serious young man had the strange agreeable sensation of feeling a
+dog. He dared not, however, accompany Ethel to the carriage, as Harry
+Burgess accompanied Millicent. Harry had been partially restored to
+favour again during the latter half of the entertainment, just in time
+to prevent him from getting tipsy. The fact was that Millicent had
+vaguely expected, in view of her position as prima donna, to be 'the
+belle of the ball'; but there had been no belle, and Millicent was put
+to the inconvenience of discovering that she could do nothing without
+footlights.
+
+'I asked Twemlow to come up to-morrow night, Nora,' said John, still
+elated, turning on the box-seat as the waggonette rattled briskly over
+the paved crossing at the top of Oldcastle Street.
+
+She mumbled something through her furs.
+
+'And is he coming?' asked Rose.
+
+'He said he'd try to.' John lighted a cigar.
+
+'He's very queer,' said Millicent.
+
+'How?' Rose aggressively demanded.
+
+'Well, imagine him going off like that. He's always going off suddenly.'
+Millicent stopped and then added: 'He only danced with mother. But he's
+a good dancer.'
+
+'I should think he was!' Ethel murmured, roused from lethargy. 'Isn't he
+just, mother?'
+
+Leonora mumbled again.
+
+'Your mother's knocked up,' said John drily. 'These late nights don't
+suit her. So you reckon Mr. Twemlow's a good dancer, eh?'
+
+No one spoke further. John threw his cigar into the road.
+
+Under the rug Leonora could feel the knees of all her daughters as they
+sat huddled and limp with fatigue in the small body of the waggonette.
+Her shoulders touched Ethel's, and every one of Milly's fidgety
+movements communicated itself to her. Mother and children were so close
+that they could not have been closer had they lain in the same grave.
+And yet the girls, and John too, had no slightest suspicion how far away
+the mother was from them, how blind they were, how amazingly they had
+been deceived. They deemed Leonora to be like themselves, the victim of
+reaction and weariness; so drowsy that even the joltings of the carriage
+could not prevent a doze. She marvelled, she could not help marvelling,
+that her spiritual detachment should remain unnoticed; the phenomenon
+frightened her as something full of strange risks. Was it possible that
+none had caught a glimpse of the intense illumination and activity of
+her brain, burning and labouring there so conspicuously amid the other
+brains sombre and dormant? And was it possible that the girls had
+observed the qualities of Arthur's dancing and had observed nothing
+else? Common sense tried to reassure her, and did not quite succeed. Her
+attitude resembled that of a person who leans against a firm rail over
+the edge of a precipice: there is no danger, but the precipice is so
+deep that he fears; and though the fear is a torture the sinister
+magnetism of the abyss forbids him to withdraw. She lived again in the
+waltz; in the gliding motions of it, the delicious fluctuations of the
+reverse, the long trance-like union, the instinctive avoidances of other
+contact. She whispered the music, endlessly repeating those poignant and
+voluptuous phrases which linger in the memory of all the world. And she
+recalled and reconstituted Arthur's physical presence, and the emanating
+charm of his disposition, and dwelt on them long and long. Instead of
+lessening, the secret commotion within her increased and continued to
+increase. While brooding with feverish joy over the immediate past, her
+mind reached forward and existed in the appalling and fatal moment, for
+whose reality however her eagerness could scarcely wait, when she should
+see him once more. And it asked unanswerable questions about his
+surprising return from New York, and his pallor, and the tremor in his
+voice, and his swift departure. Suddenly she knew that she was planning
+to have the girls out of the house to-morrow afternoon between four and
+five o'clock.... Her spine shivered, she grew painfully hot, and tears
+rushed to her eyes. She pitied herself profoundly. She said that she did
+not know what was the matter with her, or what was going to happen. She
+could not give names to things. She only felt that she was too
+violently alive.
+
+'Now, missis,' John roused her. The carriage had stopped and he had
+already descended. She got out last, and Carpenter drove away while John
+was still fumbling in his hip-pocket for the latchkey. The night was
+humid and very dark. Leonora and the girls stood waiting on the gravel,
+and John groped his way into the blackness of the portico to unfasten
+the door. A faint gleam from the hall-gas came through the leaded
+fanlight. This scarcely perceptible glow and the murmur of John's
+expletives were all that came to the women from the mystery of the
+house. The key grated in the lock, and the door opened.
+
+'G----d d----n!' Stanway exclaimed distinctly, with fierce annoyance. He
+had fallen headlong into the hall, and his silk hat could be heard
+hopping towards the staircase.
+
+'Pa! 'Milly protested, shocked.
+
+John sprang up, fuming, turned the gas on to the full, and rushed back
+to the doorway.
+
+'Ah!' he shouted. 'I knew it was a tramp lying there. Get up. Is the
+beggar asleep?'
+
+They all bent down, startled into gravity, to examine a form which lay
+in the portico, nearly parallel with the step and below it.
+
+'It's Uncle Meshach,' said Ethel. 'Oh! mother!'
+
+'Then my aunt's had another attack,' cried John, 'and he's come up to
+tell us, and--Milly, run for Carpenter.'
+
+It seemed to Leonora, as with sudden awe she vaguely figured an august
+and capricious power which conferred experience on mortals like a
+wonderful gift, that that bestowing hand was never more full than when
+it had given most.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
+
+
+While Prince, tethered summarily outside the stable-door with all his
+harness on, was trying in vain to understand this singular caprice on
+the part of Carpenter, Carpenter and the head of the house lifted Uncle
+Meshach's form and carried it into the hall. The women watched, ceasing
+their wild useless questions.
+
+'Into the breakfast-room, on the sofa,' said John, breathing hard, to
+the man.
+
+'No, no,' Leonora intervened, 'you had better take him upstairs at once,
+to Ethel and Milly's bedroom.'
+
+The procession, undignified and yet impressive, came to a halt, and
+Carpenter, who was holding Meshach's feet, glanced with canine anxiety
+from his master to his mistress.
+
+'But look here, Nora,' John began.
+
+'Yes, father, upstairs,' said Rose, cutting him short.
+
+Preoccupied with the cumbrous weight of Meshach's shoulders, John could
+not maintain the discussion; he hesitated, and then Carpenter moved
+towards the stairs. The small dangling body seemed to say: 'I am
+indifferent, but it is perhaps as well that you have done arguing.'
+
+'Run over to Dr. Hawley's, and ask him to come across at _once_, John
+instructed Carpenter, when they had steered Uncle Meshach round the
+twist of the staircase, and insinuated him through a doorway, and laid
+him at length, in his overcoat and his muffler and his quaint boots, on
+Ethel's virginal bed.
+
+'But has the doctor come home, Jack?' Leonora inquired.
+
+'Of course he has,' said John. 'He drove up with Dain, and they passed
+us at Shawport. Didn't you hear me call out to them?'
+
+'Oh yes,' she agreed.
+
+Then John, hatless but in his ulster, and the women, hooded and shawled,
+drew round the bed; but Ethel and Milly stood at the foot. The inanimate
+form embarrassed them all, made them feel self-conscious and afraid to
+meet one another's eyes.
+
+'Better loosen his things,' said Leonora, and Rose's fingers were
+instantly at work to help her.
+
+Uncle Meshach was white, rigid, and stonecold; the stiff 'Myatt' jaw
+was set; the eyes, wide open, looked upwards, and strangely outwards, in
+a fixed stare. And his audience thought, as they gazed in a sort of
+foolish astonishment at the puny, grotesque, and unfamiliar thing, 'Is
+this really Uncle Meshach?' John lifted the wrist and felt for the
+pulse, but he could distinguish no beat, and he shook his head
+accordingly. 'Try the heart, mother,' Rose suggested, and Leonora, after
+penetrating beneath garment after garment, placed her hand on Meshach's
+icy and tranquil breast. And she too shook her head. Then John, with an
+air of finality, took out his gold repeater and when he had polished the
+glass he held it to Uncle Meshach's parted lips. 'Can you see any
+moisture on it?' he asked, taking it to the light, but none of them
+could detect the slightest dimness.
+
+'I do wish the doctor would be quick,' said Milly.
+
+'Doctor'll be no use,' John remarked gruffly, returning to gaze again at
+the immovable face. 'Except for an inquest,' he added.
+
+'I think some one had better walk down to Church Street at once, and
+tell Aunt Hannah that uncle is here,' said Leonora. 'Perhaps she _is_
+ill. Anyhow, she'll be very anxious.' But she faltered before the
+complicated problem. 'Rose, go and wake Bessie, and ask her if uncle
+called here during the evening, and tell her to get up at once and light
+the gas-stove and put some water on to boil, and then to light a fire
+here.'
+
+'And who's to go to Church Street?' John asked quickly.
+
+Leonora looked for an instant at Rose, as the girl left the room. She
+felt that on such an occasion she could more easily spare Ethel's sweet
+eagerness to help than Rose's almost sinister self-possession. 'Ethel
+and Milly,' she said promptly. 'At least they can run on first. And be
+very careful what you say to Aunt Hannah, my dears. And one of you must
+hurry back at once in any case, by the road, not by the fields, and tell
+us what has happened.'
+
+Rose came in to say that Bessie and the other servants had seen nothing
+of Uncle Meshach, and that they were all three getting up, and then she
+disappeared into the kitchen. Ethel and Milly departed, a little scared,
+a little regretful, but inspirited by the dreadful charm and fascination
+of the whole inexplicable adventure.
+
+'Aunt Hannah's had another attack, depend on it,' said John, 'that's
+it.'
+
+'I hope not,' Leonora murmured perfunctorily. Now that she had broken
+the spell of futile inactivity which the discovery of Uncle Meshach's
+body seemed for a few dire moments to have laid upon them, she was more
+at ease.
+
+'I fancy you'd better go down there yourself as soon as the doctor's
+been,' John continued. 'You're perhaps more likely to be useful there
+than here. What do you think?'
+
+She looked at him under her eyelids, saying nothing, and reading all his
+mind. He had obstinately determined that Uncle Meshach was dead, and he
+was striving to conceal both his satisfaction on that account and his
+rapidly growing anxiety as to the condition of Aunt Hannah. His terrible
+lack of frankness, that instinct for the devious and the underhand which
+governed his entire existence, struck her afresh and seemed to devastate
+her heart. She felt that she could have tolerated in her husband any
+vice with less effort than that one vice which was specially his, that
+vice so contemptible and odious, so destructive of every noble and
+generous sentiment. Her silent, measured indignation fed itself on
+almost nothing--on a mere word, a mere inflection of his voice, a single
+transient gleam of his guilty eye. And though she was right by unerring
+intuition, John, could he have seen into her soul, might have been
+excused for demanding, 'What have I said, what have I done, to deserve
+this scorn?'
+
+Rose returned, bearing materials for a fire; she had changed her
+Liberty dress for the dark severe frock of her studious hours, and she
+had an irritating air of being perfectly equal to the occasion. John,
+having thrown off his ulster, endeavoured to assist her in lighting the
+fire, but she at once proved to him that his incapacity was a hindrance
+to her; whereupon he wondered what in the name of goodness Carpenter and
+the doctor were doing to be so long. Leonora began to tidy the room,
+which bore witness to the regardless frenzy of anticipation with which
+its occupants had cast aside the soiled commonplaces of life six hours
+before.
+
+'But look!' Rose cried suddenly, examining Uncle Meshach anew, after the
+fire was lighted.
+
+'What?' John and Leonora demanded together, rushing to the bed.
+
+'His lips weren't like that!' the girl asserted with eagerness.
+
+All three gazed long at the impassive face.
+
+'Of course they were,' said John, coldly discouraging. Leonora made no
+remark.
+
+The unblinking eyes of Uncle Meshach continued to stare upwards and
+outwards, indifferently, interested in the ceiling. Outside could be
+heard the creaking of stairs, and the affrighted whisper of the maids as
+they descended in deshabille from their attics at the bidding of this
+unconscious, cynical, and sardonic enigma on the bed.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'His heart is beating faintly.'
+
+Old Dr. Hawley dropped the antique stethoscope back into the pocket of
+his tight dress coat, and, still bending over Uncle Meshach, but turning
+slightly towards John and Leonora, smiled with all his invincible
+jollity.
+
+'Is it, by Jove?' John exclaimed.
+
+'You thought he was dead?' said the doctor, beaming.
+
+Leonora nodded.
+
+'Well, he isn't,' the doctor announced with curt cheerfulness.
+
+'That's good,' said John.
+
+'But I don't think he can get over it,' the doctor concluded, with
+undiminished brightness, his eyes twinkling.
+
+While he spoke he was busy with the hot water and the cloths which
+Leonora and Rose had produced immediately upon demand. In a few minutes
+Uncle Meshach was covered almost from head to foot with cloths drenched
+in hot mustard-and-water; he had hot-water bags under his arms, and he
+was swathed in a huge blanket.
+
+'There!' said the rotund doctor. 'You must keep that up, and I'll send a
+stimulant at once. I can't stop now; not another minute. I was called
+to an obstetric case just as I started out. I'll come back the moment
+I'm free.'
+
+'What is it--this thing?' John inquired.
+
+'What is it!' the doctor repeated genially. 'I'll tell you what it is.
+Put your nose there.' He indicated Uncle Meshach's mouth. 'Do you notice
+that ammoniacal smell? That's due to uraemia, a sequel of Bright's
+disease.'
+
+'Bright's disease?' John muttered.
+
+'Bright's disease,' affirmed the doctor, dwelling on the famous and
+striking syllables. 'Your uncle is the typical instance of the man who
+has never been ill in his life. He walks up a little slope or up some
+steps to a friend's house, and just as he is lifting his hand to the
+knocker, he has a convulsion and falls down unconscious. That's Bright's
+disease. Never been ill in his life! Not so far as _he_ knew! Not so far
+as _he_ knew! Nearly all you Myatts had weak kidneys. Do you remember
+your great-uncle Ebenezer? You've sent down to Miss Myatt, you say?
+Good.... Perhaps he was lying on your steps for two or three hours. He
+may pull round. He may. We must hope so.'
+
+The doctor put on his overcoat, and his cap with the ear-flaps, and
+after a final glance at the patient and a friendly, reassuring smile at
+Leonora, he went slowly to the door. Girth and good humour and funny
+stories had something to do with his great reputation in Bursley and
+Hillport. But he possessed shrewdness and sagacity; he belonged to a
+dynasty of doctors; and he was deeply versed in the social traditions of
+the district. Men consulted him because their grandfathers had consulted
+his father, and because there had always been a Dr. Hawley in Bursley,
+and because he was acquainted with the pathological details of their
+ancestral history on both sides of the hearth. His patients, indeed,
+were not individuals, but families. There were cleverer doctors in the
+place, doctors of more refined appearance and manners, doctors less
+monotonously and loudly gay; but old Hawley, with his knowledge of
+pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of
+local character, could hold his own against the most assertive young
+M.D. that ever came out of Edinburgh to monopolise the Five Towns.
+
+'Can you send some one round with me for the medicine?' he asked in the
+doorway. 'Happen you'll come yourself, John?'
+
+There was a momentary hesitation.
+
+'I'll come, doctor,' said Rose. 'And then you can give me all your
+instructions. Mother must stay here.' She completely ignored her father.
+
+'Do, my dear; come by all means.' And the doctor beamed again suddenly
+with the maximum of cheerfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meshach had given no sign of life; his eyes, staring upwards and
+outwards, were still unchangeably fixed on the same portion of the
+ceiling. He ignored equally the nonchalant and expert attentions of the
+doctor, the false solicitude of John, Leonora's passionate anxiety, and
+Rose's calm self-confidence. He treated the fomentations with the apathy
+which might have been expected from a man who for fifty years had been
+accustomed to receive the meek skilled service of women in august
+silence. One could almost have detected in those eyes a glassy and
+profound secret amusement at the disturbance which he had caused--a
+humorous appreciation of all the fuss: the maids with their hair down
+their backs bending and whispering over a stove; Ethel and Milly
+trudging scared through the nocturnal streets; Rose talking with demure
+excitement to old Hawley in his aromatic surgery; John officiously
+carrying kettles to and fro, and issuing orders to Bessie in the
+passage; Leonora cast violently out of one whirlpool into another; and
+some unknown expectant terrified pair wondering why the doctor, who had
+been warned months before, should thus culpably neglect their urgent
+summons. As he lay there so grim and derisive and solitary, so fatigued
+with days and nights, so used up, so steeped in experience, and so
+contemptuously unconcerned, he somehow baffled all the efforts of
+blankets, cloths, and bags to make his miserable frame look ridiculous.
+He had a majesty which subdued his surroundings. And in this room
+hitherto sacred to the charming mysteries of girlhood his cadaverous
+presence forced the skirts and petticoats on Milly's bed, and the
+disordered apparatus on the dressing-table, and the scented soaps on the
+washstand, and the row of tiny boots and shoes which Leonora had
+arranged near the wardrobe, to apologise pathetically and wistfully for
+their very existence.
+
+'Is that enough mustard?' John inquired idly.
+
+'Yes,' said Leonora.
+
+She realised--but not in the least because he had asked a banal question
+about mustard--that he was perfectly insensible to all spiritual
+significances. She had been aware of it for many years, yet the fact
+touched her now more sharply than ever. It seemed to her that she must
+cry out in a long mournful cry: 'Can't you see, can't you feel!' And
+once again her husband might justifiably have demanded: 'What have I
+done this time?'
+
+'I wish one of those girls would come back from Church Street,' he
+burst out, frowning. 'They're here!' He became excited as he listened to
+light rapid footsteps on the stair. But it was Rose who entered.
+
+'Here's the medicine, mother,' said Rose eagerly. She was flushed with
+running. 'It's chloric ether and nitrate of potash, a highly diffusible
+stimulant. And there's a chance that sooner or later it may put him into
+a perspiration. But it will be worse than useless if the hot
+applications aren't kept up, the doctor said. You must raise his head
+and give it him in a spoon in very small doses.'
+
+And then Meshach impassively submitted to the handling of his head and
+his mouth. He gurgled faintly in accepting the medicine, and soon his
+temples and the corners of his lips showed a very slight perspiration.
+But though the doses were repeated, and the fomentations assiduously
+maintained, no further result occurred, save that Meshach's eyes,
+according to the shifting of his head, perused new portions of the
+ceiling.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the futile minutes passed, John grew more and more restless. He was
+obliged to admit to himself that Uncle Meshach was not dead, but he felt
+absolutely sure that he would never revive. Had not the doctor said as
+much? And he wanted desperately to hear that Aunt Hannah still lived,
+and to take every measure of precaution for her continuance in this
+world. The whole of his future might depend upon the hazard of the next
+hour.
+
+'Look here, Nora,' he said protestingly, while Rose was on one of her
+journeys to the kitchen. 'It's evidently not much use you stopping here,
+whereas there's no knowing what hasn't happened down at Church Street.'
+
+'Do you mean you wish me to go down there?' she asked coldly.
+
+'Well, I leave it to your common sense,' he retorted.
+
+Rose appeared.
+
+'Your father thinks I ought to go down to Church Street,' said Leonora.
+
+'What! And leave uncle?' Rose added nothing to this question, but
+proceeded with her tasks.
+
+'Certainly,' John insisted.
+
+Leonora was conscious of an acute resentment against her husband. The
+idea of her leaving Uncle Meshach at such a crisis seemed to her to be
+positively wicked. Had not John heard what Rose said to the doctor:
+'Mother must stay here'? Had he not heard that? But of course he
+desired that Uncle Meshach should die. Yes, every word, every gesture of
+his in the sick-room was an involuntary expression of that desire.
+
+'Why don't you go yourself, father?' Rose demanded of him bluntly, after
+a pause.
+
+'Simply because, if there _is_ any illness, I shouldn't be any use.'
+John glared at his daughter.
+
+Then, quite suddenly, Leonora thought how vain, how pitiful, how
+unseemly, were these acrimonious conflicts of opinion in presence of the
+strange and awe-inspiring riddle in the blanket. An impulse seized her
+to give way, and she found a dozen reasons why she should desert Uncle
+Meshach for Aunt Hannah.
+
+'Can you manage?' she asked Rose doubtfully.
+
+'Oh yes, mother, we can manage,' answered Rose, with an exasperating
+manufactured sweetness of tone.
+
+'Tell Carpenter to put the horse in,' John suggested. 'I expect he's
+waiting about in the kitchen.'
+
+'No,' said Leonora, 'I'll pin my skirt up and walk. I shall be half way
+there before he's ready to start.'
+
+When Leonora had departed, John redoubled his activity as a nurse.
+'There's no object in changing the cloths as often as that,' said Rose.
+But his suspense forbade him to keep still. Rose annoyed him
+excessively, and the nervous energy which should have helped towards
+self-control was expended in concealing that annoyance. He felt as
+though he should go mad unless something decisive happened very soon. To
+his surprise, just after the hall clock (which was always kept
+half-an-hour fast) had sounded three through the dark passages of the
+apprehensive house, Rose left the room. He was alone with what remained
+of Uncle Meshach. He moved the blanket, and touched the cloth which lay
+on Meshach's heart. 'Not too hot, that,' he said aloud. Taking the cloth
+he walked to the fire, where was a large saucepan full of nearly boiling
+water. He picked up the lid of the saucepan, dropped it, crossed over to
+the washstand with a brusque movement, and plunged the cloth into the
+cold water of the ewer. Holding it there, he turned and gazed in a sort
+of abstract meditation at Uncle Meshach, who steadily ignored him. He
+was possessed by a genuine feeling of righteous indignation against his
+uncle.... He drew the cloth from the ewer, squeezed it a little, and
+approached the bed again. And as he stood over Meshach with the cloth in
+his hand, he saw his wife in the doorway. He knew in an instant that his
+own face had frightened her and prevented her from saying what she was
+about to say.
+
+'How you startled me, Nora!' he exclaimed, with his surpassing genius
+for escaping from an apparently fatal situation.
+
+She ran up to the bed. 'Don't keep uncle uncovered like that,' she said;
+'put it on.' And she took the cloth from his hand. 'Why,' she cried,
+'it's like ice! What on earth are you doing? Where's Rose?'
+
+'I was just taking it off,' he replied. 'What about aunt?'
+
+'I met the girls down the road,' she said. 'Your aunt is dead.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes later Uncle Meshach's rigid frame suffered a convulsion;
+the whole surface of his skin sweated abundantly; his eyes wavered,
+closed, and opened again; his mouth made the motion of swallowing. He
+had come back from unconsciousness. He was no longer an enigma, wrapped
+in supercilious and inflexible calm; but a sick, shrivelled little man,
+so pitiably prostrate that his condition drew the sympathy out of
+Leonora with a sharp violent pain, as very cold metal burns the fingers.
+He could not even whisper; he could only look. Soon afterwards Dr.
+Hawley returned, explaining that the anxiety of a husband about to be a
+father had called him too soon by several hours. The doctor, who had
+been informed of Aunt Hannah's death as he entered the house, said at
+once, on seeing him, that Uncle Meshach had had a marvellous escape.
+Then, when he had succoured the patient further, he turned rather
+formidably to Leonora.
+
+'I want to speak to you,' he said, and he led her out of the room,
+leaving Rose, Ethel, and John in charge of Meshach.
+
+'What is it, doctor?' she asked him plaintively on the landing.
+
+'Which is your bedroom? Show it me,' he demanded. She opened a door, and
+they both went in. 'I'll light the gas,' he said, doing so. 'And now,'
+he proceeded, 'you'll kindly retire to bed, instantly. Mr. Myatt is out
+of danger.' He smiled warmly, just as he had smiled when he predicted
+that Meshach would probably not recover.
+
+'But, doctor,' Leonora protested.
+
+'Instantly,' he said, forcing her gently on to the sofa at the foot of
+the two beds.
+
+'But some one ought to go down to Church Street to look after things,'
+she began.
+
+'Church Street can wait. There's no hurry at Church Street now.'
+
+'And uncle hasn't been told yet ... I'm not at all over-tired, doctor.'
+
+'Yes, mother dear, you are, and you must do as the doctor orders.' It
+was Ethel who had come into the room; she touched Leonora's arm
+caressingly.
+
+'And where are you girls to sleep? The spare room isn't----'
+
+'Oh, mother!----Just listen to her, doctor!' said Ethel, stroking her
+mother's hand, as though she and the doctor were two old and sage
+persons, and Leonora was a small child.
+
+'They think I'm ill! They think I'm going to collapse!' The idea struck
+her suddenly. 'But I'm not. I'm quite well, and my brain is perfectly
+clear. And anyhow, I'm sure I can't sleep.' She said aloud: 'It wouldn't
+be any use; I shouldn't sleep.'
+
+'Ah! I'll attend to that, I'll attend to that!' the doctor laughed.
+'Ethel, help your mother to bed.' He departed.
+
+'This is really most absurd,' Leonora reflected. 'It's ridiculous.
+However, I'm only doing it to oblige them.'
+
+Before she was entirely undressed, Rose entered with a powder in a white
+paper, and a glass of hot milk.
+
+'You are to swallow _this_, mother, and then drink _this_. Here, Eth,
+hold the glass a second.'
+
+And Leonora accepted the powder from Rose and the milk from Ethel, as
+they stood side by side in front of her. Great waves seemed to surge
+through her brain. In walking to the bed, she saw herself all white in
+the mirror of the wardrobe.
+
+'My face looks as if it was covered with flour,' she said to Ethel, with
+a short laugh. It did not occur to her that she was pale. 'Don't forget
+to----' But she had forgotten what Ethel was not to forget. Her head
+reeled as it lay firmly on the pillow. The waves were waves of sound
+now, and they developed into a rhythm, a tune. She had barely time to
+discover that the tune was the Blue Danube Waltz, and that she was
+dancing, when the whole world came to an end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She awoke to feel the radiant influence of the afternoon sun through the
+green blinds. Impregnated with a delicious languor, she slowly stretched
+out her arms, and, lifting her head, gazed first at the intricate
+tracery of the lace on her silk nightgown, and then into the silent
+dreamy spaces of the room. Everything was in perfect order; she guessed
+that Ethel must have trod softly to make it tidy before leaving her,
+hours ago. John's bed was turned down, and his pyjamas laid out, with
+all Bessie's accustomed precision. Presently she noticed on her
+night-table a sheet of note-paper, on which had been written in pencil,
+in large letters: 'Ring the bell before getting up.' She could not be
+sure whether the hand was Ethel's or Rose's. 'Oh!' she thought, 'how
+good my girls are!' She was quite well, quite restored, and slightly
+hungry. And she was also calm, content, ready to commence existence
+anew.
+
+'I suppose I had better humour them,' she murmured, and she rang the
+bell.
+
+Bessie entered. The treasure was irreproachably neat and prim in her
+black and white.
+
+'What time is it, Bessie?' Leonora inquired.
+
+'It's a straight-up three, ma'am.'
+
+'Then I must have slept for eleven hours! How is Mr. Myatt going on?'
+
+Bessie dropped her hands, and smiled benevolently: 'Oh! He's much
+better, ma'am. And when the doctor told him about poor Miss Myatt,
+ma'am, he just said the funeral must be on Saturday because he didn't
+like Sunday funerals, and it wouldn't do to wait till Monday. He didn't
+say nothing else. And he keeps on telling us he shall be well enough to
+go to the funeral, and he's sent master down to Guest's in St. Luke's
+Square to order it, and the hearse is to have two horses, but not the
+coaches, ma'am. He's asleep just now, ma'am, and I'm watching him, but
+Miss Rose is resting on Miss Milly's bed in case, so I can come in here
+for a minute or two. He told the doctor and master that Miss Myatt was
+took with one of them attacks at half-past eleven o'clock, and he went
+for Dr. Adams as lives at the top of Oldcastle Street. Dr. Adams wasn't
+in, and then he saw a cab--it must have been coming from the ball,
+ma'am, but Mr. Myatt didn't know as there was any ball--and he drove up
+to Hillport for Dr. Hawley, him being the family doctor. And then he
+said he felt bad-like, and he thought he'd come here and send master
+across the way for Dr. Hawley. And he got out of the cab and paid the
+cabman, and then he doesn't remember no more. Wasn't it dreadful, ma'am?
+I don't believe he rightly knew what he was doing, the poor old
+gentleman!'
+
+Leonora listened. 'Where are Miss Ethel and Miss Milly?' she asked.
+
+'Master said they was to go to Oldcastle to order mourning, ma'am.
+They've but just gone. And master said he should be back himself about
+six. He never slept a wink, ma'am; nor even sat down. He just had his
+bath, and Miss Ethel crept in here for his clothes.'
+
+'And have you been to bed, Bessie?'
+
+'Me? No, ma'am. What should I go to bed for? I'm as well as well, ma'am.
+Miss Milly slept in Miss Rose's bedroom, for a bit, and Miss Ethel on
+the sofy in the drawing-room--not as you might call that sleeping. Miss
+Rose said you was to have some tea before you got up, ma'am. Shall I
+tell cook to get it now?'
+
+'I really think I should prefer to have it downstairs, Bessie, thanks,'
+said Leonora.
+
+'Very well, ma'am. But Miss Rose said----'
+
+'Yes, but I will have it downstairs. In three-quarters of an hour, say.'
+
+'Very well, ma'am. Now is there anything I can do for you, ma'am?'
+
+While dressing, very placidly and deliberately, and while thinking upon
+all the multitudinous things that seemed to have happened in her world
+during her long slumber, Leonora dwelt too upon the extraordinary loving
+kindness of this hireling, who got twenty pounds a year, half-a-day a
+week, and a day a month. On the first of every month Leonora handed to
+Bessie one paltry sovereign, thirteen shillings, and the odd fourpence
+in coppers. She wondered fancifully if she would have the effrontery to
+requite the girl in coin on the next pay-day; and she was filled with a
+sense of the goodness of humanity. And then there crossed her mind the
+recollection that she had caught John in a wicked act on the previous
+night. Yes; he had not imposed on her for a moment; and she perceived
+clearly now that murder had been in his heart. She was not appalled nor
+desolated. She thought: 'So that is murder, that little thing, that
+thing over in a minute!' It appeared to her that murder in the concrete
+was less dreadful than murder in the abstract, far less horrible than
+the strident sound of the word on the lips of a newsboy, or the look of
+it in the 'Signal.' She felt dimly that she ought to be shocked,
+unnerved, terrified, at the prospect of living, eating, and sleeping
+with a man who had meant to kill. But she could not summon these
+sensations. She merely experienced a kind of pity for John. She put the
+episode away from her, as being closed, accidental, and unimportant.
+Uncle Meshach was alive.
+
+A few minutes before four o'clock, she went quietly into the sick-room.
+Bessie, sitting upright between the beds, put her finger to her lips.
+Uncle Meshach was asleep on Ethel's bed, and on the other bed lay Rose,
+also asleep, stretched in a negligent attitude, but fully dressed and
+wearing an old black frock that was too tight for her. The fire burned
+brightly.
+
+'Tea is ready in the drawing-room, ma'am,' Bessie whispered, 'and Mr.
+Twemlow has just called. He's waiting to see you.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'So you know what has happened to us?'
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I met your husband on St. Luke's Square. But I heard
+something before that. At one o'clock, a man told me at Knype Station
+that Mr. Myatt had cut his throat on your doorstep. I didn't believe it.
+So I called up Twemlow & Stanway over the 'phone and got on to the
+facts.'
+
+'What things people say!' she exclaimed.
+
+'I guess you've stood it very well,' he remarked, gazing at her, as with
+quick, sure movements of her gracile hands she poured out the tea.
+
+'Ah!' she murmured, flushing, 'they sent me to bed. I have only just got
+up.'
+
+'I know exactly when you went to bed,' he smiled.
+
+His tone filled her with satisfaction. She had hoped and expected that
+he would behave naturally, that he would not adopt the desolating
+attitude of gloom prescribed by convention for sympathisers with the
+bereaved; and she was not disappointed. He spoke with an easy and
+cheerful sincerity, and she was exquisitely conscious of the flattery
+implied in that simple, direct candour which seemed to say to her, 'You
+and I have no need of convention--we understand each other.' Perhaps
+never in her life, not even in the wonderful felicities of girlhood, had
+Leonora been more peacefully content than during those moments of calm
+succeeding stress, as she met Arthur's eyes in the intimacy of a
+fraternal confidence. The large room was so tranquil, the curtains so
+white, and the sunlight so benignant in the caress of its amber
+horizontal rays. Rose lay asleep upstairs, Ethel and Millicent were at
+Oldcastle, John would not return for two hours; and she and Arthur were
+alone together in the middle of the long quiet chamber, talking quietly.
+She was happy. She had no fear, neither for herself nor for him. As
+innocent as Rose, and more innocent than Ethel, she now regarded the
+feverish experience of the dance as accidental, a thing to be forgotten,
+an episode of which the repetition was merely to be avoided; Death and
+the fear of Death had come suddenly and written over its record in the
+page of existence. Her present sanity and calmness and mild bliss and
+self-control--these were to last, these were the real symptoms of her
+condition, and of Arthur's condition. No! The memory of the ball did not
+trouble her; it had not troubled her since she awoke after the sedative.
+She had entered the drawing-room without a qualm, and the instant of
+their meeting, anticipated on the previous night as much in terror as
+in joy, had passed equably and serenely. Relying on his strength, and
+exulting in her own, she had given him her hand, and he had taken it,
+and that was all. She knew her native force. She knew that she had the
+precious and rare gift of common sense, and she was perfectly convinced
+that this common sense, which had never long deserted her in the past,
+could never permanently desert her in the future. She imagined that
+nothing was stronger than common sense; she had small suspicion that in
+their noblest hours men and women have invariably despised common sense,
+and trampled it underfoot as the most contemptible of human attributes.
+Therefore she was content and unalarmed. And she found pleasure even in
+trifles, as, for example, that the maid had set two cups-and-saucers and
+two only; the duality struck her as delicious. She looked close at
+Arthur's sagacious, shrewd, and kindly face, with the heavy, clipped
+moustache, and the bluish chin, and those grey hairs at the sides of the
+forehead. 'We belong to the same generation, he and I,' she thought,
+eating bread and butter with relish, 'and we are not so very old, after
+all!' Aunt Hannah was incomparably older, ripe for death. Who could be
+profoundly moved by that unimportant, that trivial, demise? She felt
+very sorry for Uncle Meshach, but no more than that. Such sentiments may
+have the appearance of callousness, but they were the authentic
+sentiments of Leonora, and Leonora was not callous. The financial aspect
+of Aunt Hannah's death, as it affected John and herself and the girls
+and their home, did not disturb her. She was removed far above finance,
+far above any preoccupation about the latter years, as she sat talking
+quietly and blissfully with Arthur in the drawing-room.
+
+'Yes,' she was telling him, 'it was just opposite the Clayton-Vernons'
+that I met them.'
+
+'Where the elm-trees spread over the road?' he questioned.
+
+She nodded, pleased by his minute interest in her narrative and by his
+knowledge of the neighbourhood. 'I saw them both a long way off, walking
+quickly, under a gas-lamp. And it's very curious, but although I was so
+anxious to know what had happened, I couldn't go on to meet them--I was
+obliged to wait until they came up. And they didn't notice me at first,
+and then Ethel shrieked out: "Oh, it's mother!" And Milly said: "Aunt
+Hannah's dead, mother. Is Uncle Meshach dead?" You can't understand how
+queer I felt. I felt as if Milly would go on asking and asking: "Is
+father dead? Is Bessie dead? Is Bran dead? Are you dead?"'
+
+'I know,' he said reflectively.
+
+She guessed that he envied her the strange nocturnal adventure. And her
+secret pride in the adventure, which hitherto she had endeavoured to
+suppress, suddenly became open and legitimate. She allowed her face to
+disclose the thought: 'You see that I too have lived through crises, and
+that I can appreciate how wonderful they are.' And she proceeded to give
+him all the details of Aunt Hannah's death, as she had learnt them from
+Ethel and Milly during the walk home through sleeping Hillport: how the
+servant had grown alarmed, and had called a neighbour by breaking a
+bedroom window with a broomstick, leaning from Aunt Hannah's window, and
+how the neighbour's eldest boy had run for Dr. Adams and had caught him
+in the street just as he was returning home, and how Aunt Hannah was
+gone before the boy came back with Dr. Adams, and how no one could guess
+what had happened to Uncle Meshach, and no one could suggest what to do,
+until Ethel and Milly knocked at the door.
+
+'Isn't it all strange? Don't you think it's strange?' Leonora demanded.
+
+'No,' he said. 'It seems strange, but it isn't really. Such things are
+always happening.'
+
+'Are they?' She spoke naively, with a girlish inflection and a girlish
+gesture.
+
+'Well, of course!' He smiled gravely, and yet humorously. And his eyes
+said: 'What a charming simple thing you are!' And she liked to think of
+his superiority over her in experience, knowledge, imperturbability,
+breadth of view, and all those kindred qualities which women give to the
+men they admire.
+
+They could not talk further on the subject.
+
+'By the by, how's your foot?' he inquired.
+
+'My foot?'
+
+'Yes. You hurt it last night, didn't you, after I'd gone?'
+
+She had completely forgotten the trifling fiction, until it thus rather
+startlingly reappeared on his lips. She might easily have let it die
+naturally, had she chosen; but she could not choose. She had a whim to
+kill it violently, romantically.
+
+'No,' she said, 'I didn't hurt it.'
+
+'It was your husband was telling me.'
+
+She went on joyously and fearfully: 'Some one asked me to dance,
+after--after the Blue Danube. And I didn't want to; I couldn't. And so
+I said I had hurt my foot. It was just one of those things that one
+says, you know!'
+
+He was embarrassed; he had no remark ready. But to preserve appearances
+he lowered the corners of his lips and glanced at the copper tea-kettle
+through half-closed eyes, feigning to suppress a private amusement. She
+was quite aware, however, that she had embarrassed him. And just as, a
+minute earlier, she had liked him for his lordly, masculine, philosophic
+superiority, so now she liked him for that youthful embarrassment. She
+felt that all men were equally child-like to women, and that the most
+adorable were the most child-like. 'How little you understand, after
+all!' she thought. 'Poor boy, I unlatched the door, and you dared not
+push it open! You were afraid of committing an indiscretion. But I will
+guide and protect you, and protect us both.'
+
+This was the woman who, half an hour ago, had been exulting in the
+adequacy of her common sense. Innocent and enchanting creature, with the
+rashness of innocence!
+
+'I guess I couldn't dance again after the Blue Danube, either,' he said
+at length, boldly.
+
+She made no answer; perhaps she was a little intimidated; but she looked
+at him with eyes and lips full of latent vivacity.
+
+'That was why I left,' he finished firmly. There was in his tone a hint
+of that engaging and piquant antagonism which springs up between lovers
+and dies away; he had the air of telling her that since she had invited
+a confession she was welcome to it.
+
+She retreated, still admiring, and said evenly that the ball had been a
+great success.
+
+Soon afterwards Ethel and Milly unexpectedly entered the room. They had
+put on the formal aspect of dejection which they deemed proper for them,
+but on perceiving that their elders were talking quite naturally, they
+at once abandoned constraint and became natural too. From the sight of
+their unaffected pleasure in seeing Arthur Twemlow again, Leonora drew
+further sustenance for her mood of serene content.
+
+'Just fancy, Mr. Twemlow,' Millicent burst out. 'We walked all the way
+to Oldcastle, and we never thought, and no one reminded us. It's
+father's fault, really.'
+
+'What is father's fault, really?'
+
+'It's Thursday afternoon and the shops were all shut. We shall have to
+go to-morrow morning.'
+
+'Ah!' he said. 'The stores don't shut on Thursday afternoon in New
+York.'
+
+'Mother will be able to come with us to-morrow morning,' said Ethel, and
+approaching Leonora she asked: 'Are you all right, mother?'
+
+This simple, familiar conversation, and the free movements of the girls,
+and the graver suavity of Arthur and herself, seemed to Leonora to
+constitute a picture, a scene, of mysterious and profound charm.
+
+Arthur rose to depart. The girls wished him to stay, but Leonora did not
+support them. In a house where an aged relative lay ill, and that
+relative so pathetically bereaved, it was not meet that a visitor should
+remain too long. Immediately he had gone she began to anticipate their
+next meeting. The eagerness of that anticipation surprised her. And,
+moreover, the environment of her life closed quickly round her; she
+could not ignore it. She demanded of herself what was Arthur's excuse
+for calling, and how it was that she should be so happy in the midst of
+woe and death. Her joyous confidence was shaken. Feeling that on such a
+day she ought to have been something other than a delicate chatelaine
+idly dispensing tea in a drawing-room, she went upstairs, determined to
+find some useful activity.
+
+The light was failing in the sick-room, and the fire shone brighter.
+Bessie had disappeared, and Rose sat in her place. Uncle Meshach still
+slept.
+
+'Have you had a good rest, my dear?' she whispered, kissing Rose
+fondly. 'You had better go downstairs. I've had some tea, and I'll take
+charge here now.'
+
+'Very well,' the girl assented, yawning. 'Who's that just gone?'
+
+'Mr. Twemlow.'
+
+'Oh, mother!' Rose exclaimed in angry disappointment. 'Why didn't some
+one tell me he was here?'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'The cortege will move at 2.15,' said the mourning invitation cards, and
+on Saturday at two o'clock Uncle Meshach, dressed in deep black, sat on
+a cane-chair against the wall in the bedroom of his late sister. He had
+not been able to conceive Hannah's funeral without himself as chief
+mourner, and therefore he had accomplished his own recovery in the
+amazing period of fifty hours; and in addition to accomplishing his
+recovery he had given an uninterrupted series of the most minute
+commands concerning the arrangements for the obsequies. Protests had
+been utterly useless. 'It will kill him,' said Leonora to the doctor as
+Meshach, risen straight out of bed, was getting into a cab at Hillport
+that morning to drive to Church Street. 'It may,' old Hawley answered.
+'But what can one do?' Smiling, first at Meshach, and then at Leonora,
+the doctor had joined his aged patient in the cab and they had gone off
+together.
+
+Next to the cane-chair was Hannah's mahogany bed, which had been
+stripped. On the bed lay a massive oaken coffin, and, accurately fitted
+into the coffin, lay the withered remains of Meshach's slave. The prim
+and spotless bedroom, with its chest of drawers, its small glass, its
+three-cornered wardrobe, its narrow washstand, its odd bonnet-boxes, its
+trunk, its skirts hung inside-out behind the door, its Bible with the
+spectacle-case on it, its texts, its miniature portraits, its samplers,
+framed in maple, and its engraving of the infant John Wesley being saved
+from the fire at Epworth Vicarage, framed in gold, was eloquent of the
+habits of the woman who had used it, without ambition, without repining,
+and without hope, save an everlasting hope, for more than fifty years.
+
+Into this room, obedient to the rigid etiquette of an old-fashioned Five
+Towns funeral, every person asked to the burial was bound to come, in
+order to take a last look at the departed, and to offer a few words of
+sympathy to the chief mourner. As they entered--Stanway, David Dain,
+Fred Ryley, Dr. Hawley, Leonora, the servant, and lastly Arthur
+Twemlow--unwillingly desecrating the almost saecular modesty of the
+chamber, Meshach received them one by one with calmness, with
+detachment, with the air of the curator of the museum. 'Here she is,'
+his mien indicated. 'That is to say, what's left. Gaze your fill.'
+Beyond a monotonous 'Thank ye, thank ye,' in response to expressions of
+sympathy for him, and of appreciation of Hannah's manifold excellences,
+he made no remarks to any one except Leonora and Arthur Twemlow.
+
+'Has that ginger wine come?' he asked Leonora anxiously. The feast after
+the sepulture was as important, and as strictly controlled by etiquette,
+as the lying-in-state. Leonora, who had charge of the meal, was able to
+give him an affirmative.
+
+'I'm glad as you've come,' he said to Twemlow. 'I had a fancy for you to
+see her again as soon as they told me you was back. Her makes a good
+corpse, eh?'
+
+Twemlow agreed. 'To die suddenly, that's the best,' he murmured
+awkwardly; he did not know what to say.
+
+'Her was a good sister, a good sister!' Meshach pronounced with an
+emotion which was doubtless genuine and profound, but which
+superficially resembled that of an examiner awarding pass-marks to a
+pupil. 'By the way, Twemlow,' he added as Arthur was leaving the room,
+'didst ever thrash that business out wi' our John? I've been thinking
+over a lot of things while I was fast abed up yon'.'
+
+Arthur stared at him.
+
+'Thou knowst what I mean?' continued Meshach, putting his thin tremulous
+hand on the edge of the coffin in order to rise from the chair.
+
+'Yes,' Arthur replied, 'I know. I haven't settled it yet, I haven't had
+time.'
+
+'I should ha' thought thou'dst had time enough, lad,' said Meshach.
+
+Then the undertaker's men adjusted the lid of the coffin, hiding Aunt
+Hannah's face, and screwed in the eight brass screws, and clumped down
+the dark stairs with their burden, and so across the pavement between
+two rows of sluttish sightseers, to the hearse. Uncle Meshach, with the
+aid only of his stick, entered the first coach; John Stanway and Fred
+Ryley--the rules of precedence were thus inflexible!--occupied the
+second; and Arthur Twemlow, with the family lawyer and the family
+doctor, took the third. Leonora remained in the house with the servant
+to spread the feast.
+
+The church was barely four hundred yards away, and in less than half an
+hour they were all in the house again; all save Aunt Hannah, who had
+already, in the vault of the Myatts, passed the first five minutes of
+the tedium of waiting for the Day of Judgment. And now, as they
+gathered round the fish, the fowl, the ham, the cake, the preserves, the
+tea, the wines and the spirits, etiquette demanded that they should be
+cheerful, should show a resignation to the will of heaven, and should
+eat heartily. And although the rapid-ticking clock on the mantelpiece in
+the parlour pointed only to a little better than three o'clock they were
+obliged to eat heartily, for fear of giving pain to Uncle Meshach; to
+drink much was not essential, but nothing could have excused abstention
+from the solid fare. The repast, actively conducted by the mourning
+host, was not finished until nearly half-past four. Then Twemlow and the
+doctor said that they must leave.
+
+'Nay, nay,' Meshach complained. 'There's the will to be read. It's right
+and proper as all the guests should hear the will, and it'll take nobbut
+a few minutes.'
+
+The enfeebled old man talked more and more the dialect which his father
+and mother had talked over his cradle.
+
+'Better without us, old friend!' the doctor said jauntily. 'Besides, my
+patients!' And by dint of blithe obstinacy he managed to get away, and
+also to cover the retreat of Twemlow.
+
+'I shall call in a day or two,' said Arthur to Uncle Meshach as they
+shook hands.
+
+'Ay! call and see th' old ruin!' Meshach replied, and dropping back
+into his chair, 'Now, Dain!' he ordered.
+
+David Dain drew a long white envelope from his breast pocket.
+
+'"This is the last will and testament of me, Hannah Margaret Myatt,"'
+the lawyer began to read quickly in his thick voice, '"of Church Street,
+Bursley, in the county of Stafford, spinster. I commit my body to the
+grave and my soul to God in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection
+through my Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ. I bequeath ten pounds each to
+my dear nephew John Stanway, and to his wife Leonora, to purchase
+mourning at my decease, and five pounds each for the same purpose to my
+dear great-nephew Frederick Wellington Ryley, and to my great-nieces
+Ethel, Rosalys, and Millicent Stanway, and to any other children of the
+said John and Leonora Stanway should they have such, and should such
+children survive me." This will is dated twelve years ago,' the lawyer
+stopped to explain. He continued: '"I further bequeath to my
+great-nephew Frederick Wellington Ryley the sum of two hundred and fifty
+pounds."'
+
+'Something for you there, Frederick Wellington Ryley!' exclaimed Stanway
+in a frigid tone, biting his thumb and looking up at the ceiling.
+
+Ryley blushed. He had scarcely spoken during the meal, and he did not
+break his silence now.
+
+With much verbiage the will proceeded to state that the testatrix left
+the residue of her private savings to Meshach, 'to dispose of absolutely
+according to his own discretion,' in case he should survive her; and
+that in case she should survive him she left her private savings and the
+whole of the estate of which she and Meshach were joint tenants to John
+Stanway.
+
+'There is a short codicil,' Dain added, 'which revokes the legacy of two
+hundred and fifty pounds to Mr. Ryley in case Mr. Myatt should survive
+the testatrix. It is dated some six months ago.'
+
+'Kindly read it,' said Stanway coldly.
+
+'With pleasure,' the lawyer agreed, and he read it.
+
+'Then, as it turns out,' Stanway remarked, looking defiantly at his
+uncle, 'Ryley gets nothing but five pounds under this will.'
+
+'Under this will, nephew,' the old man assented.
+
+'And may one inquire,' Stanway persisted, 'the nature of your intentions
+in regard to aunt's savings which she leaves you to dispose of according
+to your discretion?'
+
+'What dost mean, nephew?'
+
+Leonora saw with anxiety that her husband, while intending to be calm,
+pompous, and superior, was, in fact, losing control of himself.
+
+'I mean,' said John, 'are you going to distribute them?'
+
+'No, nephew. They're well enough where they lie. I shall none touch
+'em.'
+
+Stanway gave the sigh of a martyr who has sufficient spirit to be
+disdainful. Throwing his serviette on the disordered table, he pushed
+back his chair and stood up. 'You'll excuse me now, uncle,' he said,
+bitterly polite, 'I must be off to the works. Ryley, I shall want you.'
+And without another word he left the room and the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonora was the last to go. Meshach would not allow her to stay after
+the tea-things were washed up. He declined firmly every offer of help or
+companionship, and since the middle-aged servant made no objection to
+being alone with her convalescent master, Leonora could only submit to
+his wishes.
+
+When she was gone he lighted his pipe. At seven o'clock, the servant
+came into the parlour and found him dozing in the dark; his pipe hung
+loosely from his teeth.
+
+'Eh, mester,' she cried, lighting the gas. 'Hadn't ye better go to bed?
+Ye've had a worriting day.'
+
+'Happen I'd better,' he answered deliberately, taking hold of the pipe
+and adjusting his spectacles.
+
+'Can ye undress yeself?' she asked him.
+
+'Ay,' he said, 'I can do that, wench. My candle!'
+
+And he went carefully up to bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+IN THE GARDEN
+
+
+'Father's in a horrid temper. Did anything go wrong?' said Rose, when
+Leonora reached Hillport.
+
+'No,' Leonora replied. 'Where is he?'
+
+'In the drawing-room. He says he won't have any tea.'
+
+'You must remember, my dear, that your father has been through a great
+deal this last day or two.'
+
+'So have all of us, as far as that goes,' Rose stated ruthlessly.
+'However----' She turned away, shrugging her shoulders.
+
+Leonora wondered by means of what sad experience Rose would ultimately
+discover that, whereas men have the right to cry out when they are hurt,
+it is the whole business of a woman's life to suffer in cheerful
+silence. She sat with the girls during tea, drinking a cup for the sake
+of form, and giving them disconnected items of information about the
+funeral, which at their own passionate request they had been excused
+from attending. The talk was carried on in low tones, so that the rattle
+of a spoon in a saucer sounded loud and distinct. And in the
+drawing-room John steadily perused the 'Signal,' column by column, from
+the announcement of 'Pink Dominoes' at the Hanbridge Theatre Royal on
+the first page, to the bait of a sporting bookmaker in Holland at the
+end of the last. The evening was desolating, but Leonora endured it with
+philosophy, because she appreciated John's state of mind.
+
+It was the disclosure of the legacy of two hundred and fifty pounds to
+Fred Ryley, and of the recent conditional revocation of that legacy,
+which had galled her husband's sensibilities by bringing home to him
+what he had lost through Aunt Hannah's sudden death and through the
+senile whim of Uncle Meshach to alter his will. He could well have
+tolerated Meshach's refusal to distribute Aunt Hannah's savings
+immediately (Leonora thought), had the old man's original testament
+remained uncancelled. Once upon a time, Ryley, the despised poor
+relation, the offspring of an outcast from the family, was to have been
+put off with two hundred and fifty pounds, and the bulk of the Myatt
+joint fortune was to have passed in any case to John. The withdrawal of
+the paltry legacy, as shown in the codicil, was the outward and
+irritating sign that Ryley had been lifted from his humble position to
+the level of John himself. John, of course, had known months ago that he
+and Ryley stood level in the hazard of gaining the inheritance, but the
+history of the legacy, revealed after the funeral, aroused his disgusted
+imagination, as it had not been roused before.
+
+He was beaten; and, more important, he knew it now; he had the incensed,
+futile, malevolent, devil-may-care feeling of being beaten. He bitterly
+invited Fate not to stop at half-measures but to come on and do her
+worst. And Fate, with that mysterious responsiveness which often
+distinguishes her movements, came on. 'Of course! I might have expected
+it!' John exclaimed savagely, two days later, when he received a
+circular to the effect that a small and desperate minority of
+shareholders were trying to put the famous brewery company into
+liquidation under the supervision of the Court. The shares fell another
+five in twenty-four hours. The Bursley Conservative Club knew positively
+the same night that John had 'got out' at a ruinous loss, and this
+episode seemed to give vigorous life to certain rumours, hitherto faint,
+that John and his uncle had violently quarrelled at his aunt's funeral,
+and that when Meshach died Fred Ryley would be found to be the heir.
+Other rumours, that Ethel Stanway and Fred Ryley were about to be
+secretly married, that Dain would have been the owner of Prince but for
+the difference between guineas and pounds, and that the real object of
+Arthur Twemlow's presence in the Five Towns was to buy up the concern of
+Twemlow & Stanway, were received with reserve, though not entirely
+discredited. The town, however, was more titillated than perturbed, for
+every one said that old Meshach, for the sake of the family's good name,
+would never under any circumstances permit a catastrophe to occur. The
+town saw little of Meshach now--he had almost ceased to figure in the
+streets; it knew, however, the Myatt pride in the Myatt respectability.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonora sympathised with John, but her sympathy, weakened by his
+surliness, was also limited by her ignorance of his real plight, and by
+the secret preoccupation of her own existence. From the evening of the
+funeral the desire to see Arthur again, to study his features, to hear
+his voice, definitely took the uppermost place in her mind. She thought
+of him always, and she ceased to pretend to herself that this was not
+so. She continually expected him to call, or to meet some one who had
+met him, or to receive a letter from him. She forced her memory to
+reconstitute in detail his last visit to Hillport, and all the
+exacerbating scene of the funeral feast, in order that she might dwell
+tenderly upon his gestures, his glances, his remarks, the inflections of
+his voice. The eyes of her soul were ever beholding his form. Even at
+breakfast, after the disappointment of the post, she would indulge in
+ridiculous hopes that he might be abroad very early and would look in,
+and not until bedtime did she cease to listen for his ring at the front
+door. No chance of a meeting was too remote for her wild fancy. But she
+dared not breathe his name, dared not even adumbrate an inquiry; and her
+husband and daughters appeared to have entered into a compact not to
+mention him. She did not take counsel with herself, examine herself,
+demand from herself what was the significance of these symptoms; she
+could not; she could only live from one moment to the next engrossed in
+an eternal expectancy which instead of slackening became hourly more
+intense and painful. Towards the close of the afternoon of the third
+day, in the drawing-room, she whispered that something decisive must
+happen soon, soon.... The bell rang; her ears caught the distant sound
+for which they had so long waited. Shuddering, she thanked heaven that
+she was alone. She could hear the opening and closing of the front door.
+In three seconds Bessie would appear. She heard the knob of the
+drawing-room door turn, and to hide her agitation she glanced aside at
+the clock. It was a quarter to six. 'He will stay the evening,' she
+thought.
+
+'Mr. Dain,' Bessie proclaimed.
+
+'Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Stanway? Stanway not come in yet, eh?' said the
+stout lawyer, approaching her hurriedly with his fussy, awkward gait.
+
+She could have laughed; but the visit was at any rate a distraction.
+
+A few minutes later John arrived.
+
+'Dain will stay for tea, Nora. Eh, Dain?' he said.
+
+'Well--thanks,' was Dain's reply.
+
+She asked herself, with sudden misgiving, what new thing was afoot.
+
+After tea, the two men were left together at the table.
+
+'Mother,' Ethel inquired eagerly, coming into the drawing-room, 'why are
+father and Mr. Dain measuring the dining-room?'
+
+'I don't know,' said Leonora. 'Are they?'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Dain has got ever such a long tape.'
+
+Leonora went into the kitchen and talked to the cook.
+
+The next morning an idea occurred to her. Since the funeral, the girls
+had been down to see Uncle Meshach each afternoon, and Leonora had
+called at Church Street in the forenoon, so that the solitude of the old
+man might be broken at least twice a day. When she had suggested the
+arrangement to her husband, John had answered stiffly, with an
+unimpeachable righteousness, that everything possible must be done for
+his uncle. On this fourth day, Leonora sent Ethel and Milly in the
+morning, with a message that she herself would come in the afternoon, by
+way of change. The phrase that sang in her head was Arthur's promise to
+Meshach: 'I shall call in a day or two.' She knew that he had not yet
+called. 'Don't wait tea, if I should be late, dears,' she said smilingly
+to the girls; 'I may stay with uncle a while.' And she nearly ran out of
+the house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they had had tea, and when Leonora had performed the delicate feat
+of arranging Uncle Meshach's domestic affairs without affronting his
+servant, she sat down opposite to him before the fire in the parlour.
+
+'You're for stopping a bit, eh?' he said, as if surprised.
+
+'Well,' she laughed, 'wouldn't you like me to?'
+
+'Oh, ay!' he admitted readily, 'I'st like it well enough. I don't know
+but what you aren't all on ye very good--you and th' wenches, and Fred
+as calls in of nights. But it's all one to me, I reckon. I take no
+pleasure i' life. Nay,' he went on, 'it isn't because of _her_. I've
+felt as I was done for for months past. I mun just drag on.'
+
+'Don't talk like that, uncle.' She tried conventionally to cheer him.
+'You must rouse yourself.'
+
+'What for?'
+
+She sought a good answer to this conundrum. 'For all of us,' she said
+lamely, at length.
+
+'Leonora, my lass,' he remarked drily, 'you're no better than the rest
+of 'em.'
+
+And as she sat there in the age-worn parlour, and thought of the distant
+days of his energy, when with his own hands he had pulled down a wall
+and replaced it by a glass partition, and of the night when he lay like
+a corpse on Ethel's bed at the mercy of his nephew, and of Aunt Hannah
+resting in the cold tomb just at the end of the street, her heart was
+filled for a moment with an awful, ineffable, devastating sadness. It
+seemed to her that every grief, anxiety, apprehension was joy itself
+compared to this supreme tragedy of natural decay.
+
+'Shall I light the gas?' she suggested. The room was always obscure, and
+that evening happened to be a sombre one.
+
+'Ay!'
+
+'There!' she said brightly, when the gas flared, 'that's better, isn't
+it? Aren't you going to smoke?'
+
+'Ay!'
+
+In reaching a second spill from the spill-jar on the mantelpiece she
+noticed the clock. It was only a quarter past five. 'He may call yet,'
+she dreamed, and then a more piquant thought: 'He may be at home when I
+get back.'
+
+There was a perfunctory knock at the house-door. She started.
+
+'It's the "Signal" lad,' Meshach explained. 'He keeps on bringing it,
+but I never look at it.'
+
+She went into the lobby for the paper, and then read aloud to Uncle
+Meshach the items of local news. The clock showed a quarter to six.
+Suddenly it struck her that Arthur Twemlow might have called quite early
+in the afternoon and that Meshach might have forgotten to tell her. If
+he had perchance called, and perchance informed Meshach that he was
+going on to Hillport, and if he had walked up by the road while she came
+down by the fields! The idea was too dreadful.
+
+'Has Mr. Twemlow been to see you yet?' she demanded, after a long
+silence, pretending to be interested in the 'Signal.'
+
+'No,' said Meshach; 'why dost ask?'
+
+'I remembered he said he should.'
+
+'He'll come, he'll come,' Meshach murmured confidently. 'Dain's been
+in,' he added, 'wi' papers to sign, probate o' Hannah's will. Seemingly
+John's not satisfied, from what Dain hints.'
+
+'Not satisfied with what?' Flushing a little, she dropped the paper; but
+she was still busily employed in expecting Arthur to arrive.
+
+'Eh, I canna' tell you, lass.' Meshach gave a grim sigh. 'You know as I
+altered my will?'
+
+'Jack mentioned it.'
+
+'Me and her, we thought it over. It was her as first said that Fred was
+getting a nice young chap, and very respectable, and why should he be
+left out in the cold? And so I says to her, I says, "Well, you can make
+your will i' favour o' Fred, if you've a mind." "Nay, Meshach," her
+says, "never ask me to cut out our John's name." "Well," I says to her,
+"if you won't, I will. It'll give 'em both an even chance. Us'n die
+pretty near together, me and you, Hannah, it'll be a toss-up," I says.
+Wasn't that fair?' Leonora made no reply. 'Wasn't that fair?' he
+repeated.
+
+She could not be sure, even then, whether Uncle Meshach had devised in
+perfect seriousness this extraordinary arrangement for dealing justly
+between the surviving members of the Myatt family, or whether he had
+always had a private humorous appreciation of the fantastic element in
+it.
+
+'I don't know,' she said.
+
+'Well, lass,' he continued persuasively, sitting up in his chair, 'us
+ignored young Fred for more till twenty year. And it wasna' right.
+Hannah said it wasna' right as Fred should suffer for his mother and his
+grandfeyther. And then us give Fred and your John an equal chance, and
+John's lost, and now John isna' satisfied, by all accounts.' She gazed
+at him with a gentle smile. 'Why dostna' speak, lass?'
+
+'What am I to say, uncle?'
+
+'Wouldst like me to make a new will, and halve it between John and Fred?
+It wouldna' be fair to Fred, not rightly fair, because he's run his risk
+for th' lot. But wouldst like it, lass?'
+
+There was a trace of the old vitality in his shrivelled features, as he
+laid this offering on the altar of her feminine charm.
+
+'Oh, do, uncle!' she was about to say eagerly, but she thought in the
+same instant of John standing over Meshach's body, with the ice-cold
+cloth in his hand, and something, some dim instinct of a fundamental
+propriety, prevented her from uttering those words. 'I would like you to
+do whatever you think right,' she answered with calmness.
+
+Meshach was evidently disappointed.
+
+'I shall see,' he ejaculated. And after a pause, 'John's i' smooth water
+again, isn't he? I meant to ask Dain.'
+
+'I think so,' said Leonora.
+
+She had become restive. Soon afterwards she bade him good-night and
+departed. And all the way up to Hillport she speculated upon the chances
+of finding Arthur in her drawing-room when she got home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As she passed through the hall she knew at once that Arthur was not in
+the house and had not been there; and the agitation of her heart
+subsided suddenly into the melancholy stillness of defeated hope. She
+sadly admitted that she no longer knew herself, and that the Leonora of
+old had been supplanted by a creature of incalculable moods, a feeble
+victim of strange crises of secret folly. Through the open door of the
+drawing-room she could see Rose reading, and Millicent searching among
+a pile of music on the piano. Bessie emerged from the dining-room with a
+white cloth and the crumb-tray.
+
+'Master's in there,' said Bessie; 'they didn't wait tea, ma'am.'
+
+Leonora went into the dining-room, where John sat alone at the bare
+mahogany, smoking. With her deep knowledge of him, she detected
+instantly that he had been annoyed by her absence from tea. The
+condition of the sharp end of his cigar showed that he was perturbed,
+fretful, and perhaps in a state of suspense. 'Well,' she thought with
+resignation, 'I may as well play the wife,' and she sat down in a chair
+near him, put her purse on the table, and smiled generously. Then she
+raised her veil, loosed the buttons of her new black coat, and began to
+draw off her gloves.
+
+'I've been waiting for you,' he said, and to her surprise his tone was
+extremely pacific.
+
+'Have you?' she answered, intensifying all her alluring grace. 'I
+hurried home.'
+
+'Yes, I wanted to ask you----' He stopped, ostensibly to put the cigar
+into his meerschaum holder.
+
+She perceived that the desire to ingratiate fought within him against
+his vexation, and she wondered, with a touch of cynicism, what new
+scheme had got possession of him, and how her assistance was necessary
+to it.
+
+'Would you like to go and live in the country, Nora?' He looked at her
+audaciously for a moment and then his eyes shifted.
+
+'For the summer, you mean?'
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'for the summer and the winter too. Somewhere out Sneyd
+way.'
+
+'And leave here?'
+
+'Exactly.'
+
+'But what about the house, Jack?'
+
+'Sell it, if you like,' said John lightly.
+
+'Oh, no! I shouldn't like that at all,' she replied, nervously but
+amiably. She wished to believe that his suggestion about selling the
+house was merely an idle notion thrown out on the spur of the moment,
+but she could not.
+
+'You wouldn't?'
+
+She shook her head. 'What has made you think of going to live in the
+country?' she asked him, using a tone of gentle, mild curiosity. 'How
+should you get to the works in the morning?'
+
+'There's a very good train service from Sneyd to Knype,' he said. 'But
+look here, Nora, why wouldn't you care to sell the house?'
+
+It was perfectly clear to her that, having mortgaged her house, he had
+now made up his mind to sell it. He must therefore still be in
+financial difficulties, and she had unwittingly misled Uncle Meshach.
+
+'I don't know,' she answered coldly. 'I can't explain to you why. But I
+shouldn't.' And she privately resolved that nothing should induce her to
+assent to this monstrous proposal. Her heart hardened to steel. She felt
+prepared to suffer any unpleasantness, any indignity, rather than give
+way.
+
+'It isn't as if Hillport wasn't changing,' he went on, politely
+argumentative. 'It is changing. In another ten years all the decent
+estates will have been broken up, and we shall be left alone in the
+middle of streets of villas rented at nineteen guineas to escape the
+house duty. You know the sort of thing.... And I've had a very fair
+offer for the place.'
+
+'Whom from?'
+
+'Well, Dain. I know he's wanted the house a long time. Of course, he's a
+hard nut to crack, is Dain. But he went up to two thousand, and
+yesterday I got him to make it guineas. That's a good price, Nora.'
+
+'Is it?' she exclaimed absently.
+
+'I should just imagine it was!' said John.
+
+So it was expected of her that she should surrender her home, her
+domain, her kingdom, the beautiful and mellow creation of her
+intelligence; and that she should surrender it to David Dain, and to
+the impossible Mrs. Dain, and to their impossible niece. She remembered
+one of Milly's wicked tales about Mrs. Dain and the niece. Milly had met
+Mrs. Dain in the street, and in response to an inquiry about the health
+of the hypochondriacal niece, Mrs. Dain, gorgeously attired, had
+replied: 'Her had but just rallied up off th' squab as I come out.'
+These were the people who wanted to evict her from her house. And they
+would cover its walls with new papers, and its floors with new carpets,
+in their own appalling taste; and they would crowd the rooms with
+furniture as fat, clumsy, and disgusting as themselves. And Mrs. Dain
+would hold sewing meetings in the drawing-room, and would stand
+chattering with tradesmen at the front door, and would drive out to
+Sneyd to pay a call on Leonora and tell her how _pleased_ they all were
+with the place!
+
+'Do you absolutely need the money, John?' She came to the point with a
+frank, blunt directness which angered him.
+
+'I don't absolutely need anything,' he retorted, controlling himself.
+'But Dain made the offer----'
+
+'Because if you do,' she proceeded, 'I dare say Uncle Meshach----'
+
+'Look here, my girl,' he interrupted in turn, 'I've had exactly as much
+of Uncle Meshach as I can stand. I know all about Uncle Meshach, what I
+wanted to know was whether you cared to sell the house.' And then he
+added, after hesitating, and with a false graciousness, 'To oblige me.'
+
+There was a marked pause.
+
+'I really shouldn't like to sell the house, John,' she answered quietly.
+'It was aunt's, and----'
+
+'Enough said! enough said!' he cried. 'That finishes it. I suppose you
+don't mind my having asked you!'
+
+He walked out of the room in a rage.
+
+Tears came into her eyes, the tears of a wounded and proud heart. Was it
+conceivable that he expected her to be willing to sell her house?... He
+must indeed be in serious straits. She would consult Uncle Meshach.
+
+The front door banged. And then Rose entered the room.
+
+Leonora drove back the tears.
+
+'Your father has been suggesting that we sell this house, and go and
+live at Sneyd,' she said to the girl in a trembling voice. 'Aren't you
+surprised?' She seldom talked about John to her daughters, but at that
+moment a desire for sympathy overwhelmed her.
+
+'I should never be surprised at anything where father was concerned,'
+said Rose coldly, with a slight hint of aloofness and of mental
+superiority. 'Not at anything.'
+
+Leonora got up, and, leaving the room, went into the garden through the
+side door opposite the stable. She could hear Millicent practising the
+Jewel Song from Gounod's _Faust_. As she passed down the sombre garden
+the sound of the piano and of Milly's voice in the brilliant ecstatic
+phrases of the song grew fainter. She shook violently, like a child who
+is recovering from a fit of sobs, and without thinking she fastened her
+coat. 'What a shame it is that he should want to sell my house! What a
+shame!' she murmured, full of an aggrieved resentment. At the same time
+she was surprised to find herself so suddenly and so deeply disturbed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the foot of the long garden was a low fence separating it from the
+meadow, and in the fence a wicket from which ran a faint track to the
+main field-path. She leaned against the fence, a few yards away from the
+wicket, at a spot where a clump of bushes screened the house. No one
+could possibly have seen her from the house, even had the bushes not
+been there; but she wished to isolate herself completely, and to find
+tranquillity in the isolation. The calm spring night, chill but not too
+cold, cloudy but not too dark, favoured her intention. She gazed about
+her at the obscure nocturnal forms of things, at the silent trees, and
+the mysterious clouds gently rounded in their vast shape, and the sharp
+slant of the meadow. Far below could be seen the red signal of the
+railway, and, mapped in points of light on the opposite slope, the
+streets of Bursley. To the right the eternal conflagration of the
+Cauldon Bar furnaces illumined the sky with wavering amber. And on the
+keen air came to her from the distance noises, soft but impressive, of
+immense industrial activities.
+
+She thought she could decipher a figure moving from the field-path
+across the gloom of the meadow, and as she strained her eyes the figure
+became an indubitable fact. Presently she knew that it was Arthur. 'At
+last!' her heart passionately exclaimed, and she was swept and drenched
+with happiness as a ship by the ocean. She forgot everything in the
+tremendous shock of joy. She felt as though she could have waited no
+more, and that now she might expire in a bliss intense and fatal, in a
+sigh of supreme content. She could not stir nor speak, and he was
+striding towards the wicket unconscious of her nearness! She coughed, a
+delicate feminine cough, and then he turned aside from the direction of
+the wicket and approached the fence, peering.
+
+'Is that you?' he asked.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Across the fence they clasped hands. And in spite of her great wish not
+to do so she clutched his hand tightly in her long fingers, and held it
+for a moment. And as she felt the returning pressure of his large,
+powerful, protective grasp, she covered--but in imagination only--she
+covered his face, which she could shadowily see, with brave and
+abandoned kisses; and she whispered to him, but unheard: 'Admit that I
+am made for love.' She feared, in those beautiful and shameless
+instants, neither John, nor Ethel and Milly, nor even Rose. She knew
+suddenly why men and women leave all--honour, duty, and affection--and
+follow love. Then her arm dropped, and there was silence.
+
+'What are you doing here?' She was unable to speak in an ordinary tone,
+but she spoke. Her voice exquisitely trembled, and its vibrations said
+everything that the words did not say.
+
+'Why,' he answered, and his voice too bore strange messages, 'I called
+at Church Street and Mr. Myatt said you had only been gone a few
+minutes, and so I came right away. I guessed I should overtake you. I
+don't know what he would think.' Arthur laughed nervously.
+
+She smiled at him, satisfied. And how well she knew that her smiling
+face, caught by him dimly in the obscurity of the night, troubled him
+like an enchanting and enigmatic vision!
+
+After they had looked at each other, speechless, for a while, the strong
+influence of convention forced them again into unnecessary, irrelevant
+talk.
+
+'What's this about you selling this place?' he inquired in a low, mild
+tone.
+
+'Have you heard?'
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I did hear something.'
+
+'Ah!' she murmured, wrinkling her forehead in a pretty make-believe of
+woe--the question of the sale had ceased to be acute: 'I just came out
+here to think about it.'
+
+'But you aren't really going to----'
+
+'No, of course not.'
+
+She had no desire to discuss the tedious affair, because she was
+infallibly certain of his entire sympathy. Explanations on her side, and
+assurances on his, were equally superfluous.
+
+'But won't you come into the house?' She invited him as a sort of
+afterthought.
+
+'Why?' he demanded bluntly.
+
+She hesitated before replying: 'It will look so queer, us staying here
+like this.' As soon as she had uttered the words she suspected that she
+had said something decisive and irretrievable.
+
+He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and walked several
+times to and fro a few paces. Then he stopped in front of her.
+
+'I guess we are bound to look queer, you and I, some day. So it may as
+well be now,' he said.
+
+It was in this exchange of sentences that their mutual passion became at
+length articulate. A single discreet word spoken quickly, and she might
+even yet perhaps have withdrawn from the situation. But she did not
+speak; she could not speak; and soon she knew that her own silence had
+bound her. She yielded herself with poignant and magnificent joy to the
+profound drama which had been magically created by this apparently
+commonplace dialogue. The climax had been achieved, and she was
+conscious of being lifted into a sublime exultation, and of being cut
+off from all else in the world save him. She looked at him intently with
+a sadness that was the cloak of celestial rapture. 'How courageous you
+are!' her soft eyes said. 'I should never have dared. What a _man_!' It
+seemed to her that her heart would break under the strain of that
+ecstasy. She had not imagined the possibility of such bliss.
+
+'Listen!' he proceeded. 'I ought to be in New York--I oughtn't to be
+here. I must tell you. Scarcely a fortnight ago, one afternoon while I
+was working in my office in Fourteenth Street, I had a feeling I would
+be bound to come over. I said to myself the idea was preposterous. But
+the next thing I knew I was arranging to come. I couldn't believe I was
+coming. Not even when I had booked my berth and boarded the steamer, not
+even when the steamer was actually passing Sandy Hook, could I believe
+that I was really coming. I said to myself I was mad. I said to myself
+that no man in his senses could behave as I was behaving. And when I got
+to Southampton I said I would go right back. And yet I couldn't help
+getting into the special for London. And when I got to London I said I
+would act sensible and go back. But I met young Burgess, and the next
+thing I knew I was at Euston. And here I am pretending that it's my new
+London branch that brings me over, and doing business I don't want to do
+in Knype and Cauldon and Bursley. And I'm killing myself--yes, I am; I
+tell you I couldn't stand much more--and I wouldn't be sure I wasn't
+killing you. Some folks would say the whole thing was perfectly
+dreadful, but I don't care so long as you--so long as you don't. I'm not
+conceited really, but it looks like conceit--me talking like this and
+assuming that you're ready to stand and listen. I assure you it isn't
+conceit. I only know--that's all. It's difficult for you to say
+anything--I can feel that--but I'd like you just to tell me you're glad
+I came and glad I've spoken. I'd just like to hear that.'
+
+She gazed fondly at him, at the male creature in whom she could find
+only perfection, and she was filled with glorious pride that her image
+should have drawn this strong, shrewd self-possessed man across the
+Atlantic. It was incredible, but it was true. 'And,' said the secret
+feminine in her, 'why not?'
+
+He waited for her answer, facing her.
+
+'Oh, yes!' she breathed. 'Oh, yes!... I'm glad--I'm so glad.'
+
+'I wish,' he broke out, 'I wish I could explain to you what I think of
+you, what I feel about you. You're so quiet and simple and direct and
+yet--you don't know it, but you are. You're absolutely the most--Oh!
+it's no use.'
+
+She saw that he was growing very excited, and this, too, gave her deep
+pleasure.
+
+'We're in a hell of a fix!' he sighed.
+
+Like many women, she took a fearful, almost thrilling joy in hearing a
+man swear earnestly and religiously.
+
+'That's it,' she said, 'there's nothing to be done?'
+
+'Nothing to be done?' he demanded, imperiously. 'Nothing to be done?'
+
+She examined his face, which was close to hers, with a meditative,
+expectant smile. She loved to see him out of repose, eager, masterful,
+and daring. 'What is there to be done?' she asked.
+
+'I don't know yet,' he said firmly, 'I must think.' Then, in a delicious
+surrender, she felt towards him as though they were on the brink of a
+rushing river, and he was about to pick her up in his arms, like a
+trifle, and carry her safely through the flood; and she had the illusion
+of pressing her face, which she knew he adored, against his shoulder.
+
+'Oh, you innocent angel!' he cried, seizing her hand (she let it lie
+inert), 'do you suppose I'm the sort of man to sit down and cross my
+legs and say that fate, or whatever you call it, hasn't done me right?
+Do you suppose that two sensible persons like you and me are going to be
+beaten by a mere set of circumstances? We aren't children, and we aren't
+fools.'
+
+'But----'
+
+'You're not afraid, are you?' He drank in her charm.
+
+'What of?'
+
+'Anything.'
+
+'It's when you aren't there,' she murmured tenderly. She really thought,
+then, that by some marvellous plan he would perform the impossible feat
+of reconciling the duty of fulfilling love with all the other duties.
+
+'I shall reckon it up,' he said. 'Ah!'
+
+Silence fell. And with the feel of the grass under her feet, and the
+soft clouds overhead, and the patient trees, and the glare in the
+southern smoke, and the lamps of Bursley, and the solitary red signal in
+the valley, she breathed out her spirit like an aerial essence, and
+merged into unity with him. And the strange far-off noises of nocturnal
+industry wandered faintly across the void and seemed fraught with a
+mysterious significance. Everything, in that unique hour, had the same
+mysterious significance.
+
+'Mother!' Millicent's distant voice, fresh and strong and pure in the
+night, chanted the word startlingly to the first notes of a phrase from
+the Jewel Song. 'Mother! Aren't you coming in?' The girl finished the
+phrase with inviting gaiety, holding the final syllable. And the sound
+faded, went out, like the flare of a rocket in the sky, and the dark
+stillness was emphasised.
+
+They did not move; they did not speak; but Leonora pressed his hand. The
+passing thought of the orderly, multifarious existence of the house
+behind her, of the warmed and lighted rooms, of the preoccupied lives,
+only increased the felicity of her halcyon dream. And in the dreamy and
+brooding silence all things retreated and gradually lapsed away, and the
+pair were left sole amid the ineffable spaces of the universe to listen
+to the irregular beatings of their own hearts. Time itself had paused.
+
+'Mother!' Millicent sang again, nearer, more strongly and purely in the
+night. 'We are waiting for you to come in!' She varied a little the
+phrase from the Jewel Song. 'To come in!' The long sustained notes
+seemed to become a beautiful warning, and then the sound expired.
+
+Leonora withdrew her hand.
+
+'I shall think it out, and write you to-morrow,' Arthur whispered, and
+was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day, after a futile morning of hesitations, Leonora decided in
+the afternoon that she would go out for a walk and return in some
+definite state of mind. She loosed Bran, and the dog, when he had
+finished his elephantine gambades, followed her close at heel, with all
+stateliness, to the wide marsh on the brow of the hill. Here she began
+actively and seriously to cogitate.
+
+John was sulking; and it was seldom that he sulked. He had not spoken to
+her again, neither on the previous evening nor at breakfast; he had said
+nothing whatever to any one, except to tell Bessie that he should not be
+at home for dinner; on committee-meeting days, when he was engaged at
+the Town Hall, John sometimes dined at the Tiger. His attitude produced
+small effect on Leonora. She was far too completely absorbed in herself
+to be perturbed by the offensive symptoms of her husband's wrath. She
+had neglected even to call on Uncle Meshach; and as she strolled about
+the marsh she thought vaguely and perfunctorily that she must see Uncle
+Meshach soon and acquaint him with John's difficulties.
+
+Pride as much as joy and alarm filled her heart. She was proud of her
+perilous love; she would have liked proudly to confide it to some
+friend, some mature and brilliant woman who knew the world and
+understood things, and who would talk rationally; it seemed to her that
+this secret idyll, at once tender and sincere and rather dashing, was
+worthy of pride. She knew that many women, languishing in the greyness
+of an impeccable and frigid domesticity, would be capable of envying
+her; she remembered that, in reading the newspapers, she had sometimes
+timidly envied the heroines of the matrimonial court who had bought
+romance at the price of esteem and of peace. Then suddenly the whole
+matter slipped into unreality, and she could not credit it. Was it
+possible that she, a respectable matron, a known figure, the mother of
+adult daughters, had fallen in love with a man not her husband, had had
+a secret interview with her lover, and was anticipating, not a retreat,
+but an advance? And she thought, as every honest woman has thought in
+like case: 'This may happen to others; one hears of it, one reads about
+it; but surely it cannot have happened to _me_!' And when she had
+admitted that it had in fact happened to her, and had perceived with a
+kind of shock that the heroines of the matrimonial court were real
+persons, everyday creatures of flesh-and-blood, she thought, again like
+the rest: 'Ah! But my affair is different from all the others. There is
+something in it, something indefinable and precious, which makes it
+different.'
+
+She said: 'Can one help falling in love? Can one be blamed for that?'
+
+For John she had little compassion, and the gay and feverish existence
+of New York spread out invitingly before her in a vision full of piquant
+contrasts with the death-in-life of the Five Towns! But her beloved
+girls! They were an insuperable barrier. She could not leave them; she
+could not forfeit the right to look them in the eyes without
+embarrassment ... And then the next moment--somehow, she did not know
+how--the difficulty of the girls was arranged. And she had departed. She
+had left the Five Towns for ever. And she was in the train, in the
+hotel, on the steamer; she saw every detail of the escape. Oh! The
+rapture! The tremors! The long sigh! The surrender! The intense living!
+Surely no price could be too great....
+
+No! Common sense, the acquirement of forty years, supervened, and
+informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that
+these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and
+firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary
+clearness that this course was inevitable. And lest her resolution might
+slacken, she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry. The dog
+glanced up questioningly, and hurried too.
+
+'Why!' she reflected. 'People would say: "And her husband's aunt
+scarcely cold in her grave!"' She laughed scornfully.
+
+A carriage overtook her. It was Mrs. Dain's, coming from the direction
+of Oldcastle.
+
+'Good afternoon to you,' Mrs. Dain shouted, without stopping, and then,
+when she caught sight of Bran: 'Bless us! The dog hasn't brukken his leg
+after all!'
+
+'Broken his leg!' Leonora repeated, astonished. The carriage was now in
+front of her.
+
+'Our Polly come in this morning and sat hersen down on a chair and told
+us as your dog had brukken his leg. What tales one hears!' Mrs. Dain had
+to twist her stout neck dangerously in order to finish the sentence.
+
+'I should think so!' was Leonora's private comment, her gaze fixed on
+the scarlet of Mrs. Dain's nodding bonnet.
+
+In the little room off the dining-room Leonora dipped pen in ink to
+write to Arthur. She wrote the date, and she wrote the word 'Dear.' And
+she could not proceed. She knew that she could not compose a letter
+which would be effective. She went to the window and looked out, biting
+the pen. 'What am I to do?' she whispered, in terror. 'What am I to do?'
+Then she saw Ethel running hard down the drive to the front door.
+
+'Oh, mother!' The pale girl burst into the room. 'Father's done
+something to himself. Fred's come up. They're bringing him.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+John Stanway had called at the chemist's in the Market Place and had
+given a circumstantial description of an accident to Bran. It appeared
+that while Carpenter was washing the waggonette, Bran being loose in the
+stable-yard, the groom had suddenly slipped the lever of the
+carriage-jack and the off hind wheel had caught Bran's hind leg and
+snapped it like a piece of wood. The chemist had suggested prussic acid,
+and John had laughingly answered that perhaps the chemist would be good
+enough to come up and show them how to administer prussic acid to a dog
+of Bran's size in great pain. John explained that the animal was now
+fast by the collar, and he had demanded a large dose of morphia,
+together with a hypodermic instrument. Having obtained these, and
+precise instructions for their use, John had hurried away. It was not
+till three hours had elapsed that a startling suspicion had disturbed
+the chemist's easy mind. By that time, his preparations completed, John
+had dropped unconscious from the arm-chair in his office at the works,
+and Bursley was provided with one of those morbid sensations which more
+than joy or triumph electrify the stagnant pulses of a provincial town.
+Scores of persons followed the cab which conveyed Stanway from the works
+to his house; and on the route most of the inhabitants seemed to know in
+advance, by some strange intuition, that the vehicle was coming, and at
+their windows or at their gates (according to social status) they stood
+ready to watch it pass. And even after John had entered his home and had
+been carried upstairs, and the cab and the policeman had gone, and the
+doctor had gone, and Fred Ryley and Mr. Mayer, the works manager, had
+gone, a crowd still remained on the footpath, staring at the gravelled
+drive and at the front door, silent, patient, implacable.
+
+The doctor had tried hot coffee, artificial respiration, and other
+remedies, but without the least success, and he had reluctantly
+departed, solemn for once, leaving four women to understand that there
+was nothing to do save to wait for the final sigh. The inactivity was
+dreadful for them. They could only look at each other and think, and
+move to and fro aimlessly in the large bedroom, and light the gas at
+dusk, and examine from moment to moment those contracted pupils and that
+damp white brow, and listen for the faint occasional breaths. They did
+not think the thoughts which, could they have foreseen the situation,
+they might have expected to think. It did not occur to them to search
+for the causes of the disaster, nor to speculate upon its results in
+regard to themselves: they surrendered to the supreme fact. They were
+all incapable of logical and ordered reflections, and in the hushed
+torpor of their secret hearts there wandered, loosely, little
+disconnected ideas and sensations; as that the Stanway family was at
+length getting its full share of vicissitude and misfortune, that John
+was after all more important and more truly dominant and more intimately
+a part of their lives than they had imagined, that this affair was a
+thousand miles removed from that of Uncle Meshach, that they were fully
+supplied with mourning, and that suicide was mysteriously different from
+their previous notion of it. The impressive thoughts, the obvious
+thoughts--that if their creeds were sound, a soul was about to enter
+into eternal torment, and that their lives would be violently changed,
+and that they would be branded before the world as the wife and the
+daughters of a defaulter and a self-murderer--did not by any means
+absorb their minds in those first hours.
+
+In the attitude of the girls towards Leonora there was a sort of
+religious deference, as of priestesses to one soon to be sacrificed.
+'She is the central figure of the tragedy,' they had the air of saying
+to each other. 'We feel the affliction, but it cannot be demanded from
+us that we should feel it as she feels it. We are only beginning to
+live; we have the future; but she--she will have nothing. She will be
+the widow.' And the significance of that terrible word--all that it
+implied of social diminishment, of feeding on memory, and of mere
+waiting for death--seemed to cling about Leonora as she stood restlessly
+observant by the bed. And when Rose urged her to drink some tea, she
+could not help drinking the tea humbly, from a sense of the duty of
+doing what she was told. It was not Rose's fault that Rose was superior,
+and that only twenty-four hours ago she had coldly informed her mother
+that no act of her father's would surprise her. Leonora resigned herself
+to humility.
+
+'Mamma,' said Millicent, creeping into the room after an absence, 'Uncle
+Meshach is here with Mr. Twemlow, and he says he's coming in. Must he?'
+
+'Of course, darling,' Leonora answered, without turning her head.
+
+Uncle Meshach appeared, leaning on his stick and on Arthur's arm. He
+wore his overcoat and even his hat, and a white knitted muffler
+encircled his shrivelled neck in loose folds. No one spoke as the old
+and feeble man, with short uncertain steps, drew Arthur towards the bed
+and gazed at his dying nephew. Meshach looked long, and sighed. Suddenly
+he demanded of Leonora in a whisper:
+
+'Is he unconscious?'
+
+Leonora nodded.
+
+Drawing a little nearer to the bed, Meshach signed to Millicent to
+approach, and gave her his stick. Then he unbuttoned his overcoat, and
+his coat, and the flap-pocket of his trousers, and after much searching
+found a box of matches. He shook out a match clumsily, and struck it,
+and came still nearer to the bed. All wondered apprehensively what the
+old man was going to do, but none dared interfere or protest because he
+was so old, and so precariously attached to life, and because he was the
+head of the family. With his thin, veined, trembling hand, he passed the
+lighted match close across John's eyeballs; not a muscle twitched. Then
+he extinguished the match, put it in the box, returned the box to his
+pocket, and buttoned the pocket and his coats.
+
+'Ay!' he breathed. 'The lad's unconscious right enough. Let's be going.'
+
+Taking his stick from Milly, he clutched Arthur's arm again, and very
+slowly left the room.
+
+After a moment's hesitation Leonora followed and overtook them at the
+bottom of the stairs; it was the first time she had forsaken the
+bedside. She was surprised to see Fred Ryley in the hall, self-conscious
+but apparently determined to be quite at home. She remembered that he
+said he should come up again as soon as he had arranged matters at the
+works.
+
+'Just take Mr. Myatt to the cab, will you?' said Twemlow quietly to
+Fred. 'I'll follow.'
+
+'Certainly,' Fred agreed, pulling his moustache nervously. 'Now, Mr.
+Myatt, let me help you.'
+
+'Ay!' said Meshach. 'Thou shalt help me if thou'n a mind.' As he was
+feeling for the step with his stick he stopped and looked round at
+Leonora. 'Lass!' he exclaimed, 'thou toldst me John was i' smooth
+water.' Then he departed and they could hear his shuffling steps on the
+gravel.
+
+Twemlow glanced inquiringly at Leonora.
+
+'Come in here,' she said briefly, pointing to the drawing-room. They
+entered; it was dark.
+
+'Your uncle made me drive up with him,' Arthur explained, as if in
+apology.
+
+She ignored the remark. 'You must go back to New York--at once,' she
+told him, in a dry, curt voice.
+
+'Yes,' he assented, 'I suppose I'd better.'
+
+'And don't write to me--until after I have written.'
+
+'Oh, but----' he began.
+
+She thought wildly: 'This man, with his reason and his judgment, has not
+the slightest notion how I feel, not the slightest!'
+
+'I must write,' he said in a persuasive tone.
+
+'No!' she cried passionately and vehemently. 'You aren't to write, and
+you aren't to see me. You must promise, absolutely.'
+
+'For how long?' he asked.
+
+She shook her head. 'I don't know, I can't tell.'
+
+'But isn't that rather----'
+
+'Will you promise?' she cried once more, quite loudly and almost
+fiercely. And her accents were so full of entreaty, of command, and of
+despair, that Arthur feared a nervous crisis for her.
+
+'If you wish it,' he said, forced to yield.
+
+And even then she could not be content.
+
+'You give me your word to do nothing at all until you hear from me?'
+
+He paused, but he saw no alternative to submission. 'Yes.'
+
+She thanked him, and without shaking hands or saying good-night she went
+upstairs and resumed her place by the bedside. She could hear Uncle
+Meshach's cab drive away.
+
+'How came Mr. Twemlow to be here, mother?' Rose demanded quietly.
+
+'I don't know,' Leonora replied. 'He must have been at uncle's.'
+
+When the doctor had been again and gone, and various neighbours and the
+'Signal' reporter had called to inquire for news, and the hour was
+growing late, Ethel said to her mother, 'Fred thinks he had better stay
+all night.'
+
+'But why?' Leonora asked.
+
+'Well, mother,' said Milly, 'it's just as well to have a man in the
+house.'
+
+'He can rest on the Chesterfield in the drawing-room,' Ethel added.
+'Then if he's wanted----'
+
+'Yes, yes,' Leonora agreed. 'And tell him he's very kind.'
+
+At midnight, Fred was reading in the drawing-room, the man in the house,
+the ultimate fount of security for seven women. Bessie, having refused
+positively to go to bed, slept in a chair in the kitchen, her heels
+touching the scrap of hearthrug which lay like a little island on the
+red tiles in front of the range. Rose and Millicent had retired to bed
+till three o'clock. Ethel, as the eldest, stayed with her mother. When
+the hall-clock sounded one, meaning half past twelve, Leonora glanced
+at her daughter, who reclined on the sofa at the foot of the beds; the
+girl had fallen into a doze.
+
+John's condition was unchanged; the doctor had said that he might
+possibly survive for many hours. He lay on his back, with open eyes, and
+damp face and hair; his arms rested inert on the sheet; and underneath
+that thin covering his chest rose and fell from time to time, with a
+scarcely perceptible movement. It seemed to Leonora that she could
+realise now what had happened and what was to happen. In the nocturnal
+solemnity of the house filled with sleeping and quiescent youth, she who
+was so mature and so satiate had the sensation of being alone with her
+mate. Images of Arthur Twemlow did not distract her. With the full
+strength of her mind she had shut an iron door on the episode in the
+garden; it was as though it had never existed. And she gazed at John
+with calm and sad compassion. 'I would not sell my home,' she reflected,
+'and here is the consequence of refusal.' She wished she had
+yielded--and she could perceive how unimportant, comparatively,
+bricks-and-mortar might be--but she did not blame herself for not having
+yielded. She merely regretted her sensitive obstinacy as a misfortune
+for both of them. She had a vision of humanity in a hurried procession,
+driven along by some force unseen and ruthless, a procession in which
+the grotesque and the pitiable were always occurring. She thought of
+John standing over Meshach with the cold towel, and of Meshach passing
+the flame across John's dying eyes, and these juxtapositions appeared to
+her intolerably mournful in their ridiculous grimness.
+
+Impelled by a physical curiosity, she lifted the sheet and scrutinised
+John's breast, so pallid against the dark red of his neck, and bent down
+to catch the last tired efforts of the heart within. And the idea of her
+extraordinary intimacy with this man, of the incessant familiarity of
+more than twenty years, struck her and overwhelmed her. She saw that
+nothing is so subtly influential as constant uninterrupted familiarity,
+nothing so binding, and perhaps nothing so sacred. It was a trifle that
+they had not loved. They had lived. Ah! she knew him so profoundly that
+words could not describe her knowledge. He kept his own secrets,
+hundreds of them; and he had, in a way, astounded and shocked her by his
+suicide. Yet, in another way, this miserable termination did not at all
+surprise her; and his secrets were petty, factual things of no essential
+import, which left her mystic omniscience of him unimpaired.
+
+She looked at his eyes, and thought pitifully: 'These eyes cannot see
+that I uncover him.' Then she looked again at his breast, which heaved
+in shallow respirations. And at the moment he exhaled a sigh, so softly
+delicate and gentle that it might have been the sigh of an infant
+sinking to sleep. She put her ear quickly to the still breast, as to a
+sea-shell, and listened intently, and caught no rumour of life there.
+Startled, she glanced at the jaw, which had dropped, and then at Ethel
+dozing on the sofa.
+
+The room was filled for her with the majestic sound of trumpets, loud,
+sustained, and thrilling, but heard only by the soul; a noble and
+triumphant fanfare announcing the awful advent of those forces which are
+beyond the earthly sense. John's body lay suddenly deserted and
+residual; that deceitful brain, and that lying tongue, and that
+murderous hand had already begun to decay; and the informing fragment of
+eternal and universal energy was gone to its next manifestation and its
+next task, unconscious, irresponsible, and unchanged. The ineptitude of
+human judgments had been once more emphasised, and the great excellence
+of charity.
+
+'Ethel,' said Leonora timorously, waking with a touch the young and
+beautiful girl whose flushed cheek was pressed against the cushion of
+the sofa. 'He's gone.... Call Fred.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE REFUSAL
+
+
+Fifteen months after John's death, and the inquest on his body, and the
+clandestine funeral, Leonora sat alone one evening in the garden of the
+house at Hillport. She wore a black dress trimmed with jet; a narrow
+band of white muslin clasped her neck, and from her shoulders hung a
+long thin antique gold chain, once the ornament of Aunt Hannah. Her head
+was uncovered, and the mild breeze which stirred the new leaves of the
+poplars moved also the stray locks of her hair. Her calm and mature
+beauty was unchanged; it was a common remark in the town that during the
+past year she had looked handsomer than ever, more content, radiant, and
+serene. 'And it's not surprising, either!' people added. The homestead
+appeared to be as of old. Carpenter was feeding Prince in the stable;
+Bran lay huge and benign at the feet of his mistress; the borders of the
+lawn were vivid with bloom; and within the house Bessie still ruled the
+kitchen. No luxury was abated, and no custom altered. Time apparently
+had nothing to show there, save an engagement ring on Bessie's finger.
+Many things, however, had occurred; but they had seemed to occur so
+placidly, and the days had been so even, that the term of her widowhood
+was to Leonora more like three months than fifteen, and she often
+reminded herself: 'It was last spring, not this, that he died.'
+
+'The business is right enough!' Fred Ryley had said positively, with an
+emphasis on the word 'business,' when he met Leonora and Uncle Meshach
+in family council, during the first week of the disaster; and Meshach
+had replied: 'Thou shalt prove it, lad!' The next morning Mr. Mayer, the
+manager, and everybody on the bank, learned that Fred, with old Myatt at
+his back, was in sole control of the works at Shawport; creditors
+breathed with relief; and the whole of Bursley remembered that it had
+always prophesied that Fred's sterling qualities were bound to succeed.
+Meshach lent several thousands of pounds to Fred at five per cent., and
+Fred was to pay half the net profits of the business to Leonora as long
+as she lived. The youth did not change his lodgings, nor his tailor, nor
+his modest manners; but he became nevertheless suddenly important, and
+none appreciated this fact better than Mr. Mayer, whose sandy hair was
+getting grey, and who, having six children but no rich great-uncle,
+could never hope to earn more than three pounds a week. Fred was now an
+official member of the Myatt clan, and, in the town, men of position,
+pompous individuals who used to ignore him, greeted the sole principal
+of Twemlow & Stanway's with a certain cordiality. After an interval his
+engagement to Ethel was announced. Every evening he came up to Hillport.
+The couple were ardently and openly in love; they expected always to
+have the dining-room at their private disposal, and they had it. Ethel
+simply adored him, and he was immeasurably proud of her. Even in
+presence of the family they would sit hand in hand, making no attempt to
+conceal their bliss. For the rest Fred's attitude to Leonora was very
+affectionate and deferential; it touched her, though she knew he
+worshipped her ignorantly. Rose and Millicent wondered 'what Ethel could
+see in him'; he was neither amusing nor smart nor clever, nor even
+vivacious; he had little acquaintance with games, music, novels, or the
+feminist movement; he was indeed rather dull; but they liked him because
+he was fundamentally and invariably 'nice.' At the close of the year of
+Stanway's death, Fred had paid to Leonora four hundred and fifty pounds
+as her share of the profits of the firm for nine months. But long
+before that Leonora was rich. Uncle Meshach had died and left her the
+Myatt fortune for life, with remainder to the three girls absolutely in
+equal shares. Fred was the executor and trustee, and Fred's own share of
+the bounty was a total remission of Meshach's loan to him. Thus it is
+that providence watches over the wealthy, the luxurious, and the
+well-connected, and over the lilies of the field who toil not.
+
+Aroused from lethargy by the dramatic circumstances of her father's
+death, Rose had resumed her reading with a vigour that amounted almost
+to fury. In the following January she miraculously passed the
+Matriculation examination of London University in the first division,
+and on returning home she informed Leonora that she had decided to go
+back to London and study medicine at a hospital for women.
+
+But of the three girls, it was Millicent who had made the most history.
+Millicent was rapidly developing the natural gift, so precious to the
+theatrical artist, of existing picturesquely in the eye of the public.
+When the rehearsals of _Princess Ida_ began for the annual performance
+of the Operatic Society Milly confidently expected to receive the
+principal part, despite the fact that Lucy Turner, who had the
+prescriptive right to it, was once more in a position to sing; and Milly
+was not disappointed. As a heroine of comic opera she now accounted
+herself an extremely serious person, and it soon became apparent that
+the conductor and his prima donna would have to decide between them who
+was to control the rehearsals while Milly was on the stage. One evening
+a difference of opinion as to the _tempo_ of a song and chorus reached
+the condition of being acute. Exasperated by the pretty and wayward
+child, the conductor laid down his stick and lighted a cigarette, and
+those who knew him knew that the rehearsal would not proceed until the
+duel had been fought to a finish. Milly thought hard and said: 'Mr.
+Corfe says the Hanbridge people would jump at me!' 'My good girl,' the
+conductor replied, 'Mr. Corfe's views on the acrobatic propensities of
+the Hanbridge people are just a shade off the point.' Every one laughed,
+except Milly. She possessed little appreciation of wit, and she had
+scarcely understood the remark; but she had an objection to the
+laughter, and a very strong objection to being the conductor's good
+girl. The instant result was that she vowed never again to sing or act
+under his baton, and took the entire Society to witness; her place was
+filled by Lucy Turner. The Hanbridge Society happened to be doing
+_Patience_ that year, and they justified Mr. Corfe's prediction.
+Moreover, they hired the Hanbridge Theatre Royal for six nights. On the
+first night Milly was enthusiastically applauded by two thousand people,
+and in addition to half a column of praise in the 'Signal,' she had the
+happiness of being mentioned in the district news of the 'Manchester
+Guardian' and the 'Birmingham Daily Post.' She deemed it magnificent for
+her; Leonora tried to think so too. But on the fourth day the Hanbridge
+conductor was in bed with influenza; and the Bursley conductor, upon a
+flattering request, undertook his work for the remaining nights. Milly
+broke her vow; her practical common sense was really wonderful. On the
+last and most glorious night of the six, after responding to several
+frenzied calls, Milly was inspired to seize the conductor in the wings
+and drag him with her before the curtain. The effect was tremendous. The
+conductor had won, but he very willingly admitted that, in losing, the
+adorable chit had triumphed over him. The episode was gossip for many
+days.
+
+And this was by no means the end of the matter. The agent-in-advance of
+one of the touring musical-comedy companies of Lionel Belmont, the
+famous Anglo-American manager, was in Hanbridge during that week, and
+after seeing Milly in the piece he telegraphed to Liverpool, where his
+company was, and the next day the manager visited Hanbridge incognito.
+Then Harry Burgess began to play a part in Millicent's history. Harry
+had abandoned his stool at the Bank, expressing his intention to
+undertake some large commercial enterprise; he had persuaded his mother
+to find the capital. The leisurely search for a large commercial
+enterprise precisely suited to Harry's tastes necessitated frequent
+sojourns in London. Harry became a man-about-town and a member of the
+renowned New Fantastics Club. The New Fantastics were powerful
+supporters of the dramatic art, and the roll of the club included
+numerous theatrical stars of magnitudes varying from the first to the
+tenth. It was during one of the club's official excursions--in
+pantechnicon vans--to a suburban theatre where a good French actress was
+performing, that Harry made the acquaintance of that important man,
+Louis Lewis, Belmont's head representative in Europe. Louis Lewis, over
+champagne, asked Harry if he knew a Millicent Stanway of Bursley. The
+effect of the conversation was that Harry came home and astounded Milly
+by telling her what Louis Lewis had authorised him to say. There were
+conferences between Leonora and Milly and Mr. Cecil Corfe, a journey to
+Manchester, hesitations, excitations, thrills, and in the end an
+arrangement. Millicent was to go to London to be finally appraised, and
+probably to sign a contract for a sixteen-weeks provincial tour at three
+pounds a week.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leonora's prevailing mood was the serenity of high resolve and of
+resignation. She had renounced the chance of ecstasy. She was sad, but
+she was not unhappy. The melancholy which filled the secret places of
+her soul was sweet and radiant, and she had proved the ancient truth
+that he who gives up all, finds all. Still in rich possession of beauty
+and health, she nevertheless looked forward to nothing but old age--an
+old age of solitude and sufferance. Hannah and Meshach were gone; John
+was gone; and she alone seemed to be left of the elder generations. In
+four days Ethel was to be married. Already for more than three months
+Rose had been in London, and in a fortnight Leonora was to take
+Millicent there. And when Ethel was married and perhaps a mother, and
+Rose versed and absorbed in the art and craft of obstetrics, and the
+name of Millicent familiar in the mouths of clubmen, what was Leonora to
+do then? She could not control her daughters; she could scarcely guide
+them. Ethel knew only one law, Fred's wish; and Rose had too much
+intellect, and Millicent too little heart, to submit to her. Since
+John's death the house had been the abode of peace and amiability, but
+it had also been Liberty Hall. If sometimes Leonora regretted that she
+could not more dominantly impress herself upon her children, she never
+doubted that on the whole the new republic was preferable to the old
+tyranny. What then had she to do? She had to watch over her girls, and
+especially over Rose and Milly. And as she sat in the garden with Bran
+at her feet, in the solitude which foreshadowed the more poignant
+solitude to come, she said to herself with passionate maternity: 'I
+shall watch over them. If anything occurs I shall always be ready.' And
+this blissful and transforming thought, this vehement purpose, allayed
+somewhat the misgivings which she had long had about Millicent, and
+which her recent glimpses into the factitious and erratic world of the
+theatre had only served to increase.
+
+It was Milly's affair which had at length brought Leonora to the point
+of communicating with Arthur Twemlow. In the first weeks of widowhood,
+the most terrible of her life, she could not dream of writing to him.
+Then the sacrifice had dimly shaped itself in her mind, and while
+actually engaged in fighting against it she hesitated to send any
+message whatever. And when she realised that the sacrifice was
+inevitable for her, when she inwardly knew that Arthur and the splendid
+rushing life of New York must be renounced in obedience to the double
+instinct of maternity and of repentance, she could not write. She felt
+timorous; she was unable to frame the sentences. And she procrastinated,
+ruled by her characteristic quality of supineness. Once she heard that
+he had been over to London and gone back; she drew a deep breath as
+though a peril had been escaped, and procrastinated further. Then came
+the overtures from Lionel Belmont, or at least from his agents, to
+Milly. Belmont was a New Yorker, and the notion suddenly struck her of
+writing to Arthur for information about Belmont. It was a capricious
+notion, but it provided an extrinsic excuse for a letter which might be
+followed by another of more definite import. In the end she was obliged
+to yield to it. She wrote, as she had performed every act of her
+relationship with Arthur, unwillingly, in spite of her reason, governed
+by a strange and arbitrary impulse. No sooner was the letter in the
+pillar-box than she began to wonder what Arthur would say in his
+response, and how she should answer that response. She grew impatient
+and restless, and called at the chief Post Office in Bursley for
+information about the American mails. On this evening, as Leonora sat
+in the garden, Milly was reciting at a concert at Knype, and Ethel and
+Fred had accompanied her. Leonora, resisting some pressure, had declined
+to go with them. Assuming that Arthur wrote on the day he received her
+missive, his reply, she had ascertained, ought to be delivered in
+Hillport the next morning, but there was just a chance that it might be
+delivered that night. Hence she had stayed at home, expectant, and--with
+all her serenity--a little nervous and excited.
+
+Carpenter emerged from the region of the stable and began to water some
+flower-beds in the vicinity of her seat.
+
+'Terrible dry month we've had, ma'am,' he murmured in his quiet pastoral
+voice, waving the can to and fro.
+
+She agreed perfunctorily. Her mind was divided between suspense
+concerning the postman, contemplation of the placid vista of the
+remainder of her career, and pleasure in the languorous charm of the May
+evening.
+
+Bran moved his head, and rising ponderously walked round the seat
+towards the house. Then Carpenter, following the dog with his eyes,
+smiled and touched his cap. Leonora turned sharply. Arthur Twemlow
+himself stood on the step of the drawing-room window, and Bessie's
+white apron was just disappearing within.
+
+In the first glance Leonora noticed that Arthur was considerably
+thinner. She was overcome by a violent emotion that contained both fear
+and joy. And as he approached her, agitated and unsmiling, the joy said:
+'How heavenly it is to see him again!' But the fear asked: 'Why is he so
+worn? What have you been doing to him all these months, Leonora?' She
+met him in the middle of the lawn, and they shook hands timidly,
+clumsily, embarrassed. Carpenter, with that inborn delicacy of tact
+which is the mark of a simple soul, walked away out of sight, and Bran,
+receiving no attention, followed him.
+
+'Were you surprised to see me?' Arthur lamely questioned.
+
+In their hearts a thousand sensations struggled, some for expression,
+others for concealment; and speech, pathetically unequal to the swift
+crisis, was disconcerted by it almost to the verge of impotence.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'Very.'
+
+'You ought not to have been,' he replied.
+
+His tone alarmed her. 'Why?' she said. 'When did you get my letter?'
+
+'Just after one o'clock to-day.'
+
+'To-day?'
+
+'I was in London. It was sent on to me from New York.'
+
+She was relieved. When she saw him first at the window, she had a
+lightning vision of him tearing open her letter in New York, jumping
+instantly into a cab, and boarding the English steamer. This had
+frightened her. It was, if not exactly reassuring, at any rate less
+terrifying, to learn that he had flown to her only from London.
+
+'Well,' he exclaimed, 'how's everybody? And where are the girls?'
+
+She gave the news, and then they walked together to the seat and sat
+down, in silence.
+
+'You don't look too well,' she ventured. 'You've been working too hard.'
+
+He passed his hand across his forehead and moved on the seat so as to
+meet her eyes directly.
+
+'Quite the reverse,' he said. 'I haven't been working half hard enough.'
+
+'Not half hard enough?' she repeated mechanically.
+
+As his eyes caught hers and held them she was conscious of an exquisite
+but mortal tremor; her spine seemed to give way. The old desire for
+youth and love, for that brilliant and tender existence in which were
+united virtue and the flavour of sin, dalliance and high endeavour,
+eternal appetite and eternal satisfaction, rushed wondrously over her.
+The life which she had mapped out for herself suddenly appeared
+miserable, inadequate, even contemptible. Was she, with her rich blood,
+her perfect health, her proud carriage, her indestructible beauty, and
+her passionate soul, to wither solitary in the cold shadow? She felt
+intensely, as every human heart feels sometimes, that the satisfactions
+of duty were chimerical, and that the only authentic bliss was to be
+found in a wild and utter abandonment to instinct. No matter what the
+cost of rapture, in self-respect or in remorse, it was worth the cost.
+Why did not mankind rise up and put an end to this endless crucifixion
+of instinct which saddened the whole earth, and say gloriously, 'Let us
+live'? And in a moment dalliance without endeavour, and the flavour of
+sin without virtue, were beautiful ideals for her. She could have put
+her arms round Arthur's neck and drawn him to her, and blotted out all
+the past and sullied all the future with one kiss. She wondered what
+recondite force dissuaded her from doing so. 'I have but to lift my arms
+and smile,' she thought.
+
+'You've been very cruel,' said Arthur. 'I wouldn't have believed you
+could have been so cruel. I guess you didn't know how cruel you were.
+Why didn't you write before?'
+
+'I couldn't,' she answered submissively. 'Didn't you understand?' The
+question was not quite ingenuous, but she meant it well.
+
+'I understood at first,' he said. 'I knew you would want to wait. I knew
+how upset you'd be--I--I think I knew all you'd feel.... But it will
+soon be eighteen months ago.' His voice was full of emotion. Then he
+smiled, gravely and charmingly.' However, it's finished now, and I'm
+here.'
+
+His indictment was very kind, very mild; but she could see how he had
+suffered, and that his wrath against her had been none the less genuine
+because it was the wrath of love. She grew more and more humble before
+his gaze so adoring and so reproachful. She knew that she had been
+selfish, and that she had ransomed her conscience as much at his expense
+as at her own. She perceived the vital inferiority of women to men--that
+quality of callousness which allows them to commit all cruelties in the
+name of self-sacrifice, and that lack of imagination by which they are
+blinded to the wounds they deal. Women have brief moods in which they
+judge themselves as men judge them, in which they escape from their sex
+and know the truth. Such a mood came then to Leonora. And she wished
+ardently to compensate Arthur for the martyrdom which she had inflicted
+on him. They were close to one another. The atmosphere between them was
+electric. And the darkness of a calm and delicious night was falling.
+Could she not obey her instinct, and in one bright word, one word laden
+with the invitation and acquiescence of femininity, atone for her sin
+against him? Could she not shatter the images of Rose and Milly, who
+loved her after their hard fashion, but who would never thank her for
+her watchful affection--would even resent it? Vain hope!
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed grievously, trying uselessly to keep the dream of
+joyous indulgence from fading away. 'I must tell you--I cannot leave
+them!'
+
+'Leave whom?'
+
+'The girls--Rose and Milly. I daren't. You don't know what I went
+through after John's death--and I can't desert them. I should have told
+you in my next letter.'
+
+Her tones moved not only him but herself. He was obliged at once to
+receive what she said with the utmost seriousness, as something fully
+weighed and considered.
+
+'Do you mean,' he demanded, 'that you won't marry me and come to New
+York?'
+
+'I can't, I can't,' she replied.
+
+He got up and walked along the garden towards the meadow, so far that in
+the twilight her eyes could scarcely distinguish his figure against the
+bushes. Then he returned.
+
+'Just let me hear all about the girls.' He stood in front of her.
+
+'You see,' she said entreatingly, when she had hurried through her
+recital, 'I couldn't leave them, could I?'
+
+But instead of answering, he questioned her further about Milly's
+projects, and made suggestions, and they seemed to have been discussing
+the complex subject for an hour before she found a chance to reassert,
+plaintively: 'I couldn't leave them.'
+
+'You're entirely wrong,' he said firmly and authoritatively. 'You've
+just got an idea fixed in your head, and it's all wrong, all wrong.'
+
+'It isn't as if they were going to be married,' she obstinately pursued
+the sequence of her argument. 'Ethel now----'
+
+'Married!' he cried, roused. 'Are we to wait patiently, you and I, until
+Rose and Milly choose to get married?' He was bitterly scornful. 'Is
+that our role? I fancy I know something about Rose and Milly, and allow
+me to tell you they never will get married, neither of them. They
+aren't the marrying sort. Not but what that's beside the point!... Yes,'
+he continued, 'and if there ever were two girls in this world able to
+look after themselves without parental assistance Rose and Milly are
+those two.'
+
+'You don't understand women; you don't know, you don't understand,' she
+murmured. She was shocked and hurt by this candid and hostile expression
+of opinion concerning Rose and Milly, whom hitherto he had always
+appeared to like.
+
+'No,' he retorted with solemn resentment. 'And no other man either!...
+Before, when they needed your protection perhaps, when your husband was
+alive, you would have left Rose and Milly then, wouldn't you?...
+Wouldn't you?'
+
+'Oh!' the exclamation escaped her unawares. She burst into a sob. She
+had not meant to cry, but she was crying.
+
+He sat down close to her, and put his hand on her shoulder, and leaned
+over her. 'My dearest girl,' he whispered in a new voice of infinite
+softness, 'you've forgotten that you have a duty to yourself, and to me,
+as well as to Rose and Milly. Our lives want looking after, too. We're
+human creatures, you know, you and I. This row that we're having now has
+occurred thousands of times before, but this time it's going to be
+settled with common sense, isn't it?' And he kissed her with a kiss as
+soft as his voice.
+
+She sighed. Still perplexed and unconvinced, she was nevertheless in
+those minutes acutely happy. The mysterious and profound affinity of the
+flesh had made a truce between the warring principles of the male and of
+the female; a truce only. To the left of the house, over the Marsh, the
+last silver relics of day hung in the distant sky. She looked at the
+dying light, so provocative of melancholy in its reluctance to depart,
+and at the timidly-appearing stars and the sombre trees, and her thought
+was: 'World, how beautiful and sad you are!'
+
+Bran emerged forlorn from the gloom, and rested his great chin
+confidingly on her knees.
+
+'Bran!' she condoled with him through her tears, stroking the dog's head
+tenderly, 'Ah! Bran!'
+
+Arthur stood up, resolute, victorious, but prudent and magnanimous too.
+He put one foot on the seat beside her, and leaned forward on the raised
+knee, tapping his stick. 'I've hired a flat over there,' he said low in
+her ear, 'such as can't be gotten outside of New York. And in my
+thoughts I've made a space for you in New York, where it's life and no
+mistake, and where I'm known, and where my interests are. And if you
+didn't come I don't know what I should do. I tell you fair I don't know
+what I should do. And wouldn't your life be spoilt? Wouldn't it? But it
+isn't the flat I've got, and it isn't the space I've sort of cleared,
+and it isn't the ruin and smash for you and me--it isn't so much these
+things that make me feel wicked when I think of the mere possibility of
+you refusing to come, as the fundamental injustice of the thing to both
+of us. My dear girl, no one ever understood you as I do. I can see it
+all as well as if I'd been here all the time. You took fright
+after--after his death. Women are always more frightened after the
+danger's over than at the time, especially when they're brave. And you
+thought, "I must do something very good because it was on the cards I
+might have been very wicked." And so it's Rose and Milly that mustn't be
+left ... I'm not much of an intellect, outside crocks, you know, but
+there's one thing I can do, I _can_ see clear?... Can't I see clear?'
+
+Their hands met in the dog's fur. She was still crying, but she smiled
+up at him admiringly and appreciatively.
+
+'If Rose and Milly want a change any time,' he continued, 'let 'em come
+over. And we can come to Europe just as often as you feel that way ...
+Eh?'
+
+'Why,' she meditated, 'cannot this last for ever?' She felt so feminine
+and illogical, and the masculine, masterful rationality of his appeal
+touched her so intimately, that she had discovered in the woe and the
+indecision of her situation a kind of happiness. And she wished to keep
+what she had got. At length a certain courage and resolution visited
+her, and summoning all her sweetness she said to him: 'Don't press me,
+please, please! In a fortnight I shall be in London with Milly.... Will
+you wait a fortnight? Will you wait that long? I know that what you say
+is--You will wait that long, won't you? You'll be in London then to meet
+us?'
+
+'God!' he exclaimed, deeply moved by the fainting, beseeching poignancy
+of her voice, 'I will wait forty fortnights. And I guess I shall be in
+London.'
+
+She sank back on the reprieve as on a pillow.
+
+'Of course I'll wait,' he repeated lightly, and his tone said: 'I
+understand. Life isn't all logic, and allowances must be made. Women are
+women--that's what makes them so adorable--and I'm not in a hurry.'
+
+They did not speak further.
+
+A moving patch of white on the path indicated Bessie.
+
+'If you please, ma'am, shall I set supper for five?' she asked
+vivaciously in the summer darkness.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+'I'm not staying, Bessie,' said Twemlow.
+
+'Thank you, sir. Come along, Bran, come kennel.'
+
+The great beast slouched off, and left them together.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Guess who's been!' Leonora demanded of her girls and Fred, with
+feverish gaiety, when they returned from the concert. The dining-room
+was very cheerful, and brightly lit; outside lay the dark garden and
+Bran reflective in his kennel. No one could guess Arthur, and so Leonora
+had to tell. They were surprised; and they were interested, but not for
+long. Millicent was preoccupied with her successful performance at the
+concert; and Ethel and Fred had had a brilliant idea. This couple were
+to commence married life modestly in Uncle Meshach's house; but the
+place was being repaired and redecorated, and there seemed to be an
+annoying probability that it would not be finished for immediate
+occupation after the short honeymoon--Fred could only spare 'two
+week-ends' from the works. Why should they not return on the very day
+when Leonora and Milly were to go to London and keep house at Hillport
+during Leonora's absence? Such was the brilliant idea, one of those
+domestic ideas whose manifold excellences call for interminable
+explanation and discussion. The name of Arthur Twemlow was not again
+mentioned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN LONDON
+
+
+The last day of the dramatic portion of Leonora's life was that on which
+she went to London with Milly. They were up early, in order to catch the
+morning express, and, before leaving, Leonora arranged with the excited
+Bessie all details for the reception of Ethel and Fred, who were to
+arrive in the afternoon from their honeymoon. 'I will drive,' she said
+to Carpenter when the cart was brought round, and Carpenter had to sit
+behind among the trunks. Bessie in her morning print and her engagement
+ring stood at the front door, and sped them beneficently away while
+clinging hard to Bran.
+
+As the train rushed smoothly across the vast and rich plain of Middle
+England, Leonora's thoughts dwelt on the house at Hillport, on her
+skilled and sympathetic servants, on Prince and Bran, and on the calm
+and the orderliness and the high decency of everything. And she pictured
+the homecoming of Ethel and Fred from Wales--Fred stiff and nervous,
+and Ethel flushed, beautiful, and utterly bewitching in the
+self-consciousness of the bride. 'May I call her Mrs. Fred, ma'am?'
+Bessie had asked, recoiling from the formality of 'Mrs. Ryley,' and
+aware that 'Miss Ethel' was no longer possible. Leonora saw them in the
+dining-room consuming the tea which Bessie had determined should be the
+final word of teas; and she saw Bessie, in that perfect black of hers
+and that miraculous muslin, waiting at table with a superlative and cold
+primness that covered a desire to take Ethel in her arms and kiss her.
+And she saw the pair afterwards, dallying on the lawn with Bran at dusk,
+simple, unambitious, unassuming, content; and, still later, Fred
+meticulously locking up the great house, so much too large and
+complicated for one timid couple, and Ethel standing at the top of the
+stairs as he extinguished the hall-gas. These visions of them made her
+feel sad--sad because Ethel could never again be that which she had
+been, and because she was so young, inexperienced, confiding, and
+beautiful, and would gradually grow old and lose the ineffable grace of
+her years and situation; and because they were both so innocent of the
+meaning of life. Leonora yearned for some magic to stay the destructive
+hand of time and keep them ever thus, young, naive, trustful, and
+unspoilt. And knowing that this could not be, she wanted intensely to
+shield, and teach, and advise them. She whispered, thinking of Ethel:
+'Ah! I must always be near, within reach, within call, lest she should
+need me.'
+
+'Mother, shall you go with me to see Mr. Louis Lewis to-morrow?' Milly
+demanded suddenly when the train halted at Rugby.
+
+'Yes, of course, dear. Don't you wish me to?'
+
+'Oh! I don't mind,' said Milly grandly.
+
+Two well-dressed, middle-aged men entered the compartment, which, till
+then, Leonora and Milly had had to themselves; and while duly admiring
+Leonora, they could not refrain from looking continually at Millicent;
+they talked to one another gravely, and they made a pretence of reading
+newspapers, but their eyes always returned furtively to Milly's corner.
+The girl was not by any means confused by the involuntary homage, which
+merely heightened her restless vitality. She chattered to her mother;
+she was pert; she looked out of the window; she tapped the floor with
+her brown shoes. In the unconscious process of displaying her
+individuality for admiration, she was never still. The fair, pretty face
+under the straw hat responded to each appreciative glance, and beneath
+her fine blue coat and skirt the muscles of the immature body and limbs
+played perpetually in graceful and free movement. She was adorable; she
+knew it, Leonora knew it, the two middle-aged men knew it. Nothing--no
+pertness, no audacity, no silliness, no affectation--could impair the
+extraordinary charm. Leonora was exceedingly proud of her daughter. And
+yet she reflected impartially that Millicent was a little fool. She
+trembled for Millicent; she feared to let her out of sight; the idea of
+Millicent loose in the world, with no guide but her own rashness and no
+protection but her vanity, made Leonora feel sick. Nevertheless,
+Millicent would soon be loose in the world, and at the best Leonora
+could only stand in the background, ready for emergency.
+
+At Euston they were not surprised to see Harry. The young man was more
+dandiacal and correct than ever, and he could cut a figure on the
+platform; but Leonora observed the pallor of his thin cheeks and the
+watery redness of his eyes. He had come to meet them, and he insisted on
+escorting them to their hotel in South Kensington.
+
+'Look here,' he said in the cab, 'I've one dying request to make before
+the luggage drops through the roof. I want you both to come and dine
+with me at the Majestic to-night, and then we'll go to the Regency.
+Lewis has given me a box. By the way, I told him he might rely on me to
+take you up to see him to-morrow.'
+
+'Shall we, mother?' Milly asked carelessly; but it was obvious that she
+wished to dine at the Majestic.
+
+'I don't know,' said Leonora. 'There's Rose. We're going to fetch Rose
+from the hospital this afternoon, Harry, and she will spend the evening
+with us.'
+
+'Well, Rose must come too, of course,' Harry replied quickly, after a
+slight hesitation. 'It will do her good.'
+
+'We will see,' said Leonora. She had known Harry from his infancy, and
+when she encountered him in these latter days she was always subject to
+the illusion that he could not really be a man, but was rather playing
+at manhood. Moreover, she had warned Arthur Twemlow of their arrival and
+expected to find a letter from him at the hotel, and she could make no
+arrangements until she had seen the letter.
+
+They drove into the courtyard of the select and austere establishment
+where John Stanway had brought his wife on her wedding journey. Leonora
+found that it had scarcely changed; the dark entrance lounge presented
+the same appearance now as it had done more than twenty years ago; it
+had the same air of receiving visitors with condescension; the whole
+street was the same. She grew thoughtful; and Harry's witticisms, as he
+ceremoniously superintended their induction into the place, served only
+to deepen the shadow in her heart.
+
+'Any letters for me?' she asked the hall porter, loitering behind while
+Millicent and Harry went into the _salle a manger_.
+
+'What name, madam? No, madam.'
+
+But during luncheon, to which Harry stayed, a flunkey approached bearing
+a telegram on silver. 'In a moment,' she thought, 'I shall know when we
+are to meet.' And she trembled with apprehension. The flunkey, however,
+gave the telegram to Millicent, who accepted it as though she had been
+accepting telegrams at the hands of flunkeys all her life.
+
+'_Miss_ Stanway,' she smiled superiorly with her chin forward,
+perceiving the look on Leonora's face. She tore the envelope. 'Lewis
+says I am to go to-day at four, instead of to-morrow. Hooray! the sooner
+it's over, the sooner to sleep, though the harbour bar be mo--oaning.
+Ma, that's the very time you have to meet Rose at the hospital. Harry,
+you shall take me.'
+
+Leonora would have preferred that Harry and Millicent should not go
+alone together to see Mr. Louis Lewis. But she could not bring herself
+to break the appointment with Rose, who was extremely sensitive; nor
+could she well inform Harry, at this stage of his close intimacy with
+the family, that she no longer cared to entrust Milly to his charge.
+
+She left the hotel before the other two, because she had further to
+drive. The hansom had scarcely got into the street when she instructed
+the driver to return.
+
+'Of course you will settle nothing definitely with Mr. Lewis,' she said
+to Milly. 'Tell him I wish to see him first.'
+
+'Oh, mother!' the girl cried, pouting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the New Female and Maternity Hospital in Lamb's Conduit Street
+Leonora was shown to a bench in the central hall and requested to sit
+down. The clock over the first landing of the double staircase indicated
+three minutes to four. During the drive she had begun by expecting to
+meet Arthur on his way to the hotel, and even in Piccadilly, where
+delays of traffic had forced upon her attention the glittering opulence
+and afternoon splendour of the London season, she had still thought of
+him and of the interview which was to pass between them. But here she
+was obsessed by her immediate environment. The approach to the hospital,
+through sombre squalid streets, past narrow courts in which innumerable
+children tumbled and yelled, disturbed and desolated her. It appeared
+that she had entered the secret breeding-quarter of the immense city,
+the obscene district where misery teemed and generated, and where the
+revolting fecundity of nature was proved amid surroundings of horror and
+despair. And the hospital itself was the very centre, the innermost
+temple of all this ceaseless parturition. In a corner of the hall, near
+a door, waited a small crowd of embossed women, young and middle-aged,
+sad, weary, unkempt, lightly dressed in shabby shapeless clothes, and
+sweltering in the summer heat; a few had babies in their arms. In the
+doorway two neatly attired youngish women, either doctors or students,
+held an animated and interminable conversation, staring absent-mindedly
+at the attendant crowd. A pale nurse came hurrying from the back of the
+hall and vanished through the doorway, squeezing herself between the
+doctors or students, who soon afterwards followed her, still talking;
+and then one by one the embossed women began to vanish through the
+doorway also. The clock gently struck four, and Leonora, sighing,
+watched the hand creep to five minutes and to ten beyond the hour. She
+gazed up the well of the staircases, and in imagination saw ward after
+ward, floor above floor of beds, on which lay repulsive and piteous
+creatures in fear, in pain, in exhaustion. And she thought with dismay
+how many more poor immortal souls went out of that building than ever
+went into it. 'Rose is somewhere up there,' she reflected. At a quarter
+past four a stout white-haired lady briskly descended the stairs, and,
+after being accosted twice by officials, spoke to Leonora.
+
+'You are Mrs. Stanway? My name is Smithson. I dare say your daughter has
+mentioned it in her letters.' The famous dean of the hospital smiled,
+and paused while Leonora responded. 'Just at the moment,' Miss Smithson
+continued, 'dear Rosalys is engaged, but I hope she will be down
+directly. We are very, very busy. Are you making a long stay in London,
+Mrs. Stanway? The season is now in full swing, is it not?'
+
+Leonora could find little to say to this experienced spinster, whom she
+unwillingly admired but with whom she was not in accord. Miss Smithson
+uttered amiable banalities with an evident intention to do nothing more;
+her demeanour was preoccupied, and she made no further reference to
+Rose. Soon a nurse respectfully called her; she hastened away full of
+apologies, leaving Leonora to meditate upon her own shortcomings as a
+serious person, and upon the futility of her existence of forty-one
+years.
+
+Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and then Rose ran impetuously down
+the stone steps.
+
+'Mother, I'm so glad to see you! Where's Milly?' she exclaimed eagerly,
+and they kissed twice.
+
+As she answered the greeting Leonora noticed the lines of fatigue in
+Rose's face, the brilliancy of her eyes, the emaciation of the body
+beneath her grey alpaca dress, and that air of false serenity masking
+hysteric excitement which she seemed to have noticed too in all the
+other officials--the doctors or students, the nurses, and even the dean.
+
+'Are you ready now, dear?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, I can't possibly come to-day, mother. Didn't Miss Smithson tell
+you? I'm awfully sorry I can't. But there's a very important case on. I
+can only stay a minute.'
+
+'But, my child, we have arranged to take you to the theatre,' Leonora
+was on the point of expostulating. She checked herself, and placidly
+replied: 'I'm sorry, too. When shall you be free?'
+
+'Might be able to get off to-morrow. I'll slip out in the morning and
+send you a telegram.'
+
+'I should like you to try and be free to-morrow, my dear. You seem as if
+you needed a rest. Do you take any exercise?'
+
+'As much as I can.'
+
+'But you know, Rose----'
+
+'That's all right, mater,' Rose interrupted confidently, patting her
+mother's arm. 'We can look after ourselves here, don't you worry. Have
+you seen Mr. Twemlow yet?'
+
+'Not yet. Why?'
+
+'Nothing. But he called to see me yesterday. We're great friends. I must
+run back now.'
+
+Leonora departed with the girl's hasty kiss on her lips, realising that
+she had fallen to the level of a mere episodic interest in Rose's life.
+The impassioned student of obstetrics had disappeared up the staircase
+before Leonora could reach the double-doors of the entrance. The mother
+was dashed, stricken, a little humiliated. But as she arranged the folds
+of her beautiful dress in the hansom which was carrying her away from
+Lamb's Conduit Street towards South Kensington, she said to herself
+firmly, 'I am not a ninny, after all, and I know that Rose will be ill
+soon. And there are things in that hospital that I could manage better.'
+
+'Mr. Twemlow came to see you just after you left,' said Harry when he
+restored Milly to her mother at half-past five. 'I asked him to join us
+at dinner, but he said he couldn't. However, he's coming to the theatre,
+to our box.'
+
+'You must excuse us from dining with you to-night, Harry,' was Leonora's
+reply. 'We'll meet you at the theatre.'
+
+'Yes, Harry,' said Millicent coldly. 'We really can't come to-day.'
+
+'The hand of the Lord is heavy upon me,' Harry murmured. And he repeated
+the phrase on leaving the hotel.
+
+Neither he nor Millicent had shown much interest in Rose's defection.
+The dandy seemed to be relieved, and Millicent said, 'How stupid of
+her!' Milly had returned from the visit to Mr. Louis Lewis in a state of
+high self-satisfaction. Leonora was told that Mr. Lewis was simply the
+most delightful and polite man that Milly had ever met; he would be
+charmed to see Mrs. Stanway, and would make an appointment. Meanwhile
+Milly gave her mother to understand that the affair was practically
+settled. She knew the date when the tour of _Princess Puck_ started, and
+the various towns which it would include; and Mr. Lewis had provided her
+with a box for the next afternoon at the Queen's Theatre, where the
+piece had been most successfully produced a month ago; the music she
+would receive by post; and the first rehearsal of the No. I. Company
+would occur within a week or so. Millicent walked in flowery paths. She
+saw herself covered with jewels and compliments, flattered, adored,
+worshipped, and leading always a life of superb luxury. And this
+prophetic dream was not the conception of a credulous fancy, but the
+product of the hard and calculating shrewdness which she possessed. She
+was aware of the importance of Mr. Louis Lewis, who, on behalf of Lionel
+Belmont, absolutely controlled three West End theatres; and she was also
+aware of the effect which she had had upon him. She knew that in her
+personality there was a mysterious something which intoxicated, not all
+the men with whom she came in contact, but most of them, and men of
+utterly different sorts. She did not trouble to attempt any analysis of
+that quality; she accepted it as a natural phenomenon; and she meant to
+use it ruthlessly, for she was almost incapable of pity or gratitude. It
+was, for instance, her intention to drop Harry; she had no further use
+for him now. She was learning to forget her childish awe of Leonora: a
+very little time, and she would implacably force her mother to
+recognise that even the semblance of parental control must cease.
+
+'And I am to have my photograph taken, mamma!' she exclaimed
+triumphantly. 'Mr. Lewis says that Antonios in Regent Street will be
+only too glad to take it for nothing. He's going to send them a line.'
+
+Leonora was silent. Deep in her heart she made a gesture of appeal to
+each of her daughters--to Ethel who was immersed in love, to Rose who
+was absorbed by a vocation, and to this seductive minx whose venal lips
+would only smile to gain an end--and each seemed to throw her a glance
+indifferent or preoccupied, and to say, 'Presently, presently. When I
+can spare a moment.' And she thought bitterly how Rose had been content
+to receive her mother in the public hall of the hospital.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were late in arriving at the theatre because the cab could not get
+through Piccadilly, and Harry was impatiently expecting them in the
+foyer. His brow smoothed at once when he caught sight of them, and he
+admired their dresses, and escorted them up the celebrated marble stairs
+with youthful pride.
+
+'I thought no one was going to supervene,' he smiled. 'I was afraid
+you'd all been murdered in patent asphyxiating hansoms. I don't know
+what's happened to Twemlow. I must leave word with the people here which
+box he's to come to.'
+
+'Perhaps he won't come,' thought Leonora. 'Perhaps I shall not see him
+till to-morrow.'
+
+Harry's box was exactly in the middle of the semi-circle of boxes which
+surround the balcony of the Regency Theatre. They were ushered into it
+with the precautions of silence, for the three hundred and fifty-fifth
+performance of _The Dolmenico Doll_, the unique musical comedy from New
+York, had already commenced. Leonora and Milly sat in front, and Harry
+drew up a chair so that he might whisper in their ears; he was very
+talkative. Leonora could see nothing clearly at first. Then gradually
+the crowded auditorium arranged itself in her mind. She perceived the
+semi-circle of boxes, each exactly like their own, and each filled with
+women quite as elegantly gowned as she and Millicent, and men as
+dandiacal and correct as Harry; and in the balcony and in the stalls
+were serried regular rows of elaborate coiffures and shining bald heads;
+and all the seats seemed to be pervaded by the glitter of gems, the
+wing-like beating of fans, and the restless curving of arms. She had not
+visited London for many years, and this multitudinous and wholesale
+opulence startled her. Under other circumstances she would have enjoyed
+it intensely, and basked in it as a flower in the sunshine; to-night,
+however, she could not dismiss the image of Rose in the gaunt hospital
+in Lamb's Conduit Street. She knew the comparison was crude; she assured
+herself that there must always be rich and poor, idle and industrious,
+gay and sorrowful, elegant and shabby, arrogant and meek; but her
+discomfort none the less persisted, and she had the uneasy feeling that
+the whole of civilisation was wrong, and that Rose and the earnest ones
+were justified in their scorn of such as her. And concurrently she dwelt
+upon Ethel and Fred at that hour, and listened with anxiety for the
+opening of the box-door and the entry of Arthur Twemlow.
+
+She imagined that owing to their late arrival she must have missed the
+one essential clue to the plot of _The Dolmenico Doll_, and as the
+gorgeously decorated action was developed on the dazzling stage she
+tried in vain to grasp its significance. The fall of the curtain came as
+a surprise to her. The end of the first act had left her with nothing
+but a confused notion of the interior of a confectioner's shop, and
+young men therein getting tipsy and stealing kisses, and marvellously
+pretty girls submitting to the robbery with a nonchalance born of three
+hundred and fifty four similar experiences; and old men grotesque in a
+dissolute senility; and sudden bursts of orchestral music, and simpering
+ballads, and comic refrains and crashing choruses; and lights,
+_lingerie_, picture-hats and short skirts; and over all, dominating all,
+the set, eternal, mechanical, bored smile of the pretty girls.
+
+'Awfully good, isn't it?' said Harry, when the generous applause had
+ceased.
+
+'It's simply lovely,' Milly agreed, fidgeting on her chair in juvenile
+rapture.
+
+'Yes,' Leonora admitted. And she indeed thought that parts of it were
+amusing and agreeable.
+
+'Of course,' Harry remarked hastily to Leonora, '_Princess Puck_ isn't
+at all like this. It's an idyll sort of thing, you know. By the way,
+hadn't I better go out and offer a reward for the recovery of Twemlow?'
+
+He returned just as the curtain went up, bringing a faint odour of
+whisky, but without Twemlow.
+
+A few moments later, while the principal pretty girl was warbling an
+invitation to her lover amid the diversions of Narragansett Pier, the
+latch of the door clicked and Arthur noiselessly entered the box. He
+nodded cheerfully, murmuring 'Sorry I'm so late,' and then shook hands
+with Leonora. She could not find her voice. In the hazard of rearranging
+the seats, an operation which Harry from diffidence conducted with a
+certain clumsiness, Arthur was placed behind Milly while Leonora had
+Harry by her side.
+
+'You've missed all the first act, and everyone says it's the best,'
+Milly remarked, leaning towards Arthur with an air of intimacy. And
+Harry expressed agreement.
+
+'But you must remember I saw it in New York two years ago,' Leonora
+heard him whisper in reply.
+
+She liked his avuncular, slightly quizzical attitude to them. He
+reinforced the elder generation in the box, reducing by his mere
+presence the two young and callow creatures to their proper position in
+the scheme of things.
+
+And now the question of her future relations with Arthur, which hitherto
+she had in a manner shunned, at once became peremptory for Leonora. She
+was conscious of a passionate tenderness for him; he seemed to her to
+have qualities, indefinable and exquisite touches of character, which
+she had never observed in any other human being. But she was in control
+of her heart. She had chosen, and she knew that she could abide by her
+choice. She was uplifted by the force of one of those tremendous and
+invincible resolutions which women alone, with their instinctive bent
+towards martyrdom, are capable of making. And the resolution was not the
+fruit of the day, the result of all that she had recently seen and
+thought. It was a resolution independent of particular circumstances, a
+simple admission of the naked fact that she could not desert her
+daughters. If Ethel had been shrewd and worldly, and Rose temperate in
+her altruism, and Milly modest and sage, the resolution would not have
+been modified. She dared not abandon her daughters: the blood in her
+veins, the stern traits inherited from her irreproachable ancestors,
+forbade it. She might be convinced in argument--and she vividly
+remembered everything that Arthur had said--she might admit that she was
+wrong, that her sacrifice would be futile, and that she was about to be
+guilty of a terrible injustice to Arthur and to herself. No matter! She
+would not leave the girls. And if in thus obstinately remaining at their
+service she committed a sin, she could only ask pardon for that sin. She
+could only beg Arthur to forgive her, and assure him that he would
+forget, and submit to his reproaches in silence and humility. Now and
+then she gazed at him, but his eyes were always fixed on the stage, and
+the corners of his mouth turned down into a slightly ironic smile. She
+wondered if he expected to be able to persuade her, and whether an
+opportunity to convince him and so end the crisis would occur that
+evening, or whether she would be compelled to wait through another
+night.
+
+At last the adventures of the Dolmenico Doll were concluded, the naughty
+kisses regularised, the old men finally befooled, the glory
+extinguished, the music hushed. The audience stood up and began to
+chatter, and the women curved their long arms backward to receive white
+cloaks from the men. Arthur led the way out with Milly, and as the party
+slowly proceeded through the crush into the foyer, Leonora could hear
+the impetuous and excited child delivering to him her professional views
+on the acting and the singing.
+
+'Well, Burgess,' Arthur said, in the portico, 'I guess we'll see these
+ladies home, eh?' And he called to a commissionaire: 'Say, two hansoms.'
+
+In a minute Leonora and Arthur were driving together along the
+scintillating nocturnal thoroughfare; he had put Harry and Millicent
+into the other hansom like school children. And in the sudden privacy of
+the vehicle Leonora thought: 'Now!' She looked up at him furtively from
+beneath her eyelashes. He caught the glance and shook his head sadly.
+
+'Why do you shake your head?' she timidly began.
+
+His kind shrewd eyes caressed her. 'You mustn't look at me so,' he said.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I can't stand it,' he replied. 'It's too much for me. You don't
+know--you don't know. You think I'm calm enough, but I tell you the top
+of my head has nearly come off to-day.'
+
+'But I----'
+
+'Listen here,' he ran on. 'Let me finish up. What I said a fortnight ago
+was quite right. It was absolutely unanswerable. But there was something
+about your letter that upset me. I can't tell you what it was--only it
+made my heart beat. And then yesterday I happened to go and worry out
+Rose at that awful hospital. And then Milly to-night! I know how you
+feel. I've got it to the eighth of an inch. And I've thought: "Suppose I
+do get her to New York, and she isn't happy?" Well, it's right here:
+I've settled to sell my business over there, and fix up in London. What
+do I care for New York, anyway? I don't care for anything so long as we
+can be happy. I've been a bachelor too long. And if I can be alone with
+you in this London, lost in it, just you and me! Oh, well! I want a
+woman to think about--one woman all mine. I'm simply mad for it. And we
+can only live once. We shan't be short of money. Now don't look at me
+any more like you did. Say yes, and let's begin right away and be
+happy.'
+
+'Do you really mean----?' She was obliged thus, in weak unfinished
+phrases, to gain time in order to recover from the shock.
+
+'I'm going to cable to-morrow morning,' he said, joyously. 'Not that
+there's so much hurry as all that, but I shall feel better after I've
+cabled. I'm silly, and I want to be silly.... I wouldn't live in New
+York for a million now. And don't you think we can keep an eye on Rose
+and Millicent, between us?'
+
+'Oh, Arthur!'
+
+She breathed a long, deep sigh, shutting her eyes for an instant; and
+then the beautiful creature, with all her elegance and her appearance of
+impassive and fastidious calm, permitted herself to move
+infinitesimally, but perceptibly, closer to him in the hansom; and her
+spirit performed the supreme feminine act of acquiescence and surrender.
+She thought passionately: 'He has yielded to me--I will be his slave.'
+
+'I shall call you Leo,' he murmured fondly. 'It occurred to me last
+night.'
+
+She smiled, as if to say: 'How charmingly boyish you are!'
+
+'And I must tell you--but see here, we shall be at your hotel too soon.'
+He pushed at the trap-door. 'Say, driver, go up Park Lane and along
+Oxford Street a bit.'
+
+Then he explained to her how he had refused Harry's invitation to
+dinner, and had arrived late at the theatre, solely that he might not
+have to talk to her until they could talk in solitude.
+
+As, later, the cab rolled swiftly southwards through the mysterious dark
+avenues of Hyde Park, Leonora had the sensation of being really alone
+with him in the very heart of that luxurious, voluptuous, and decadent
+civilisation for which she had always yearned, and in which she was now
+to participate. The feeling of the beauty of the world, and of its
+catholicity and many-sidedness, returned to her. She gave play to her
+instincts. And, revelling in the self-confidence and the masterful
+ascendency which underlay Arthur's usual reticent demeanour, she resumed
+with exquisite relief her natural supineness. She began to depend on
+him. And she foresaw how he would reason diplomatically with Rose, and
+watch between Milly and Mr. Louis Lewis, and perhaps assist Fred Ryley,
+and do in the best way everything that ought to be done; and how she
+would reward him with the consolations of her grace and charm, her
+feminine arts, and her sweet acquiescence.
+
+'So you've come,' exclaimed Milly, rather desolate in the drawing-room
+of the hotel.
+
+'Yes, Miss Muffet,' said Arthur, 'we've come. Where is the youth?'
+
+'Harry? I made him go home.'
+
+Leonora smiled indulgently at Millicent with her pretty pouting face and
+her adorable artificiality, lounging on one of the sofas in the vast
+garish chamber. And her thoughts flew to Ethel, and existence in
+Bursley. The Myatt family had risen, flourished, and declined. Some of
+its members were dead, in honour or in dishonour; others were scattered
+now. Only Ethel and Fred remained; and these two, in the house at
+Hillport (which Leonora meant to give them), were beginning again the
+eternal effort, and renewing the simple and austere traditions of the
+Five Towns, where luxury was suspect and decadence unknown.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
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