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+Project Gutenberg's Studies in love and in terror, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+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: Studies in love and in terror
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #26702]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LOVE AND IN TERROR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    STUDIES IN LOVE
+    AND IN TERROR
+
+    BY
+
+    MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
+
+    (Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes)
+
+    _Short Story Index Reprint Series_
+
+
+    BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
+    FREEPORT, NEW YORK
+
+
+    First Published 1913
+
+    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                 PAGE
+
+    PRICE OF ADMIRALTY              1
+
+    THE CHILD                      99
+
+    ST. CATHERINE'S EVE           131
+
+    THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY      187
+
+    WHY THEY MARRIED              227
+
+
+
+
+PRICE OF ADMIRALTY
+
+    "O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!
+     Ce pays nous ennuie, O mort! Appareillons!"
+
+
+I
+
+Claire de Wissant, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood
+in the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of
+poise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of the cliff.
+
+At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of
+the Pavillon de Wissant, the charming country house to which her husband
+had brought her, a seventeen year old bride, ten long years ago.
+
+She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded
+eyes with her right hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to
+which was attached a small key.
+
+A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It
+blotted out the low grey line on the horizon which, on the majority of
+each year's days, reminds the citizens of Falaise how near England is to
+France.
+
+Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the _entente cordiale_, if only
+because it brought such a stream of tourists to the old seaport town of
+which he was now Mayor. But his beautiful wife thought of the English as
+gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not great-granddaughter to
+that admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered by
+chain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might go
+on commanding, in the hour of defeat, to the end?
+
+And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet
+invisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse
+of a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters had
+made them recite to her that very morning. How did it run? Aloud she
+murmured:
+
+    "Yet this inconstancy is such,
+     As you too shall adore--"
+
+and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two
+concluding lines.
+
+To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled
+by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an
+intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the
+anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.
+
+With an abrupt, restless movement she turned and walked on till her way
+along the path was barred by a curious obstacle. This was a small
+red-brick tower, built within a few feet of the edge of the cliff. It
+was an ugly blot on the beautiful stretch of down, all the uglier that
+the bricks and tiles had not yet had time to lose their hardness of line
+and colour in the salt wind.
+
+On the cliff side, the small circular building, open to wind, sky and
+sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply,
+almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular
+steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a
+rough protection added by means of knotted ropes fixed on either side of
+the dangerous descent.
+
+In the days when the steps had started sheer from a cleft in the cliff
+path, Jacques de Wissant had never used this way of reaching a spot
+which till last year had been his property, and his favourite
+bathing-place; and he had also, in those same quiet days which now
+seemed so long ago, forbidden his daughters to use that giddy way. But
+Claire was a fearless woman; and she had always preferred the
+dangerous, ladder-like stairs which seemed, when gazed at from below, to
+hang 'twixt sky and sea.
+
+Now, however, she rarely availed herself of the right retained by her
+husband of using one of the two keys which unlocked the door set in the
+new brick tower, for the cove--only by courtesy could it be called a
+bay--had been chosen, owing to its peculiar position, naturally remote
+and yet close to a great maritime port, to be the quarters of the
+Northern Submarine Flotilla.
+
+Jacques de Wissant--and it was perhaps the only time in their joint life
+that his wife had entirely understood and sympathized with any action of
+her husband's--had refused the compensation his Government had offered
+him; more, in his cold, silent way, he had shown himself a patriot in a
+sense comparatively few modern men have the courage to be, namely, in
+that which affected both his personal comfort and his purse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After standing for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform
+which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the
+knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side.
+She no longer gazed out to sea, instead she looked straight down into
+the pale green, sun-flecked waters of the little bay, where seven out of
+the nine submarines which composed the flotilla were lying
+half-submerged, as is their wont in harbour.
+
+A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have
+thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight
+before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the
+placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still.
+
+But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the
+cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created
+monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had
+become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last
+few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they
+differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not
+only here, in these familiar waters, but in the waters of France's great
+rival on the sea....
+
+It ever gave her a thrill of pride to remember that it was France which
+first led the way in this, the most dangerous as also the most
+adventurous new arm of naval warfare: and she rejoiced as fiercely, as
+exultantly as any of her sea-fighting forbears would have done in the
+terrible potentialities of destruction which each of these strange,
+grotesque-looking craft bore in their narrow flanks.
+
+It was now the hour of the crews' midday meal; there were fewer men
+standing about than usual; and so, after she had stepped down on the
+sandy strip of shore, and climbed the ladder leading to the old
+Napoleonic hulk which served as workshop and dwelling-place of the
+officers of the flotilla, Madame de Wissant for a few moments stood
+solitary, and looked musingly down into the waters of the bay.
+
+Each submarine, its long, fish-like shape lying prone in the almost
+still, transparent water, differed not only in size, but in make, from
+its fellows, and no two conning towers even were alike.
+
+Lying apart, as if sulking in a corner, was an example of the old
+"Gymnote" type of under-sea boat. She went by the name of the _Carp_,
+and she was very squat, small and ugly, her telescopic conning tower
+being of hard canvas.
+
+To Claire, the _Carp_ always recalled an old Breton woman she had known
+as a girl. That woman had given thirteen sons to France, and of the
+thirteen five had died while serving with the colours--three at sea and
+two in Tonkin--and a grateful country had given her a pension of ten
+francs a week, two francs for each dead son.
+
+Like that Breton woman, the ugly, sturdy little _Carp_ had borne heroes
+in her womb, and like her, too, she had paid terrible toll of her sons
+to death.
+
+Occasionally, but very seldom now, the _Carp_ was taken out to sea, and
+the men, strange to say, liked being in her, for they regarded her as a
+lucky boat; she had never had what they called a serious accident.
+
+Sunk deeper in the water was the broad-backed _Abeille_, significantly
+named "La P�troleuse," the heroine of four explosions, no favourite with
+either crews or commanders; and, cradled in a low dock on the farther
+strip of beach, was stretched the _Triton_, looking like a huge fish
+which had panted itself to death. The _Triton_ also was not a lucky
+boat; she had been the theatre of a terrible mishap when, for some
+inexplicable cause, the conning tower had failed to close. Claire was
+always glad to see her safe in dock.
+
+Out in the middle of the bay was _La Glorieuse_, a submarine of the
+latest type. Had she not lain so low, little more than her flying bridge
+being above the water, she would have put her elder sisters to shame, so
+exquisitely shaped was she. Everything about _La Glorieuse_ was made
+delicately true to scale, and she could carry a crew of over twenty men.
+But somehow Claire de Wissant did not care for this miniature leviathan
+as she did for the older kind of submarine, and, with more reason for
+his prejudice, the officer in charge of the flotilla shared her feeling.
+Commander Dupr� thought _La Glorieuse_ difficult to handle under water.
+But he had had the same opinion of the _Neptune_, one of the two
+submarines which were out this fine August morning....
+
+An eager "Bonjour, madame," suddenly sounded in Claire de Wissant's ear,
+and she turned quickly to find one of the younger officers at her elbow.
+
+"The _Neptune_ is a few minutes late," he said smiling. "I hope your
+sister has enjoyed her cruise!" He was looking with admiring and
+grateful eyes at the young wife of the Mayor of Falaise, for Claire de
+Wissant and her widowed sister, Madeleine Baudoin, were very kind and
+hospitable to the officers of the submarine flotilla.
+
+The life of both officers and men who volunteer for this branch of the
+service is grim and arduous. And if this is generally true of them all,
+it was specially so of those who served under Commander Dupr�. By a
+tacit agreement with their chief, they took no part in the summer
+gaieties of the watering-place which has grown up round the old port of
+Falaise, and out of duty hours they would have led dull lives indeed had
+it not been for the hospitality shown them by the owners of the Pavillon
+de Wissant, and for the welcome which awaited them in the freer, gayer
+atmosphere of Madame Baudoin's villa, the Ch�let des Dunes.
+
+Madeleine Baudoin was a lively, cheerful woman, younger in nature if not
+in years than her beautiful sister, and so she was naturally more
+popular with the younger officers. They had felt especially flattered
+when Madame Baudoin had allowed herself to be persuaded to go out for a
+couple of hours in the _Neptune_; till this morning neither of the
+sisters had ever ventured out to sea in a submarine.
+
+And now 'twas true that the _Neptune_ had been out longer than her
+commander had said she would be, but no touch of fear brushed Claire de
+Wissant; she would have trusted what she held most precious in the
+world--her children--to Commander Dupr�'s care, and a few moments after
+her companion had spoken she suddenly saw the little tricolor, for which
+her keen eyes had for long swept the sea, bravely riding the waves, and
+making straight for the bay.
+
+The flag moving swiftly over the surface of the blue water was a
+curious, almost an uncanny sight; one which never failed to fill Claire
+with a kind of spiritual exaltation. For the tiny strip of waving colour
+was a symbol of the gallantry, of the carelessness of danger, lying
+under the dancing, sun-flecked ripples which alone proved that the
+tricolor was not some illusion of sorcery.
+
+And then, as if the submarine had been indeed a sentient, living thing,
+the _Neptune_ lifted her great shield-like back up out of the sea and
+glided through the narrow neck of the bay, and so close under the long
+deck on which Madame de Wissant and her companion were standing.
+
+The eager, busy hum of work slackened--discipline is not perhaps quite
+so taut in the French as it is in the British Navy--for both men and
+officers were one and all eager to see the lady who had ventured out in
+the _Neptune_ with their commander. Only those actually on board had
+seen Madame Baudoin embark; there was a long, rough jetty close to her
+house, the lonely Ch�let des Dunes, and it was from there the submarine
+had picked up her honoured passenger.
+
+But when Commander Dupr�'s stern, sun-burnt face suddenly appeared above
+the conning tower, the men vanished as if by enchantment, while the
+eager, busy hum began again, much as if a lever, setting this human
+machinery in motion, had been touched by some titanic finger.
+
+The officers naturally held their ground.
+
+There was a look of strain in the Commander's blue eyes, and his mouth
+was set in hard lines; a thoughtful onlooker would have suspected that
+the exciting, dangerous life he led was trying his nerves. His men knew
+better; still, though they had no clue to the cause which had changed
+him, they all knew he had changed greatly of late; to them individually
+he had become kinder, more human, and that heightened their regret that
+he was now quitting the Northern Flotilla.
+
+Commander Dupr� had asked to be transferred to the Toulon Submarine
+Station; some experiments were being made there which he was anxious to
+watch. He was leaving Falaise on the morrow.
+
+Claire de Wissant reddened, and a gleam leapt into her eyes as she met
+the naval officer's grave, measuring glance. But very soon he looked
+away from her, for now he was bending down, putting out a hand to help
+his late passenger to step from the conning tower.
+
+Smiling, breathless, a little dishevelled, her grey linen skirt
+crumpled, Madame Baudoin looked round her, dazed for the moment by the
+bright sunlight. Then she called out gaily:
+
+"Well, Claire! Here I am--alive and very, very hot!"
+
+And as she jumped off the slippery flank of the _Neptune_, she gave
+herself and her crumpled gown a little shake, and made a slight, playful
+grimace.
+
+The bright young faces round her broke into broad grins--those officers
+who volunteer for the submarine services of the world are chosen young,
+and they are merry boys.
+
+"You may well laugh, messieurs,"--she threw them all a lively
+challenging glance--"when I tell you that to-day, for the first time in
+my life, I acknowledge masculine supremacy! I think that you will admit
+that we women are not afraid of pain, but the discomfort, the--the
+stuffiness? Ah, no--I could not have borne much longer the horrible
+discomfort and stuffiness of that dreadful little _Neptune_ of yours!"
+
+Protesting voices rose on every side. The _Neptune_ was not
+uncomfortable! The _Neptune_ was not stuffy!
+
+"And I understand"--again she made a little grimace--"that it is quite
+an exceptional thing for the crew to be consoled, as I was to-day, by
+an ice-pail!"
+
+"A most exceptional thing," said the youngest lieutenant, with a sigh.
+His name was Paritot, and he also had been out with the _Neptune_ that
+morning. "In fact, it only happens in that week which sees four
+Thursdays--or when we have a lady on board, madame!"
+
+"What a pity it is," said another, "that the old woman who left a legacy
+to the inventor who devises a submarine life-saving apparatus didn't
+leave us instead a cream-ice allowance! It would have been a far more
+practical thing to do."
+
+Madame Baudoin turned quickly to Commander Dupr�, who now stood silent,
+smileless, at her sister's side.
+
+"Surely you're going to try for this extraordinary prize?" she cried.
+"I'm sure that you could easily devise something which would gain the
+old lady's legacy."
+
+"I, madame?" he answered with a start, almost as if he were wrenching
+himself free from some deep abstraction. "I should not think of trying
+to do such a thing! It would be a mere waste of time. Besides, there is
+no real risk--no risk that we are not prepared to run." He looked
+proudly round at the eager, laughing faces of the youngsters who were,
+till to-morrow night, still under his orders.
+
+"The old lady meant very well," he went on, and for the first time since
+he had stepped out of the conning tower Commander Dupr� smiled. "And I
+hope with all my heart that some poor devil will get her money! But I
+think I may promise you that it will not be an officer in the submarine
+service. We are too busy, we have too many really important things to
+do, to worry ourselves about life-saving appliances. Why, the first
+thing we should do if pressed for room would be to throw our
+life-helmets overboard!"
+
+"Has one of the life-helmets ever saved a life?"
+
+It was Claire who asked the question in her low, vibrating voice.
+
+Commander Dupr� turned to her, and he flushed under his sunburn. It was
+the first time she had spoken to him that day.
+
+"No, never," he answered shortly. And then, after a pause, he added,
+"the conditions in which these life-helmets could be utilized only occur
+in one accident in a thousand----"
+
+"Still, they would have saved our comrades in the _Lutin_," objected
+Lieutenant Paritot.
+
+The _Lutin_? There was a moment's silence. The evocation of that
+tricksy sprite, the Ariel of French mythology, whose name, by an
+ironical chance, had been borne by the most ill-fated of all submarine
+craft, seemed to bring the shadow of death athwart them all.
+
+Madeleine Baudoin felt a sudden tremor of retrospective fear. She was
+glad she had not remembered the _Lutin_ when she was sitting, eating
+ices, and exchanging frivolous, chaffing talk with Lieutenant Paritot in
+that chamber of little ease, the drum-like interior of the _Neptune_,
+where not even she, a small woman, could stand upright.
+
+"Well, well! We must not keep you from your _d�jeuner_!" she cried,
+shaking off the queer, disturbing sensation. "I have to thank you
+for--shall I say a very interesting experience? I am too honest to say
+an agreeable one!"
+
+She shook hands with Commander Dupr� and Lieutenant Paritot, the
+officers who had accompanied her on what had been, now that she looked
+back on it, perhaps a more perilous adventure than she had realized.
+
+"You're coming with me, Claire?" She looked at her sister--it was a
+tender, anxious, loving look; Madeleine Baudoin had been the eldest, and
+Claire de Wissant the youngest, of a Breton admiral's family of three
+daughters and four sons; they two were devoted to one another.
+
+Claire shook her head. "I came to tell you that I can't lunch with you
+to-day," she said slowly. "I promised I would be back by half-past
+twelve."
+
+"Then we shall not meet till to-morrow?"
+
+Claire repeated mechanically, "No, not till to-morrow, dear Madeleine."
+
+"May I row you home, madame?" Lieutenant Paritot asked Madeleine
+eagerly.
+
+"Certainly, _mon ami_."
+
+And so, a very few minutes later, Claire de Wissant and Commander Dupr�
+were left alone together--alone, that is, save for fifty inquisitive, if
+kindly, pairs of eyes which saw them from every part of the bay.
+
+At last she held out her hand. "Good-bye, then, till to-morrow," she
+said, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
+
+"No, not good-bye yet!" he cried imperiously. "You must let me take you
+up the cliff to-day. It may be--I suppose it is--the last time I shall
+be able to do so."
+
+Hardly waiting for her murmured word of assent, he led the way up the
+steep, ladder-like stairway cut in the cliff side; half-way up there
+were some very long steps, and it was from above that help could best be
+given. He longed with a fierce, aching longing that she would allow him
+to take her two hands in his and draw her up those high, precipitous
+steps. But of late Claire had avoided accepting from him, her friend,
+this simple, trifling act of courtesy. And now twice he turned and held
+out a hand, and twice she pretended not to see it.
+
+At last, within ten feet of the top of the cliff, they came to the
+steepest, rudest step of all--a place some might have thought very
+dangerous.
+
+Commander Dupr� bent down and looked into Claire's uplifted face. "Let
+me at least help you up here," he said hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head obstinately--but suddenly he felt her tremulous lips
+touch his lean, sinewy hand, and her hot tears fall upon his fingers.
+
+He gave a strangled cry of pain and of pride, of agony and of rapture,
+and for a long moment he battled with an awful temptation. How easy it
+would be to gather her into his arms, and, with her face hidden on his
+breast, take a great leap backwards into nothingness....
+
+But he conquered the persuasive devil who had been raised--women do not
+know how easy it is to rouse this devil--by Claire's moment of piteous
+self-revelation.
+
+And at last they stood together on the narrow platform where she, less
+than an hour ago, had stood alone.
+
+Sheltered by the friendly, ugly red walls of the little tower, they were
+as remote from their kind as if on a rock in the midst of the sea. More,
+she was in his power in a sense she had never been before, for she had
+herself broken down the fragile barrier with which she had hitherto
+known how to keep him at bay. But he felt rather than saw that it was
+herself she would despise if now, at the eleventh hour, he took
+advantage of that tremulous kiss of renunciation, of those hot tears of
+anguished parting--and so--"Then at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"
+he said, and he felt as if it was some other man, not he himself, who
+was saying the words. He took her hand in farewell--so much he could
+allow himself--and all unknowing crushed her fingers in his strong,
+convulsive grasp.
+
+"Yes," she said, "at eleven to-morrow morning Madeleine and I will be
+waiting out on the end of the jetty."
+
+He thought he detected a certain hesitancy in her voice.
+
+"Are you sure you still wish to come?" he said gravely. "I would not
+wish you to do anything that would cause you any fear--or any
+discomfort. Your sister evidently found it a very trying experience
+to-day----"
+
+Claire smiled. Her hand no longer hurt her; her fingers had become quite
+numb.
+
+"Afraid?" she said, and there was a little scorn in her voice. And then,
+"Ah me! I only wish that there were far more risk than there is about
+that which we are going to do together to-morrow." She was in a
+dangerous mood, poor soul--the mood that raises a devil in men. But
+perhaps her good angel came to help her, for suddenly, "Forgive me," she
+said humbly. "You know I did not mean that! Only cowards wish for
+death."
+
+And then, looking at him, she averted her eyes, for they showed her
+that, if that were so, Dupr� was indeed a craven.
+
+"_Au revoir_," she whispered; "_au revoir_ till to-morrow morning."
+
+When half-way through the door, leading on to the lonely stretch of
+down, she turned round suddenly. "I do not want you to bring any ices
+for me to-morrow."
+
+"I never thought of doing so," he said simply. And the words pleased
+Claire as much as anything just then could pleasure her, for they proved
+that her friend did not class her in his mind with those women who fear
+discomfort more than danger.
+
+It had been her own wish to go out with Commander Dupr� for his last
+cruise in northern waters. She had not had the courage to deny herself
+this final glimpse of him--they were never to meet again after
+to-morrow--in his daily habit as he lived.
+
+
+II
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning Jacques de Wissant stood in his wife's
+boudoir.
+
+It was a strange and beautiful room, likely to linger in the memory of
+those who knew its strange and beautiful mistress.
+
+The walls were draped with old Persian shawls, the furniture was of red
+Chinese lacquer, a set acquired in the East by some Norman sailing man
+unnumbered years ago, and bought by Claire de Wissant out of her own
+slender income not long after her marriage.
+
+Pale blue and faded yellow silk cushions softened the formal angularity
+of the wide cane-seated couch and low, square chairs. There was a deep
+crystal bowl of midsummer flowering roses on the table, laden with
+books, by which Claire often sat long hours reading poetry and volumes
+written by modern poets and authors of whom her husband had only
+vaguely heard and of whom he definitely disapproved.
+
+The window was wide open, and there floated in from the garden, which
+sloped away to the edge and indeed over the crumbling cliff, fragrant,
+salt-laden odours, dominated by the clean, sharp scent thrown from huge
+shrubs of red and white geraniums. The balls of blossom set against the
+belt of blue sea, formed a band of waving tricolor.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant was unconscious, uncaring of the beauty round
+him, either in the room or without, and when at last he walked forward
+to the window, his face hardened as his eyes instinctively sought out
+the spot where, if hidden from his sight, he knew there lay the deep
+transparent waters of the little bay which had been selected as
+providing ideal quarters for the submarine flotilla.
+
+He had eagerly assented to the sacrifice of his land, and, what meant
+far more to him, of his privacy; but now he would have given much--and
+he was a careful man--to have had the submarine station swept away,
+transferred to the other side of Falaise.
+
+Down there, out of sight of the Pavillon, and yet but a few minutes away
+(if one used the dangerous cliff-stairway), dwelt Jacques de Wissant's
+secret foe, for the man of whom he was acutely, miserably jealous was
+Commander Dupr�, of whose coming departure he as yet knew nothing.
+
+The owner of the Pavillon de Wissant seldom entered the room where he
+now stood impatiently waiting for his wife, and he never did so without
+looking round him with distaste, and remembering with an odd, wistful
+feeling what it had been like in his mother's time. Then "le boudoir de
+madame" had reflected the tastes and simple interests of an
+old-fashioned provincial lady born in the year that Louis Philippe came
+to the throne. Greatly did the man now standing there prefer the room as
+it had been to what it was now!
+
+The heavy, ugly furniture which had been there in the days of his lonely
+youth, for he had been an only child, was now in the schoolroom where
+the twin daughters of the house, Clairette and Jacqueline, did their
+lessons with Miss Doughty, their English governess.
+
+Clairette and Jacqueline? Jacques de Wissant's lantern-jawed,
+expressionless face quickened into feeling as he thought of his two
+little girls. They were the pride, as well as the only vivid pleasure,
+of his life. All that he dispassionately admired in his wife was, so he
+sometimes told himself with satisfaction, repeated in his daughters.
+Clairette and Jacqueline had inherited their mother's look of race, her
+fastidiousness and refinement of bearing, while fortunately lacking
+Claire's dangerous personal beauty, her touch of eccentricity, and her
+discontent with life--or rather with the life which Jacques de Wissant,
+in spite of a gnawing ache and longing that nothing could still or
+assuage, yet found good.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise looked strangely out of keeping with his present
+surroundings, at least so he would have seemed to the eye of any
+foreigner, especially of any Englishman, who had seen him standing
+there.
+
+He was a narrowly built man, forty-three years of age, and his
+clean-shaven, rather fleshy face was very pale. On this hot August
+morning he was dressed in a light grey frock-coat, under which he wore a
+yellow waistcoat, and on his wife's writing-table lay his tall hat and
+lemon-coloured gloves.
+
+As mayor of his native town--a position he owed to an historic name and
+to his wealth, and not to his very moderate Republican opinions--his
+duties included the celebration of civil marriages, and to-day, it being
+the 14th of August, the eve of the Assumption, and still a French
+national f�te, there were to be a great many weddings celebrated in the
+H�tel de Ville.
+
+Jacques de Wissant considered that he owed it to himself, as well as to
+his fellow-citizens, to appear "correctly" attired on such occasions. He
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of his acquaintances who dressed
+on ceremonial occasions "� l'anglaise," that is, in loose lounge suits
+and straw hats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing.
+It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful
+passionate words of an old sea ballad rang out, full of a desolate pain
+and sense of bitter loss.
+
+The sound irritated him shrewdly, and there came back to him a fragment
+of conversation he had not thought of for ten years. During a discussion
+held between his father and mother in this very room about their adored
+only son's proposed marriage with Claire de Kergou�t, his father had
+said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very
+musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he
+heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "_Mon ami_, you cannot
+expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now
+admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch with
+her love of music....
+
+He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door.
+
+The song broke short with an almost cruel suddenness, and yet there
+followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in."
+
+And then, as Jacques de Wissant slowly turned the handle of the door, he
+saw his wife, Claire, before she saw him. He had a vision, that is, of
+her as she appeared when she believed herself to be, if not alone, then
+in sight of eyes that were indifferent, unwatchful. But Jacques' eyes,
+which his wife's widowed sister, the frivolous Parisienne, Madeleine
+Baudoin, had once unkindly compared to fishes' eyes, were now filled
+with a watchful, suspicious light which gave a tragic mask to his
+pallid, plain-featured face.
+
+Claire de Wissant was standing before a long, narrow mirror placed at
+right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow,
+dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender
+figure, the figure which remained so supple, so--so girlish, in spite of
+her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed
+and yet beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and
+sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret
+tears, and in the firm, delicately modelled mouth.
+
+She was engaged in tucking up her dark, curling hair under a grey
+yachting cap, and, for a few moments, she neither spoke nor looked round
+to see who was standing framed in the door. But when, at last, she
+turned away from the mirror and saw her husband, the colour, rushing
+into her pale face, caused an unbecoming flush to cover it.
+
+"I thought it was one of the children," she said, a little breathlessly.
+And then she waited, assuming, or so Jacques thought, an air at once of
+patience and of surprise which sharply angered him.
+
+Then her look of strain, nay, of positive illness, gave him an uneasy
+twinge of discomfort. Could it be anxiety concerning her second sister,
+Marie-Anne, who, married to an Italian officer, was now ill of scarlet
+fever at Mantua? Two days ago Claire had begged very earnestly to be
+allowed to go and nurse Marie-Anne. But he, Jacques, had refused, not
+unkindly, but quite firmly. Claire's duty of course lay at Falaise, with
+her husband and children; not at Mantua, with her sister.
+
+Suddenly she again broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything
+you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
+the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
+of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
+return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
+one instance, to follow fashion.
+
+She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
+sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
+chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
+be on the defensive when speaking to her husband.
+
+Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
+sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
+sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
+the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
+Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
+this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
+"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
+widow.
+
+In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
+Claire's face.
+
+"I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?"
+
+She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
+the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
+each winter.
+
+"To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
+deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
+morning."
+
+"Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
+courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
+which she had early schooled him to endure.
+
+But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
+to-day--the fourteenth of August--is our wedding day! How stupid of me
+to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
+them----"
+
+She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
+de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
+moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
+the distance between them.
+
+But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
+strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
+possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed
+with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that
+Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any
+passionate feeling to restrain.
+
+All he now did was to take a shagreen case out of his breast pocket and
+hold it out towards her.
+
+"Claire," he said quietly, "I have brought you, in memory of our wedding
+day, a little gift which I hope you will like. It is a medallion of the
+children." And as she at last advanced towards him, he pressed a spring,
+and revealed a dull gold medal on which, modelled in high relief, and
+superposed the one on the other, were Clairette's and Jacqueline's
+childish, delicately pure profiles.
+
+A softer, kindlier light came into Claire de Wissant's sad grey eyes.
+She held out a hesitating hand--and Jacques de Wissant, before placing
+his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather
+awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss
+a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage. But to Claire
+the touch of her husband's lips was hateful--so hateful indeed that she
+had to make an instant effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion
+with which that touch had suddenly engulfed her in certain dark recesses
+of memory and revolt.
+
+"It is a charming medallion," she said hurriedly, "quite a work of art,
+Jacques; and I thank you for having thought of it. It gives me
+great--very great pleasure."
+
+And then something happened which was to her so utterly unexpected that
+she gave a stifled cry of pain--almost it seemed of fear.
+
+As she forced herself to look straight into her husband's face, the
+anguish in her own sore heart unlocked the key to his, and she perceived
+with the eyes of the soul, which see, when they are not holden, so much
+that is concealed from the eyes of the body, the suffering, the dumb
+longing she had never allowed herself to know were there.
+
+For the first time since her marriage--since that wedding day of which
+this was the tenth anniversary--Claire felt pity for Jacques as well as
+for herself. For the first time her rebellious heart acknowledged that
+her husband also was enmeshed in a web of tragic circumstance.
+
+"Jacques?" she cried. "Oh, Jacques!" And as she so uttered his name
+twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution
+on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that--that--if I
+were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to
+the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word--that word
+which in French signifies woman as well as wife.
+
+He stared at her, and uttered no word of answer, of understanding, in
+response to her strange speech.
+
+At one time, not lately, but many years ago, Claire had sometimes tried
+his patience by the odd, unreasonable things she said, and once, stung
+beyond bearing, he had told her so. Remembering those cold, measured
+words of rebuke, she now caught with quick, exultant relief at the idea
+that Jacques had not understood the half-confession wrung from her by
+her sudden vision of his pain; and she swung back to a belief she had
+always held till just now, the belief that he was dull--dull and
+unperceptive.
+
+With a nervous smile she turned again to her mirror, and then Jacques de
+Wissant, with his wife's enigmatic words ringing in his ears, abruptly
+left the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's
+beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins
+tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower,
+and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house.
+
+And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to
+co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions.
+
+Ah yes, he had understood--understood only too well Claire's strange,
+ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all
+men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but
+divine before they are actually in being.
+
+Jacques de Wissant now believed that he was justified of the suspicions
+of which he had been ashamed. His wife--moved by some obscure desire for
+self-revelation to which he had had no clue--had flung at him the truth.
+
+Yes, without doubt Claire could have made him happy--so little would
+have contented his hunger for her--had she been one of those light women
+of whom he sometimes heard, who go from their husbands' kisses to those
+of their lovers.
+
+But if he sometimes, nay, often heard of them, Jacques de Wissant knew
+nothing of such women. The men of his race had known how to acquire
+honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de
+Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and
+which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those
+scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed
+by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings
+when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the
+honourable marriage of daughters difficult of achievement.
+
+Jacques de Wissant thanked the God of his fathers that Claire had
+nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need
+her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the
+phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of
+half-avowal racked him with jealous and, yes, suspicious pain.
+
+Fortunately for him, he was a man burdened with much business, and so at
+last he looked at his watch. Why, it was getting late--terribly late,
+and he prided himself on his punctuality. Still, if he started now, at
+once, he would be at the H�tel de Ville a few minutes before ten
+o'clock, the time when the first of the civil marriages he had to
+celebrate that morning was timed to take place.
+
+Without passing through the house, he made his way rapidly round by the
+gardens to the road, winding ribbon-wise behind the cliffs, where his
+phaeton was waiting for him; for Jacques de Wissant had as yet resisted
+the wish of his wife and the advice of those of his friends who
+considered that he ought to purchase an automobile: driving had been
+from boyhood one of his few pleasures and accomplishments.
+
+But as he drove, keeping his fine black bays well in hand, the five
+miles into the town, and tried to fix his mind on a commercial problem
+of great importance with which he would be expected to deal that day,
+Jacques de Wissant found it impossible to think of any matter but that
+which for the moment filled his heart to the exclusion of all else. That
+matter concerned his own relations to his wife, and his wife's relations
+to Commander Dupr�.
+
+This gentleman of France was typical in more than one sense of his
+nation and of his class--quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture
+which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in
+manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his
+name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country;
+obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is
+never questioned by those about them, Jacques de Wissant's fetish was
+his personal honour and the honour of his name--of the name of Wissant.
+
+In his distress and disturbance of mind--for his wife's half confession
+had outraged his sense of what was decorous and fitting--his memory
+travelled over the map of his past life, aye, and even beyond the
+boundaries of his own life.
+
+Before him lay spread retrospectively the story of his parents'
+uneventful, happy marriage. They had been mated in the good old French
+way, that is, up to their wedding morning they had never met save in the
+presence of their respective parents. And yet--and yet how devoted they
+had been to each other! So completely one in thought, in interest, in
+sympathy had they grown that when, after thirty-three years of married
+life, his father had died, Jacques' mother had not known how to go on
+living. She had slipped out of life a few months later, and as she lay
+dying she had used a very curious expression: "My faithful companion is
+calling me," she had said to her only child, "and you must not try, dear
+son, to make me linger on the way."
+
+Now, to-day, Jacques de Wissant asked himself with perplexed pain and
+anger, why it was that his parents had led so peaceful, so dignified, so
+wholly contented a married life, while he himself----?
+
+And yet his own marriage had been a love match--or so those about him
+had all said with nods and smiles--love marriages having suddenly become
+the fashion in the rich provincial world of which he had then been one
+of the heirs-apparent.
+
+His old-fashioned mother would have preferred as daughter-in-law any one
+of half a dozen girls who belonged to her own good town of Falaise, and
+whom she had known from childhood. But Jacques had been difficult to
+please, and he was already thirty-two when he had met, by a mere chance,
+Claire de Kergou�t at her first ball. She was only seventeen, with but
+the promise of a beauty which was now in exquisite flower, and he had
+decided, there and then, in the course of two hours, that this
+demoiselle de Kergou�t was alone worthy of becoming Madame Jacques de
+Wissant.
+
+And on the whole his prudent parents had blessed his choice, for the
+girl was of the best Breton stock, and came of a family famed in the
+naval annals of France. Unluckily Claire de Kergou�t had had no dowry to
+speak of, for her father, the Admiral, had been a spendthrift, and, as
+is still the reckless Breton fashion, father of a large family--three
+daughters and four sons. But Jacques de Wissant had not allowed his
+parents to give the matter of Claire's fortune more than a regretful
+thought--indeed, he had done further, he had "recognized" a larger dowry
+than she brought him to save the pride of her family.
+
+But Claire--he could not help thinking of it to-day with a sense of
+bitter injury--had never seemed grateful, had never seemed to understand
+all that had been done for her....
+
+Had he not poured splendid gifts upon her in the beginning of their
+married life? And, what had been far more difficult, had he not, within
+reason, contented all her strange whims and fantasies?
+
+But nought had availed him to secure even a semblance of that steadfast,
+warm affection, that sincere interest and pride in his concerns which is
+all such a Frenchman as was Jacques de Wissant expects, or indeed
+desires, of his wedded wife. Had Claire been such a woman, Jacques' own
+passion for her would soon have dulled into a reasonable, comfortable
+affection. But his wife's cool aloofness had kept alive the hidden
+fires, the more--so ironic are the tricks which sly Dame Nature
+plays--that for many years past he had troubled her but very little with
+his company.
+
+Outwardly Claire de Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and
+relations on such occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing
+herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed
+the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly?
+Inwardly they two were strangers.
+
+And yet only during the last few months had Jacques de Wissant ever felt
+jealous of his wife. There had been times when he had been angered by
+the way in which her young beauty, her indefinable, mysterious charm,
+had attracted the very few men with whom she was brought into contact.
+But Claire, so her husband had always acknowledged to himself, was no
+flirt; she was ever perfectly "correct."
+
+Correct was a word dear to Jacques de Wissant. It was one which he used
+as a synonym for great things--things such as honour, fineness of
+conduct, loyalty.
+
+But fate had suddenly introduced a stranger into the dull, decorous life
+of the Pavillon de Wissant, and it was he, Jacques himself, who had
+brought him there.
+
+How bitter it was to look back and remember how much he had liked--liked
+because he had respected--Commander Dupr�! He now hated and feared the
+naval officer, and he would have given much to have been able to despise
+him. But that Jacques de Wissant could not do. Commander Dupr� was still
+all that he had taken him to be when he first made him free of his
+house--a brilliant officer, devoted to his profession, already noted in
+the Service as having made several important improvements in submarine
+craft.
+
+From the first it had seemed peculiar, to Jacques de Wissant's mind
+unnatural, that such a man as was Dupr� should be so keenly interested
+in music and in modern literature. But so it was, and it had been owing
+to these strange, untoward tastes that Commander Dupr� and Claire had
+become friends.
+
+He now reminded himself, for the hundredth time, that he had begun by
+actually approving of the acquaintance between his wife and the naval
+officer--an acquaintance which he had naturally supposed would be of the
+most "correct" nature.
+
+Then, without warning, there came an hour--nay, a moment, when in that
+twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most
+torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession
+of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the
+elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always
+dwelt so snugly and unquestioningly ensconced.
+
+He had come home after a long afternoon spent at the H�tel de Ville to
+learn with tepid pleasure that there was a visitor, Commander Dupr�, in
+the house, and as he had come hurrying towards his wife's boudoir,
+Jacques had heard Claire's low, deep voice and the other's ardent, eager
+tones mingling together....
+
+And then as he, the husband, had opened the door, they had stopped
+speaking, their words clipped as if a sword had fallen between them. At
+the same moment a servant had brought a lamp into the twilit room, and
+Jacques had seen the ravaged face of Commander Dupr�, a fair, tanned
+face full of revolt and of longing leashed. Claire had remained in
+shadow, but her eyes, or so the interloper thought he perceived, were
+full of tears.
+
+Since that spring evening the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy
+moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever
+watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of
+her movements.
+
+True, Commander Dupr� had soon ceased to trouble the owner of the
+Pavillon de Wissant by his presence. The younger officers came and went,
+but since that hour, laden with unspoken drama, their commander only
+came when good breeding required him to pay a formal call on his nearest
+neighbour and sometime host. But Claire saw Dupr� constantly at the
+Ch�let des Dunes, her sister's house, and she was both too proud and too
+indifferent, it appeared, to her husband's view of what a young married
+woman's conduct should be, to conceal the fact.
+
+This openness on his wife's part was at once Jacques' consolation and
+opportunity for endless self-torture.
+
+For three long miserable months he had wrestled with those ignoble
+questionings only the jealous know, now accepting as probable, now
+rejecting with angry self-rebuke, the thought that his wife suffered,
+perhaps even returned, Dupr�'s love. And to-day, instead of finding his
+jealousy allayed by her half-confidence, he felt more wretched than he
+had ever been.
+
+His horses responded to his mood, and going down the steep hill which
+leads into the town of Falaise they shied violently at a heap of stones
+they had passed sedately a dozen times or more. Jacques de Wissant
+struck them several cruel blows with the whip he scarcely ever used, and
+the groom, looking furtively at his master's set face and blazing eyes,
+felt suddenly afraid.
+
+
+III
+
+It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
+out of the great _salle_ of the Falaise town hall and so to the
+Cathedral across the market place.
+
+Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
+badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
+characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
+the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
+high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
+intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
+picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
+holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
+to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
+everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
+nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
+felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
+had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
+few moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
+market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
+house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
+fads--for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion--were known.
+
+He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves--and then a look
+of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
+door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.
+
+He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
+he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
+reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
+business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.
+
+But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
+his way out to _d�jeuner_; it was the chief of the employ�s in the
+telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
+young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.
+
+"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
+stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
+The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
+news, especially of ill news.
+
+M. de Wissant shook his head.
+
+"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible
+accident! One of the submarines--they don't yet know which it is--has
+been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the
+Channel, about two miles out!"
+
+The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When
+did it happen?" he asked quickly.
+
+"About half an hour ago more or less. _I_ said that m'sieur le maire
+ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait
+till the marriages were over."
+
+Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that
+he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously
+displeased.
+
+There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of
+Falaise--there often is in a naval port--and the mayor ought certainly
+to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.
+
+The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for
+the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher
+grade--that advancement which is the perpetual dream of every French
+Government official.
+
+"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not
+five minutes ago----"
+
+But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the
+increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The
+sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the
+tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole
+population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying
+itself out and hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.
+
+Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
+of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
+eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
+swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea.
+
+The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
+mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
+Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
+child.
+
+Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
+high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
+manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
+at Falaise--Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
+France.
+
+The hurrying crowd--strangely silent in its haste--poured out on to the
+great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
+on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name.
+
+Beyond the harbour--crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
+little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
+the calamity--lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
+sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed.
+
+The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
+officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
+stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
+was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
+Admiral was a naval officer of the old school--of the school who called
+their men "my children"--and who detested the Republican form of
+government as being subversive of discipline.
+
+As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
+the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
+Wissant--a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
+such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
+oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergou�t with whom he had first gone
+to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergou�t had
+been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
+landsman.
+
+"Do they yet know, Admiral, which of the submarines has gone down?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant in a low tone. He was full of a burning
+curiosity edged with a longing and a suspense into whose secret sources
+he had no wish to thrust a probe.
+
+The Admiral's weather-beaten face was a shade less red than usual; the
+bright blue eyes he turned on the younger man were veiled with a film of
+moisture. "Yes, the news has just come in, but it isn't to be made
+public for awhile. It's the submarine _Neptune_ which was struck, with
+Commander Dupr�, Lieutenant Paritot, and ten men on board. The craft is
+lying eighteen fathoms deep----"
+
+Jacques de Wissant uttered an inarticulate cry--was it of horror or only
+of surprise? And yet, gifted for that once and that once only with a
+kind of second sight, he had known that it was the _Neptune_ and
+Commander Dupr� which lay eighteen fathoms deep on the floor of the sea.
+
+The old seaman, moved by the mayor's emotion, relaxed into a
+confidential undertone. "Poor Dupr�! I had forgotten that you knew him.
+He is indeed pursued by a malignant fate. As of course you are aware, he
+applied a short time ago to be transferred to Toulon, and his
+appointment is in to-day's _Gazette_. In fact he was actually leaving
+Falaise this very evening in order to spend a week with his family
+before taking up his new command!"
+
+The Mayor of Falaise stared at the Admiral. "Dupr� going away?--leaving
+Falaise?" he repeated incredulously.
+
+The other nodded.
+
+Jacques de Wissant drew a long, deep breath. God! How mistaken he had
+been! Mistaken as no man, no husband, had ever been mistaken before. He
+felt overwhelmed, shaken with conflicting emotions in which shame and
+intense relief predominated.
+
+The fact that Commander Dupr� had applied for promotion was to his mind
+absolute proof that there had been nothing--nothing and less than
+nothing--between the naval officer and Claire. The Admiral's words now
+made it clear that he, Jacques de Wissant, had built up a huge
+superstructure of jealousy and base thoughts on the fact that poor Dupr�
+and Claire had innocently enjoyed certain tastes in common. True, such
+friendships--friendships between unmarried men and attractive young
+married women--are generally speaking to be deprecated. Still, Claire
+had always been "correct;" of that there could now be no doubt.
+
+As he stood there on the pier, staring out, as all those about him and
+behind him were doing, at the expanse of dark blue sun-flecked sea,
+there came over Jacques de Wissant a great lightening of the spirit....
+
+But all too soon his mind, his memory, swung back to the tragic business
+of the moment.
+
+Suddenly the Admiral burst into speech, addressing himself, rather than
+the silent man by his side.
+
+"The devil of it is," he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances
+are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone
+responsible for that blunder. Dupr� and his comrades have, it seems,
+thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen--if, indeed, they are still living,
+which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant,
+I was at Bizerta when the _Lutin_ sank. A man doesn't want to remember
+two such incidents in his career. One is quite bad enough!"
+
+"I suppose it isn't yet known how far the _Neptune_ is injured?"
+inquired the Mayor of Falaise.
+
+But he spoke mechanically; he was not really thinking of what he was
+saying. His inner and real self were still steeped in that strange
+mingled feeling of shame and relief--shame that he should have suspected
+his wife, exultant relief that his jealousy should have been so entirely
+unfounded.
+
+"No, as usual no one knows exactly what did happen. But we shall learn
+something of that presently. The divers are on their way. But--but even
+if the craft did sustain no injury, what can they do? Ants might as well
+attempt to pierce a cannon-ball"--he shrugged his shoulders, oppressed
+by the vision his homely simile had conjured up.
+
+And then--for no particular reason, save that his wife Claire was very
+present to him--Jacques de Wissant bethought himself that it was most
+unlikely that any tidings of the accident could yet have reached the
+Ch�let des Dunes, the lonely villa on the shore where Claire was now
+lunching with her sister. But at any moment some casual visitor from the
+town might come out there with the sad news. He told himself uneasily
+that it would be well, if possible, to save his wife from such a shock.
+After all, Claire and that excellent Commander Dupr� had been good
+friends--so much must be admitted, nay, now he was eager to admit it.
+
+Jacques de Wissant touched the older man on the arm.
+
+"I should be most grateful, Admiral, for the loan of your motor-car. I
+have just remembered that I ought to go home for an hour. This terrible
+affair made me forget it; but I shall not be long--indeed, I must soon
+be back, for there will be all sorts of arrangements to be made at the
+town hall. Of course we shall be besieged with inquiries, with messages
+from Paris, with telegrams----"
+
+"My car, monsieur, is entirely at your disposal."
+
+The Admiral could not help feeling, even at so sad and solemn a moment
+as this, a little satirical amusement. Arrangements at the town hall,
+forsooth! If the end of the world were in sight, the claims of the
+municipality of Falaise would not be neglected or forgotten; in as far
+as Jacques de Wissant could arrange it, everything in such a case would
+be ready at the town hall, if not on the quarter-deck, for the Great
+Assize!
+
+What had a naval disaster to do with the Mayor of Falaise, after all?
+But in this matter the old Admiral allowed prejudice to get the better
+of him; the men now immured in the submarine were, with two
+exceptions--their commander and his junior officer--all citizens of the
+town. It was their mothers, wives, children, sweethearts, who were now
+pressing with wild, agonized faces against the barriers drawn across the
+end of the pier....
+
+As Jacques de Wissant made his way through the crowd, his grey
+frock-coat was pulled by many a horny hand, and imploring faces gazed
+with piteous questioning into his. But he could give them no comfort.
+
+Not till he found himself actually in the Admiral's car did he give his
+instructions to the chauffeur.
+
+"Take me to the Ch�let des Dunes as quickly as you can drive without
+danger," he said briefly. "You probably know where it is?"
+
+The man nodded and looked round consideringly. He had never driven so
+elegantly attired a gentleman before. Why, M. de Wissant looked like a
+bridegroom! The Mayor of Falaise should be good for a handsome tip.
+
+The chauffeur did not need to be told that on such a day time was of
+importance, and once they were out of the narrow, tortuous streets of
+the town, the Admiral's car flew.
+
+And then, for the first time that day, Jacques de Wissant began to feel
+pleasantly cool, nay, there even came over him a certain exhilaration.
+He had been foolish to hold out against motor-cars. There was a great
+deal to be said for them, after all. He owed his wife reparation for his
+evil thoughts of her. He resolved that he would get Claire the best
+automobile money could buy. It is always a mistake to economize in such
+matters....
+
+His mind took a sudden turn--he felt ashamed of his egoism, and the
+sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had
+occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How
+could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which
+should just now be absorbing his whole mind?
+
+Thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen? Well, it might have been worse, for
+a great deal can be done in thirty-six hours.
+
+True, all the salvage appliances, so the Admiral had said, were at
+Cherbourg. What a shameful lack of forethought on someone's part! Still,
+there was little doubt but that the _Neptune_ would be raised in--in
+time. The British Navy would send her salvage appliances. Jacques de
+Wissant had a traditional distrust of the English, but at such moments
+all men are brothers, and just now the French and the English happened
+to be allies. He himself felt far more kindly to his little girls'
+governess, Miss Doughty, than he would have done five years ago.
+
+Yes, without doubt the gallant English Navy would send salvage
+appliances....
+
+There would be some hours of suspense--terrible hours for the wives and
+mothers of the men, but those poor women would be upheld by the
+universal sympathy shown them. He himself as mayor of the town would do
+all he could. He would seek these poor women out, say consoling, hopeful
+things, and Claire would help him. She had, as he knew, a very tender
+heart, especially where seamen were concerned.
+
+Indeed, it was a terrible thought--that of those brave fellows down
+there beneath the surface of the waters. Terrible, that is, if they were
+alive--alive in the same measure as he, Jacques de Wissant, was now
+alive in the keen, rushing air. Alive, and waiting for a deliverance
+that might never come. The idea made him feel a queer, interior tremor.
+
+Then his mind, in spite of himself, swung back to its old moorings. How
+strange that he had not been told that Commander Dupr� had applied for
+a change of command! Doubtless the Mediterranean was better suited,
+being a tideless sea, for submarine experiments. Keen, clever Dupr�,
+absorbed as he was in his profession, had doubtless thought of that.
+
+But, again, how odd of Claire not to have mentioned that Dupr� was
+leaving Falaise! Of course it was possible that she also had been
+ignorant of the fact. She very seldom spoke of other people's affairs,
+and lately she had been so dreadfully worried about her sister's,
+Marie-Anne's, illness.
+
+If his wife had known nothing of Commander Dupr�'s plans, it proved as
+hardly anything else could have done how little real intimacy there
+could have been between them. A man never leaves the woman he loves
+unless he has grown tired of her--then, as all the world knows, except
+perchance the poor soul herself, no place is too far for him to make
+for.
+
+Such was Jacques de Wissant's simple, cynical philosophy concerning a
+subject to which he had never given much thought. The tender passion had
+always appeared to him in one of two shapes--the one was a grotesque and
+slightly improper shape, which makes men do silly, absurd things; the
+other came in the semblance of a sinister demon which wrecks the honour
+and devastates, as nothing else can do, the happiness of respectable
+families. It was this second and more hateful form which had haunted him
+these last few weeks.
+
+He recalled with a sick feeling of distaste the state of mind and body
+he had been in that very morning. Why, he had then been in the mood to
+kill Dupr�, or, at any rate, to welcome the news of his death with
+fierce joy! And then, simultaneously with his discovery of how
+groundless had been his jealousy, he had learnt the awful fact that the
+man whom he had wrongly accused lay out there, buried and yet alive,
+beneath the glistening sea, which was stretched out, like a great blue
+pall, on his left.
+
+Still, it was only proper that his wife should be spared the shock of
+hearing in some casual way of this awful accident. Claire had always
+been sensitive, curiously so, to everything that concerned the Navy.
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier had recalled the horrible submarine disaster
+of Bizerta harbour; Jacques de Wissant now remembered uncomfortably how
+very unhappy that sad affair had made Claire. Why, one day he had found
+her in a passion of tears, mourning over the tragic fate of those poor
+sailor men, the crew of the _Lutin_, of whose very names she was
+ignorant! At the time he had thought her betrayal of feeling very
+unreasonable, but now he understood, and even shared to a certain
+extent, the pain she had shown; but then he knew Dupr�, knew and liked
+him, and the men immured in the _Neptune_ were men of Falaise.
+
+These were the thoughts which jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's
+brain as he sat back in the Admiral's car.
+
+They were now rushing past the Pavilion de Wissant. What a pity it was
+that Claire had not remained quietly at home to-day! It would have been
+so much pleasanter--if one could think of anything being pleasant in
+such a connection--to have gone in and told her the sad news at home.
+Her sister, Madeleine Baudoin, though older than Claire, was foolishly
+emotional and unrestrained in the expression of her feelings. Madeleine
+was sure to make a scene when she heard of Commander Dupr�'s peril, and
+Jacques de Wissant hated scenes.
+
+He now asked himself whether there was any real necessity for his
+telling his wife before her sister. All he need do was to send Claire a
+message by the servant who opened the door to him. He would say that she
+was wanted at home; she would think something had happened to one of the
+children, and this would be a good thing, for it would prepare her in a
+measure for ill tidings.
+
+From what Jacques knew of his wife he believed she would receive the
+news quietly, and he, her husband, would show her every consideration;
+again he reminded himself that it would be ridiculous to deny the fact
+that Claire had made a friend, almost an intimate, of Commander Dupr�.
+It would be natural, nay "correct," for her to be greatly distressed
+when she heard of the accident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a familiar cutting in the road, and again the sea lay spread
+out, an opaque, glistening sheet of steel, before him. He gazed across,
+with a feeling of melancholy and fearful curiosity, to the swarm of
+craft great and small collected round the place where the _Neptune_ lay,
+eighteen fathoms deep....
+
+He hoped Claire would not ask to go back into the town with him in order
+to hear the latest news. But if she did so ask, then he would raise no
+objection. Every Falaise woman, whatever her rank in life, was now full
+of suspense and anxiety, and as the mayor's wife Claire had a right to
+share that anxious suspense.
+
+The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and
+Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.
+
+"Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Ch�let. I want you
+to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to
+give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get
+back to Falaise as soon as I can."
+
+The Ch�let des Dunes had been well named. It stood enclosed in rough
+palings in a sandy wilderness. An attempt had been made to turn the
+immediate surroundings of the villa into the semblance of a garden;
+there were wind-blown flowers set in sandy flower-beds, and coarse,
+luxuriant creepers flung their long, green ropes about the wooden
+verandah. In front, stretching out into the sea, was a stone pier, built
+by Jacques' father many a year ago.
+
+The Ch�let looked singularly quiet and deserted, for all the shutters
+had been closed in order to shut out the midday heat.
+
+Jacques de Wissant became vaguely uneasy. He reconsidered his plan of
+action. If the two sisters were alone together--as he supposed them to
+be--he would go in and quietly tell them of the accident. It would be
+making altogether too much of the matter to send for Claire to come out
+to him; she might very properly resent it. For the matter of that, it
+was quite possible that Madeleine Baudoin had some little sentiment for
+Dupr�. That would explain so much--the officer's constant presence at
+the Ch�let des Dunes added to his absence from the Pavillon. It was odd
+he had never thought of the possibility before.
+
+But this new idea made Jacques grow more and more uneasy at the thought
+of the task which now lay before him. With slow, hesitating steps he
+walked up to the little front door of the Ch�let.
+
+He pulled the rusty bell-handle. How absurd to have ironwork in such a
+place!
+
+There followed what seemed to him a very long pause. He rang again.
+
+There came the sound of light, swift steps; he could hear them in spite
+of the rhythmical surge of the sea; and then the door was opened by his
+sister-in-law, Madame Baudoin, herself.
+
+In the midst of his own agitation and unease, Jacques de Wissant saw
+that there was a look of embarrassment on the face which Madeleine tried
+to make amiably welcoming.
+
+"Jacques?" she exclaimed. "Forgive me for having made you ring twice! I
+have sent the servants into Falaise to purchase a railway time-table.
+Claire will doubtless have told you that I am starting for Italy
+to-night. Our poor Marie-Anne is worse; and I feel that it is my duty
+to go to her."
+
+She did not step aside to allow him to come in. In fact, doubtless
+without meaning to do so, she was actually blocking up the door.
+
+No, Claire had not told Jacques that Marie-Anne was worse. That of
+course was why she had looked so unhappy this morning. He felt hurt and
+angered by his wife's reserve.
+
+"I am sure you will agree, Madeleine," he said stiffly--he was not sorry
+to gain a little time--"that it would not be wise for Claire to
+accompany you to Italy. After all, she is still quite a young woman, and
+poor Marie-Anne's disease is most infectious. I have ascertained, too,
+that there is a regular epidemic raging in Mantua."
+
+Madeleine nodded. Then she turned, with an uneasy side-look at her
+brother-in-law, and began leading the way down the short passage. The
+door of the dining-room was open; Jacques could not help seeing that
+only one place was laid at the round table, also that Madeleine had just
+finished her luncheon.
+
+"Isn't Claire here?" he asked, surprised. "She said she was going to
+lunch with you to-day. Hasn't she been here this morning?"
+
+"No--I mean yes." Madeleine spoke confusedly. "She did not stay to
+lunch. She was only here for a very little while."
+
+"But has she gone home again?"
+
+"Well--she may be home by now; I really don't know"--Madeleine was
+opening the door of the little drawing-room.
+
+It was an ugly, common-looking room; the walls were hung with Turkey
+red, and ornamented with cheap coloured prints. There were cane and
+basket chairs which Madame Baudoin had striven to make comfortable with
+the help of cushions and rugs.
+
+Jacques de Wissant told himself that it was odd that Claire should like
+to spend so much of her time here, in the Ch�let des Dunes, instead of
+asking her sister to join her each morning or afternoon in her own
+beautiful house on the cliff.
+
+"Forgive me," he said stiffly, "but I can't stay a moment. I really came
+for Claire. You say I shall find her at home?"
+
+He held his top hat and his yellow gloves in his hand, and his
+sister-in-law thought she had never seen Jacques look so plain and
+unattractive, and--and tiresome as he looked to-day.
+
+Madame Baudoin had a special reason for wishing him away; but she knew
+the slow, sure workings of his mind. If Jacques found that his wife had
+not gone back to the Pavillon de Wissant, and that there was no news of
+her there, he would almost certainly come back to the Ch�let des Dunes
+for further information.
+
+"No," she said reluctantly, "Claire has not gone back to the Pavillon. I
+believe that she has gone into the town. She had something important
+that she wished to do there."
+
+She looked so troubled, so--so uncomfortable that Jacques de Wissant
+leapt to the sudden conclusion that the tidings he had been at such
+pains to bring had already been brought to the Ch�let des Dunes.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, "then I am too late! Ill news travels fast."
+
+"Ill news?" Madeleine repeated affrightedly. "Is anything the matter?
+Has anything happened to one of the children? Don't keep me in suspense,
+Jacques. I am not cold-blooded--like you!"
+
+"The children are all right," he said shortly. "But there has been, as
+you evidently know, an accident. The submarine _Neptune_ has met with a
+serious mishap. She now lies with her crew in eighteen fathoms of water
+about two miles out."
+
+He spoke with cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try
+and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make
+foolish mysteries about nothing.
+
+"The submarine _Neptune_?" As she stammered out the question which had
+already been answered, there came over Madame Baudoin's face a look of
+measureless terror. Twice her lips opened--and twice she closed them
+again.
+
+At last she uttered a few words--words of anguished protest and revolt.
+"No, no," she cried, "that can't be--it's impossible!"
+
+"Command yourself!" he said sternly. "Remember what would be thought by
+anyone who saw you in this state."
+
+But she went on looking at him with wild, terror-stricken eyes. "My poor
+Claire!" she moaned. "My little sister Claire----"
+
+All Jacques de Wissant's jealousy leapt into eager, quivering life. Then
+he had been right after all? His wife loved Dupr�. Her sister's
+anguished sympathy had betrayed Claire's secret as nothing Claire
+herself was ever likely to say or do could have done.
+
+"You are a good sister," he said ironically, "to take Claire's distress
+so much to heart. Identifying yourself as entirely as you seem to do
+with her, I am surprised that you did not accompany her into Falaise: it
+was most wrong of you to let her go alone."
+
+"Claire is not in Falaise," muttered Madeleine. She was grasping the
+back of one of the cane chairs with her hand as if glad of even that
+slight support, staring at him with a dazed look of abject misery which
+increased his anger, his disgust.
+
+"Not in Falaise?" he echoed sharply. "Then where, in God's name, is
+she?"
+
+A most disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it
+conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the
+disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go
+alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to
+the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with jealous rage that he
+would find it very difficult ever to forgive Claire. There are things a
+woman with any self-respect, especially a woman who is the mother of
+daughters, refrains from doing.
+
+"Well?" he said contemptuously. "Well, Madeleine? I am waiting to hear
+the truth. I desire no explanations--no excuses. I cannot, however,
+withhold myself from telling you that you ought to have accompanied your
+sister, even if you found it impossible to control her."
+
+"I was there yesterday," said Madeleine Baudoin, with a pinched, white
+face, "for over two hours."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Where were you yesterday for
+over two hours?"
+
+"In the _Neptune_."
+
+She gazed at him, past him, with widely open eyes, as if she were
+staring, fascinated, at some scene of unutterable horror--and there
+crept into Jacques de Wissant's mind a thought so full of shameful dread
+that he thrust it violently from him.
+
+"You were in the _Neptune_," he said slowly, "knowing well that it is
+absolutely forbidden for any officer to take a friend on board a
+submarine without a special permit from the Minister of Marine?"
+
+"It is sometimes done," she said listlessly.
+
+Madame Baudoin had now sat down on a low chair, and she was plucking at
+the front of her white serge skirt with a curious mechanical movement of
+the fingers.
+
+"Did the submarine actually put out to sea with you on board?"
+
+She nodded her head, and then very deliberately added, "Yes, I have told
+you that I was out for two hours. They all knew it--the men and officers
+of the flotilla. I was horribly frightened, but--but now I am glad
+indeed that I went. Yes, I am indeed glad!"
+
+"Why are you glad?" he asked roughly--and again a hateful suspicion
+thrust itself insistently upon him.
+
+"I am glad I went, because it will make what Claire has done to-day
+seem natural, a--a simple escapade."
+
+There was a moment of terrible silence between them.
+
+"Then do all the officers and men belonging to the flotilla know that my
+wife is out there--in the _Neptune_?" Jacques de Wissant asked in a low,
+still voice.
+
+"No," said Madeleine, and there was now a look of shame, as well as of
+terror, on her face. "They none of them know--only those who are on
+board." She hesitated a moment--"That is why I sent the servants away
+this morning. We--I mean Commander Dupr� and I--did not think it
+necessary that anyone should know."
+
+"Then no one--that is, only a hare-brained young officer and ten men
+belonging to the town of Falaise--were to be aware of the fact that my
+wife had accompanied her lover on this life-risking expedition? You and
+Dupr� were indeed tender of her honour--and mine."
+
+"Jacques!" She took her hand off the chair, and faced her brother-in-law
+proudly. "What infamous thing is this that you are harbouring in your
+mind? My sister is an honest woman, aye, as honest, as high-minded as
+was your own mother----"
+
+He stopped her with a violent gesture. "Do not mention Claire and my
+mother in the same breath!" he cried.
+
+"Ah, but I will--I must! You want the truth--you said just now you
+wanted only the truth. Then you shall hear the truth! Yes, it is as you
+have evidently suspected. Louis Dupr� loves Claire, and she"--her voice
+faltered, then grew firmer--"she may have had for him a little
+sentiment. Who can tell? You have not been at much pains to make her
+happy. But what is true, what is certain, is that she rejected his love.
+To-day they were to part--for ever."
+
+Her voice failed again, then once more it strengthened and hardened.
+
+"That is why he in a moment of folly--I admit it was in a moment of
+folly--asked her to come out on his last cruise in the _Neptune_. When
+you came I was expecting them back any moment. But, Jacques, do not be
+afraid. I swear to you that no one shall ever know. Admiral de Saint
+Vilquier will do anything for us Kergou�ts; I myself will go to him,
+and--and explain."
+
+But Jacques de Wissant scarcely heard the eager, pitiful words.
+
+He had thrust his wife from his mind, and her place had been taken by
+his honour--his honour and that of his children, of happy,
+light-hearted Clairette and Jacqueline. For what seemed a long while he
+said nothing; then, with all the anger gone from his voice, he spoke,
+uttered a fiat.
+
+"No," he said quietly. "You must leave the Admiral to me, Madeleine. You
+were going to Italy to-night, were you not? That, I take it, _is_ true."
+
+She nodded impatiently. What did her proposed journey to Italy matter
+compared with her beloved Claire's present peril?
+
+"Well, you must carry out your plan, my poor Madeleine. You must go away
+to-night."
+
+She stared at him, her face at last blotched with tears, and a look of
+bewildered anguish in her eyes.
+
+"You must do this," Jacques de Wissant went on deliberately, "for
+Claire's sake, and for the sake of Claire's children. You haven't
+sufficient self-control to endure suspense calmly, secretly. You need
+not go farther than Paris, but those whom it concerns will be told that
+Claire has gone with you to Italy. There will always be time to tell the
+truth. Meanwhile, the Admiral and I will devise a plan. And perhaps"--he
+waited a moment--"the truth will never be known, or only known to a very
+few people--people who, as you say, will understand."
+
+He had spoken very slowly, as if weighing each of his words, but it was
+quickly, with a queer catch in his voice, that he added--"I ask you to
+do this, my sister"--he had never before called Madeleine Baudoin "my
+sister"--"because of Claire's children, of Clairette and Jacqueline.
+Their mother would not wish a slur to rest upon them."
+
+She looked at him with piteous, hunted eyes. But she knew that she must
+do what he asked.
+
+
+IV
+
+Jacques de Wissant sat at his desk in the fine old room which is set
+aside for the mayor's sole use in the town hall of Falaise.
+
+He was waiting for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, whom he had summoned on
+the plea of a matter both private and urgent. In his note, of which he
+had written more than one draft, he had omitted none of the punctilio
+usual in French official correspondence, and he had asked pardon, in the
+most formal language, for asking the Admiral to come to him, instead of
+proposing to go to the Admiral.
+
+The time that had elapsed since he had parted from his sister-in-law had
+seemed like years instead of hours, and yet every moment of those hours
+had been filled with action.
+
+From the Ch�let des Dunes Jacques had made his way straight to the
+Pavillon de Wissant, and there his had been the bitter task of lying to
+his household.
+
+They had accepted unquestioningly his statement that their mistress,
+without waiting even to go home, had left the Ch�let des Dunes with her
+sister for Italy owing to the arrival of sudden worse news from Mantua.
+
+While Claire's luggage was being by his orders hurriedly prepared, he
+had changed his clothes; and then, overcome with mortal weariness, with
+sick, sombre suspense, he had returned to Falaise, taking the railway
+station on his way to the town hall, and from there going through the
+grim comedy of despatching his wife's trunks to Paris.
+
+Since the day war was declared by France on Germany, there had never
+been at the town hall of Falaise so busy an afternoon. Urgent messages
+of inquiry and condolence came pouring in from all over the civilized
+world, and the mayor had to compose suitable answers to them all.
+
+To him there also fell the painful duty of officially announcing to the
+crowd surging impatiently in the market place--though room in front was
+always made and kept for those of the fisher folk who had relatives in
+the submarine service--that it was the _Neptune_ which had gone down.
+
+He had seen the effect of that announcement painted on rough, worn,
+upturned faces; he had heard the cries of anger, the groans of despair
+of the few, and had witnessed the relief, the tears of joy of the many.
+But his heart felt numb, and his cold, stern manner kept the emotions
+and excitement of those about him in check.
+
+At last there had come a short respite. It was publicly announced that
+owing to the currents the divers had had to suspend their work awhile,
+but that salvage appliances from England and from Cherbourg were on
+their way to Falaise, and that it was hoped by seven that evening active
+operations would begin. With luck the _Neptune_ might be raised before
+midnight.
+
+Fortunate people blessed with optimistic natures were already planning a
+banquet at which the crew of the _Neptune_ were to be entertained within
+an hour of the rescue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacques de Wissant rose from the massive First Empire table which formed
+part of the fine suite of furniture presented by the great Napoleon
+just a hundred years ago to the municipality of Falaise.
+
+With bent head, his hands clasped behind him, the mayor began walking up
+and down the long room.
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier might now come at any moment, but the man
+awaiting him had not yet made up his mind how to word what he had to
+say--how much to tell, how much to conceal from, his wife's old friend.
+He was only too well aware that if the desperate attempts which would
+soon be made to raise the _Neptune_ were successful, and if its human
+freight were rescued alive, the fact that there had been a woman on
+board could not be concealed. Thousands would know to-night, and
+millions to-morrow morning.
+
+Not only would the amazing story provide newspaper readers all over the
+world with a thrilling, unexpected piece of news, but the fact that
+there had been a woman involved in the disaster would be perpetuated, as
+long as our civilization endures, in every account of subsequent
+accidents to submarine craft.
+
+More intimately, vividly agonizing was the knowledge that the story, the
+scandal, would be revived when there arose the all-important question of
+a suitable marriage for Clairette or Jacqueline.
+
+As he paced up and down the room, longing for and yet dreading the
+coming of the Admiral, he visualized what would happen. He could almost
+hear the whispered words: "Yes, dear friend, the girl is admirably
+brought up, and has a large fortune, also she and your son have taken
+quite a fancy for one another, but there is that very ugly story of the
+mother! Don't you remember that she was with her lover in the submarine
+_Neptune_? The citizens of Falaise still laugh at the story and point
+her out in the street. Like mother like daughter, you know!" Thus the
+miserable man tortured himself, turning the knife in his wound.
+
+But stay---- Supposing the salvage appliances failed, as they had failed
+at Bizerta, to raise the _Neptune_? Then with the help of Admiral de
+Saint Vilquier the awful truth might be kept secret.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the door opened.
+
+Jacques de Wissant took a step forward, and as his hand rested loosely
+for a moment in the old seaman's firmer grasp, he would have given many
+years of his life to postpone the coming interview.
+
+"As you asked me so urgently to do so, I have come, M. de Wissant, to
+learn what you have to tell me. But I'm afraid the time I can spare you
+must be short. As you know, I am to be at the station in half an hour to
+meet the Minister of Marine. He will probably wish to go out at once to
+the scene of the calamity, and I shall have to accompany him."
+
+The Admiral was annoyed at having been thus sent for to the town hall.
+It was surely Jacques de Wissant's place to have come to him.
+
+And then, while listening to the other's murmured excuses, the old naval
+officer happened to look straight into the face of the Mayor of Falaise,
+and at once a change came over his manner, even his voice softened and
+altered.
+
+"Pardon my saying so, M. de Wissant," he exclaimed abruptly, "but you
+look extremely ill! You mustn't allow this sad business to take such a
+hold on you. It is tragic no doubt that such things must be, but
+remember"--he uttered the words solemnly--"they are the Price of
+Admiralty."
+
+"I know, I know," muttered Jacques de Wissant.
+
+"Shall we sit down?"
+
+The deadly pallor, the look of strain on the face of the man before him
+was making the Admiral feel more and more uneasy. "It would be very
+awkward," he thought to himself, "were Jacques de Wissant to be taken
+ill, here, now, with me---- Ah, I have it!"
+
+Then he said aloud, "You have doubtless had nothing to eat since the
+morning?" And as de Wissant nodded--"But that's absurd! It's always
+madness to go without food. Believe me, you will want all your strength
+during the next few days. As for me, I had fortunately lunched before I
+received the sad news. I keep to the old hours; I do not care for your
+English _d�jeuners_ at one o'clock. Midday is late enough for me!"
+
+"Admiral?" said the wretched man, "Admiral----?"
+
+"Yes, take your time; I am not really in such a hurry. I am quite at
+your disposal."
+
+"It is a question of honour," muttered Jacques de Wissant, "a question
+of honour, Admiral, or I should not trouble you with the matter."
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier leant forward, but Jacques de Wissant avoided
+meeting the shrewd, searching eyes.
+
+"The honour of a naval family is involved." The Mayor of Falaise was now
+speaking in a low, pleading voice.
+
+The Admiral stiffened. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "So you have been asked to
+intercede with me on behalf of some young scapegrace. Well, who is it?
+I'll look into the matter to-morrow morning. I really cannot think of
+anything to-day but of this terrible business----"
+
+"----Admiral, it concerns this business."
+
+"The loss of the _Neptune_? In what way can the honour of a naval family
+be possibly involved in such a matter?" There was a touch of hauteur as
+well as of indignant surprise in the fine old seaman's voice.
+
+"Admiral," said Jacques de Wissant deliberately, "there was--there is--a
+woman on board the _Neptune_."
+
+"A woman in the _Neptune_? That is quite impossible!" The Admiral got up
+from his chair. "It is one of our strictest regulations that no stranger
+be taken on board a submarine without a special permit from the Minister
+of Marine, countersigned by an admiral. No such permit has been issued
+for many months. In no case would a woman be allowed on board. Commander
+Dupr� is far too conscientious, too loyal, an officer to break such a
+regulation."
+
+"Commander Dupr�," said Jacques de Wissant in a low, bitter tone, "was
+not too conscientious or too loyal an officer to break that regulation,
+for there is, I repeat it, a woman in the _Neptune_."
+
+The Admiral sat down again. "But this is serious--very serious," he
+muttered.
+
+He was thinking of the effect, not only at home but abroad, of such a
+breach of discipline.
+
+He shook his head with a pained, angry gesture--"I understand what
+happened," he said at last. "The woman was of course poor Dupr�'s"--and
+then something in Jacques de Wissant's pallid face made him substitute,
+for the plain word he meant to have used, a softer, kindlier
+phrase--"poor Dupr�'s _bonne amie_," he said.
+
+"I am advised not," said Jacques de Wissant shortly. "I am told that the
+person in question is a young lady."
+
+"Do you mean an unmarried girl?" asked the Admiral. There was great
+curiosity and sincere relief in his voice.
+
+"I beg of you not to ask me, Admiral! The family of the lady have
+implored me to reveal as little of the truth as possible. They have
+taken their own measures, and they are good measures, to account for
+her--her disappearance." The unhappy man spoke with considerable
+agitation.
+
+"Quite so! Quite so! They are right. I have no wish to show indiscreet
+curiosity."
+
+"Do you think anything can be done to prevent the fact becoming known?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant--and, as the other waited a moment before
+answering, the suspense became almost more than he could endure.
+
+He got up and instinctively stood with his back to the light. "The
+family of this young lady are willing to make any pecuniary
+sacrifice----"
+
+"It is not a question of pecuniary sacrifice," the Admiral said stiffly.
+"Money will never really purchase either secrecy or silence. But honour,
+M. de Wissant, will sometimes, nay, often, do both."
+
+"Then you think the fact can be concealed?"
+
+"I think it will be impossible to conceal it if the _Neptune_ is
+raised"--he hesitated, and his voice sank as he added the poignant words
+"_in time_. But if that happens, though I fear that it is not likely to
+happen, then I promise you that I will allow it to be thought that I had
+given this lady permission, and her improper action will be accepted for
+what it no doubt was--a foolish escapade. If Dupr� and little Paritot
+are the men of honour I take them to be, one or other of them will of
+course marry her!"
+
+"And if the _Neptune_ is not raised--" the Mayor's voice also dropped
+to a whisper--"_in time_--what then?"
+
+"Then," said the Admiral, "everything will be done by me--so you can
+assure your unlucky friends--to conceal the fact that Commander Dupr�
+failed in his duty. Not for his sake, you understand--he, I fear,
+deserves what he has suffered, what he is perhaps still suffering,"--a
+look of horror stole over his old, weather-roughened face--"but for the
+sake of the foolish girl and for the sake of her family. You say it is a
+naval family?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques de Wissant. "A noted naval family."
+
+The Admiral got up. "And now I, on my side, must exact of you a pledge,
+M. de Wissant--" he looked searchingly at the Government official
+standing before him. "I solemnly implore you, monsieur, to keep this
+fact you have told me absolutely secret for the time being--secret even
+from the Minister of Marine."
+
+The Mayor of Falaise bent his head. "I intend to act," he said slowly,
+"as if I had never heard it."
+
+"I ask it for the honour, the repute, of the Service," muttered the old
+officer. "After all, M. de Wissant, the poor fellow did not mean much
+harm. We sailors have all, at different times of our lives, had some
+_bonne amie_ whom we found it devilish hard to leave on shore!"
+
+The Admiral walked slowly towards the door. To-day had aged him years.
+Then he turned and looked benignantly at Jacques de Wissant; the man
+before him might be stiff, cold, awkward in manner, but he was a
+gentleman, a man of honour.
+
+And as he drove to the station to meet the Minister of Marine, Admiral
+de Saint Vilquier's shrewd, practical mind began to deal with the
+difficult problem which was now added to his other cares. It was
+simplified in view of the fact--the awful fact--that according to his
+private information it was most unlikely that the submarine would be
+raised within the next few hours. He hoped with all his heart that the
+twelve men and the woman now lying beneath the sea had met death at the
+moment of the collision.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that summer night the caf�s and eating-houses of Falaise remained
+open, and there was a constant coming and going to the beach, where many
+people, even among those visitors who were not directly interested in
+the calamity, camped out on the stones.
+
+The mayor sent word to the Pavillon de Wissant that he would sleep in
+his town house, but though he left the town hall at two in the morning
+he was back at his post by eight, and he spent there the whole of the
+next long dragging day.
+
+Fortunately for him there was little time for thought. In addition to
+the messages of inquiry and condolence which went on pouring in,
+important members of the Government arrived from Paris and the
+provinces.
+
+There also came to Falaise the mother of Commander Dupr�, and the father
+and brother of Lieutenant Paritot. De Wissant made the latter his
+special care. They, the two men, were granted the relief of tears, but
+Madame Dupr�'s silent agony could not be assuaged.
+
+Once, when he suddenly came upon her sitting, her chin in her hand, in
+his room at the town hall, Jacques de Wissant shrank from her blazing
+eyes and ravaged face, so vividly did they recall to him the eyes, the
+face, he had seen that April evening "'twixt dog and wolf," when he had
+first leapt upon the truth.
+
+On the third day all hope that there could be anyone still living in the
+_Neptune_ was being abandoned, and yet at noon there ran a rumour
+through the town that knocking had been heard in the submarine....
+
+The mayor himself drew up an official proclamation, in which it was
+pointed out that it was almost certain that all on board had perished at
+the time of the collision, and that, even if any of them had survived
+for a few hours, not one could be alive now.
+
+And then, as one by one the days of waiting began to wear themselves
+away, the world, apart from the town which numbered ten of her sons
+among the doomed men, relaxed its painful interest in the fate of the
+French submarine. Indeed, Falaise took on an almost winter stillness of
+aspect, for the summer visitors naturally drifted away from a spot which
+was still the heart of an awful tragedy.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant did not relax in his duties or in his efforts on
+behalf of the families of the men who still lay, eighteen fathoms deep,
+encased in their steel tomb; and the townspeople were deeply moved by
+their mayor's continued, if restrained, distress. He even put his
+children, his pretty twin daughters, Jacqueline and Clairette, into deep
+mourning; this touched the seafaring portion of the population very
+much.
+
+It also became known that M. de Wissant was suffering from domestic
+distress of a very sad and intimate kind; his sister-in-law was
+seriously ill in Italy from an infectious disease, and his wife, who
+had gone away at a moment's notice to help to nurse her, had caught the
+infection.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise and Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not often have
+occasion to meet during those days spent by each of them in entertaining
+official personages and in composing answers to the messages and
+inquiries which went on dropping in, both by day and by night, at the
+town hall and at the Admiral's quarters. But there came an hour when
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier at last sought to have a private word with the
+Mayor of Falaise.
+
+"I think I have arranged everything satisfactorily," he said briefly,
+"and you can convey the fact to your friends. I do not suppose, as
+matters are now, that there is much fear that the truth will ever come
+out."
+
+The old man did not look into Jacques de Wissant's face while he uttered
+the comforting words. He had become aware of many things--including
+Madeleine Baudoin's cruise in the _Neptune_ the day before the accident,
+and of her own and Claire de Wissant's reported departure for Italy.
+
+Alone, among the people who sometimes had friendly speech of the mayor
+during those sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not
+condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave
+Falaise for Mantua.
+
+
+V
+
+Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed. He had heard a
+knock--but, awake or sleeping, his ears were never free of the sound of
+knocking,--of muffled, regular knocking....
+
+It was the darkest hour of the summer night, but with a sharp sense of
+relief he became aware that what had wakened him this time was a real
+sound, not the slow, patient, rhythmical, tapping which haunted him
+incessantly. But now the knocking had been followed by the opening of
+his bedroom door, and vaguely outlined before him was the short, squat
+form of an old woman who had entered his mother's service when he was a
+little boy, and who always stayed in his town house.
+
+"M'sieur l'Amiral de Saint Vilquier desires to see M'sieur Jacques on
+urgent business," she whispered. "I have put him to wait in the great
+drawing-room. It is fortunate that I took all the covers off the
+furniture yesterday."
+
+Then the moment of ordeal, the moment he had begun to think would never
+come--was upon him? He knew this summons to mean that the _Neptune_ had
+been finally towed into the harbour, and that now, in this still, dark
+hour before dawn, was about to begin the work of taking out the bodies.
+
+Every day for a week past it had been publicly announced that the
+following night would see the final scene of the dread drama, and each
+evening--even last evening--it had been as publicly announced that
+nothing could be done for the present.
+
+Jacques de Wissant had put all his trust in the Admiral and in the
+arrangements the Admiral was making to avoid discovery. But now, as he
+got up and dressed himself--strange to say that phantom sound of
+knocking had ceased--there came over him a frightful sensation of doubt
+and fear. Had he been right to trust wholly to the old naval officer?
+Would it not have been better to have taken the Minister of Marine into
+his confidence?
+
+How would it be possible for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, unless backed by
+Governmental authority, to elude the vigilance, not only of the
+Admiralty officials and of all those that were directly interested, but
+also of the journalists who, however much the public interest had
+slackened in the disaster, still stayed on at Falaise in order to be
+present at the last act of the tragedy?
+
+These thoughts jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's brain. But
+whether he had been right or wrong it was too late to alter now.
+
+He went into the room where the Admiral stood waiting for him.
+
+The two men shook hands, but neither spoke till they had left the house.
+Then, as they walked with firm, quick steps across the deserted
+market-place, the Admiral said suddenly, "This is the quietest hour in
+the twenty-four, and though I anticipate a little trouble with the
+journalists, I think everything will go off quite well."
+
+His companion muttered a word of assent, and the other went on, this
+time in a gruff whisper: "By the way, I have had to tell Dr. Tarnier--"
+and as Jacques de Wissant gave vent to a stifled exclamation of
+dismay--"of course I had to tell Dr. Tarnier! He has most nobly offered
+to go down into the _Neptune_ alone--though in doing so he will run
+considerable personal risk."
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier paused a moment, for the quick pace at which
+his companion was walking made him rather breathless. "I have simply
+told him that there was a young woman on board. He imagines her to have
+been a Parisienne,--a person of no importance, you understand,--who had
+come to spend the holiday with poor Dupr�. But he quite realizes that
+the fact must never be revealed." He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact
+tone. "There will not be room on the pontoon for more than five or six,
+including ourselves and Dr. Tarnier. Doubtless some of our newspaper
+friends will be disappointed--if one can speak of disappointment in such
+a connection--but they will have plenty of opportunities of being
+present to-morrow and the following nights. I have arranged with the
+Minister of Marine for the work to be done only at night."
+
+As the two men emerged on the quays, they saw that the news had leaked
+out, for knots of people stood about, talking in low hushed tones, and
+staring at the middle of the harbour.
+
+Apart from the others, and almost dangerously close to the unguarded
+edge below which was the dark lapping water, stood a line of women
+shrouded in black, and from them came no sound.
+
+As the Admiral and his companion approached the little group of
+officials who were apparently waiting for them, the old naval officer
+whispered to Jacques de Wissant, using for the first time the familiar
+expression, "_mon ami_," "Do not forget, _mon ami_, to thank the
+harbour-master and the pilot. They have had a very difficult task, and
+they will expect your commendation."
+
+Jacques de Wissant said the words required of him. And then, at the last
+moment, just as he was on the point of going down the steps leading to
+the flat-bottomed boat in which they were to be rowed to the pontoon,
+there arose an angry discussion. The harbour-master had, it seemed,
+promised the representatives of two Paris newspapers that they should be
+present when the submarine was first opened.
+
+But the Admiral stiffly asserted his supreme authority. "In such matters
+I can allow no favouritism! It is doubtful if any bodies will be taken
+out to-night, gentlemen, for the tide is already turning. I will see if
+other arrangements can be made to-morrow. If any of you had been in the
+harbour of Bizerta when the _Lutin_ was raised, you would now thank me
+for not allowing you to view the sight which we may be about to see."
+
+And the weary, disappointed special correspondents, who had spent long
+days watching for this one hour, realized that they would have to
+content themselves with describing what could be seen from the quays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will, however, surprise no one familiar with the remarkable
+enterprise of the modern press, when it is recorded that by far the most
+accurate account of what occurred during the hour that followed was
+written by a cosmopolitan war correspondent, who had had the good
+fortune of making Dr. Tarnier's acquaintance during the dull fortnight
+of waiting.
+
+He wrote:
+
+    None of those who were there will ever forget what they saw last
+    night in the harbour of Falaise.
+
+    The scene, illumined by the searchlight of a destroyer, was at
+    once sinister, sombre, and magnificent. Below the high, narrow
+    pontoon, on the floor of the harbour, lay the wrecked submarine;
+    and those who gazed down at the _Neptune_ felt as though they
+    were in the presence of what had once been a sentient being done
+    to death by some huge Goliath of the deep.
+
+    Dr. Tarnier, the chief medical officer of the port--a man who is
+    beloved and respected by the whole population of Falaise--stood
+    ready to begin his dreadful task. I had ascertained that he had
+    obtained permission to go down alone into the hold of death--an
+    exploration attended with the utmost physical risk. He was clad
+    in a suit of india-rubber clothing, and over his arm was folded
+    a large tarpaulin sheet lined with carbolic wool, one of half a
+    dozen such sheets lying at his feet.
+
+    The difficult work of unsealing the conning tower was then
+    proceeded with in the presence of Admiral de Saint Vilquier,
+    whose prowess as a midshipman is still remembered by British
+    Crimean veterans--and of the Mayor of Falaise, M. Jacques de
+    Wissant.
+
+    At last there came a guttural exclamation of "_�a y est!_" and
+    Dr. Tarnier stepped downwards, to emerge a moment later with the
+    first body, obviously that of the gallant Commander Dupr�, who
+    was found, as it was expected he would be, in the conning tower.
+
+    Once more the doctor's burly figure disappeared, once more he
+    emerged, tenderly bearing a slighter, lighter burden, obviously
+    the boyish form of Lieutenant Paritot, who was found close to
+    Commander Dupr�.
+
+    The tide was rising rapidly, but two more bodies--this time with
+    the help of a webbed band cleverly designed by Dr. Tarnier with
+    a view to the purpose--were lifted from the inner portion of the
+    submarine.
+
+    The four bodies, rather to the disappointment of the large crowd
+    which had gradually gathered on the quays, were not taken
+    directly to the shore, to the great hall where Falaise is to
+    mourn her dead sons; one by one they were reverently conveyed,
+    by the Admiral's orders, to a barge which was once used as a
+    hospital ward for sick sailors, and which is close to the mouth
+    of the harbour. Thence, when all twelve bodies have been
+    recovered--that is, in three or four days, for the work is only
+    to be proceeded with at night,--they will be taken to the Salle
+    d'Armes, there to await the official obsequies.
+
+On the morning following the night during which the last body was lifted
+from within the _Neptune_, there ran a curious rumour through the
+fishing quarter of the town. It was said that thirteen bodies--not
+twelve, as declared the official report--had been taken out of the
+_Neptune_. It was declared on the authority of one of the seamen--a
+Gascon, be it noted--who had been there on that first night, that five,
+not four, bodies had been conveyed to the hospital barge.
+
+But the rumour, though it found an echo in the French press, was not
+regarded as worth an official denial, and it received its final quietus
+on the day of the official obsequies, when it was at once seen that the
+number of ammunition wagons heading the great procession was twelve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As long as tradition endures in the life of the town, Falaise will
+remember the _Neptune_ funeral procession. Not only was every navy in
+the world represented, but also every strand of that loosely woven human
+fabric we civilized peoples call a nation.
+
+Through the long line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed,
+walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed
+the minute gun.
+
+First the President of the French Republic, with, to his right, the
+Minister of Marine; and close behind them the stiff, still vigorous,
+figure of old Admiral de Saint Vilquier. By his side walked the Mayor of
+Falaise--so mortally pale, so what the French call undone, that the
+Admiral felt fearful lest his neighbour should be compelled to fall out.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant was not minded to fall out.
+
+The crowd looking on, especially the wives of those substantial citizens
+of the town who stood at their windows behind half-closed shutters and
+drawn blinds, stared down at the mayor with pitying concern.
+
+"He has a warm heart though a cold manner," murmured these ladies to one
+another, "and just now, you know, he is in great anxiety, for his
+wife--that beautiful Claire with whom he doesn't get on very well--is in
+Italy, seriously ill of scarlet fever." "Yes, and as soon as this sad
+ceremony is over, he will leave for the south--I hear that the President
+has offered him a seat in his saloon as far as Paris."
+
+As the head of the procession at last stopped on the great parade ground
+where the last honours were to be rendered to the lowly yet illustrious
+dead, Jacques de Wissant straightened himself with an instinctive
+gesture, and his lips began to move. He was muttering to himself the
+speech he would soon have to deliver, and which he had that morning,
+making a great mental effort, committed to memory.
+
+And after the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say;
+and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a
+quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came
+to the turn of the Mayor of Falaise.
+
+He was there, he said, simply as the mouth-piece of his fellow-townsmen,
+and they, bowed as they were by deep personal grief, could say but
+little--they could indeed only murmur their eternal gratitude for the
+sympathy they had received, and were now receiving, from their
+countrymen and from the world.
+
+Then Jacques de Wissant gave a brief personal account of each of the ten
+seamen whom this vast concourse had gathered together to honour. It was
+noted by the curious in such things that he made no allusion to the two
+officers, to Commander Dupr� and Lieutenant Paritot; doubtless he
+thought that they, after all, had been amply honoured in the preceding
+speeches.
+
+But though his care for the lowly heroes proved the Mayor of Falaise a
+good republican, he showed himself in the popular estimation also a
+scholar, for he wound up with the old tag--the grand old tag which
+inspired so many noble souls in the proudest of ancient empires and
+civilizations, and which will retain the power of moving and thrilling
+generations yet unborn in both the Western and the Eastern worlds:
+
+    "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD
+
+
+I
+
+It was close on eleven o'clock; the July night was airless, and the last
+of that season's great balls was taking place in Grosvenor Square.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn's brougham came to a sudden halt in Green Street. Encompassed
+behind and before with close, intricate traffic, the carriage swung
+stiffly on its old-fashioned springs, responding to every movement of
+the fretted horse.
+
+Hugh Elwyn, sitting by his mother's side, wondered a little impatiently
+why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could
+remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his
+thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in
+a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her
+narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had given up the world. This was
+the first time since her widowhood that she and her son had dined out
+together; but then the occasion was a very special one--they had been to
+dinner with the family of Elwyn's fianc�e, Winifred Fanshawe.
+
+Hugh Elwyn turned and looked at his mother. As he saw in the
+half-darkness the outlines of the delicately pure profile, framed in
+grey bands of hair covering the ears as it had been worn when Mrs. Elwyn
+was a girl upwards of forty years ago, he felt stirred with an unwonted
+tenderness, added to the respect with which he habitually regarded her.
+
+Since leaving Cavendish Square they had scarcely spoken the one to the
+other. The drive home was a short one, for they lived in South Street.
+It was tiresome that they should be held up in this way within a hundred
+yards of their own door.
+
+Suddenly the mother spoke. She put out her frail hand and laid it across
+her son's strong brown fingers. She gazed earnestly into the
+good-looking face which was not as radiantly glad as she would have
+wished to see it--as indeed she had once seen her son's face look, and
+as she could still very vividly remember her own husband's face had
+looked during their short formal engagement nearly fifty years ago. "I
+could not be better pleased, Hugh, if I had myself chosen your future
+wife."
+
+Elwyn was a little amused as well as touched; he was well aware that his
+mother, to all intents and purposes, _had_ chosen Winifred. True, she
+had been but slightly acquainted with the girl before the engagement,
+but she had "known all about her," and had been on terms of friendly
+acquaintance with Winifred's grandmother all her long life. Elwyn
+remembered how his mother had pressed him to accept an invitation to a
+country house where Winifred Fanshawe was to be. But Mrs. Elwyn had
+never spoken to her son of her wishes until the day he had come and told
+her that he intended to ask Winifred to marry him, and then her
+unselfish joy had moved him and brought them very near to one another.
+
+When Hugh Elwyn was in London--he had been a great wanderer over the
+earth--he lived with his mother, and they were outwardly on the closest,
+most intimate terms of affection. But then Mrs. Elwyn never interfered
+with Hugh, as he understood his friends' mothers so often interfered
+with them and with their private affairs. This doubtless was why they
+were, and remained, on such ideal terms together.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Elwyn again spoke, but she did not turn round and look
+tenderly at her son as she had done when speaking of his future
+wife--this time she gazed straight before her: "Is not Winifred a cousin
+of Mrs. Bellair?"
+
+"Yes, there's some kind of connection between the Fanshawes and the
+Bellairs."
+
+Hugh Elwyn tried to make his voice unconcerned, but he failed, and he
+knew that he had failed. His mother's question had disturbed him, and
+taken him greatly by surprise.
+
+"I wondered whether they are friends?"
+
+"I have never heard Winifred mention her," he said shortly. "Yes, I
+have--I remember now that she told me the Bellairs had sent her a
+present the very day after our engagement was in the _Morning Post_."
+
+"Then I suppose you will have to see something of them after your
+marriage?"
+
+"You mean the Bellairs? Yes--no. I don't think that follows, mother."
+
+"Do you see anything of them now?"
+
+"No"--he again hesitated, and again ate his word--"that is--yes. I met
+them some weeks ago. But I don't think we are likely to see much of them
+after our marriage."
+
+He would have given the world to feel that his voice was betraying
+nothing of the discomfort he was feeling.
+
+"I hope not, Hugh. Mrs. Bellair would not be a suitable friend for
+Winifred--or--or for any young married woman."
+
+"Mother!" Elwyn only uttered the one word, but anger, shame, and
+self-reproach were struggling in the tone in which he uttered that one
+word. "You are wrong, indeed, you are quite wrong--I mean about Fanny
+Bellair."
+
+"My dear," she said gently, but her voice quivered, "I do not think I am
+wrong. Indeed, I know I am right." Neither had ever seen the other so
+moved. "My dear," again she said the two quiet words that may mean so
+much or so little, "you know that I never spoke to you of the matter. I
+tried never even to think of it, and yet, Hugh, it made me very anxious,
+very unhappy. But to-night, looking at that sweet girl, I felt I must
+speak."
+
+She waited a moment, and then added in a constrained voice, "I do not
+judge you, Hugh."
+
+"No!" he cried, "but you judge her! And it's so unfair, mother--so
+horribly unfair!"
+
+He had turned round; he was forcing his mother to look at his now moody,
+unhappy face.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn shrank back and closed her lips tightly. Her expression
+recalled to her son the look which used to come over her face when, as a
+petted, over cared-for only child, he asked her for something which she
+believed it would be bad for him to have. From that look there had been,
+in old days, no appeal. But now he felt that he must say something more.
+His manhood demanded it of him.
+
+"Mother," he said earnestly, "as you have spoken to me of the matter, I
+feel I must have it out with you! Please believe me when I say that you
+are being unjust--indeed, cruelly so. I was to blame all through--from
+the very beginning to the very end."
+
+"You must allow me," she said in a low tone, "to be the judge of that,
+Hugh." She added deprecatingly, "This discussion is painful, and--and
+very distasteful to me."
+
+Her son leant back, and choked down the words he was about to utter. He
+knew well that nothing he could say would change or even modify his
+mother's point of view. But oh! why had she done this? Why had she
+chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung,
+so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night--not madly,
+foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably,
+decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a
+_mariage de convenance_, but there had been another man on the lists, a
+younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the
+pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had
+won--won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more
+could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of
+that providence which shapes our ends?
+
+The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.
+
+As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I
+ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs.
+Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful
+mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is
+seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything
+for him."
+
+Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned
+prejudice against trained nurses.
+
+Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent
+down and just touched her cheek with his lips.
+
+"Won't you come up into the drawing-room? Just for a few minutes?" she
+asked; there was a note of deep, yearning disappointment in her voice,
+and her face looked grey and tired, very different from the happy,
+placid air it had worn during the little dinner party.
+
+"No, thank you, mother, I won't come up just now. I think I'll go out
+again for half an hour. I haven't walked at all to-day, and it's so
+hot--I feel I shouldn't sleep if I turn in now."
+
+He was punishing his mother as he had seen other sons punishing their
+mothers, but as he himself had never before to-night been tempted to
+punish his. Nay, more, as Hugh Elwyn watched her slow ascent up the
+staircase, he told himself that she had hurt and angered him past entire
+forgiveness. He had sometimes suspected that she knew of that fateful
+episode in his past life, but he had never supposed that she would speak
+of it to him, especially not now, after years had gone by, and when,
+greatly to please her, he was about to make what is called a "suitable"
+marriage.
+
+He was just enough to know that his mother had hurt herself by hurting
+him, but that did not modify his feelings of anger and of surprise at
+what she had done. Of course she thought she knew everything there was
+to know, but how much there had been that she had never even suspected!
+
+Those words--that admission--as to Fanny Bellair being a good mother
+would never have passed Mrs. Elwyn's lips--they would never even have
+been credited by her had she known the truth--the truth, that is, as to
+the child to whom Mrs. Bellair was so passionately devoted, and who now,
+it seemed, was ailing. That secret, and Hugh Elwyn thanked God, not
+irreverently, that it was so, was only shared by two human beings, that
+is by Fanny and himself. And perhaps, Fanny, like himself, had managed
+by now almost to forget it....
+
+Elwyn swung out of the house, he walked up South Street, and so into
+Park Lane and over to the Park railings. There was still a great deal of
+traffic in the roadway, but the pavements were deserted.
+
+As he began to walk quickly westward, the past came back and overwhelmed
+him as with a great flood of mingled memories. And it was not, as his
+mother would probably have visioned it, a muddy spate filled with
+unclean things. Rather was it a flood of exquisite spring waters,
+instinct with the buoyant head-long rushes of youth, and filled with
+clear, happy shallows, in which retrospectively he lay and sunned
+himself in the warmth of what had been a great love--love such as
+Winifred Fanshawe, with her thin, complaisant nature, would never
+bestow.
+
+The mother's imprudent words of unnecessary warning had brought back to
+her son everything she had hoped was now, if not obliterated, then
+repented of; but Elwyn's heart was filled to-night with a vague
+tenderness for the half-forgotten woman whom he had loved awhile with so
+passionate and absorbing a love, and to whom, under cover of that poor
+and wilted thing, his conscience, he had ultimately behaved so ill.
+
+Hugh Elwyn's mind travelled back across the years, to the very beginning
+of his involved account with honour--that account which he believed to
+be now straightened out.
+
+Jim Bellair had been Elwyn's friend--first college friend and then
+favourite "pal." When Bellair had fallen head over ears in love with a
+girl still in the schoolroom, a girl not even pretty, but with wonderful
+auburn hair and dark, startled-looking eyes, and had finally persuaded,
+cajoled, badgered her into saying "Yes," it was Hugh Elwyn who had been
+Bellair's rather sulky best man. Small wonder that the bridegroom had
+half-jokingly left his young wife in Elwyn's charge when he had had to
+go half across the world on business that could not be delayed, while
+she stayed behind to nurse her father who was ill.
+
+It was then, with mysterious, uncanny suddenness, that the mischief had
+begun. There had been something wild and untamed in Fanny
+Bellair--something which had roused in Elwyn the hunter's instinct, an
+instinct hitherto unslaked by over easy victories. And then Chance, that
+great, cynical goddess which plays so great a part in civilized life,
+had flung first one opportunity and then another into his eager,
+grasping hands.
+
+Fanny's father had died; and she had been lonely and in sorrow. Careless
+friends, however kind, do not care to see much of those who mourn, but
+he, Hugh Elwyn, had not been careless, nay, he had been careful to see
+more, not less, of his friend's wife in this her first great grief, and
+she had been moved to the heart by his sympathy.
+
+It was by Elwyn's advice that Mrs. Bellair had taken a house not far
+from London that lovely summer.
+
+Ah, that little house! Elwyn could remember every bush, almost every
+flower that had flowered, in the walled garden during those enchanted
+weeks. Against the background of his mind every ornament, every odd
+piece of furniture in that old cottage, stood out as having been the
+silent, it had seemed at the time the kindly, understanding witnesses of
+what had by then become an exquisite friendship. He, the man, had known
+almost from the first where they too were drifting, but she, the woman,
+had slipped into love as a wanderer at night slips suddenly into a deep
+and hidden pool.
+
+In a story book they would both have gone away openly together--but
+somehow the thought of doing such a thing never seriously occurred to
+Elwyn. He was far too fond of Bellair--it seemed absurd to say that now,
+but the truth, especially the truth of what has been, is often absurd.
+
+Elwyn had contented himself with stealing Bellair's wife; he had no
+desire to put public shame and ridicule upon his friend. And fortune,
+favouring him, had prolonged the other man's enforced absence.
+
+And then? And then at last Bellair had come back,--and trouble began. As
+to many things, nay, as to most things which have to do with the flesh
+rather than the spirit, men are more fastidiously delicate than are
+women. There had come months of misery, of revolt, and, on Elwyn's part,
+of dulling love....
+
+Then, once more, Chance gave him an unlooked-for opportunity--an
+opportunity of escape from what had become to him an intolerable
+position.
+
+The war broke out, and Hugh Elwyn was among the very first of those
+gallant fellows who volunteered during the dark November of '99.
+
+By a curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa
+had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision--he was
+far the cleverer man of the two--he and his friend were no longer bound
+together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie
+among men. By the time the two came back from Africa they had become
+little more than cordial acquaintances. Marriage, so Bellair sometimes
+told himself ruefully, generally plays the devil with a man's bachelor
+friendships. He was a kindly, generous hearted soul, who found much
+comfort in platitudes....
+
+But that, alas! had not been the end. On Elwyn's return home there had
+come to him a violent, overmastering revival of his passion. Again he
+and Fanny met--again they loved. Then one terrible day she came and told
+him, with stricken eyes, what he sometimes hoped, even now, had not been
+true--that she was about to have a child, and that it would be his
+child. At that moment, as he knew well, Mrs. Bellair had desired
+ardently to go away with him, openly. But he had drawn back, assuring
+himself--and this time honestly--that his shrinking from that course,
+now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do
+such a thing it would go far to kill his mother--worse, it would
+embitter every moment of the life which remained to her.
+
+For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband
+the truth. But the weeks and months drifted by, and she remained silent.
+And as he had gone about that year, petted and made much of by his
+friends and acquaintances--for did he not bear on his worn, handsome
+face that look which war paints on the face of your sensitive modern
+man?--he heard whispered the delightful news that after five years of
+marriage kind Jim and dear Fanny Bellair were at last going to be made
+happy--happy in the good old way.
+
+Among the other memories of that hateful time, one came back, to-night,
+with especial vividness. Hurrying home across the park one afternoon,
+seven years ago now, almost to a day, he had suddenly run up against
+Bellair.
+
+They had talked for a few moments on indifferent things, and then Jim
+had said shyly, awkwardly, but with a beaming look on his face, "You
+know about Fanny? Of course I can't help feeling a bit anxious, but
+she's so healthy--not like those women who have always something the
+matter with them!" And he, Elwyn, had gripped the other man's hand, and
+muttered the congratulation which was being asked of him.
+
+That meeting, so full of shameful irony, had occurred about a week
+before the child's birth. Elwyn had meant to be away from London--but
+Chance, so carelessly kind a friend to him in the past, at last proved
+cruel, for surely it was Chance and Chance alone that led him, on the
+very eve of the day he was starting for Norway, straight across the
+quiet square, composed of high Georgian houses, where the Bellairs still
+lived.
+
+To-night, thanks to his mother, every incident of that long, agonizing
+night came back. He could almost feel the tremor of half fear, half
+excitement, which had possessed him when he had suddenly become aware
+that his friends' house was still lit up and astir, and that fresh straw
+lay heaped up in prodigal profusion in the road where, a little past the
+door, was drawn up a doctor's one-horse brougham. Even then he might
+have taken another way, but something had seemed to drive him on, past
+the house,--and there Elwyn, staying his deadened footsteps, had heard
+float down to him from widely opened windows above, certain sounds,
+muffled moans, telling of a physical extremity which even now he winced
+to remember.
+
+He had waited on and on--longing to escape, and yet prisoned between
+imaginary bounds within which he paced up and down, filled with an
+obscure desire to share, in the measure that was possible to him, her
+torment.
+
+At last, in the orange, dust-laden dawn of a London summer morning, the
+front door of the house had opened, and Elwyn had walked forward, every
+nerve quivering with suspense and fatigue, feeling that he must know....
+
+A great doctor, with whose face he was vaguely acquainted, had stepped
+out accompanied by Bellair--Bellair with ruffled hair and red-rimmed
+eyes, but looking if tired then content, even more, triumphant. Elwyn
+had heard him say the words, "Thanks awfully. I shall never forget how
+kind you have been, Sir Joseph. Yes, I'll go to bed at once. I know you
+must have thought me rather stupid."
+
+And then Bellair had suddenly seen Elwyn standing on the pavement; he
+had accepted unquestioningly the halting explanation that he was on his
+way home from a late party, and had happened, as it were, that way.
+"It's a boy!" he had said exultantly, although Elwyn had asked him no
+question, and then, "Of course I'm awfully pleased, but I'm dog tired!
+She's had a bad time, poor girl--but it's all right now, thank God! Come
+in and have a drink, Hugo."
+
+But Elwyn had shaken his head. Again he had gripped his old friend's
+hand, as he had done a week before, and again he had muttered the
+necessary words of congratulation. Then, turning on his heel, he had
+gone home, and spent the rest of the night in desultory packing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was just seven years ago, and Elwyn had never seen Fanny's child.
+He had been away from England for over a year, and when he came back he
+learned that the Bellairs were away, living in the country, where they
+had taken a house for the sake of their boy.
+
+As time had gone on, Elwyn and his friends had somehow drifted apart, as
+people are apt to drift apart in the busy idleness of the life led by
+the fortunate Bellairs and Elwyns of this world. Fanny avoided Hugh
+Elwyn, and Elwyn avoided Fanny, but they two only were aware of this. It
+was the last of the many secrets which they had once shared. When he
+and Bellair by chance met alone, all the old cordiality and even the old
+affection seemed to come back, if not to Elwyn then to the other man.
+
+And now the child, to whom it seemed not only Fanny but Jim Bellair also
+was so devoted, was ill, and he, Hugh Elwyn, had been the last to hear
+of it. He felt vaguely remorseful that this should be so. There had been
+years when nothing that affected Bellair could have left him
+indifferent, and a time when the slightest misadventure befalling Fanny
+would have called forth his eager, helpful sympathy.
+
+How strange it would be--he quickened his footsteps--if this child, with
+whom he was at once remotely and intimately concerned, were to die! He
+could not help feeling, deep down in his heart, that this would be, if a
+tragic, then a natural solution of a painful and unnatural problem--and
+then, quite suddenly, he felt horribly ashamed of having allowed himself
+to think this thought, to wish this awful wish.
+
+Why should he not go now, at once, to Manchester Square, and inquire as
+to the little boy's condition? It was not really late, not yet midnight.
+He could go and leave a message, perhaps even scribble a line to Jim
+Bellair explaining that he had come round as soon as he had heard of the
+child's illness.
+
+
+II
+
+When Hugh Elwyn reached the familiar turning whence he could see the
+Bellairs' high house, time seemed to have slipped back.
+
+The house was all lit up as it had been on that summer night seven years
+ago. Everything was the same--even to the heaped-up straw into which his
+half-reluctant feet now sank. There was even a doctor's carriage drawn
+up a little way from the front door, but this time it was a smart
+electric brougham.
+
+He rang the bell, and as the door opened, Jim Bellair suddenly came into
+the hall, out of a room which Elwyn knew to be the smoking-room--a room
+in which he and Fanny had at one time spent long hours in contented, nay
+in ecstatic, dual solitude.
+
+"I have come to inquire--I only heard to-night--" he began awkwardly,
+but the other cut him short, "Yes, yes, I understand--it's awfully good
+of you, Elwyn! I'm awfully glad to see you. Come in here--" and perforce
+he had to follow. "The doctor's upstairs--I mean Sir Joseph Pixton.
+Fanny was determined to have him, and he very kindly came, though of
+course he's not a child's doctor. He's annoyed because Fanny won't have
+trained nurses; but I don't suppose anything would make any difference.
+It's just a fight--a fight for the little chap's life--that's what it
+is, and we don't know yet who'll win."
+
+He spoke in quick, short sentences, staring with widely open eyes at his
+erstwhile friend as he spoke. "Pneumonia--I suppose you don't know
+anything about it? I thought children never had such things, especially
+not in hot weather."
+
+"I had a frightful illness when I was about your boy's age," said Elwyn
+eagerly. "It's the first thing I can really remember. They called it
+inflammation of the lungs. I was awfully bad. My mother talks of it now,
+sometimes."
+
+"Does she?" Bellair spoke wearily. "If only one could _do_ something,"
+he went on. "But you see the worst of it is that I can do
+nothing--nothing! Fanny hates my being up there--she thinks it upsets
+the boy. He's such a jolly little chap, Hugo. You know we called him
+Peter after Fanny's father?"
+
+Elwyn moved towards the door. He felt dreadfully moved by the other's
+pain. He told himself that after all he could do no good by staying, and
+he felt so ashamed, such a cur----
+
+"You don't want to go away yet?" There was sharp chagrin, reproachful
+dismay, in Bellair's voice. Elwyn remembered that in old days Jim had
+always hated being alone. "Won't you stay and hear what Pixton says?
+Or--or are you in a hurry?"
+
+Elwyn turned round. "Of course I'll stay," he said briefly.
+
+Bellair spared him thanks, but he began walking about the room
+restlessly. At last he went to the door and set it ajar. "I want to hear
+when Sir Joseph comes down," he explained, and even as he spoke there
+came the sound of heavy, slow footsteps on the staircase.
+
+Bellair went out and brought the great man in.
+
+"I've told Mrs. Bellair that we ought to have Bewdley! He knows a great
+deal more about children than I can pretend to do; and I propose, with
+your leave, to go off now, myself, and if possible bring him back." The
+old doctor's keen eyes wandered as he spoke from Bellair's fair face to
+Hugh Elwyn's dark one. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, Mr. Bellair, you
+would get someone to telephone to Dr. Bewdley's house to say that I'm
+coming? It might save a few moments."
+
+As Bellair left the room, the doctor turned to Elwyn and said abruptly,
+"I hope you'll be able to stay with your brother? All this is very hard
+on him; Mrs. Bellair will scarcely allow him into the child's room, and
+though that, of course, is quite right, I'm sorry for the man. He's
+wrapped up in the child."
+
+And when Bellair came back from accompanying the old doctor to his
+carriage, there was a smile on his face--the first smile which had been
+there for a long time: "Pixton thinks you're my brother! He said, 'I
+hope your brother will manage to stay with you for a bit.' Now I'll go
+up and see Fanny. Pixton is certainly more hopeful than the last man we
+had--"
+
+Bellair's voice had a confident ring. Elwyn remembered with a pang that
+Jim had always been like that--always believed, that is, that the best
+would come to pass.
+
+When left alone, Elwyn began walking restlessly up and down, much as his
+friend had walked up and down a few minutes ago. Something of the
+excitement of the fight going on above had entered into him; he now
+desired ardently that the child should live, should emerge victor from
+the grim struggle.
+
+At last Bellair came back. "Fanny believes that this is the night of
+crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But--but
+Elwyn, I hope you won't mind--the fact is she's set her heart on your
+seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your
+illness as a child, and it's cheered her up amazingly, poor girl!
+Perhaps you could tell her a little bit more about it, though I like to
+think that if the boy gets through it"--his voice broke suddenly--"she
+won't remember this--this awful time. But don't let's keep her
+waiting--" He took Elwyn's consent for granted, and quickly the two men
+walked up the stairs of the high house, on and on and on.
+
+"It's a good way up," whispered Bellair, "but Fanny was told that a
+child's nursery couldn't be too high. So we had the four rooms at the
+top thrown into two."
+
+They were now on the dimly-lighted landing. "Wait one moment--wait one
+moment, Hugo." Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper.
+
+Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the
+room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his
+ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the
+house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a
+touch of grotesque horror to the situation.
+
+Suddenly the handle of the door in front of him moved round, and he
+heard Fanny Bellair's voice, unnaturally controlled and calm. "I sent
+Nanna to bed, Jim. The poor old creature was absolutely worn out. And
+then I would so much rather be alone when Sir Joseph brings back the
+other doctor. He admits--I mean Sir Joseph does--that to-night _is_ the
+crisis."
+
+The door swung widely open, and Elwyn, moving instinctively back,
+visualized the scene before him very distinctly.
+
+There was a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the
+one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over.
+
+Mrs. Bellair stood between the screen and the pale blue wall. Her slim
+figure was clad in some sort of long white garment, and over it she wore
+an apron, which he noticed was far too large for her. Her hair, the
+auburn hair which had been her greatest beauty, and which he had once
+loved to praise and to caress, was fastened back, massed up in as small
+a compass as possible. That, and the fact that her face was
+expressionless, so altered her in Elwyn's eyes as to give him an uncanny
+feeling that the woman before him was not the woman he had known, had
+loved, had left,--but a stranger, only bound to him by the slender link
+of a common humanity.
+
+She waited some moments as if listening, then she came out on to the
+landing, and shut the door behind her very softly.
+
+The sentence of conventional sympathy half formed on Elwyn's lips died
+into nothingness; as little could he have offered words of cheer to one
+who was being tortured; but in the dim light their hands met and clasped
+tightly.
+
+"Hugo?" she said, "I want to ask you something. You told Jim just now
+that you were once very ill as a child,--ill like this, ill like my
+child. I want you to tell me honestly if that is true? I mean, were you
+very, very ill?"
+
+He answered her in the same way, without preamble, baldly: "It is quite
+true," he said. "I was very ill--so ill that my mother for one moment
+thought that I was dead. But remember, Fanny, that in those days they
+did not know nearly as much as they do now. Your boy has two chances for
+every one that I had then."
+
+"Would you mind coming in and seeing him?" Her voice faltered, it had
+become more human, more conventional, in quality.
+
+"Of course I will see him," he said. "I want to see him,--dear." She
+had suddenly become to him once more the thing nearest his heart; once
+more the link between them became of the closest, most intimate nature,
+and yet, or perhaps because of its intensity, the sense of nearness
+which had sprung at her touch into being was passionless.
+
+The face which had been drained of all expression quickened into
+agonized feeling. She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held
+it firmly, and it was hand in hand that together they walked into the
+room.
+
+As they came round the screen behind which lay the sick child, Bellair
+went over to the farthest of the three windows and stood there with
+crossed arms staring out into the night.
+
+The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the
+edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat,
+became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his
+ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium. But the
+small, dark face, framed by the white pillow, was set in lines of deep,
+unchildlike gravity, and in the eyes which now gazed incuriously at
+Elwyn there was a strange, watchful light which seemed to illumine that
+which was within rather than that which was without.
+
+As is always the case with a living creature near to death, little
+Peter Bellair looked very lonely.
+
+Then Elwyn, moving nearer still, seemed--or so at least Fanny Bellair
+will ever believe--to take possession of the moribund child, yielding
+him as he did so something of his own strength to help him through the
+crisis then imminent. And indeed the little creature whose forehead,
+whose clenched left hand lying on the sheet were beginning to glisten
+with sweat, appeared to become merged in some strange way with himself.
+Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of
+thirty years back, who, as a lonely only child, had lived so intensely
+secret, imaginative a life, peopling the prim alleys of Hyde Park with
+fairies, imps, tricksy hobgoblins in whom he more than half believed,
+and longing even then, as ever after, for the unattainable, never
+carelessly happy as his father and mother believed him to be....
+
+Hugh Elwyn stayed with the Bellairs all that night. He shared the sick
+suspense the hour of the crisis brought, and he was present when the
+specialist said the fateful words, "I think, under God, this child will
+live."
+
+When at last Elwyn left the house, clad in an old light coat of
+Bellair's in order that the folk early astir should not see that he was
+wearing evening clothes, he felt happier, more light-hearted, than he
+had done for years.
+
+His life had been like a crowded lumber-room, full of useless and
+worn-out things he had accounted precious, while he had ignored the one
+possession that really mattered and that linked him, not only with the
+future, but with the greatest reality of his past.
+
+The inevitable pain which this suddenly discovered treasure was to bring
+was mercifully concealed from him, as also the sombre fact that he would
+henceforth go lonely all his life, perforce obliged to content himself
+with the crumbs of another man's feast. For Peter Bellair, high-strung,
+imaginative, as he will ever be, will worship the strong, kindly, simple
+man he believes to be his father, but to that dear father's friend he
+will only yield the careless affection born of gratitude for much
+kindness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the matter of the broken engagement, Hugh Elwyn was more fairly
+treated by the men and women whom the matter concerned, or who thought
+it concerned them, than are the majority of recusant lovers.
+
+"Hugh Elwyn has never been quite the same since the war, and you know
+Winifred Fanshawe really liked the other man the best," so said those
+who spent an idle moment in discussing the matter, and they generally
+added, "It's a good thing that he's spending the summer with his old
+friends, the Bellairs. They're living very quietly just now, for their
+little boy has been dreadfully ill, so it's just the place for poor old
+Hugo to get over it all!"
+
+
+
+
+ST. CATHERINE'S EVE
+
+
+I
+
+"In this matter of the railway James Mottram has proved a false friend,
+a very traitor to me!"
+
+Charles Nagle's brown eyes shone with anger; he looked loweringly at his
+companions, and they, a beautiful young woman and an old man dressed in
+the sober garb of a Catholic ecclesiastic of that day, glanced at one
+another apprehensively.
+
+All England was then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of
+those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which
+obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the
+coming of the railroads.
+
+Charles Nagle got up and walked to the end of the terrace. He stared
+down into the wooded combe, or ravine, below, and noted with sullen
+anger the signs of stir and activity in the narrow strip of wood which
+till a few weeks before had been so still, so entirely remote from
+even the quiet human activities of 1835.
+
+At last he turned round, pirouetting on his heel with a quick movement,
+and his good looks impressed anew each of the two who sat there with
+him. Eighty years ago beauty of line and colour were allowed to tell in
+masculine apparel, and this young Dorset squire delighted in fine
+clothes. Though November was far advanced it was a mild day, and Charles
+Nagle wore a bright blue coat, cut, as was then the fashion, to show off
+the points of his elegant figure--of his slender waist and his broad
+shoulders; as for the elaborately frilled waistcoat, it terminated in an
+India muslin stock, wound many times round his neck. He looked a foppish
+Londoner rather than what he was--an honest country gentleman who had
+not journeyed to the capital for some six years, and then only to see a
+great physician.
+
+"'Twas a most unneighbourly act on the part of James--he knows it well
+enough, for we hardly see him now!" He addressed his words more
+particularly to his wife, and he spoke more gently than before.
+
+The old priest--his name was Dorriforth--looked uneasily from his host
+to his hostess. He felt that both these young people, whom he had known
+from childhood, and whom he loved well, had altered during the few weeks
+which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather--he mentally
+corrected himself--it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles
+Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he
+belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are
+mentally infirm, and shunned by their more fortunate fellows.
+
+But Charles Nagle's wife, the sweet young woman who for so long had been
+content, nay glad, to share this pitiful exile, seemed now to have
+escaped, if not in body then in mind, from the place where her sad,
+monotonous duty lay.
+
+She did not at once answer her husband; but she looked at him fixedly,
+her hand smoothing nervously the skirt of her pretty gown.
+
+Mrs. Nagle's dress also showed a care and research unusual in that of
+the country lady of those days. This was partly no doubt owing to her
+French blood--her grandparents had been _�migr�s_--and to the fact that
+Charles liked to see her in light colours. The gown she was now wearing
+on this mild November day was a French flowered silk, the spoil of a
+smuggler who pursued his profitable calling on the coast hard by. The
+short, high bodice and puffed sleeves were draped with a scarf of
+Buckinghamshire lace which left, as was the fashion of those days, the
+wearer's lovely shoulders bare.
+
+"James Mottram," she said at last, and with a heightened colour,
+"believes in progress, Charles. It is the one thing concerning which you
+and your friend will never agree."
+
+"Friend?" he repeated moodily. "Friend! James Mottram has shown himself
+no friend of ours. And then I had rights in this matter--am I not his
+heir-at-law? I could prevent my cousin from touching a stone, or felling
+a tree, at the Eype. But 'tis his indifference to my feelings that
+angers me so. Why, I trusted the fellow as if he had been my brother!"
+
+"And James Mottram," said the old priest authoritatively, "has always
+felt the same to you, Charles. Never forget that! In all but name you
+are brothers. Were you not brought up together? Had I not the schooling
+of you both as lads?" He spoke with a good deal of feeling; he had
+noticed--and the fact disturbed him--that Charles Nagle spoke in the
+past tense when referring to his affection for the absent man.
+
+"But surely, sir, you cannot approve that this iron monster should
+invade our quiet neighbourhood?" exclaimed Charles impatiently.
+
+Mrs. Nagle looked at the priest entreatingly. Did she by any chance
+suppose that he would be able to modify her husband's violent feeling?
+
+"If I am to say the truth, Charles," said Mr. Dorriforth mildly, "and
+you would not have me conceal my sentiments, then I believe the time
+will come when even you will be reconciled to this marvellous invention.
+Those who surely know declare that, thanks to these railroads, our
+beloved country will soon be all cultivated as is a garden. Nay, perhaps
+others of our Faith, strangers, will settle here----"
+
+"Strangers?" repeated Charles Nagle sombrely, "I wish no strangers here.
+Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he
+expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear
+suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing
+Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which
+stood the old manor-house.
+
+"Nay, nay," he repeated, returning to his grievance, "never had I
+expected to find James Mottram a traitor to his order. As for the folk
+about here, they're bewitched! They believe that this puffing devil will
+make them all rich! I could tell them different; but, as you know, there
+are reasons why I should not."
+
+The priest bent his head gravely. The Catholic gentry of those days were
+not on comfortable terms with their neighbours. In spite of the fact
+that legally they were now "emancipated," any malicious person could
+still make life intolerable to them. The railway mania was at its
+beginnings, and it would have been especially dangerous for Charles
+Nagle to take, in an active sense, the unpopular side.
+
+In other parts of England, far from this Dorset countryside, railroads
+had brought with them a revival of trade. It was hoped that the same
+result would follow here, and a long strip of James Mottram's estate had
+been selected as being peculiarly suitable for the laying down of the
+iron track which was to connect the nearest town with the sea.
+
+Unfortunately the land in question consisted of a wood which formed the
+boundary-line where Charles Nagle's property marched with that of his
+kinsman and co-religionist, James Mottram; and Nagle had taken the
+matter very ill indeed. He was now still suffering, in a physical
+sense, from the effects of the violent fit of passion which the matter
+had induced, and which even his wife, Catherine, had not been able to
+allay....
+
+As he started walking up and down with caged, impatient steps, she
+watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head
+with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the
+opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle,
+James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds
+which swept up from the sea.
+
+Suddenly he again strode over to the edge of the terrace: "I think I'll
+go down and have a talk to those railroad fellows," he muttered
+uncertainly.
+
+Charles knew well that this was among the forbidden things--the things
+he must not do; yet occasionally Catherine, who was, as the poor fellow
+dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
+submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.
+
+But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
+decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
+to Mr. Dorriforth."
+
+"They were making hellish noises all last night; I had no rest at all,"
+Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
+and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'--that's what they call it, reverend
+sir," he turned to the priest.
+
+Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
+she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
+losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
+priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?
+
+Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
+first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
+the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
+knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
+during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
+strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
+servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.
+
+She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
+not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
+railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
+now done."
+
+"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea, love! And if they're going off
+at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
+I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
+no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"
+
+Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
+on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
+in a child, so pardonable.
+
+She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
+wound about her soft dark hair--hair dressed high, turned back from her
+forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
+fashion, arranged in stiff curls.
+
+The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
+out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
+planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
+quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this
+closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing
+two fields, terminated in the beech-wood where now ran the iron track of
+the new railroad.
+
+Catherine Nagle unlocked the orchard gate, and went through on to the
+field path. And then she slackened her steps.
+
+For hours, nay, for days, she had been longing for solitude, and now,
+for a brief space, solitude was hers. But, instead of bringing her
+peace, this respite from the companionship of Charles and of Mr.
+Dorriforth brought increased tumult and revolt.
+
+She had ardently desired the visit of the old priest, but his presence
+had bestowed, instead of solace, fret and discomfort. When he fixed on
+her his mild, penetrating eyes, she felt as if he were dragging into the
+light certain secret things which had been so far closely hidden within
+her heart, and concerning which she had successfully dulled her once
+sensitive conscience.
+
+The waking hours of the last two days had each been veined with torment.
+Her soul sickened as she thought of the morrow, St. Catherine's Day,
+that is, her feast-day. The _�migr�s_, Mrs. Nagle's own people, had in
+exile jealousy kept up their own customs, and to Charles Nagle's wife
+the twenty-fifth day of November had always been a day of days, what her
+birthday is to a happy Englishwoman. Even Charles always remembered the
+date, and in concert with his faithful man-servant, Collins, sent to
+London each year for a pretty jewel. The housefolk, all of whom had
+learnt to love their mistress, and who helped her loyally in her
+difficult, sometimes perilous, task, also made of the feast a holiday.
+
+But now, on this St. Catherine's Eve, Mrs. Nagle told herself that she
+was at the end of her strength. And yet only a month ago--so she now
+reminded herself piteously--all had been well with her; she had been
+strangely, pathetically happy a month since; content with all the
+conditions of her singular and unnatural life....
+
+Suddenly she stopped walking. As if in answer to a word spoken by an
+invisible companion she turned aside, and, stooping, picked a weed
+growing by the path. She held it up for a moment to her cheek, and then
+spoke aloud. "Were it not for James Mottram," she said slowly, and very
+clearly, "I, too, should become mad."
+
+Then she looked round in sudden fear. Catherine Nagle had never before
+uttered, or permitted another to utter aloud in her presence, that awful
+word. But she knew that their neighbours were not so scrupulous. One
+cruel enemy, and, what was especially untoward, a close relation, Mrs.
+Felwake, own sister to Charles Nagle's dead father, often uttered it.
+This lady desired her son to reign at Edgecombe; it was she who in the
+last few years had spread abroad the notion that Charles Nagle, in the
+public interest, should be asylumed.
+
+In his own house, and among his own tenants, the slander was angrily
+denied. When Charles was stranger, more suspicious, moodier than usual,
+those about him would tell one another that "the squire was ill to-day,"
+or that "the master was ailing." That he had a mysterious illness was
+admitted. Had not a famous London doctor persuaded Mr. Nagle that it
+would be dangerous for him to ride, even to walk outside the boundary of
+his small estate,--in brief, to run any risks which might affect his
+heart? He had now got out of the way of wishing to go far afield;
+contentedly he would pace up and down for hours on the long terrace
+which overhung the wood--talking, talking, talking, with Catherine on
+his arm.
+
+But he was unselfish--sometimes. "Take a walk, dear heart, with James,"
+he would say, and then Catherine Nagle and James Mottram would go out
+and make their way to some lonely farmhouse or cottage where Mottram had
+estate business. Yet during these expeditions they never forgot Charles,
+so Catherine now reminded herself sorely,--nay, it was then that they
+talked of him the most, discussing him kindly, tenderly, as they
+went....
+
+Catherine walked quickly on, her eyes on the ground. With a feeling of
+oppressed pain she recalled the last time she and Mottram had been alone
+together. Bound for a distant spot on the coast, they had gone on and on
+for miles, almost up to the cliffs below which lay the sea. Ah, how
+happy, how innocent she had felt that day!
+
+Then they had come to a stile--Mottram had helped her up, helped her
+down, and for a moment her hand had lain and fluttered in his hand....
+
+During the long walk back, each had been very silent; and Catherine--she
+could not answer for her companion--when she had seen Charles waiting
+for her patiently, had felt a pained, shamed beat of the heart. As for
+James Mottram, he had gone home at once, scarce waiting for good-nights.
+
+That evening--Catherine remembered it now with a certain comfort--she
+had been very kind to Charles; she was ever kind, but she had then been
+kinder than usual, and he had responded by becoming suddenly clearer in
+mind than she had known him to be for a long time. For some days he had
+been the old Charles--tender, whimsical, gallant, the Charles with whom,
+at a time when every girl is in love with love, she had alack! fallen in
+love. Then once more the cloud had come down, shadowing a dreary waste
+of days--dark days of oppression and of silence, alternating with sudden
+bursts of unreasonable and unreasoning rage.
+
+James Mottram had come, and come frequently, during that time of misery.
+But his manner had changed. He had become restrained, as if watchful of
+himself; he was no longer the free, the happy, the lively companion he
+had used to be. Catherine scarcely saw him out of Charles's presence,
+and when they were by chance alone they talked of Charles, only of
+Charles and of his unhappy condition, and of what could be done to
+better it.
+
+And now James Mottram had given up coming to Edgecombe in the old
+familiar way; or rather--and this galled Catherine shrewdly--he came
+only sufficiently often not to rouse remark among their servants and
+humble neighbours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine Nagle was on the edge of the wood, and looking about her she
+saw with surprise that the railway men she had come down to see had
+finished work for the day. There were signs of their immediate
+occupation, a fire was still smouldering, and the door of one of the
+shanties they occupied was open. But complete stillness reigned in this
+kingdom of high trees. To the right and left, as far as she could see,
+stretched the twin lines of rude iron rails laid down along what had
+been a cart-track, as well as a short cut between Edgecombe Manor and
+Eype Castle. A dun drift, to-day's harvest of dead leaves, had settled
+on the rails; even now it was difficult to follow their course.
+
+As she stood there, about to turn and retrace her steps, Catherine
+suddenly saw James Mottram advancing quickly towards her, and the
+mingled revolt and sadness which had so wholly possessed her gave way to
+a sudden, overwhelming feeling of security and joy.
+
+She moved from behind the little hut near which she had been standing,
+and a moment later they stood face to face.
+
+James Mottram was as unlike Charles Nagle as two men of the same age, of
+the same breed, and of the same breeding could well be. He was shorter,
+and of sturdier build, than his cousin; and he was plain, whereas
+Charles Nagle was strikingly handsome. Also his face was tanned by
+constant exposure to sun, salt-wind, and rain; his hair was cut short,
+his face shaven.
+
+The very clothes James Mottram wore were in almost ludicrous contrast to
+those which Charles Nagle affected, for Mottram's were always of
+serviceable homespun. But for the fact that they and he were
+scrupulously clean, the man now walking by Catherine Nagle's side might
+have been a prosperous farmer or bailiff instead of the owner of such
+large property in those parts as made him, in spite of his unpopular
+faith, lord of the little world about him.
+
+On his plain face and strong, sturdy figure Catherine's beautiful eyes
+dwelt with unconscious relief. She was so weary of Charles's absorption
+in his apparel, and of his interest in the hundred and one fal-lals
+which then delighted the cosmopolitan men of fashion.
+
+A simple, almost childish gladness filled her heart. Conscience, but
+just now so insistent and disturbing a familiar, vanished for a space,
+nay more, assumed the garb of a meddling busybody who seeks to discover
+harm where no harm is.
+
+Was not James Mottram Charles's friend, almost, as the old priest had
+said, Charles's brother? Had she not herself deliberately chosen Charles
+in place of James when both young men had been in ardent pursuit of
+her--James's pursuit almost wordless, Charles's conducted with all the
+eloquence of the poet he had then set out to be?
+
+Mottram, seeing her in the wood, uttered a word of surprise. She
+explained her presence there. Their hands scarce touched in greeting,
+and then they started walking side by side up the field path.
+
+Mottram carried a stout ash stick. Had the priest been there he would
+perchance have noticed that the man's hand twitched and moved restlessly
+as he swung his stick about; but Catherine only became aware that her
+companion was preoccupied and uneasy after they had gone some way.
+
+When, however, the fact of his unease seemed forced upon her notice, she
+felt suddenly angered. There was a quality in Mrs. Nagle that made her
+ever ready to rise to meet and conquer circumstance. She told herself,
+with heightened colour, that James Mottram should and must return to his
+old ways--to his old familiar footing with her. Anything else would be,
+nay was, intolerable.
+
+"James,"--she turned to him frankly--"why have you not come over to see
+us lately as often as you did? Charles misses you sadly, and so do I.
+Prepare to find him in a bad mood to-day. But just now he distressed
+Mr. Dorriforth by his unreasonableness touching the railroad." She
+smiled and went on lightly, "He said that you were a false friend to
+him--a traitor!"
+
+And then Catherine Nagle stopped and caught her breath. God! Why had she
+said that? But Mottram had evidently not caught the sinister word, and
+Catherine in haste drove back conscience into the lair whence conscience
+had leapt so suddenly to her side.
+
+"Maybe I ought, in this matter of the railroad," he said musingly, "to
+have humoured Charles. I am now sorry I did not do so. After all,
+Charles may be right--and all we others wrong. The railroad may not
+bring us lasting good!"
+
+Catherine looked at him surprised. James Mottram had always been so sure
+of himself in this matter; but now there was dejection, weariness in his
+voice; and he was walking quickly, more quickly up the steep incline
+than Mrs. Nagle found agreeable. But she also hastened her steps,
+telling herself, with wondering pain, that he was evidently in no mood
+for her company.
+
+"Mr. Dorriforth has already been here two days," she observed
+irrelevantly.
+
+"Aye, I know that. It was to see him I came to-day; and I will ask you
+to spare him to me for two or three hours. Indeed, I propose that he
+should walk back with me to the Eype. I wish him to witness my new will.
+And then I may as well go to confession, for it is well to be shriven
+before a journey, though for my part I feel ever safer on sea than
+land!"
+
+Mottram looked straight before him as he spoke.
+
+"A journey?" Catherine repeated the words in a low, questioning tone.
+There had come across her heart a feeling of such anguish that it was as
+though her body instead of her soul were being wrenched asunder. In her
+extremity she called on pride--and pride, ever woman's most loyal
+friend, flew to her aid.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, still staring straight in front of him, "I leave
+to-morrow for Plymouth. I have had letters from my agent in Jamaica
+which make it desirable that I should return there without delay." He
+dug his stick into the soft earth as he spoke.
+
+James Mottram was absorbed in himself, in his own desire to carry
+himself well in his fierce determination to avoid betraying what he
+believed to be his secret. But Catherine Nagle knew nothing of this.
+She almost thought him indifferent.
+
+They had come to a steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly
+quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he
+could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she
+desired to say were strangled, at birth, in her throat.
+
+"Charles will not mind; he will not miss me as he would have missed me
+before this unhappy business of the railroad came between us," Mottram
+said lamely.
+
+She still made no answer; instead she shook her head with an impatient
+gesture. Her silence made him sorry. After all, he had been a good
+friend to Catherine Nagle--so much he could tell himself without shame.
+He stepped aside on to the grass, and striding forward turned round and
+faced her.
+
+The tears were rolling down her cheeks; but she threw back her head and
+met his gaze with a cold, almost a defiant look. "You startled me
+greatly," she said breathlessly, "and took me so by surprise, James! I
+am grieved to think how Charles--nay, how we shall both--miss you. It is
+of Charles I think, James; it is for Charles I weep----"
+
+As she uttered the lying words, she still looked proudly into his face
+as if daring him to doubt her. "But I shall never forget--I shall ever
+think with gratitude of your great goodness to my poor Charles. Two
+years out of your life--that's what it's been, James. Too much--too much
+by far!" She had regained control over her quivering heart, and it was
+with a wan smile that she added, "But we shall miss you, dear, kind
+friend."
+
+Her smile stung him. "Catherine," he said sternly, "I go because I
+must--because I dare not stay. You are a woman and a saint, I a man and
+a sinner. I've been a fool and worse than a fool. You say that Charles
+to-day called me false friend, traitor! Catherine--Charles spoke more
+truly than he knew."
+
+His burning eyes held her fascinated. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
+She was thirstily absorbing the words as they fell now slowly, now
+quickly, from his lips.
+
+But what was this he was saying? "Catherine, do you wish me to go on?"
+Oh, cruel! Cruel to put this further weight on her conscience! But she
+made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent--and again he spoke.
+
+"Years ago I thought I loved you. I went away, as you know well, because
+of that love. You had chosen Charles--Charles in many ways the better
+fellow of the two. I went away thinking myself sick with love of you,
+but it was false--only my pride had been hurt. I did not love you as I
+loved myself. And when I got clear away, in a new place, among new
+people"--he hesitated and reddened darkly--"I forgot you! I vow that
+when I came back I was cured--cured if ever a man was! It was of
+Charles, not of you, Catherine, that I thought on my way home. To me
+Charles and you had become one. I swear it!" He repeated: "To me you and
+Charles were one."
+
+He waited a long moment, and then, more slowly, he went on, as if
+pleading with himself--with her: "You know what I found here in place of
+what I had left? I found Charles a----"
+
+Catherine Nagle shrank back. She put up her right hand to ward off the
+word, and Mottram, seizing her hand, held it in his with a convulsive
+clasp. "'Twas not the old feeling that came back to me--that I again
+swear, Catherine. 'Twas something different--something infinitely
+stronger--something that at first I believed to be all noble----"
+
+He stopped speaking, and Catherine Nagle uttered one word--a curious
+word. "When?" she asked, and more urgently again she whispered, "When?"
+
+"Long before I knew!" he said hoarsely. "At first I called the passion
+that possessed me by the false name of 'friendship.' But that poor
+hypocrisy soon left me! A month ago, Catherine, I found myself
+wishing--I'll say this for myself, it was for the first time--that
+Charles was dead. And then I knew for sure what I had already long
+suspected--that the time had come for me to go----"
+
+He dropped her hand, and stood before her, abased in his own eyes, but
+one who, if a criminal, had had the strength to be his own judge and
+pass heavy sentence on himself.
+
+"And now, Catherine--now that you understand why I go, you will bid me
+God-speed. Nay, more"--he looked at her, and smiled wryly--"if you are
+kind, as I know you to be kind, you will pray for me, for I go from you
+a melancholy, as well as a foolish man."
+
+She smiled a strange little wavering smile, and Mottram was deeply moved
+by the gentleness with which Catherine Nagle had listened to his story.
+He had been prepared for an averted glance, for words of cold
+rebuke--such words as his own long-dead mother would surely have
+uttered to a man who had come to her with such a tale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked on for a while, and Catherine again broke the silence by a
+question which disturbed her companion. "Then your agent's letter was
+not really urgent, James?"
+
+"The letters of an honest agent always call for the owner," he muttered
+evasively.
+
+They reached the orchard gate. Catherine held the key in her hand, but
+she did not place it in the lock--instead she paused awhile. "Then there
+is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James--forgive me for asking
+it--are you, indeed, leaving England because of this--this matter of
+which you have just told me?"
+
+He bent his head in answer.
+
+Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
+I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
+Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
+voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
+disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
+charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
+house. You have been nursing the sick--nay, more, you have been
+tending"--she waited, then in a low voice she added--"the dead--the dead
+that are yet alive."
+
+Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.
+
+"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
+is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."
+
+"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
+fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.
+
+And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
+felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
+shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
+which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
+over scrupulous.
+
+There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
+poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
+another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
+presence. It was when he was alone--alone in his great house on the
+hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
+thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in her
+beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
+Nagle--poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
+kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
+Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
+man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.
+
+"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
+he bowed his head in reverence.
+
+They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
+terrace.
+
+Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
+bright, and that the rose-red colour in her cheeks had deepened as if
+she had been standing before a great fire.
+
+As they came within sight of Charles Nagle and of the old priest,
+Catherine put out her hand. She touched Mottram on the arm--it was a
+fleeting touch, but it brought them both, with beating hearts, to a
+stand. "James," she said, and then she stopped for a moment--a moment
+that seemed to contain �ons of mingled rapture and pain--"one word about
+Mr. Dorriforth." The commonplace words dropped them back to earth. "Did
+you wish him to stay with you till to-morrow? That will scarcely be
+possible, for to-morrow is St. Catherine's Day."
+
+"Why, no," he said quickly. "I will not take him home with me to-night.
+All my plans are now changed. My will can wait"--he smiled at her--"and
+so can my confession."
+
+"No, no!" she cried almost violently. "Your confession must not wait,
+James----"
+
+"Aye, but it must," he said, and again he smiled. "I am in no mood for
+confession, Catherine." He added in a lower tone, "you've purged me of
+my sin, my dear--I feel already shriven."
+
+Shame of a very poignant quality suddenly seared Catherine Nagle's soul.
+"Go on, you," she said breathlessly, though to his ears she seemed to
+speak in her usual controlled and quiet tones, "I have some orders to
+give in the house. Join Charles and Mr. Dorriforth. I will come out
+presently."
+
+James Mottram obeyed her. He walked quickly forward. "Good news,
+Charles," he cried. "These railway men whose presence so offends you go
+for good to-morrow! Reverend sir, accept my hearty greeting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine Nagle turned to the right and went into the house. She
+hastened through the rooms in which, year in and year out, she spent
+her life, with Charles as her perpetual, her insistent companion. She
+now longed for a time of recollection and secret communion, and so she
+instinctively made for the one place where no one, not even Charles,
+would come and disturb her.
+
+Walking across the square hall, she ran up the broad staircase leading
+to the gallery, out of which opened the doors of her bedroom and of her
+husband's dressing-room. But she went swiftly past these two closed
+doors, and made her way along a short passage which terminated abruptly
+with a faded red baize door giving access to the chapel.
+
+Long, low-ceilinged and windowless, the chapel of Edgecombe Manor had
+remained unaltered since the time when there were heavy penalties
+attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
+of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
+opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
+on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
+congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
+permitted of Mass being celebrated there.
+
+Catherine went up close to the altar rails, and sat down on the
+arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
+to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
+been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
+taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
+a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.
+
+Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
+exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
+the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
+moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
+things to her--of happiness and shrinking shame....
+
+But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
+her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
+Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
+of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit--but Catherine Nagle called
+it by a harsher name--which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
+on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
+appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
+the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
+honour, who was playing traitor--and traitor to one at once confiding
+and defenceless....
+
+Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
+conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
+care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
+never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
+Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
+Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
+been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
+and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk--only a few hours later to
+come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
+I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided his caresses had
+kissed him of her own accord with tears, and cried, "No, no, Charles,
+you never offend me--you are always good to me!"
+
+There had been a moment to-day, just before she had taunted James
+Mottram with being over-scrupulous, when she had told herself that she
+could be loyal to both of these men she loved and who loved her, giving
+to each a different part of her heart.
+
+But that bargain with conscience had never been struck; while
+considering it she had found herself longing for some convulsion of the
+earth which should throw her and Mottram in each other's arms.
+
+James Mottram traitor? That was what she was about to make him be.
+Catherine forced herself to face the remorse, the horror, the loathing
+of himself which would ensue.
+
+It was for Mottram's sake, far more than in response to the command laid
+on her by her own soul, that Catherine Nagle finally determined on the
+act of renunciation which she knew was being immediately required of
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mrs. Nagle came out on the terrace the three men rose
+ceremoniously. She glanced at Charles, even now her first thought and
+her first care. His handsome face was overcast with the look of gloomy
+preoccupation which she had learnt to fear, though she knew that in
+truth it signified but little. At James Mottram she did not look, for
+she wished to husband her strength for what she was about to do.
+
+Making a sign to the others to sit down, she herself remained standing
+behind Charles's chair. It was from there that she at last spoke,
+instinctively addressing her words to the old priest.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "if James has told you of his approaching
+departure? He has heard from his agent in Jamaica that his presence is
+urgently required there."
+
+Charles Nagle looked up eagerly. "This is news indeed!" he exclaimed.
+"Lucky fellow! Why, you'll escape all the trouble that you've put on us
+with regard to that puffing devil!" He spoke more cordially than he had
+done for a long time to his cousin.
+
+Mr. Dorriforth glanced for a moment up at Catherine's face. Then quickly
+he averted his eyes.
+
+James Mottram rose to his feet. His limbs seemed to have aged. He gave
+Catherine a long, probing look.
+
+"Forgive me," he said deliberately. "You mistook my meaning. The matter
+is not as urgent, Catherine, as you thought." He turned to Charles, "I
+will not desert my friends--at any rate not for the present. I'll face
+the puffing devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"
+
+But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
+boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
+thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
+comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
+immediately.
+
+"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
+looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
+come over to-morrow morning--to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
+is St. Catherine's Day--that this is St. Catherine's Eve."
+
+Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
+heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
+breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
+matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."
+
+For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
+with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
+Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.
+
+"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
+service!"
+
+Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
+"No need for you to go round by the road."
+
+They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
+stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
+to part, he spoke:
+
+"You bid me go--at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
+tone; but he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
+following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
+their feet.
+
+"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
+Nagle uttered sounded very cold.
+
+"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
+"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
+wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
+Charles--I swear it solemnly. Catherine!--do not bid me leave you.
+Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
+become beseeching and imperious.
+
+Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
+"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own----" And as she thus made
+surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
+womanly reticence, Mottram's face--the plain-featured face so
+exquisitely dear to her--became transfigured. He said no word, he made
+no step forward, and yet Catherine felt as if the whole of his being was
+calling her, drawing her to him....
+
+Suddenly there rang through the still air a discordant cry: "Catherine!
+Catherine!"
+
+Mrs. Nagle sighed, a long convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit
+had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she
+whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I must not keep him waiting."
+
+"God forgive me," Mottram said huskily, "and bless you, Catherine, for
+all your goodness to me." He took her hand in farewell, and she felt the
+firm, kind grasp to be that of the kinsman and friend, not that of the
+lover.
+
+Then came over her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She
+realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to
+her--of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human
+being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely.
+Charles had been their common charge, the link as well as the barrier
+between them.
+
+"You'll come to-morrow morning?" she said, and she tried to withdraw her
+hand from his. His impersonal touch hurt her.
+
+"I'll come to-morrow, and rather early, Catherine. Then I'll be able to
+confess before Mass." He was speaking in his usual voice, but he still
+held her hand, and she felt his grip on it tightening, bringing welcome
+hurt.
+
+"And you'll leave----?"
+
+"For Plymouth to-morrow afternoon," he said briefly. He dropped her
+hand, which now felt numbed and maimed, and passed through the gate
+without looking back.
+
+She stood a moment watching him as he strode down the field path. It had
+suddenly become, from day, night,--high time for Charles to be indoors.
+
+Forgetting to lock the gate, she turned and retraced her steps through
+the orchard, and so made her way up to where her husband and the old
+priest were standing awaiting her.
+
+As she approached them, she became aware that something going on in the
+valley below was absorbing their close attention. She felt glad that
+this was so.
+
+"There it is!" cried Charles Nagle angrily. "I told you that they'd
+begin their damned practice again to-night!"
+
+Slowly through the stretch of open country which lay spread to their
+right, the Bridport Wonder went puffing its way. Lanterns had been hung
+in front of the engine, and as it crawled sinuously along it looked like
+some huge monster with myriad eyes. As it entered the wood below, the
+dark barrel-like body of the engine seemed to give a bound, a lurch
+forward, and the men that manned it laughed out suddenly and loudly. The
+sound of their uncouth mirth floated upwards through the twilight.
+
+"James's ale has made them merry!" exclaimed Charles, wagging his head.
+"And he, going through the wood, will just have met the puffing devil. I
+wish him the joy of the meeting!"
+
+
+II
+
+It was five hours later. Mrs. Nagle had bidden her reverend guest good
+night, and she was now moving about her large, barely furnished
+bedchamber, waiting for her husband to come upstairs.
+
+The hours which had followed James Mottram's departure had seemed
+intolerably long. Catherine felt as if she had gone through some
+terrible physical exertion which had left her worn out--stupefied. And
+yet she could not rest. Even now her day was not over; Charles often
+grew restless and talkative at night. He and Mr. Dorriforth were no
+doubt still sitting talking together downstairs.
+
+Mrs. Nagle could hear her husband's valet moving about in the next room,
+and the servant's proximity disturbed her.
+
+She waited awhile and then went and opened the door of the
+dressing-room. "You need not sit up, Collins," she said.
+
+The man looked vaguely disturbed. "I fear that Mr. Nagle, madam, has
+gone out of doors," he said.
+
+Catherine felt dismayed. The winter before Charles had once stayed out
+nearly all night.
+
+"Go you to bed, Collins," she said. "I will wait up till Mr. Nagle comes
+in, and I will make it right with him."
+
+He looked at her doubtingly. Was it possible that Mrs. Nagle was unaware
+of how much worse than usual his master had been the last few days?
+
+"I fear Mr. Nagle is not well to-day," he ventured. "He seems much
+disturbed to-night."
+
+"Your master is disturbed because Mr. Mottram is again leaving England
+for the Indies." Catherine forced herself to say the words. She was
+dully surprised to see how quietly news so momentous to her was received
+by her faithful servant.
+
+"That may be it," said the man consideringly, "but I can't help thinking
+that the master is still much concerned about the railroad. I fear that
+he has gone down to the wood to-night."
+
+Catherine was startled. "Oh, surely he would not do that, Collins?" She
+added in a lower tone, "I myself locked the orchard gate."
+
+"If that is so," he answered, obviously relieved, "then with your leave,
+madam, I'll be off to bed."
+
+Mrs. Nagle went back into her room, and sat down by the fire, and then,
+sooner than she had expected to do so, she heard a familiar sound. It
+came from the chapel, for Charles was fond of using that strange and
+secret entry into his house.
+
+She got up and quietly opened her bedroom door.
+
+From the hall below was cast up the dim light of the oil-lamp which
+always burnt there at night, and suddenly Catherine saw her husband
+emerge from the chapel passage, and begin walking slowly round the
+opposite side of the gallery. She watched him with languid curiosity.
+
+Charles Nagle was treading softly, his head bent as if in thought.
+Suddenly he stayed his steps by a half-moon table on which stood a large
+Chinese bowl filled with pot-pourri; and into this he plunged his hands,
+seeming to lave them in the dry rose-leaves. Catherine felt no surprise,
+she was so used to his strange ways; and more than once he had hidden
+things--magpie fashion--in that great bowl. She turned and closed her
+door noiselessly; Charles much disliked being spied on.
+
+At last she heard him go into his dressing-room. Then came the sounds of
+cupboard doors being flung open, and the hurried pouring out of
+water.... But long before he could have had time to undress, she heard
+the familiar knock.
+
+She said feebly, "Come in," and the door opened.
+
+It was as she had feared; her husband had no thought, no intention, of
+going yet to bed. Not only was he fully dressed, but the white evening
+waistcoat he had been wearing had been changed by him within the last
+few moments for a waistcoat she had not seen before, though she had
+heard of its arrival from London. It was of cashmere, the latest freak
+of fashion. She also saw with surprise that his nankeen trousers were
+stained, as if he had been kneeling on damp ground. He looked very hot,
+his wavy hair lay damply on his brow, and he appeared excited,
+oppressively alive.
+
+"Catherine!" he exclaimed, hurrying up to the place where she was
+standing near the fire. "You will bear witness that I was always and
+most positively averse to the railroad being brought here?" He did not
+wait for her to answer him. "Did I not always say that trouble would
+come of it--trouble to us all? Yet sometimes it's an ill thing to be
+proved right."
+
+"Indeed it is, Charles," she answered gently. "But let us talk of this
+to-morrow. It's time for bed, my dear, and I am very weary."
+
+He was now standing by her, staring down into the fire.
+
+Suddenly he turned and seized her left arm. He brought her unresisting
+across the room, then dragged aside the heavy yellow curtains which had
+been drawn before the central window.
+
+"Look over there, Catherine," he said meaningly. "Can you see the Eype?
+The moon gives but little light to-night, but the stars are bright. I
+can see a glimmer at yon window. They must be still waiting for James to
+come home."
+
+"I see the glimmer you mean," she said dully. "No doubt they leave a
+lamp burning all night, as we do. James must have got home hours ago,
+Charles." She saw that the cuff of her husband's coat was also covered
+with dark, damp stains, and again she wondered uneasily what he had been
+doing out of doors.
+
+"Catherine?" Charles Nagle turned her round, ungently, and forced her to
+look up into his face. "Have you ever thought what 'twould be like to
+live at the Eype?"
+
+The question startled her. She roused herself to refute what she felt to
+be an unworthy accusation. "No, Charles," she said, looking at him
+steadily. "God is my witness that at no time did I think of living at
+the Eype! Such a wish never came to me----"
+
+"Nor to me!" he cried, "nor to me, Catherine! All the long years that
+James Mottram was in Jamaica the thought never once came to me that he
+might die, and I survive him. After all we were much of an age, he had
+but two years the advantage of me. I always thought that the boy--my
+aunt's son, curse him!--would get it all. Then, had I thought of it--and
+I swear I never did think of it--I should have told myself that any day
+James might bring a wife to the Eype----"
+
+He was staring through the leaded panes with an intent, eager gaze. "It
+is a fine house, Catherine, and commodious. Larger, airier than
+ours--though perhaps colder," he added thoughtfully. "Cold I always
+found it in winter when I used to stay there as a boy--colder than this
+house. You prefer Edgecombe, Catherine? If you were given a choice, is
+it here that you would live?" He looked at her, as if impatient for an
+answer.
+
+"Every stone of Edgecombe, our home, is dear to me," she said solemnly.
+"I have never admired the Eype. It is too large, too cold for my taste.
+It stands too much exposed to the wind."
+
+"It does! it does!" There was a note of regret in his voice. He let the
+curtain fall and looked about him rather wildly.
+
+"And now, Charles," she said, "shall we not say our prayers and retire
+to rest."
+
+"If I had only thought of it," he said, "I might have said my prayers in
+the chapel. But there was much to do. I thought of calling you,
+Catherine, for you make a better sacristan than I. Then I remembered
+Boney--poor little Boney crushed by the miller's dray--and how you cried
+all night, and that though I promised you a far finer, cleverer dog than
+that poor old friend had ever been. Collins said, 'Why, sir, you should
+have hid the old dog's death from the mistress till the morning!' A
+worthy fellow, Collins. He meant no disrespect to me. At that time,
+d'you remember, Collins had only been in my service a few months?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour later. From where she lay in bed, Catherine Nagle with
+dry, aching eyes stared into the fire, watching the wood embers turn
+from red to grey. By her side, his hand in hers, Charles slept the
+dreamless, heavy slumber of a child.
+
+Scarcely breathing, in her anxiety lest he should wake, she loosened her
+hand, and with a quick movement slipped out of bed. The fire was burning
+low, but Catherine saw everything in the room very clearly, and she
+threw over her night-dress a long cloak, and wound about her head the
+scarf which she had worn during her walk to the wood.
+
+It was not the first time Mrs. Nagle had risen thus in the still night
+and sought refuge from herself and from her thoughts in the chapel; and
+her husband had never missed her from his side.
+
+As she crept round the dimly lit gallery she passed by the great bowl of
+pot-pourri by which Charles Nagle had lingered, and there came to her
+the thought that it might perchance be well for her to discover, before
+the servants should have a chance of doing so, what he had doubtless
+hidden there.
+
+Catherine plunged both her hands into the scented rose-leaves, and she
+gave a sudden cry of pain--for her fingers had closed on the sharp edge
+of a steel blade. Then she drew out a narrow damascened knife, one
+which her husband, taken by its elegant shape, had purchased long
+before in Italy.
+
+Mrs. Nagle's brow furrowed in vexation--Collins should have put the
+dangerous toy out of his master's reach. Slipping the knife into the
+deep pocket of her cloak, she hurried on into the unlit passage leading
+to the chapel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Save for the hanging lamp, which since Mr. Dorriforth had said Mass
+there that morning signified the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the
+chapel should have been in darkness. But as Catherine passed through the
+door she saw, with sudden, uneasy amazement, the farther end of the
+chapel in a haze of brightness.
+
+Below the altar, striking upwards from the floor of the sanctuary,
+gleamed a corona of light. Charles--she could not for a moment doubt
+that it was Charles's doing--had moved the six high, heavy silver
+candlesticks which always stood on either side of the altar, and had
+placed them on the ground.
+
+There, in a circle, the wax candles blazed, standing sentinel-wise about
+a dark, round object which was propped up on a pile of altar-linen
+carefully arranged to support it.
+
+Fear clutched at Catherine's heart--such fear as even in the early days
+of Charles's madness had never clutched it. She was filled with a
+horrible dread, and a wild, incredulous dismay.
+
+What was the Thing, at once so familiar and so terribly strange, that
+Charles had brought out of the November night and placed with so much
+care below the altar?
+
+But the thin flames of the candles, now shooting up, now guttering low,
+blown on by some invisible current of strong air, gave no steady light.
+
+Staying still close to the door, she sank down on her knees, and
+desiring to shut out, obliterate, the awful sight confronting her, she
+pressed both her hands to her eyes. But that availed her nothing.
+
+Suddenly there rose up before Catherine Nagle a dreadful scene of that
+great Revolution drama of which she had been so often told as a child.
+She saw, with terrible distinctness, the severed heads of men and women
+borne high on iron pikes, and one of these blood-streaked, livid faces
+was that of James Mottram--the wide-open, sightless eyes, his eyes....
+
+There also came back to her as she knelt there, shivering with cold and
+anguish, the story of a French girl of noble birth who, having bought
+her lover's head from the executioner, had walked with it in her arms
+to the village near Paris where stood his deserted ch�teau.
+
+Slowly she rose from her knees, and with her hands thrown out before
+her, she groped her way to the wall and there crept along, as if a
+precipice lay on her other side.
+
+At last she came to the narrow oak door which gave on to the staircase
+leading into the open air. The door was ajar; it was from there that
+blew the current of air which caused those thin, fantastic flames to
+flare and gutter in the awful stillness.
+
+She drew the door to, and went on her way, so round to the altar. In the
+now steadier light Catherine saw that the large missal lay open at the
+Office for the Dead.
+
+She laid her hands with a blind instinct upon the altar, and felt a
+healing touch upon their palms. Henceforth--and Catherine Nagle was
+fated to live many long years--she remained persuaded that it was then
+there had come to her a shaft of divine light piercing the dark recesses
+of her soul. For it was at that moment that there came to her the
+conviction, and one which never faltered, that Charles Nagle had done no
+injury to James Mottram. And there also came to her then the swift
+understanding of what others would believe, were there to be found in
+the private chapel of Edgecombe Manor that which now lay on the ground
+behind her, close to her feet.
+
+So understanding, Catherine suddenly saw the way open before her, and
+the dread thing which she must do if Charles were to be saved from a
+terrible suspicion--one which would undoubtedly lead to his being taken
+away from her and from all that his poor, atrophied heart held dear, to
+be asylumed.
+
+With steps that did not falter, Catherine Nagle went behind the altar
+into the little sacristy, there to seek in the darkness an altar-cloth.
+
+Holding the cloth up before her face she went back into the lighted
+chapel, and kneeling down, she uncovered her face and threw the cloth
+over what lay before her.
+
+And then Catherine's teeth began to chatter, and a mortal chill overtook
+her. She was being faced by a new and to her a most dread enemy, for
+till to-night she and that base physical fear which is the coward's foe
+had never met. Pressing her hands together, she whispered the short,
+simple prayer for the Faithful Departed that she had said so often and,
+she now felt, so unmeaningly. Even as she uttered the familiar words,
+base Fear slunk away, leaving in his place her soul's old companion,
+Courage, and his attendant, Peace.
+
+She rose to her feet, and opening wide her eyes forced herself to think
+out what must be done by her in order that no trace of Charles's
+handiwork should remain in the chapel.
+
+Snuffing out the wicks, Catherine lifted the candlesticks from the
+ground and put them back in their accustomed place upon the altar. Then,
+stooping, she forced herself to wrap up closely in the altar-cloth that
+which must be her burden till she found James Mottram's headless body
+where Charles had left it, and placing that same precious burden within
+the ample folds of her cloak, she held it with her left hand and arm
+closely pressed to her bosom....
+
+With her right hand she gathered up the pile of stained altar-linen from
+the ground, and going once more into the sacristy she thrust it into the
+oak chest in which were kept the Lenten furnishings of the altar. Having
+done that, and walking slowly lest she should trip and fall, she made
+her way to the narrow door Charles had left open to the air, and going
+down the steep stairway was soon out of doors in the dark and windy
+night.
+
+Charles had been right, the moon gave but little light; enough, however,
+so she told herself, for the accomplishment of her task.
+
+She sped swiftly along the terrace, keeping close under the house, and
+then more slowly walked down the stone steps where last time she trod
+them Mottram had been her companion, his living lips as silent as were
+his dead lips now.
+
+The orchard gate was wide open, and as she passed through there came to
+Catherine Nagle the knowledge why Charles on his way back from the wood
+had not even latched it; he also, when passing through it, had been
+bearing a burden....
+
+She walked down the field path; and when she came to the steep place
+where Mottram had told her that he was going away, the tears for the
+first time began running down Catherine's face. She felt again the
+sharp, poignant pain which his then cold and measured words had dealt
+her, and the blow this time fell on a bruised heart. With a convulsive
+gesture she pressed more closely that which she was holding to her
+desolate breast.
+
+At night the woodland is strangely, curiously alive. Catherine shuddered
+as she heard the stuffless sounds, the tiny rustlings and burrowings of
+those wild, shy creatures whose solitude had lately been so rudely
+invaded, and who now of man's night made their day. Their myriad
+presence made her human loneliness more intense than it had been in the
+open fields, and as she started walking by the side of the iron rails,
+her eyes fixed on the dark drift of dead leaves which dimly marked the
+path, she felt solitary indeed, and beset with vague and fearsome
+terrors.
+
+At last she found herself nearing the end of the wood. Soon would come
+the place where what remained of the cart-track struck sharply to the
+left, up the hill towards the Eype.
+
+It was there, close to the open, that Catherine Nagle's quest ended; and
+that she was able to accomplish the task she had set herself, of making
+that which Charles had rendered incomplete, complete as men, considering
+the flesh, count completeness.
+
+Within but a few yards of safety, James Mottram had met with death; a
+swift, merciful death, due to the negligence of an engine-driver not
+only new to his work but made blindly merry by Mottram's gift of ale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles Nagle woke late on the morning of St. Catherine's Day, and the
+pale November sun fell on the fully dressed figures of his wife and Mr.
+Dorriforth standing by his bedside.
+
+But Charles, absorbed as always in himself, saw nothing untoward in
+their presence.
+
+"I had a dream!" he exclaimed. "A most horrible and gory dream this
+night! I thought I was in the wood; James Mottram lay before me, done
+to death by that puffing devil we saw slithering by so fast. His head
+nearly severed--_� la guillotine_, you understand, my love?--from his
+poor body----" There was a curious, secretive smile on Charles Nagle's
+pale, handsome face.
+
+Catherine Nagle gave a cry, a stifled shriek of horror.
+
+The priest caught her by the arm and led her to the couch which stood
+across the end of the bed.
+
+"Charles," he said sternly, "this is no light matter. Your
+dream--there's not a doubt of it--was sent you in merciful preparation
+for the awful truth. Your kinsman, your almost brother, Charles, was
+found this morning in the wood, dead as you saw him in your dream."
+
+The face of the man sitting up in bed stiffened--was it with fear or
+grief? "They found James Mottram dead?" he repeated with an uneasy
+glance in the direction of the couch where crouched his wife. "And his
+head, most reverend sir--what of his head?"
+
+"James Mottram's body was terribly mangled. But his head," answered the
+priest solemnly, "was severed from his body, as you saw it in your
+dream, Charles. A strangely clean cut, it seems----"
+
+"Ay," said Charles Nagle. "That was in my dream too; if I said nearly
+severed, I said wrong."
+
+Catherine was now again standing by the priest's side.
+
+"Charles," she said gravely, "you must now get up; Mr. Dorriforth is
+only waiting for you, to say Mass for James's soul."
+
+She made the sign of the cross, and then, with her right hand shading
+her sunken eyes, she went on, "My dear, I entreat you to tell no
+one--not even faithful Collins--of this awful dream. We want no such
+tale spread about the place----"
+
+She looked at the old priest entreatingly, and he at once responded.
+"Catherine is right, Charles. We of the Faith should be more careful
+with regard to such matters than are the ignorant and superstitious."
+
+But he was surprised to hear the woman by his side say insistently,
+"Charles, if only to please me, vow that you will keep most secret this
+dreadful dream. I fear that if it should come to your Aunt Felwake's
+ears----"
+
+"That I swear it shall not," said Charles sullenly.
+
+And he kept his word.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY
+
+    "... not dead, this friend--not dead,
+    But, in the path we mortals tread,
+    Got some few, little steps ahead
+      And nearer to the end,
+    So that you, too, once past the bend,
+    Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
+      You fancy dead."
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Barlow, the prettiest and the happiest and the best dressed of the
+young wives of Summerfield, was walking toward the Catholic Church. She
+was going to consult the old priest as to her duty to an unsatisfactory
+servant; for Agnes Barlow was a conscientious as well as a pretty and a
+happy woman.
+
+Foolish people are fond of quoting a foolish gibe: "Be good, and you may
+be happy; but you will not have a good time." The wise, however, soon
+become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve
+goodness and happiness, you will almost certainly have a good time too.
+
+So, at least, Agnes Barlow had found in her own short life. Her
+excellent parents had built one of the first new houses in what had then
+been the pretty, old-fashioned village of Summerfield, some fifteen
+miles from London. There she had been born; there she had spent
+delightful years at the big convent school over the hill; there she had
+grown up into a singularly pretty girl; and there, finally--it had
+seemed quite final to Agnes--she had met the clever, fascinating young
+lawyer, Frank Barlow.
+
+Frank had soon become the lover all her girl friends had envied her, and
+then the husband who was still--so he was fond of saying and of proving
+in a dozen dear little daily ways--as much in love with her as on the
+day they were married. They lived in a charming house called The Haven,
+and they were the proud parents of a fine little boy, named Francis
+after his father, who never had any of the tiresome ailments which
+afflict other people's children.
+
+But strange, dreadful things do happen--not often, of course, but just
+now and again--even in this delightful world! So thought Agnes Barlow on
+this pleasant May afternoon; for, as she walked to church, this pretty,
+happy, good woman found her thoughts dwelling uncomfortably on another
+woman, her sometime intimate friend and contemporary, who was neither
+good nor happy.
+
+This was Teresa Maldo, the lovely half-Spanish girl who had been her
+favourite schoolmate at the convent over the hill.
+
+Poor, foolish, unhappy, wicked Teresa! Only ten days ago Teresa had done
+a thing so extraordinary, so awful, so unprecedented, that Agnes Barlow
+had thought of little else ever since. Teresa Maldo had eloped, gone
+right away from her home and her husband, and with a married man!
+
+Teresa and Agnes were the same age; they had had the same upbringing;
+they were both--in a very different way, however--beautiful, and they
+had each been married, six years before, on the same day of the month.
+
+But how different had been their subsequent fates!
+
+Teresa had at once discovered that her husband drank. But she loved him,
+and for a while it seemed as if marriage would reform Maldo.
+Unfortunately, this better state of things did not last: he again began
+to drink: and the matrons of Summerfield soon had reason to shake their
+heads over the way Teresa Maldo went on.
+
+Men, you see, were so sorry for this lovely young woman, blessed (or
+cursed) with what old-fashioned folk call "the come-hither eye," that
+they made it their business to console her for such a worthless husband
+as was Maldo. No wonder Teresa and Agnes drifted apart; no wonder Frank
+Barlow soon forbade his spotless Agnes to accept Mrs. Maldo's
+invitations. And Agnes knew that her dear Frank was right; she had never
+much enjoyed her visits to Teresa's house.
+
+But an odd thing had happened about a fortnight ago. And it was to this
+odd happening that Agnes's mind persistently recurred each time she
+found herself alone.
+
+About three days before Teresa Maldo had done the mad and wicked thing
+of which all Summerfield was still talking, she had paid a long call on
+Agnes Barlow.
+
+The unwelcome guest had stayed a very long time; she had talked, as she
+generally did talk now, wildly and rather strangely; and Agnes, looking
+back, was glad to remember that no one else had come in while her old
+schoolfellow was there.
+
+When, at last, Teresa Maldo had made up her mind to go (luckily, some
+minutes before Frank was due home from town), Agnes accompanied her to
+the gate of The Haven, and there the other had turned round and made
+such odd remarks.
+
+"I came to tell you something!" she had exclaimed. "But, now that I see
+you looking so happy, so pretty, and--forgive me for saying so,
+Agnes--so horribly good, I feel that I can't tell you! But, Agnes,
+whatever happens, you must pity, and--and, if you can, understand me."
+
+It was now painfully clear to Agnes Barlow that Teresa had come that day
+intending to tell her once devoted friend of the wicked thing she meant
+to do; and more than once pretty and good Mrs. Barlow had asked herself
+uneasily whether she could have done anything to stop Teresa on her
+downward course.
+
+But no; Agnes felt her conscience clear. How would it have been possible
+for her even to discuss with Teresa so shameful a possibility as that of
+a woman leaving her husband with another man?
+
+Agnes thought of the two sinners with a touch of fascinated curiosity.
+They were said to be in Paris, and Teresa was probably having a very
+good time--a wildly amusing, exciting time.
+
+She even told herself, did this pretty, happy, fortunate young married
+woman, that it was strange, and not very fair, that vice and pleasure
+should always go together! It was just a little irritating to know that
+Teresa would never again be troubled by the kind of worries that played
+quite an important part in Agnes's own blameless life. Never again, for
+instance, would Teresa's cook give her notice, as Agnes's cook had given
+her notice that morning. It was about that matter she wished to see
+Father Ferguson, for it was through the priest she had heard of the
+impertinent Irish girl who cooked so well, but who had such an
+independent manner, and who would _not_ wear a cap!
+
+Yes, it certainly seemed unfair that Teresa would now be rid of all
+domestic worries--nay, more, that the woman who had sinned would live in
+luxurious hotels, motoring and shopping all day, going to the theatre or
+to a music-hall each night.
+
+At last, however, Agnes dismissed Teresa Maldo from her mind. She knew
+that it is not healthy to dwell overmuch on such people and their
+doings.
+
+The few acquaintances Mrs. Barlow met on her way smiled and nodded, but,
+as she was walking rather quickly, no one tried to stop her. She had
+chosen the back way to the church because it was the prettiest way, and
+also because it would take her by a house where a friend of hers was
+living in lodgings.
+
+And suddenly the very friend in question--his name was Ferrier--came out
+of his lodgings. He had a tall, slight, active figure; he was dressed in
+a blue serge suit, and, though it was still early spring, he wore a
+straw hat.
+
+Agnes smiled a little inward smile. She was, as we already know, a very
+good as well as a happy woman. But a woman as pretty as was Agnes Barlow
+meets with frequent pleasant occasions of withstanding temptation, of
+which those about her, especially her dear parents and her kind husband,
+are often curiously unknowing. And the tall, well-set-up masculine
+figure now hurrying toward her with such eager steps played a
+considerable part in Agnes's life, if only as constantly providing her
+with occasions of acquiring merit.
+
+Agnes knew very well--even the least imaginative woman is always acutely
+conscious of such a fact--that, had she not been a prudent and a
+ladylike as well as (of course) a very good woman, this clever,
+agreeable, interesting young man would have made love to her. As it was,
+he (of course) did nothing of the kind. He did not even try to flirt
+with her, as our innocent Agnes understood that much-tried verb; and she
+regarded their friendship as a pleasant interlude in her placid,
+well-regulated existence, and as a most excellent influence on his more
+agitated life.
+
+Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat. He smiled down into Agnes's blue eyes. What
+very charming, nay, what beautiful eyes they were! Deeply, exquisitely
+blue, but unshadowed, as innocent of guile, as are a child's eyes.
+
+"Somehow, I had a kind of feeling that you would be coming by just now,"
+he said in a rather hesitating voice; "so I left my work and came out on
+chance."
+
+Now, Agnes was very much interested in Mr. Ferrier's work. Mr. Ferrier
+was not only a writer--the only writer she had ever known; he was also a
+poet. She had been pleasantly thrilled the day he had given her a slim
+little book, on each page of which was a poem. This gift had been made
+when they had known each other only two months, and he had inscribed it:
+"From G. G. F. to A. M. B."
+
+Mr. Ferrier had a charming studio flat in Chelsea, that odd, remote
+place where London artists live, far from the pleasant London of the
+shops and theatres which was all Agnes knew of the great City near which
+she dwelt. But he always spent the summer in the country, and his summer
+lasted from the 1st of May till the 1st of October. He had already
+spent two holidays at Summerfield, and had been a great deal at The
+Haven.
+
+When with Mr. Ferrier, and they were much together during the long
+week-days when Summerfield is an Adamless Eden, Agnes Barlow made a
+point of often speaking of dear Frank and of Frank's love for her,--not,
+of course, in a way that any one could have regarded as silly, but in a
+natural, happy, simple way.
+
+How easy, how very easy, it is to keep this kind of
+friendship--friendship between a man and a woman--within bounds! And how
+terribly sad it was to think that Teresa Maldo had not known how to do
+that easy thing! But then, Teresa's lover had been a married man
+separated from his wife, and that doubtless made all the difference.
+Agnes Barlow could assure herself in all sincerity that, had Mr. Ferrier
+been the husband of another woman, she would never have allowed him to
+become her friend to the extent that he was now.
+
+Mr. Ferrier--Agnes never allowed herself to think of him as Gerald
+(although he had once asked her to call him by his Christian name)--held
+an evening paper in his hand.
+
+"I was really on my way to The Haven," he observed, "for there are a few
+verses of mine in this paper which I am anxious you should read. Shall
+I go on and leave it at your house, or will you take it now? And then,
+if I may, I will call for it some time to-morrow. Should I be likely to
+find you in about four o'clock?"
+
+"Yes, I'll be in about four, and I think I'll take the paper now."
+
+And then--for she was walking very slowly, and Ferrier, with his hands
+behind his back, kept pace with her--Agnes could not resist the pleasure
+of looking down at the open sheet, for the newspaper was so turned about
+that she could see the little set of verses quite plainly.
+
+The poem was called "My Lady of the Snow," and it told in very pretty,
+complicated language of a beautiful, pure woman whom the writer loved in
+a desperate but quite respectful way.
+
+She grew rather red. "I must hurry on, for I am going to church," she
+said a little stiffly. "Good evening, Mr. Ferrier. Yes, I will keep the
+paper till to-morrow, if I may. I should like to show it to Frank. He
+hasn't been to the office to-day, for he isn't very well, and he will
+like to see an evening paper."
+
+Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat with a rather sad look, and turned back
+toward the house where he lodged. And as Agnes walked on she felt
+disturbed and a little uncomfortable. Her clever friend had evidently
+been grieved by her apparent lack of appreciation of his poem.
+
+When she reached the church her parents had helped to build, she went
+in, knelt down, and said a prayer. Then she got up and walked through
+into the sacristy. Father Ferguson was almost certain to be there just
+now.
+
+Agnes Barlow had known the old priest all her life. He had baptized her;
+he had been chaplain at the convent during the years she had been at
+school there; and now he had come back to be parish priest at
+Summerfield.
+
+When with Father Ferguson, Agnes somehow never felt quite so good as she
+did when she was by herself or with a strange priest; and yet Father
+Ferguson was always very kind to her.
+
+As she came into the sacristy he looked round with a smile. "Well?" he
+said. "Well, Agnes, my child, what can I do for you?"
+
+Agnes put the newspaper she was holding down on a chair. And then, to
+her surprise, Father Ferguson took up the paper and glanced over the
+front page. He was an intelligent man, and sometimes he found
+Summerfield a rather shut-in, stifling sort of place.
+
+But the priest's instinctive wish to know something of what was passing
+in the great world outside the suburb where it was his duty to dwell did
+him an ill turn, for something he read in the paper caused him to utter
+a low, quick exclamation of intense pain and horror.
+
+"What's the matter?" cried Agnes Barlow, frightened out of her usual
+self-complacency. "Whatever has happened, Father Ferguson?"
+
+He pointed with shaking finger to a small paragraph. It was headed
+"Suicide of a Lady at Dover," and Agnes read the few lines with
+bewildered and shocked amazement.
+
+Teresa Maldo, whom she had visioned, only a few minutes ago, as leading
+a merry, gloriously careless life with her lover, was dead. She had
+thrown herself out of a bedroom window in a hotel at Dover, and she had
+been killed instantly, dashed into a shapeless mass on the stones below.
+
+Agnes stared down at the curt, cold little paragraph with excited
+horror. She was six-and-twenty, but she had never seen death, and, as
+far as she knew, the girls with whom she had been at school were all
+living. Teresa--poor unhappy, sinful Teresa--had been the first to die,
+and by her own hand.
+
+The old priest's eyes slowly brimmed over with tears. "Poor, unhappy
+child!" he said, with a break in his voice. "Poor, unfortunate Teresa!
+I did not think, I should never have believed, that she would seek--and
+find--this terrible way out."
+
+Agnes was a little shocked at his broken words. True, Teresa had been
+very unhappy, and it was right to pity her; but she had also been very
+wicked; and now she had put, as it were, the seal on her wickedness by
+killing herself.
+
+"Three or four days before she went away she came and saw me," the
+priest went on, in a low, pained voice. "I did everything in my power to
+stop her, but I could do nothing--she had given her word!"
+
+"Given her word?" repeated Agnes wonderingly.
+
+"Yes," said Father Ferguson; "she had given that wretched, that wickedly
+selfish man her promise. She believed that if she broke her word he
+would kill himself. I begged her to go and see some woman--some kind,
+pitiful, understanding woman--but I suppose she feared lest such a one
+would dissuade her to more purpose than I was able to do."
+
+Agnes looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"She was very dear to my heart," the priest went on. "She was always a
+generous, unselfish child, and she was very, very fond of you, Agnes."
+
+Agnes's throat tightened. What Father Ferguson said was only too true.
+Teresa had always been a very generous and unselfish girl, and very,
+very fond of her. She wondered remorsefully if she had omitted to do or
+say anything she could have done or said on the day that poor Teresa had
+come and spoken such strange, wild words----?
+
+"It seems so awful," she said in a low voice, "so very, very awful to
+think that we may not even pray for her soul, Father Ferguson."
+
+"Not pray for her soul?" the priest repeated. "Why should we not pray
+for the poor child's soul? I shall certainly pray for Teresa's soul
+every day till I die."
+
+"But--but how can you do that, when she killed herself?"
+
+He looked at her surprised. "And do you really so far doubt God's mercy?
+Surely we may hope--nay, trust--that Teresa had time to make an act of
+contrition?" And then he muttered something--it sounded like a line or
+two of poetry--which Agnes did not quite catch; but she felt, as she
+often did feel when with Father Ferguson, at once rebuked and
+rebellious.
+
+Of course there _might_ have been time for Teresa to make an act of
+contrition. But every one knows that to take one's life is a deadly
+sin. Agnes felt quite sure that if it ever occurred to herself to do
+such a thing she would go straight to hell. Still, she was used to obey
+this old priest, and that even when she did not agree with him. So she
+followed him into the church, and side by side they knelt down and each
+said a separate prayer for the soul of Teresa Maldo.
+
+As Agnes Barlow walked slowly and soberly home, this time by the high
+road, she tried to remember the words, the lines of poetry, that Father
+Ferguson had muttered. They at once haunted and eluded her memory.
+Surely they could not be
+
+    Between the window and the ground,
+    She mercy sought and mercy found.
+
+No, Agnes was sure that he had not said "window," and yet window seemed
+the only word that would fit the case. And he had not said, "_she_ mercy
+found"; he had said, "_he_ mercy sought and mercy found"--of that Agnes
+felt sure, and that, too, was odd. But then, Father Ferguson was very
+odd sometimes, and he was fond of quoting in his sermons queer little
+bits of verse of which no one had ever heard.
+
+Suddenly she bethought herself, with more annoyance than the matter was
+worth, that in her agitation she had left Mr. Ferrier's newspaper in
+the sacristy. She did not like the thought that Father Ferguson would
+probably read those pretty, curious verses, "My Lady of the Snow."
+
+Also, Agnes had actually forgotten to speak to the old priest of her
+impertinent cook!
+
+
+II
+
+We find Agnes Barlow again walking in Summerfield; but this time she is
+hurrying along the straight, unlovely cinder-strewn path which forms a
+short cut from the back of The Haven to Summerfield station; and the
+still, heavy calm of a late November afternoon broods over the rough
+ground on either side of her.
+
+It is nearly six months since Teresa Maldo's elopement and subsequent
+suicide, and now no one ever speaks of poor Teresa, no one seems to
+remember that she ever lived, excepting, perhaps, Father Ferguson....
+
+As for Agnes herself, life had crowded far too many happenings into the
+last few weeks for her to give more than a passing thought to Teresa;
+indeed, the image of her dead friend rose before her only when she was
+saying her prayers. And as Agnes, strange to say, had grown rather
+careless as to her prayers, the memory of Teresa Maldo was now very
+faint indeed.
+
+An awful, and to her an incredible, thing had happened to Agnes Barlow.
+The roof of her snug and happy House of Life had fallen in, and she lay,
+blinded and maimed, beneath the fragments which had been hurled down on
+her in one terrible moment.
+
+Yes, it had all happened in a moment--so she now reminded herself, with
+the dull ache which never left her.
+
+It was just after she had come back from Westgate with little Francis.
+The child had been ailing for the first time in his life, and she had
+taken him to the seaside for six weeks.
+
+There, in a day, it had turned from summer to winter, raining as it only
+rains at the seaside; and suddenly Agnes had made up her mind to go back
+to her own nice, comfortable home a whole week before Frank expected her
+back.
+
+Agnes sometimes acted like that--on a quick impulse; she did so to her
+own undoing on that dull, rainy day.
+
+When she reached Summerfield, it was to find her telegram to her husband
+lying unopened on the hall table of The Haven. Frank, it seemed, had
+slept in town the night before. Not that that mattered, so she told
+herself gleefully, full of the pleasant joy of being again in her own
+home; the surprise would be the greater and the more welcome when Frank
+did come back.
+
+Having nothing better to do that first afternoon, Agnes had gone
+up to her husband's dressing-room in order to look over his summer
+clothes before sending them to the cleaner. In her careful,
+playing-at-housewifely fashion, she had turned out the pockets
+of his cricketing coat. There, a little to her surprise, she had
+found three letters, and idle curiosity as to Frank's invitations
+during her long stay away--Frank was deservedly popular with the
+ladies of Summerfield and, indeed, with all women--caused her to
+take the three letters out of their envelopes.
+
+In a moment--how terrible that it should take but a moment to shatter
+the fabric of a human being's innocent House of Life!--Agnes had seen
+what had happened to her--to him. For each of these letters, written in
+the same sloping woman's hand, was a love letter signed "Janey"; and in
+each the writer, in a plaintive, delicate, but insistent and reproachful
+way, asked Frank for money.
+
+Even now, though nearly seven weeks had gone by since then, Agnes could
+recall with painful vividness the sick, cold feeling that had come over
+her--a feeling of fear rather than anger, of fear and desperate
+humiliation.
+
+Locking the door of the dressing-room, she had searched eagerly--a
+dishonourable thing to do, as she knew well. And soon she had found
+other letters--letters and bills; bills of meals at restaurants, showing
+that her husband and a companion had constantly dined and supped at the
+Savoy, the Carlton, and Prince's. To those restaurants where he had
+taken her, Agnes, two or three times a year, laughing and grumbling at
+the expense, he had taken this--this _person_ again and again in the
+short time his wife had been away.
+
+As to the further letters, all they proved was that Frank had first met
+"Janey Cartwright" over some law business of hers, connected--even Agnes
+saw the irony of it--in some shameful way with another man; for, tied
+together, were a few notes signed with the writer's full name, of which
+the first began:
+
+    Dear Mr. Barlow:
+        Forgive me for writing to your private address
+        [etc., etc.].
+
+The ten days that followed her discovery had seared Agnes's soul. Frank
+had been so dreadfully affectionate. He had pretended--she felt sure it
+was all pretence--to be so glad to see her again, though sometimes she
+caught him looking at her with cowed, miserable eyes.
+
+More than once he had asked her solicitously if she felt ill, and she
+had said yes, she did feel ill, and the time at the seaside had not done
+her any good.
+
+And then, on the last of those terrible ten days, Gerald Ferrier had
+come down to Summerfield, and both she and Frank had pressed him to stay
+on to dinner. He had done so, though aware that something was wrong, and
+he had been extraordinarily kind, sympathetic, unquestioning. But as he
+was leaving he had said a word to his host: "I feel worried about Mrs.
+Barlow"--Agnes had heard him through the window. "She doesn't look the
+thing, somehow! How would it be if I asked her to go with me to a
+private view? It might cheer her up, and perhaps she would lunch with me
+afterwards?" Frank had eagerly assented.
+
+Since then Agnes had gone up to London, if not every day, very nearly
+every day, and Mr. Ferrier had done his best, without much success, to
+"cheer her up."
+
+Though they soon became more intimate than they had ever been, Agnes
+never told Ferrier what it was that had turned her from a happy,
+unquestioning child into a miserable woman; but, of course, he guessed.
+
+And gradually Frank also had come to know that she knew, and, man-like,
+he spent less and less time in his now uncomfortable home. He would go
+away in the morning an hour earlier than usual, and then, under pretext
+of business keeping him late at the office, he would come back after
+having dined, doubtless with "Janey," in town.
+
+Soon Agnes began to draw a terrible comparison between these two
+men--between the husband who had all she had of heart, and the friend
+whom she now acknowledged to herself--for hypocrisy had fallen away from
+her--had lived only for her, and for the hours they were able to spend
+together, during two long years, and yet who had never told her of his
+love, or tried to disturb her trust in Frank.
+
+Yes, Gerald Ferrier was all that was noble--Frank Barlow all that was
+ignoble. So she told herself with trembling lip a dozen times a day,
+taking fierce comfort in the knowledge that Ferrier was noble. But she
+was destined even to lose that comfort; for one day, a week before the
+day when we find her walking to Summerfield station, Ferrier's nobility,
+or what poor Agnes took to be such, suddenly broke down.
+
+They had been walking together in Battersea Park, and, after one of
+those long silences which bespeak true intimacy between a man and a
+woman, he had asked her if she would come back to his rooms--for tea.
+
+She had shaken her head smilingly. And then he had turned on her with a
+torrent of impetuous, burning words--words of ardent love, of anguished
+longing, of eager pleading. And Agnes had been frightened, fascinated,
+allured.
+
+And that had not been all.
+
+More quietly he had gone on to speak as if the code of morality in which
+his friend had been bred, and which had hitherto so entirely satisfied
+her, was, after all, nothing but a narrow counsel of perfection, suited
+to those who were sheltered and happy, but wretchedly inadequate to meet
+the needs of the greater number of human beings who are, as Agnes now
+was, humiliated and miserable. His words had found an echo in her sore
+heart, but she had not let him see how much they moved her. On the
+contrary, she had rebuked him, and for the first time they had
+quarrelled.
+
+"If you ever speak to me like that again," she had said coldly, "I will
+not come again."
+
+And once more he had turned on her violently. "I think you had better
+not come again! I am but a man after all!"
+
+They parted enemies; but the same night Ferrier wrote Agnes a very
+piteous letter asking pardon on his knees for having spoken as he had
+done. And his letter moved her to the heart. Her own deep misery--never
+for one moment did she forget Frank, and Frank's treachery--made her
+understand the torment that Ferrier was going through.
+
+For the first time she realized, what so few of her kind ever realize,
+that it is a mean thing to take everything and give nothing in exchange.
+And gradually, as her long, solitary hours wore themselves away, Agnes
+came to believe that if she did what she now knew Ferrier desired her to
+do,--if, casting the past behind her, she started a new life with
+him--she would not only be doing a generous thing by the man who had
+loved her silently and faithfully for so long, but she would also be
+punishing Frank--hurting him in his honour, as he had hurt her in hers.
+
+And then the stars that fight in their courses for those lovers who are
+also poets fought for Ferrier.
+
+The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous
+letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill to
+write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling
+very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which
+had been vouchsafed to him.
+
+In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door
+of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had
+slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him
+peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe
+must never come to him through her.
+
+The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision
+brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a
+pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank.
+
+For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel
+and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her
+husband thought to purchase her forgiveness?
+
+If Ferrier's letter had never been written, if Frank's gift had never
+been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we
+now find her doing--hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier's
+dream come true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield.
+
+One of her father's many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a
+season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a
+ticket at the booking-office instead.
+
+The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind
+that pretty Mrs. Barlow--she wore to-day a curiously thick veil--had a
+friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and
+flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her
+face?
+
+She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got
+into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening
+Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun.
+
+And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her
+husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that
+filled her sad, embittered heart.
+
+Old memories--memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love
+for him--became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced
+themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her
+marriage day, the start for the honeymoon,--a start made amid a crowd of
+laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left.
+
+She remembered the delicious tremor which had come over her when she
+had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old
+bridegroom.
+
+How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her!
+
+And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like
+Frank Barlow are always kind--too kind--to women.
+
+Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and
+especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis's
+birth.
+
+Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station--but
+only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts
+just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his
+wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea,
+that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor.
+
+And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway
+carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way!
+She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman's prim
+remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was
+certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen.
+
+But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her
+purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more
+tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had
+known nothing of the simpler human sanctities and joys, and who had
+never--so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself--been
+loved by any woman whom he himself could love.
+
+In her ears there sounded Ferrier's quick, hoarsely uttered words:
+"D'you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this--if you
+had gone on being happy? D'you think I'd ask you to come to me if I
+thought you had any chance of being happy with him--now?"
+
+And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never
+have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried
+during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and
+when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though
+it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only
+"friendship."
+
+
+III
+
+The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
+Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
+oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks
+Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her,
+eager to hurry her into a cab--to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of
+late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town
+still leaves her lovers.
+
+But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely
+rooms which he called "home."
+
+Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station.
+
+Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a
+curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet
+some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in
+town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense,
+stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather
+than on that of his neighbours.
+
+Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very
+slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to her. He took off
+his hat and peered insolently into her face.
+
+"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said.
+
+She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No
+doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank's. "I--I don't think
+so," she faltered.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said. "Don't you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in
+Regent Street? I don't _think_ I can be wrong."
+
+And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said
+breathlessly, and quickened her steps.
+
+The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further
+attempt to molest her.
+
+She was trembling--shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd,
+but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She
+was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a
+foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had
+just repulsed.
+
+She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the
+way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering.
+
+"Why, yes, Miss. It's a good step from here, but you can't mistake it.
+You've only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you've
+been walking about twenty minutes. You can't mistake it." And she
+hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight
+adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She
+thrilled with angry fear lest that--that brute should still be stalking
+her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was
+nearly bare of walkers.
+
+At last the broad thoroughfare narrowed to a point where four streets
+converged. Agnes glanced fearfully this way and that. Which of those
+shadowy black-coated figures hurrying past, intent on their business,
+would direct her rightly? Within the last half-hour Agnes had grown
+horribly afraid of men.
+
+And then, with more relief than the fact warranted, across the narrow
+roadway she saw emerge, between two parting waves of fog, the shrouded
+figure of a woman leaning against a dead wall.
+
+Agnes crossed the street, but as she stepped up on to the kerb, suddenly
+there broke from her, twice repeated, a low, involuntary cry of dread.
+
+"Teresa!" she cried. And then, again, "Teresa!" For in the shrouded
+figure before her she had recognized, with a thrill of incredulous
+terror, the form and lineaments of Teresa Maldo.
+
+But there came no answering cry; and Agnes gave a long, gasping,
+involuntary sigh of relief as she realized that what had seemed to be
+her dead friend's dark, glowing face was the face of a little child--a
+black-haired beggar child, with large startled eyes wide open on a
+living world.
+
+The tall woman whose statuesque figure had so strangely recalled
+Teresa's supple, powerful form was holding up the child, propping it on
+the wall behind her.
+
+Still shaking with the chill terror induced by the vision she now
+believed she had not seen, Agnes went up closer to the melancholy group.
+
+Even now she longed to hear the woman speak. "Can you tell me the way to
+Flood Street?" she asked.
+
+The woman looked at her fixedly. "No, that I can't," she said
+listlessly. "I'm a stranger here." And then, with a passionate energy
+which startled Agnes, "For God's sake, give me something, lady, to help
+me to get home! I've walked all the way from Essex; it's taken me, oh!
+so long with the child, though we've had a lift here and a lift there,
+and I haven't a penny left. I came to find my husband; but he's lost
+himself--on purpose!"
+
+A week ago, Agnes Barlow would have shaken her head and passed on. She
+had always held the theory, carefully inculcated by her careful parents,
+that it is wrong to give money to beggars in the street.
+
+But perhaps the queer illusion that she had just experienced made her
+remember Father Ferguson. In a flash she recalled a sermon of the old
+priest's which had shocked and disturbed his prosperous congregation,
+for in it the preacher had advanced the astounding theory that it is
+better to give to nine impostors than to refuse the one just man; nay,
+more, he had reminded his hearers of the old legend that Christ
+sometimes comes, in the guise of a beggar, to the wealthy.
+
+She took five shillings out of her purse, and put them, not in the
+woman's hand, but in that of the little child.
+
+"Thank you," said the woman dully. "May God bless you!" That was all,
+but Agnes went on, vaguely comforted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now at last, helped on her way by more than one good-natured
+wayfarer, she reached the quiet, but shabby Chelsea street where
+Ferrier lived. The fog had drifted towards the river, and in the
+lamplight Agnes Barlow was not long in finding a large open door, above
+which was inscribed: "The Thomas More Studios."
+
+Agnes walked timorously through into the square, empty, gas-lit hall,
+and looked round her with distaste. The place struck her as very ugly
+and forlorn, utterly lacking in what she had always taken to be the
+amenities of flat life--an obsequious porter, a lift, electric light.
+
+How strange of Ferrier to have told her that he lived in a building that
+was beautiful!
+
+Springing in bold and simple curves, rose a wrought-iron staircase,
+filling up the centre of the narrow, towerlike building. Agnes knew that
+Ferrier lived high up, somewhere near the top.
+
+She waited a moment at the foot of the staircase. She was gathering up
+her strength, throwing behind her everything that had meant life,
+happiness, and--what signified so very much to such a woman as
+herself--personal repute.
+
+But, even so, Agnes did not falter in her purpose. She was still
+possessed, driven onward, by a passion of jealous misery.
+
+But, though her spirit was willing, ay, and more than willing, for
+revenge, her flesh was weak; and as she began slowly walking up the
+staircase she started nervously at the grotesque shapes cast by her own
+shadow, and at the muffled sounds of her own footfalls.
+
+Half-way up the high building the gas-jets burned low, and Agnes felt
+aggrieved. What a mean, stupid economy on the part of the owners of this
+strange, unnatural dwelling-place.
+
+How dreadful it would be if she were to meet any one she knew--any one
+belonging to what she was already unconsciously teaching herself to call
+her old, happy life! As if in cruel answer to her fear, a door opened,
+and an old man, clad in a big shabby fur coat and broad-brimmed hat,
+came out.
+
+Agnes's heart gave a bound in her bosom. Yes; this was what she had
+somehow thought would happen. In the half-light she took the old man to
+be an eccentric acquaintance of her father's.
+
+"Mr. Willis?" she whispered hoarsely.
+
+He looked at her, surprised, resentful.
+
+"My name's not Willis," he said gruffly, as he passed her on his way
+down, and her heart became stilled. How could she have been so foolish
+as to take that disagreeable old man for kindly-natured Mr. Willis?
+
+She was now very near the top. Only a storey and a half more, and she
+would be there. Her steps were flagging, but a strange kind of peace had
+fallen on her. In a few moments she would be safe, for ever, in
+Ferrier's arms. How strange and unreal the notion seemed!
+
+And then--and then, as if fashioned by some potent incantation from the
+vaporous fog outside, a tall, grey figure rose out of nothingness, and
+stood, barring the way, on the steel floor of the landing above her.
+
+Agnes clutched the iron railing, too oppressed rather than too
+frightened to speak. Out in the fog-laden street she had involuntarily
+called out the other's name. "Teresa?" she had cried, "Teresa!" But this
+time no word broke from her lips, for she feared that if she spoke the
+other would answer.
+
+Teresa Maldo's love, the sisterly love of which Agnes had been so little
+worthy, had broken down the gateless barrier which stretches its dense
+length between the living and the dead. What she, the living woman, had
+not known how to do for Teresa, the dead woman had come back to do for
+her--for now Agnes seemed suddenly able to measure the depth of the gulf
+into which she had been about to throw herself....
+
+She stared with fearful, fascinated eyes at the immobile figure swathed
+in grey, cere-like garments, and her gaze travelled stealthfully up to
+the white, passionless face, drained of all expression save that of
+watchful concern and understanding tenderness....
+
+With a swift movement Agnes turned round. Clinging to the iron rail, she
+stumbled down the stairway to the deserted hall, and with swift
+terror-hastened steps rushed out into the street.
+
+Through the fog she plunged, not even sparing a moment to look back and
+up to the dimly lighted window behind which poor Ferrier stood,--as a
+softer, a truer-natured woman might have done. Violently she put all
+thought of her lover from her, and as she hurried along with tightening
+breath, the instinct of self-preservation alone possessing her, she
+became more and more absorbed in measuring the fathomless depth of the
+pit in which she had so nearly fallen.
+
+Her one wish now was to get home--to get home--to get home--before Frank
+got back.
+
+But the fulfilment of that wish was denied her--for as Agnes Barlow
+walked, crying softly as she went, in the misty darkness along the road
+which led from Summerfield station to the gate of The Haven, there fell
+on her ear the rhythmical tramp of well-shod feet.
+
+She shrank near to the hedge, in no mood to greet or to accept greeting
+from a neighbour. But the walker was now close to her. He struck a
+match.
+
+"Agnes?" It was Frank Barlow's voice--shamed, eager, questioning. "Is
+that you? I thought--I hoped you would come home by this train."
+
+And as she gave no immediate answer, as he missed--God alone knew with
+what relief--the prim, cold accents to which his wife had accustomed him
+of late, he hurried forward and took her masterfully in his arms. "Oh!
+my darling," he whispered huskily, "I know I've been a beast--but I've
+never left off loving you--and I can't stand your coldness, Agnes; it's
+driving me to the devil! Forgive me, my pure angel----"
+
+And Frank Barlow's pure angel did forgive him, and with a spontaneity
+and generous forgetfulness which he will ever remember. Nay, more;
+Agnes--and this touched her husband deeply--even gave up her pleasant
+acquaintance with that writing fellow, Ferrier, because Ferrier, through
+no fault of his, was associated, in both their minds, with the terrible
+time each would have given so much to obliterate from the record of
+their otherwise cloudless married life.
+
+
+
+
+WHY THEY MARRIED
+
+    "God doeth all things well, though by what strange, solemn, and
+     murderous contrivances."
+
+
+I
+
+John Coxeter was sitting with his back to the engine in a first-class
+carriage in the Paris-Boulogne night train. Not only Englishman, but
+Englishman of a peculiarly definite class, that of the London civil
+servant, was written all over his spare, still active figure.
+
+It was late September, and the rush homewards had begun; so Coxeter,
+being a man of precise and careful habit, had reserved a corner seat.
+Then, just before the train had started, a certain Mrs. Archdale, a
+young widowed lady with whom he was acquainted, had come up to him on
+the Paris platform, and to her he had given up his seat.
+
+Coxeter had willingly made the little sacrifice of his personal comfort,
+but he had felt annoyed when Mrs. Archdale in her turn had yielded the
+corner place with foolish altruism to a French lad exchanging vociferous
+farewells with his parents. When the train started the boy did not give
+the seat back to the courteous Englishwoman to whom it belonged, and
+Coxeter, more vexed by the matter than it was worth, would have liked to
+punch the boy's head.
+
+And yet, as he now looked straight before him, sitting upright in the
+carriage which was rocking and jolting as only a French railway carriage
+can rock and jolt, he realized that he himself had gained by the lad's
+lack of honesty. By having thus given away something which did not
+belong to her, Mrs. Archdale was now seated, if uncomfortably hemmed in
+and encompassed on each side, just opposite to Coxeter himself.
+
+Coxeter was well aware that to stare at a woman is the height of bad
+breeding, but unconsciously he drew a great distinction between what is
+good taste to do when one is being observed, and that which one does
+when no one can catch one doing it. Without making the slightest effort,
+in fact by looking straight before him, Nan Archdale fell into his
+direct line of vision, and he allowed his eyes to rest on her with an
+unwilling sense that there was nothing in the world he had rather they
+rested on. Her appearance pleased his fastidious, rather old-fashioned
+taste. Mrs. Archdale was wearing a long grey cloak. On her head was
+poised a dark hat trimmed with Mercury wings; it rested lightly on the
+pale golden hair which formed so agreeable a contrast to her deep blue
+eyes.
+
+Coxeter did not believe in luck; the word which means so much to many
+men had no place in his vocabulary, or even in his imagination. But,
+still, the sudden appearance of Mrs. Archdale in the great Paris station
+had been an agreeable surprise, one of those incidents which, just
+because of their unexpectedness, make a man feel not only pleased with
+himself, but at one with the world.
+
+Before Mrs. Archdale had come up to the carriage door at which he was
+standing, several things had contributed to put Coxeter in an
+ill-humour.
+
+It had seemed to his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded,
+immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow
+travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they
+talked--jabbered would be the better word--laughed and cried! How they
+hugged and embraced one another! Coxeter thanked God he was an
+Englishman.
+
+His feeling of bored disgust was intensified by the conduct of a
+long-nosed, sallow man, who had put his luggage into the same carriage
+as that where Coxeter's seat had been reserved.
+
+Strange how the peculiar characteristics common to the Jewish race
+survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was
+saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a
+very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered
+idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was
+half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm,
+now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face,
+while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and
+extravagant terms of affection. "_Adieu, mon petit homme ador�!_" she
+finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to
+Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice,
+albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my
+dear girl. It's only for a fortnight after all."
+
+Coxeter felt a pang of sincere pity for the poor fellow; a cad, no
+doubt--but an English cad, cursed with an emotional French wife!
+
+Then his attention had been most happily diverted by the unexpected
+appearance of Mrs. Archdale. She had come up behind him very quietly,
+and he had heard her speak before actually seeing her. "Mr. Coxeter, are
+you going back to England, or have you only come to see someone off?"
+
+Not even then had Coxeter--to use a phrase which he himself would not
+have used, for he avoided the use of slang--"given himself away." Over
+his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had
+still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been
+looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the
+compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved
+for himself, not even she--noted though she was for her powers of
+sympathy and understanding--had divined the delicious tremor, the
+curious state of mingled joy and discomfort into which her sudden
+presence had thrown the man whom she had greeted a little doubtfully, by
+no means sure that he would welcome her companionship on a long journey.
+
+And, indeed, in spite of the effect she produced upon him, in spite of
+the fact that she was the only human being who had ever had, or was ever
+likely to have, the power of making him feel humble, not quite satisfied
+with himself--Coxeter disapproved of Mrs. Archdale. At the present
+moment he disapproved of her rather more than usual, for if she meant
+to give up that corner seat, why had she not so arranged as to sit by
+him? Instead, she was now talking to the French boy who occupied what
+should have been her seat.
+
+But Nan Archdale, as all her friends called her, was always like that.
+Coxeter never saw her, never met her at the houses to which he went
+simply in order that he might meet her, without wondering why she wasted
+so much of the time she might have spent in talking to him, and above
+all in listening to him, in talking and listening to other people.
+
+Four years ago, not long after their first acquaintance, he had made her
+an offer of marriage, impelled by something which had appeared at the
+time quite outside himself and his usual wise, ponderate view of life.
+He had been relieved, as well as keenly hurt, when she had refused him.
+
+Everything that concerned himself appeared to John Coxeter of such
+moment and importance that at the time it had seemed incredible that Nan
+Archdale would be able to keep to herself the peculiar honour which had
+befallen her,--one, by the way, which Coxeter had never seriously
+thought of conferring on any other woman. But as time went on he became
+aware that she had actually kept the secret which was not hers to
+betray, and, emboldened by the knowledge that she alone knew of his
+humiliating bondship, he had again, after a certain interval, written
+and asked her if she would marry him. Again she had refused, in a kind,
+impersonal little note, and this last time she had gone so far as to
+declare that in this matter she really knew far better than he did
+himself what was good for him, and once more something deep in his heart
+had said "Amen."
+
+When he thought about it, and he went on thinking about it more than was
+quite agreeable for his own comfort or peace of mind, Coxeter would tell
+himself, with what he believed to be a vicarious pang of regret, that
+Mrs. Archdale had made a sad mistake as regarded her own interest. He
+felt sure she was not fit to live alone; he knew she ought to be
+surrounded by the kind of care and protection which only a husband can
+properly bestow on a woman. He, Coxeter, would have known how to detach
+her from the unsuitable people by whom she was always surrounded.
+
+Nan Archdale, and Coxeter was much concerned that it was so, had an
+instinctive attraction for those poor souls who lead forlorn hopes, and
+of whom--they being unsuccessful in their fine endeavours--the world
+never hears. She also had a strange patience and tenderness for those
+ne'er-do-wells of whom even the kindest grow weary after a time. Nan had
+a mass of queer friends, old prot�g�s for whom she worked unceasingly in
+a curious, detached fashion, which was quite her own, and utterly apart
+from any of the myriad philanthropic societies with which the world she
+lived in, and to which she belonged by birth, interests its prosperous
+and intelligent leisure.
+
+It was characteristic that Nan's liking for John Coxeter often took the
+form of asking him to help these queer, unsatisfactory people. Why, even
+in this last week, while he had been in Paris, he had come into close
+relation with one of Mrs. Archdale's "odd-come-shorts." This time the
+man was an inventor, and of all unpractical and useless things he had
+patented an appliance for saving life at sea!
+
+Nan Archdale had given the man a note to Coxeter, and it was
+characteristic of the latter that, while resenting what Mrs. Archdale
+had done, he had been at some pains when in Paris to see the man in
+question. The invention--as Coxeter had of course known would be the
+case--was a ridiculous affair, but for Nan's sake he had agreed to
+submit it to the Admiralty expert whose business it is to consider and
+pronounce on such futile things. The queer little model which its maker
+believed would in time supersede the life-belts now carried on every
+British ship, had but one merit, it was small and portable: at the
+present moment it lay curled up, looking like a cross between a
+serpent's cast skin and a child's spent balloon, in Coxeter's
+portmanteau. Even while he had accepted the parcel with a coolly civil
+word of thanks, he had mentally composed the letter with which he would
+ultimately dash the poor inventor's hopes.
+
+To-night, however, sitting opposite to her, he felt glad that he had
+been to see the man, and he looked forward to telling her about it.
+Scarcely consciously to himself, it always made Coxeter glad to feel
+that he had given Nan pleasure, even pleasure of which he disapproved.
+
+And yet how widely apart were these two people's sympathies and
+interests! Putting Nan aside, John Coxeter was only concerned with two
+things in life--his work at the Treasury and himself--and people only
+interested him in relation to these two major problems of existence. Nan
+Archdale was a citizen of the world--a freewoman of that dear kingdom of
+romance which still contains so many fragrant byways and sunny oases for
+those who have the will to find them. But for her freedom of this
+kingdom she would have been a very sad woman, oppressed by the griefs
+and sorrows of that other world to which she also belonged, for Nan's
+human circle was ever widening, and in her strange heart there seemed
+always room for those whom others rejected and despised.
+
+She had the power no human being had ever had--that of making John
+Coxeter jealous. This was the harder to bear inasmuch as he was well
+aware that jealousy is a very ridiculous human failing, and one with
+which he had no sympathy or understanding when it affected--as it
+sometimes did--his acquaintances and colleagues. Fortunately for
+himself, he was not retrospectively jealous--jealous that is of the dead
+man of whom certain people belonging to his and to Nan's circle
+sometimes spoke of as "poor Jim Archdale." Coxeter knew vaguely that
+Archdale had been a bad lot, though never actually unkind to his wife;
+nay, more, during the short time their married life had lasted,
+Archdale, it seemed, had to a certain extent reformed.
+
+Although he was unconscious of it, John Coxeter was a very material
+human being, and this no doubt was why this woman had so compelling an
+attraction for him; for Nan Archdale appeared to be all spirit, and that
+in spite of her eager, sympathetic concern in the lives which circled
+about hers.
+
+And yet? Yet there was certainly a strong, unspoken link between them,
+this man and woman who had so little in common the one with the other.
+They met often, if only because they both lived in Marylebone, that most
+conventional quarter of old Georgian London, she in Wimpole Street, he
+in a flat in Wigmore Street. She always was glad to see him, and seemed
+a little sorry when he left her. Coxeter was one of the rare human
+beings to whom Nan ever spoke of herself and of her own concerns. But,
+in spite of that curious kindliness, she did not do what so many people
+who knew John Coxeter instinctively did--ask his advice, and, what was,
+of course, more seldom done--take it. In fact he had sometimes angrily
+told himself that Nan attached no weight to his opinion, and as time had
+gone on he had almost given up offering her unsought advice.
+
+John Coxeter attached great importance to health. He realized that a
+perfect physical condition is a great possession, and he took
+considerable pains to keep himself what he called "fit." Now Mrs.
+Archdale was recklessly imprudent concerning her health, the health,
+that is, which was of so great a value to him, her friend. She took her
+meals at such odd times; she did not seem to mind, hardly to know, what
+she ate and drank!
+
+Of the many strange things Coxeter had known her to do, by far the
+strangest, and one which he could scarcely think of without an inward
+tremor, had happened only a few months ago.
+
+Nan had been with an ailing friend, and the ailing friend's only son, in
+the Highlands, and this friend, a foolish woman,--when recalling the
+matter Coxeter never omitted to call this lady a foolish woman--on
+sending her boy back to school, had given him what she had thought to be
+a dose of medicine out of the wrong bottle, a bottle marked "Poison."
+Nothing could be done, for the boy had started on his long railway
+journey south before the mistake had been discovered, and even Coxeter,
+when hearing the story told, had realized that had he been there he
+would have been sorry, really sorry, for the foolish mother.
+
+But Nan's sympathy--and on this point Coxeter always dwelt with a
+special sense of injury--had taken a practical shape. She had poured out
+a similar dose from the bottle marked "Poison" and had calmly drunk it,
+observing as she did so, "I don't believe it _is_ poison in the real
+sense of the word, but at any rate we shall soon be able to find out
+exactly what is happening to Dick."
+
+Nothing, or at least nothing but a bad headache, had followed, and so
+far had Nan been justified of her folly. But to Coxeter it was terrible
+to think of what might have happened, and he had not shared in any
+degree the mingled amusement and admiration which the story, as told
+afterwards by the culpable mother, had drawn forth. In fact, so deeply
+had he felt about it that he had not trusted himself to speak of the
+matter to Mrs. Archdale.
+
+But Mrs. Archdale was not only reckless of her health; she was also
+reckless--perhaps uncaring would be the truer word--of something which
+John Coxeter supposed every nice woman to value even more than her
+health or appearance, that is the curiously intangible, and yet so
+easily frayed, human vesture termed reputation.
+
+To John Coxeter the women of his own class, if worthy, that is, of
+consideration and respect, went clad in a delicate robe of ermine, and
+the thought that this ermine should have even a shade cast on its
+fairness was most repugnant to him. Now Nan Archdale was not as careful
+in this matter of keeping her ermine unspoiled and delicately white as
+she ought to have been, and this was the stranger inasmuch as even
+Coxeter realized that there was about his friend a Una-like quality
+which made her unafraid, because unsuspecting, of evil.
+
+Another of the cardinal points of Coxeter's carefully thought-out
+philosophy of life was that in this world no woman can touch pitch
+without being defiled. And yet on one occasion, at least, the woman who
+now sat opposite to him had proved the falsity of this view. Nan
+Archdale, apparently indifferent to the opinion of those who wished her
+well, had allowed herself to be closely associated with one of those
+unfortunate members of her own sex who, at certain intervals in the
+history of the civilized world, become heroines of a drama of which each
+act takes place in the Law Courts. Of these dramas every whispered word,
+every piece of "business"--to pursue the analogy to its logical end--is
+overheard and visualized not by thousands but by millions,--in fact by
+all those of an age to read a newspaper.
+
+Had the woman in the case been Mrs. Archdale's sister, Coxeter with a
+groan would have admitted that she owed her a duty, though a duty which
+he would fain have had her shirk or rather delegate to another. But this
+woman was no sister, not even a friend, simply an old acquaintance
+known to Nan, 'tis true, over many years. Nan had done what she had
+done, had taken her in and sheltered her, going to the Court with her
+every day, simply because there seemed absolutely no one else willing to
+do it.
+
+When he had first heard of what Mrs. Archdale was undertaking to do,
+Coxeter had been so dismayed that he had felt called upon to expostulate
+with her.
+
+Very few words had passed between them. "Is it possible," he had asked,
+"that you think her innocent? That you believe her own story?"
+
+To this Mrs. Archdale had answered with some distress, "I don't know, I
+haven't thought about it---- As she says she is--I hope she is. If she's
+not, I'd rather not know it."
+
+It had been a confused utterance, and somehow she had made him feel
+sorry that he had said anything. Afterwards, to his surprise and
+unwilling relief, he discovered that Mrs. Archdale had not suffered in
+reputation as he had expected her to do. But it made him feel, more than
+ever, that she needed a strong, wise man to take care of her, and to
+keep her out of the mischief into which her unfortunate
+good-nature--that was the way Coxeter phrased it to himself--was so apt
+to lead her.
+
+It was just after this incident that he had again asked her to marry
+him, and that she had again refused him. But it was since then that he
+had become really her friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last Mrs. Archdale turned away, or else the French boy had come to an
+end of his eloquence. Perhaps she would now lean a little forward and
+speak to him--the friend whom she had not seen for some weeks and whom
+she had seemed so sincerely glad to see half an hour ago? But no; she
+remained silent, her face full of thought.
+
+Coxeter leant back; as a rule he never read in a train, for he was aware
+that it is injurious to the eyesight to do so. But to-night he suddenly
+told himself that after all he might just as well look at the English
+paper he had bought at the station. He might at least see what sort of
+crossing they were going to have to-night. Not that he minded for
+himself. He was a good sailor and always stayed on deck whatever the
+weather, but he hoped it would be smooth for Mrs. Archdale's sake. It
+was so unpleasant for a lady to have a rough passage.
+
+Again, before opening the paper, he glanced across at her. She did not
+look strong; that air of delicacy, combined as it was with perfect
+health--for Mrs. Archdale was never ill--was one of the things that made
+her attractive to John Coxeter. When he was with a woman, he liked to
+feel that he was taking care of her, and that she was more or less
+dependent on his good offices. Somehow or other he always felt this
+concerning Nan Archdale, and that even when she was doing something of
+which he disapproved and which he would fain have prevented her doing.
+
+Coxeter turned round so that the light should fall on the page at which
+he had opened his newspaper, which, it need hardly be said, was the
+_Morning Post_. Presently there came to him the murmuring of two voices,
+Mrs. Archdale's clear, low utterances, and another's, guttural and full.
+
+Ah! then he had been right; the fellow sitting there, on Nan's other
+side, was a Jew: probably something financial, connected with the Stock
+Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a
+financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his
+knowledge of human beings,--or rather of men, for even his
+self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he
+entirely understood women; there had been a time when he had thought
+so, but that was a long while ago.
+
+He began reading his newspaper. There was a most interesting article on
+education. After having glanced at this, he studied more carefully
+various little items of social news which reminded him that he had been
+away from London for some weeks. Then, as he read on, the conversation
+between Nan Archdale and the man next to her became more audible to him.
+All the other people in the carriage were French, and so first one, and
+then the other, window had been closed.
+
+His ears had grown accustomed to the muffled, thundering sounds caused
+by the train, and gradually he became aware that Nan Archdale was
+receiving some singular confidences from the man with whom she was now
+speaking. The fellow was actually unrolling before her the whole of his
+not very interesting life, and by degrees Coxeter began rather to
+overhear than to listen consciously to what was being said.
+
+The Jew, though English by birth, now lived in France. As a young man he
+had failed in business in London, and then he had made a fresh start
+abroad, apparently impelled thereto by his great affection for his
+mother. The Jewish race, so Coxeter reminded himself, are admirable in
+every relation of private life, and it was apparently in order that his
+mother might not have to alter her style of living that the person on
+whom Mrs. Archdale was now fixing her attention had finally accepted a
+post in a Paris house of business--no, not financial, something
+connected with the sweetmeat trade.
+
+Coxeter gathered that the speaker had at last saved enough money to make
+a start for himself, and that now he was very prosperous. He spoke of
+what he had done with legitimate pride, and when describing the struggle
+he had gone through, the fellow used a very odd expression, "It wasn't
+all jam!" he said. Now he was in a big way of business, going over to
+London every three months, partly in connection with his work, partly to
+see his old mother.
+
+Behind his newspaper Coxeter told himself that it was amazing any human
+being should tell so much of his private concerns to a stranger. Even
+more amazing was it that a refined, rather peculiar, woman like Nan
+Archdale should care to listen to such a commonplace story. But
+listening she was, saying a word here and there, asking, too, very
+quaint, practical questions concerning the sweetmeat trade. Why, even
+Coxeter became interested in spite of himself, for the Jew was an
+intelligent man, and as he talked on Coxeter learned with surprise that
+there is a romantic and exciting side even to making sweets.
+
+"What a pity it is," he heard Nan say at last in her low, even voice,
+"that you can't now come back to England and settle down there. Surely
+it would make your mother much happier, and you don't seem to like Paris
+so very much?"
+
+"That is true," said the man, "but--well, unluckily there's an obstacle
+to my doing that----"
+
+Coxeter looked up from his paper. The stranger's face had become
+troubled, preoccupied, and his eyes were fixed, or so Coxeter fancied
+them to be, on Nan Archdale's left hand, the slender bare hand on which
+the only ring was her wedding ring.
+
+Coxeter once more returned to his paper, but for some minutes he made no
+attempt to follow the dancing lines of print.
+
+"I trust you won't be offended if I ask whether you are, or are not, a
+married lady?" The sweetmeat man's voice had a curious note of shamed
+interrogation threading itself through the words.
+
+Coxeter felt surprised and rather shocked. This was what came of
+allowing oneself to become familiar with an underbred stranger! But Nan
+had apparently not so taken the impertinent question, for, "I am a
+widow," Coxeter heard her answer gently, in a voice that had no touch of
+offence in it.
+
+And then, after a few moments, staring with frowning eyes at the
+spread-out sheet of newspaper before him, Coxeter, with increasing
+distaste and revolt, became aware that Mrs. Archdale was now receiving
+very untoward confidences--confidences which Coxeter had always imagined
+were never made save under the unspoken seal of secrecy by one man to
+another. This objectionable stranger was telling Nan Archdale the story
+of the woman who had seen him off at the station, and whose absurd
+phrase, "_Adieu, mon petit homme ador�_," had rung so unpleasantly in
+his, Coxeter's, ears.
+
+The eavesdropper was well aware that such stories are among the everyday
+occurrences of life, but his knowledge was largely theoretical; John
+Coxeter was not the sort of man to whom other men are willing to confide
+their shames, sorrows, or even successes in a field of which the
+aftermath is generally bitter.
+
+In as far as such a tale can be told with decent ambiguity it was so
+told by this man of whose refinement Coxeter had formed so poor an
+opinion, but still the fact that he was telling it remained--and it was
+a fact which to such a man as Coxeter constituted an outrage on the
+decencies of life.
+
+Mrs. Archdale, by her foolish good-nature, had placed herself in such a
+position as to be consulted in a case of conscience concerning a Jewish
+tradesman and his light o' love, and now the man was debating with her
+as with himself, as to whether he should marry this woman, as to whether
+he should force on his respectable English mother a French
+daughter-in-law of unmentionable antecedents! Coxeter gathered that the
+liaison had lasted ten years--that it had begun, in fact, very soon
+after the man had first come to Paris.
+
+In addition to his feeling of wrath that Nan Archdale should become
+cognisant of so sordid a tale, there was associated a feeling of shame
+that he, Coxeter, had overheard what it had not been meant that he
+should hear.
+
+Perforce the story went on to its melancholy and inconclusive end, and
+then, suddenly, Coxeter became possessed with a desire to see Nan
+Archdale's face. He glanced across at her. To his surprise her face was
+expressionless; but her left hand was no longer lying on her knee, it
+was supporting her chin, and she was looking straight before her.
+
+"I suppose," she said at last, "that you have made a proper provision
+for your--your friend? I mean in case of your death. I hope you have so
+arranged matters that if anything should happen to you, this poor woman
+who loves you would not have to go back to the kind of life from which
+you took her." Even Coxeter divined that Nan had not found it easy to
+say this thing.
+
+"Why, no, I haven't done anything of that sort. I never thought of doing
+it; she's always been the delicate party. I am as strong as a horse!"
+
+"Still--still, life's very uncertain." Mrs. Archdale was now looking
+straight into the face of the stranger on whom she was thrusting
+unsought advice.
+
+"She has no claim on me, none at all----" the man spoke defensively. "I
+don't think she'd expect anything of that sort. She's had a very good
+time with me. After all, I haven't treated her badly."
+
+"I'm sure you haven't," Nan spoke very gently. "I am sure you have been
+always kind to her. But, if I may use the simile you used just now,
+life, even to the happiest, the most sheltered, of women, isn't all
+jam!"
+
+The man looked at her with a doubting, shame-faced glance. "I expect
+you're right," he said abruptly. "I ought to have thought of it. I'll
+make my will when I'm in England this time--I ought to have done so
+before."
+
+Suddenly Coxeter leant forward. He felt the time had come when he really
+must put an end to this most unseemly conversation.
+
+"Mrs. Archdale?" he spoke loudly, insistently. She looked up, startled
+at the sharpness of the tone, and the man next her, whose eyes had been
+fixed on her face with so moved and doubting a look, sat back. "I want
+to tell you that I've seen your inventor, and that I've promised to put
+his invention before the right quarter at the Admiralty."
+
+In a moment Nan was all eagerness. "It really is a very wonderful
+thing," she said; "I'm so grateful, Mr. Coxeter. Did you go and see it
+tried? _I_ did, last time I was in Paris; the man took me to a
+swimming-bath on the Seine--such an odd place--and there he tested it
+before me. I was really very much impressed. I do hope you will say a
+word for it. I am sure they would value your opinion."
+
+Coxeter looked at her rather grimly. "No, I didn't see it tested." To
+think that she should have wasted even an hour of her time in such a
+foolish manner, and in such a queer place, too! "I didn't see the use of
+doing so, though of course the man was very anxious I should. I'm
+afraid the thing's no good. How could it be?" He smiled superciliously,
+and he saw her redden.
+
+"How unfair that is!" she exclaimed. "How can you possibly tell whether
+it's no good if you haven't seen it tried? Now I _have_ seen the thing
+tried."
+
+There was such a tone of protest in her voice that Coxeter felt called
+upon to defend himself. "I daresay the thing's all right in theory," he
+said quickly, "and I believe what he says about the ordinary life-belts;
+it's quite true, I mean, that they drown more people than they save: but
+that's only because people don't know how to put them on. This thing's a
+toy--not practical at all." He spoke more irritably than he generally
+allowed himself to speak, for he could see that the Jew was listening to
+all that they were saying.
+
+All at once, Mrs. Archdale actually included the sweetmeat stranger in
+their conversation, and Coxeter at last found himself at her request
+most unwillingly taking the absurd model out of his bag. "Of course
+you've got to imagine this in a rough sea," he said sulkily, playing the
+devil's advocate, "and not in a fresh water river bath."
+
+"Well, _I_ wouldn't mind trying it in a rough sea, Mr. Coxeter." Nan
+smiled as she spoke.
+
+Coxeter wondered if she was really serious. Sometimes he suspected that
+Mrs. Archdale was making fun of him--but that surely was impossible.
+
+
+II
+
+When at last they reached Boulogne and went on board the packet,
+Coxeter's ill-humour vanished. It was cold, raw, and foggy, and most of
+their fellow-passengers at once hurried below, but Mrs. Archdale decided
+to stay on the upper deck. This pleased her companion; now at last he
+would have her to himself.
+
+In his precise and formal way he went to a good deal of trouble to make
+Nan comfortable; and she, so accustomed to take thought for others,
+stood aside and watched him find a sheltered corner, secure with some
+difficulty a deck chair, and then defend it with grim determination
+against two or three people who tried to lay hands upon it.
+
+At last he beckoned to her to sit down. "Where's your rug?" he asked.
+She answered meekly, "I haven't brought one."
+
+He put his own rug,--large, light, warm, the best money could buy--round
+her knees; and in the pleasure it gave him to wait on her thus he did
+not utter aloud the reproof which had been on his lips. But she saw him
+shake his head over a more unaccountable omission--on the journey she
+had somehow lost her gloves. He took his own off, and with a touch of
+masterfulness made her put them on, himself fastening the big bone
+buttons over each of her small, childish wrists; but his manner while he
+did all these things--he would have scorned himself had it been
+otherwise--was impersonal, businesslike.
+
+There are men whose every gesture in connection with a woman becomes an
+instinctive caress. Such men, as every woman learns in time, are not
+good "stayers," but they make the time go by very quickly--sometimes.
+
+With Coxeter every minute lasted sixty seconds. But Nan Archdale found
+herself looking at him with unwonted kindliness. At last she said, a
+little tremulously, and with a wondering tone in her voice, "You're very
+kind to me, Mr. Coxeter." Those who spend their lives in speeding others
+on their way are generally allowed to trudge along alone; so at least
+this woman had found it to be. Coxeter made no answer to her
+words--perhaps he did not hear them.
+
+Even in the few minutes which had elapsed since they came on board, the
+fog had deepened. The shadowy figures moving about the deck only took
+substance when they stepped into the circle of brightness cast by a
+swinging globe of light which hung just above Nan Archdale's head.
+Coxeter moved forward and took up his place in front of the deck-chair,
+protecting its occupant from the jostling of the crowd, for the
+sheltered place he had found stood but a little way back from the
+passage between the land gangway and the iron staircase leading to the
+lower deck.
+
+There were more passengers that night than usual. They passed, a
+seemingly endless procession, moving slowly out of the darkness into the
+circle of light and then again into the white, engulfing mist.
+
+At last the deck became clear of moving figures; the cold, raw fog had
+driven almost everyone below. But Coxeter felt curiously content, rather
+absurdly happy. This was to him a great adventure....
+
+He took out his watch. If the boat started to time they would be off in
+another five minutes. He told himself that this was turning out a very
+pleasant journey; as a rule when crossing the Channel one meets tiresome
+people one knows, and they insist on talking to one. And then, just as
+he was thinking this, there suddenly surged forward out of the foggy
+mist two people, a newly married couple named Rendel, with whom both he
+and Mrs. Archdale were acquainted, at whose wedding indeed they had both
+been present some six or seven weeks ago. So absorbed in earnest talk
+with one another were the bride and bridegroom that they did not seem to
+see where they were going; but when close to Mrs. Archdale they stopped
+short, and turned towards one another, still talking so eagerly as to be
+quite oblivious of possible eavesdroppers.
+
+John Coxeter, standing back in the shadow, felt a sudden gust of envious
+pain. They were evidently on their way home from their honeymoon, these
+happy young people, blessed with good looks, money, health, and love;
+their marriage had been the outcome of quite a pretty romance.
+
+But stay,--what was this they were saying? Both he and Nan unwillingly
+heard the quick interchange of words, the wife's shrill, angry
+utterances, the husband's good-humoured expostulations. "I won't stay on
+the boat, Bob. I don't see why we should risk our lives in order that
+you may be back in town to-morrow. I know it's not safe--my great-uncle,
+the Admiral, always said that the worst storm at sea was not as bad as
+quite a small fog!" Then the gruff answer: "My dear child, don't be a
+fool! The boat wouldn't start if there was the slightest danger. You
+heard what that man told us. The fog was much worse this morning, and
+the boat was only an hour late!" "Well, you can do as you like, but _I_
+won't cross to-night. Where's the use of taking any risk? Mother's
+uncle, the Admiral----" and Coxeter heard with shocked approval the
+man's "Damn your great-uncle, the Admiral!"
+
+There they stood, not more than three yards off, the pretty, angry
+little spitfire looking up at her indignant, helpless husband. Coxeter,
+if disgusted, was amused; there was also the comfort of knowing that
+they would certainly pretend not to see him, even if by chance they
+recognized him, intent as they were on their absurd difference.
+
+"I shall go back and spend the night at the station hotel. No, you
+needn't trouble to find Stockton for me--there's no time." Coxeter and
+Nan heard the laughing gibe, "Then you don't mind your poor maid being
+drowned as well as your poor husband," but the bride went on as if he
+hadn't spoken--"I've quite enough money with me; you needn't give me
+anything--_good-bye_."
+
+She disappeared into the fog in the direction of the gangway, and
+Coxeter moved hastily to one side. He wished to save Bob Rendel the
+annoyance of recognizing him; but then, with amazing suddenness,
+something happened which made Coxeter realize that after all women were
+even more inexplicable, unreasonable beings than even he had always
+known them to be.
+
+There came the quick patter of feet over the damp deck, and Mrs. Rendel
+was back again, close to where her husband was standing.
+
+"I've made up my mind to stay on the boat," she said quietly. "I think
+you are very unwise, as well as very obstinate, to cross in this fog;
+but if you won't give way, then I'd rather be with you, and share the
+danger."
+
+Bob Rendel laughed, not very kindly, and together they went across to
+the stair leading below.
+
+Coxeter opened his mouth to speak, then he closed it again. What a
+scene! What a commentary on married life! And these two people were
+supposed to be "in love" with one another.
+
+The little episode had shocked him, jarred his contentment. "If you
+don't mind, I'll go and smoke a pipe," he said stiffly.
+
+Mrs. Archdale looked up. "Oh yes, please do," and yet she felt suddenly
+bereft of something warm, enveloping, kindly. The words formed
+themselves on her lips, "Don't go too far away," but she did not speak
+them aloud. But, as if in answer to her unspoken request, Coxeter called
+out, "I'm just here, close by, if you want anything," and the
+commonplace words gave her a curious feeling of security,--a feeling,
+though she herself was unaware of it, which her own care and tenderness
+for others often afforded to those round whom she threw the sheltering
+mantle of her kindness.
+
+Perhaps because he was so near, John Coxeter remained in her thoughts.
+Almost alone of those human beings with whom life brought her in
+contact, he made no demand on her sympathy, and very little on her time.
+In fact, his first offer of marriage had taken her so much by surprise
+as to strike her as slightly absurd; she had also felt it, at the time,
+to be an offence, for she had given him no right to encroach on the
+inner shrine of her being.
+
+Trying to account for what he had done, she had supposed that John
+Coxeter, being a man who evidently ordered his life according to some
+kind of system, had believed himself ripe for the honourable estate of
+marriage, and had chosen her as being "suitable."
+
+When writing her cold letter of refusal, she had expected to hear within
+a few weeks of his engagement to some "nice" girl. But time had gone by
+and nothing of the sort had happened. Coxeter's second offer, conveyed,
+as had been the first, in a formal letter, had found her in a very
+different mood, for it had followed very closely on that done by her of
+which he, John Coxeter, had so greatly disapproved. She had been touched
+this second time and not at all offended, and gradually they had become
+friends. It was after his second offer that Nan began making use of him,
+not so much for herself as on behalf of other people.
+
+Nan Archdale led her life without reference to what those about her
+considered appropriate or desirable; and years had gone by since the
+boldest busybody among them would have ventured a word of rebuke. Her
+social background was composed of happy, prosperous people. They had but
+little to do with her, however, save when by some amazing mischance
+things went wrong with them; when all went well they were apt to forget
+Nan Archdale. But John Coxeter, though essentially one of them by birth
+and instinct, and though it had been through them that she had first met
+him, never forgot her.
+
+Yet though they had become, in a sense, intimate, he made on her none of
+those demands which endear a man to a woman. Living up on a pleasant
+tableland of self-approval, he never touched the heights or depths which
+go to form the relief map of most human beings' lives. He always did his
+duty and generally enjoyed doing it, and he had no patience, only
+contempt, for those who shirked theirs.
+
+The passion of love, that greatest of the Protean riddles set by nature
+to civilized man and woman, played no part, or so Nan Archdale believed,
+in John Coxeter's life. At the time she had received the letter in which
+he had first asked her to marry him, there had come to her, seen through
+the softening mists of time, a sharp, poignant remembrance of Jim
+Archdale's offer, "If you won't have me, Nan, I'll do something
+desperate! You'll be sorry then!" So poor Jim Archdale had conquered
+her; and looking back, when she recalled their brief married life, she
+forgot the selfishness and remembered only the love, the love which had
+made Jim so dependent on her presence and her sympathy.
+
+But if John Coxeter were incapable of love, she now knew him to be a
+good friend, and it was the friend--so she believed, and was grateful to
+him for it,--who had asked her to accept what he had quixotically
+supposed would be the shelter of his name when she had done that thing
+of which he had disapproved.
+
+To-night Nan could not help wondering if he would ever again ask her to
+marry him. She thought not--she hoped not. She told herself quite
+seriously that he was one of those men who are far happier unwedded. His
+standard, not so much of feminine virtue as of feminine behaviour, was
+too high. Take what had happened just now; she had listened indulgently,
+tenderly, to the quarrel of the newly married couple, but she had seen
+the effect it had produced on John Coxeter. To him it had been a
+tragedy, and an ugly, ignoble tragedy to boot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The deck was now clear of passengers. Out in the open sea the fog had
+become so thick as to be impenetrable, and the boat seemed to be groping
+its way, heralded by the mournful screaming of the siren. Mrs. Archdale
+felt drowsy; she leant back and closed her eyes. Coxeter was close by,
+puffing steadily at his pipe. She felt a pleasant sensation of security.
+
+She was roused, rather startled, by a man bending over her, while a
+voice said gruffly, "I think, ma'am, that you'd better get into shelter.
+The deck saloon is close by. Allow me to lead you to it."
+
+Nan rose obediently. With the petty officer on one side and Coxeter on
+the other, she made a slow progress across the deck, and so to the
+large, brilliantly lighted saloon. There the fog had been successfully
+shut out, and some fifteen to twenty people sat on the velvet benches;
+among them was the sweetmeat merchant to whom Nan had talked in the
+train.
+
+Coxeter found a comfortable place for Nan rather apart from the others,
+and sitting down he began to talk to her. The fog-horn, which was
+trumpeting more loudly, more insistently than ever, did not, he thought,
+interfere with their conversation as much as it might have done.
+
+"We shan't be there till morning," Coxeter heard a man say, "till
+morning doth appear, at this rate!"
+
+"I suppose we're all right. There's no _real_ danger in a fog--not in
+the Channel; there never has been an accident on the Channel
+passage--not an accident of any serious kind."
+
+"Yes, there was--to one of the Dieppe boats--a very bad accident!"
+
+And then several of those present joined in the discussion. The man who
+had recalled the Dieppe boat accident could be heard, self-assertive,
+pragmatical, his voice raised above the voices around him. "I've been
+all over the world in my time, and when I'm caught in a fog at sea I
+always get up, dress, and go up on deck, however sleepy I may be."
+
+Coxeter, sitting apart by Nan's side, listened with some amusement. His
+rather thin sense of humour was roused by the fact that the people
+around him were talking in so absurd a manner. This delay was not
+pleasant; it might even mean that he would be a few hours late at the
+Treasury, a thing he had never once been after a holiday, for Coxeter
+prided himself on his punctuality in the little as well as the great
+things of life. But, of course, all traffic in the Channel would be
+delayed by this fog, and his absence would be accounted for by the fact.
+
+Sitting there, close to Mrs. Archdale, with no one sufficiently near to
+attract her attention, or, what was more likely, to appeal to her for
+sympathy, he felt he could well afford to wait till the fog cleared off.
+As for the loud, insistent screaming of the siren, that sound which
+apparently got on the nerves of most of those present in the deck
+saloon, of course it was a disagreeable noise, but then they all knew it
+was a necessary precaution, so why make a fuss about it?
+
+Coxeter turned and looked at his companion, and as he looked at her he
+felt a little possessive thrill of pride. Mrs. Archdale alone among the
+people there seemed content and at ease, indeed she was now smiling,
+smiling very brightly and sweetly, and, following the direction of her
+eyes, he saw that they rested on a child lying asleep in its mother's
+arms....
+
+Perhaps after all it was a good thing that Nan was so detached from
+material things. Before that burst of foolish talk provoked by the fog,
+he had been speaking to her about a matter very interesting to
+himself--something connected with his work, something, by the way, of
+which he would not have thought of speaking to any other woman; but then
+Mrs. Archdale, as Coxeter had good reason to know, was exceptionally
+discreet.... She had evidently been very much interested in all he had
+told her, and he had enjoyed the conversation.
+
+Coxeter became dimly conscious of what it would mean to him to have Nan
+to come back to when work, and the couple of hours he usually spent at
+his club, were over. Perhaps if Nan were waiting for him, he would not
+wish to stay as long as two hours at his club. But then of course he
+would want Nan all to himself. Jealous? Certainly not. He was far too
+sensible a man to feel jealous, but he would expect his wife to put him
+first--a very long way in front of anybody else. It might be
+old-fashioned, but he was that sort of man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Coxeter's thoughts leapt back into the present with disagreeable
+abruptness. Their Jewish fellow-traveller, the man who had thrust on
+Mrs. Archdale such unseemly confidences, had got up. He was now heading
+straight for the place where Mrs. Archdale was sitting.
+
+Coxeter quickly decided that the fellow must not be allowed to bore Mrs.
+Archdale. She was in his, Coxeter's, care to-night, and he alone had a
+right to her interest and attention. So he got up and walked down the
+saloon. To his surprise the other, on seeing him come near, stopped
+dead. "I want to speak to you," he said in a low voice,
+"Mr.--er--Coxeter."
+
+Coxeter looked at him, surprised, then reminded himself that his full
+name, "John Coxeter," was painted on his portmanteau. Also that Mrs.
+Archdale had called him "Mr. Coxeter" at least once, when discussing
+that life-saving toy. Still, sharp, observant fellows, Jews! One should
+always be on one's guard with them. "Yes?" he said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, Mr. Coxeter, I want to ask you to do me a little favour. The
+truth is I've just made my will--only a few lines--and I want you to be
+my second witness. I've no objection, none in the world, to your seeing
+what I want you to witness."
+
+He spoke very deliberately, as if he had prepared the form of words in
+which he made his strange request, and as he spoke he held out a sheet
+of paper apparently torn out of a notebook. "I asked that gentleman over
+there"--he jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"to be my first witness,
+and he kindly consented. I'd be much obliged if you'd sign your name
+just here. I'll also ask you to take charge of it--only a small
+envelope, as you see. It's addressed to my mother. I've made her
+executor and residuary legatee."
+
+Coxeter felt a strong impulse to refuse. He never mixed himself up with
+other people's affairs; he always refused to do so on principle.
+
+The man standing opposite to him divined what was passing through his
+mind, and broke in, "Only just while we're on this boat. You can tear it
+up and chuck the pieces away once we're on land again--" he spoke
+nervously, and with contemptuous amazement Coxeter told himself that the
+fellow was _afraid_. "Surely you don't think there's any danger?" he
+asked. "D'you mean you've made this will because you think something may
+happen to the boat?"
+
+The other nodded, "Accidents do happen"; he smiled rather foolishly as
+he said the words, pronouncing the last one, as Coxeter noted with
+disapproval, "habben." He was holding out a fountain pen; he had an
+ingratiating manner, and Coxeter, to his own surprise, suddenly gave
+way.
+
+"All right," he said, and taking the paper in his hand he glanced over
+it. He had no desire to pry into any man's private affairs, but he
+wasn't going to sign anything without first reading it.
+
+This odd little will consisted of only two sentences, written in a
+clear, clerkly hand. The first bequeathed an annuity of �240 (six
+thousand francs) to L�onie Lenoir, of Rue Lafayette, Paris; the second
+appointed the testator's mother, Mrs. Solomon Munich, of Scott Terrace,
+Maida Vale, residuary legatee and executor. The will was signed "Victor
+Munich."
+
+"Very well, I'll sign it," said Coxeter, at last, "and I'll take charge
+of it till we're on land. But look here--I won't keep it a moment
+longer!" Then, perhaps a little ashamed of his ungraciousness, "I say,
+Mr. Munich, if I were you I'd go below and take a stiffish glass of
+brandy and water. I once had a fright, I was nearly run over by a
+brewer's dray at Charing Cross, and I did that--took some brandy I
+mean--" he jerked the words out, conscious that the other's sallow face
+had reddened.
+
+Then he signed his name at the bottom of the sheet of paper, and busied
+himself with putting the envelope carefully into his pocketbook.
+"There," he said, with the slight supercilious smile which was his most
+marked physical peculiarity, but of which he was quite unconscious,
+"your will is quite safe now! If we meet at Folkestone I'll hand it you
+back; if we miss one another in the--er--fog I'll destroy it, as
+arranged."
+
+He turned and began walking back to where Nan Archdale was sitting. What
+a very odd thing! How extraordinary, how unexpected!
+
+Then a light broke in on him. Why, of course, it was Nan who had brought
+this about! She had touched up the Jew fellow's conscience, frightened
+him about that woman--the woman who had so absurdly termed him her
+"_petit homme ador�_." That's what came of mixing up in other people's
+business; but Coxeter's eyes nevertheless rested on the sitting figure
+of his friend with a certain curious indulgence. Odd, sentimental,
+sensitive creatures--women! But brave--not lacking in moral courage
+anyway.
+
+As he came close up to her, Mrs. Archdale moved a little, making room
+for him to sit down by her. It was a graceful, welcoming gesture, and
+John Coxeter's pulse began to quicken.... He told himself that this also
+was an extraordinary thing--this journey with the woman he had wished to
+make his wife. He felt her to be so tantalizingly near, and yet in a
+sense so very far away.
+
+His eyes fell on her right hand, still encased in his large brown glove.
+As he had buttoned that glove, he had touched her soft wrist, and a wild
+impulse had come to him to bend yet a little closer and press his lips
+to the white triangle of yielding flesh. Of course he had resisted the
+temptation, reminding himself sternly that it was a caddish thing even
+to have thought of taking advantage of Nan's confiding friendliness. Yet
+now he wondered whether he had been a fool not to do it. Other men did
+those things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a dragging, grating sound, the boat shuddering as if in
+response. Coxeter had the odd sensation that he was being gently but
+irresistibly pushed round, and yet he sat quite still, with nothing in
+the saloon changed in relation to himself.
+
+Someone near him exclaimed in a matter-of-fact voice, "We've struck;
+we're on a rock." Everyone stood up, and he saw an awful look of doubt,
+of unease, cross the faces of the men and women about him.
+
+The fog-horn ceased trumpeting, and there rose confused sounds, loud
+hoarse shouts and thin shrill cries, accompanying the dull thunder
+caused by the tramping of feet. Then the lights went out, all but the
+yellow flame of a small oil lamp which none of them had known was there.
+
+The glass-panelled door opened widely, and a burly figure holding a
+torch, which flared up in the still, moist air, was outlined against the
+steamy waves of fog.
+
+"Come out of here!" he cried; and then, as some people tried to push
+past him, "Steady, keep cool! There'll be room in the boats for every
+soul on board," and Coxeter, looking at the pale, glistening face, told
+himself that the man was lying, and that he knew he lied.
+
+They stumbled out, one by one, and joined the great company which was
+now swarming over the upper deck, each man and woman forlorn and lonely
+as human beings must ever be when individually face to face with death.
+
+Coxeter's right hand gripped firmly Mrs. Archdale's arm. She was
+pressing closely to his side, shrinking back from the rough crowd
+surging about them, and he was filled with a fierce protective
+tenderness which left no room in his mind for any thought of self. His
+one thought was how to preserve his companion from contact with some of
+those about them; wild-eyed, already distraught creatures, swayed with a
+terror which set them apart from the mass of quiet, apparently dazed
+people who stood patiently waiting to do what they were told.
+
+Close to Nan and Coxeter two men were talking Spanish; they were
+gesticulating, and seemed to be disagreeing angrily as to what course to
+pursue. Presently one of them suddenly produced a long knife which
+glittered in the torchlight; with it he made a gesture as if to show the
+other that he meant to cut his way through the crowd towards the spot,
+now railed off with rope barriers, where the boats were being got ready
+for the water.
+
+With a quick movement Coxeter unbuttoned his cloak and drew Nan within
+its folds; putting his arms round her he held her, loosely and yet how
+firmly clasped to his breast. "I can't help it," he muttered
+apologetically. "Forgive me!" As only answer she seemed to draw yet
+closer to him, and then she lay, still and silent, within his sheltering
+arms,--and at that moment he remembered to be glad he had not kissed her
+wrist.
+
+They two stood there, encompassed by a living wall, and yet how
+strangely alone. The fog had become less dense, or else the resin
+torches which flared up all about them cleared the air.
+
+From the captain's bridge there whistled every quarter minute a high
+rocket, and soon from behind the wall of fog came in answer distant
+signals full of a mingled mockery and hope to the people waiting there.
+
+But for John Coxeter the drama of his own soul took precedence of that
+going on round him. Had he been alone he would have shared to the full
+the awful, exasperating feeling of being trapped, of there being nothing
+to be done, which possessed all the thinking minds about him. But he was
+not alone----
+
+Nan, lying on his breast, seemed to pour virtue into him--to make him
+extraordinarily alive. Never had he felt death, extinction so near, and
+yet there seemed to be something outside himself, a spirit informing,
+uplifting, and conquering the flesh.
+
+Perceptions, sympathies, which had lain dormant during the whole of his
+thirty-nine years of life, now sprang into being. His imagination
+awoke. He saw that it was this woman, now standing, with such complete
+trust in the niceness of his honour, heart to heart with him, who had
+made the best of that at once solitary and companioned journey which we
+call life. He had thought her to be a fool; he now saw that, if a fool,
+she had been a divine fool, ever engaged while on her pilgrimage with
+the only things that now mattered. How great was the sum of her
+achievement compared with his. She had been a beacon diffusing light and
+warmth; he a shadow among shadows. If to-night he were engulfed in the
+unknown, for so death was visioned by John Coxeter, who would miss him,
+who would feel the poorer for his sudden obliteration?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Coxeter came back into the present; he looked round him, and for the
+first time he felt the disabling clutch of physical fear. The life-belts
+were being given out, and there came to him a horrid vision of the
+people round him as they might be an hour hence, drowned, heads down,
+legs up, done to death by those monstrous yellow bracelets which they
+were now putting on with such clumsy, feverish eagerness.
+
+He was touched on the arm, and a husky voice, with which he was by now
+familiar, said urgently, "Mr. Coxeter--see, I've brought your bag out
+of the saloon." The man whose name he knew to be Victor Munich was
+standing at his elbow. "Look here, don't take offence, Mr. Coxeter, I
+think better of the----" he hesitated--"the life-saver that you've got
+in this bag of yours than you do. I'm willing to give you a fancy price
+for it--what would you say to a thousand pounds? I daresay I shan't have
+occasion to use it, but of course I take that risk."
+
+Coxeter, with a quick, unobtrusive movement, released Mrs. Archdale. He
+turned and stared, not pleasantly, at the man who was making him so odd
+an offer. Damn the fellow's impudence! "The life-saver is not for sale,"
+he said shortly.
+
+Nan had heard but little of the quick colloquy. She did not connect it
+with the fact that the strong protecting arms which had been about her
+were now withdrawn,--and the tears came into her eyes. She felt both in
+a physical and in a spiritual sense suddenly alone. John Coxeter, the
+one human being who ever attempted to place himself on a more intimate,
+personal plane with her, happened, by a strange irony of fate, to be her
+companion in this awful adventure. But even he had now turned away from
+her....
+
+Nay, that was not quite true. He was again looking down at her, and she
+felt his hand groping for hers. As he found and clasped it, he made a
+movement as if he wished again to draw her towards him. Gently she
+resisted, and at once she felt that he responded to her feeling of
+recoil, and Nan, with a confused sense of shame and anger, was now hurt
+by his submission. Most men in his place would have made short work of
+her resistance,--would have taken her, masterfully, into the shelter of
+his arms.
+
+There came a little stir among the people on the deck. Coxeter heard a
+voice call out in would-be-cheery tones, "Now then, ladies! Please step
+out--ladies and children only. Look sharp!" A sailor close by whispered
+gruffly to his mate, "I'll stick to her anyhow. No crowded boats for me!
+I expect she'll be a good hour settling--perhaps a bit longer."
+
+As the first boat-load swung into the water, some of the people about
+them gave a little cheer. Coxeter thought, but he will never be quite
+sure, that in that cheer Nan joined. There was a delay of a minute; then
+again the captain's voice rang out, this time in a sharper, more
+peremptory tone, "Now, ladies, look sharp! Come along, please."
+
+Coxeter unclasped Nan's hand--he did not know how tightly he had been
+holding it. He loved her. God, how he loved her! And now he must send
+her away--away into the shrouding fog--away, just as he had found her.
+If what he had overheard were true, might he not be sending Nan to a
+worse fate than that of staying to take the risk with him?
+
+But the very man who had spoken so doubtfully of the boats just now came
+forward. "You'd best hurry your lady forward, sir. There's no time to
+lose." There was an anxious, warning note in the rough voice.
+
+"You must go now," said Coxeter heavily. "I shall be all right, Mrs.
+Archdale," for she was making no movement forward. "There'll be plenty
+of room for the men in the next boat. I'd walk across the deck with you,
+but I'm afraid they won't allow that." He spoke in his usual
+matter-of-fact, rather dry tone, and Nan looked up at him doubtingly.
+Did he really wish her to leave him?
+
+Flickering streaks of light fell on his face. It was convulsed with
+feeling,--with what had become an agony of renunciation. She withdrew
+her eyes, feeling a shamed, exultant pang of joy. "I'll wait till
+there's room for you, too, Mr. Coxeter." She breathed rather than
+actually uttered the words aloud.
+
+Another woman standing close by was saying the same thing to her
+companion, but in far more eager, more vociferous tones. "Is it likely
+that I should go away now and leave you, Bob? Of course not--don't be
+ridiculous!" But the Rendels pushed forward, and finally both found
+places in this, the last boat but one.
+
+Victor Munich was still standing close to John Coxeter, and Mrs.
+Archdale, glancing at his sallow, terror-stricken face, felt a thrill of
+generous pity for the man. "Mr. Coxeter," she whispered, "do give him
+that life-saver! Did he not ask you for it just now? We don't want it."
+
+Coxeter bent down and unstrapped his portmanteau. He handed to Nan the
+odd, toy-like thing by which he had set so little store, but which now
+he let go with a touch of reluctance. He saw her move close to the man
+whose name she did not know. "Here is the life-saver," she said kindly;
+"I heard you say you would like it."
+
+"But you?"--he stammered--"how about you?"
+
+"I don't want it. I shall be all right. I shouldn't put it on in any
+case."
+
+He took it then, avidly; and they saw him go forward with a quick,
+stealthy movement to the place where the last boat was being got ready
+for the water.
+
+"There's plenty of room for you and the lady now, sir!" Coxeter hurried
+Nan across the deck, but suddenly they were pushed roughly back. The
+rope barriers had been cut, and a hand-to-hand struggle was taking place
+round the boat,--an ugly scrimmage to which as little reference as
+possible was made at the wreck inquiry afterwards. To those who looked
+on it was a horrible, an unnerving sight; and this time Coxeter with
+sudden strength took Nan back into his arms. He felt her trembling,
+shuddering against him,--what she had just seen had loosed fear from its
+leash.
+
+"I'm frightened," she moaned. "Oh, Mr. Coxeter, I'm so horribly
+frightened of those men! Are they all gone?"
+
+"Yes," he said grimly, "most of them managed to get into the boat. Don't
+be frightened. I think we're safer here than we should be with those
+ruffians."
+
+Another man would have found easy terms of endearment and comfort for
+almost any woman so thrust on his protection and care, but the very
+depth of Coxeter's feeling seemed to make him dumb,--that and his
+anguished fear lest by his fault, by his own want of quickness, she had
+perhaps missed her chance of being saved.
+
+But what he was lacking another man supplied. This was the captain, and
+Nan, listening to the cheering, commonplace words, felt her nerve, her
+courage, come back.
+
+"Stayed with your husband?" he said, coming up to them. "Quite right,
+mum! Don't you be frightened. Look at me and my men, we're not
+frightened--not a bit of it! My boat will last right enough for us to be
+picked off ten times over. I tell you quite fairly and squarely, if I'd
+my wife aboard I'd 'a kept her with me. I'd rather be on this boat of
+mine than I would be out there, on the open water, in this fog." But as
+he walked back to the place where stood the rocket apparatus, Coxeter
+heard him mutter, "The brutes! Not all seconds or thirds either. I wish
+I had 'em here, I'd give 'em what for!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, when reading the narratives supplied by some of the passengers
+who perforce had remained on the doomed boat, Coxeter was surprised to
+learn how many thrilling experiences he had apparently missed during the
+long four hours which elapsed before their rescue. And yet the time of
+waiting and suspense probably appeared as long to him as it did to any
+of the fifty odd souls who stayed, all close together, on the upper
+deck waiting with what seemed a stolid resignation for what might next
+befall them.
+
+From the captain, Coxeter, leaving Mrs. Archdale for a moment, had
+extracted the truth. They had drifted down the French coast. They were
+on a dangerous reef of rock, and the rising of the wind, the lifting of
+the fog, for which they all looked so eagerly, might be the signal for
+the breaking up of the boat. On the other hand, the boat might hold for
+days. It was all a chance.
+
+Coxeter kept what he had learnt to himself, but he was filled with a
+dull, aching sensation of suspense. His remorse that he had not hurried
+Mrs. Archdale into one of the first boats became almost intolerable. Why
+had he not placed her in the care even of the Jew, Victor Munich, who
+was actually seated in the last boat before the scramble round it had
+begun?
+
+More fortunate than he, Mrs. Archdale found occupation in tending the
+few forlorn women who had been thrust back. He watched her moving among
+them with an admiration no longer unwilling; she looked bright, happy,
+almost gay, and the people to whom she talked, to whom she listened,
+caught something of her spirit. Coxeter would have liked to follow her
+example, but though he saw that some of the men round him were eager to
+talk and to discuss the situation, his tongue refused to form words of
+commonplace cheer.
+
+When with the coming of the dawn the fog lifted, Nan came up to Coxeter
+as he stood apart, while the other passengers were crowding round a fire
+which had been lit on the open deck. Together in silence they watched
+the rolling away of the enshrouding mist; together they caught sight of
+the fleet of French fishing boats from which was to come succour.
+
+As he turned and clasped her hand, he heard her say, more to herself
+than to him, "I did not think we should be saved."
+
+
+III
+
+John Coxeter was standing in the library of Mrs. Archdale's home in
+Wimpole Street. Two nights had elapsed since their arrival in London,
+and now he was to see her for the first time since they had parted on
+the Charing Cross platform, in the presence of the crowd of people
+comprised of unknown sympathisers, acquaintances, and friends who had
+come to meet them.
+
+He looked round him with a curious sense of unfamiliarity. The colouring
+of the room was grey and white, with touches of deep-toned mahogany. It
+was Nan's favourite sitting-room, though it still looked what it had
+been ever since Nan could remember it--a man's room. In his day her
+father had been a collector of books, medals, and engravings connected
+with the severer type of eighteenth-century art and letters.
+
+In a sense this room always pleased Coxeter's fancy, partly because it
+implied a great many things that money and even modern culture cannot
+buy. But now, this morning--for it was still early, and he was on his
+way to his office for the first time since what an aunt of his had
+called his mysterious preservation from death--he seemed to see
+everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been
+to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential.
+
+He had sometimes secretly wondered why Mrs. Archdale, possessed as she
+was of considerable means, had not altered the old house, had not made
+it pretty as her friends' houses and rooms were pretty; but to-day he no
+longer wondered at this. His knowledge of the fleetingness of life, and
+of the unimportance of all he had once thought so important, was too
+vividly present....
+
+She came into the room, and he saw that she was dressed in a more
+feminine kind of garment than that in which he generally saw her. It
+was white, and though girdled with a black ribbon, it made her look very
+young, almost girlish.
+
+For a moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale
+also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware,
+as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had
+brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she was more
+absorbed in her own sensations than in those of the person with her.
+
+Seeing John Coxeter standing there waiting for her, looking so like his
+old self, so absolutely unchanged, confused her and made her feel
+desperately shy.
+
+She held out her hand, but Coxeter scarcely touched it. After having
+held her so long in his arms, he did not care to take her hand in formal
+greeting. She mistook his gesture, thought that he was annoyed at having
+received no word from her since they had parted. The long day in between
+had been to Nan Archdale full of nervous horror, for relations, friends,
+acquaintances had come in troops to see her, and would not be denied.
+
+Already she had received two or three angry notes from people who
+thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had
+refused to see them when they had rushed to hear her account of an
+adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the
+mistake of confusing Coxeter with these selfish people.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice, "that when you called
+yesterday I was supposed to be asleep. I have been most anxious to see
+you"--she waited a moment and then added his name--"Mr. Coxeter. I knew
+that you would have the latest news, and that you would tell it me."
+
+"There is news," he said, "of all the boats; good news--with the
+exception of the last boat----" His voice sounded strangely to himself.
+
+"Oh, but that must be all right too, Mr. Coxeter! The captain said the
+boats might drift about for a long time."
+
+Coxeter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "In fact"--he waited
+a moment, and she came close up to him.
+
+"Tell me," she commanded in a low voice, "tell me what you know. They
+say I ought to put it all out of my mind, but I can think of nothing
+else. Whenever I close my eyes I see the awful struggle that went on
+round that last boat!" She gave a quick, convulsive sob.
+
+Coxeter was dismayed. How wildly she spoke, how unlike herself she
+seemed to-day--how unlike what she had been during the whole of their
+terrible ordeal.
+
+Already that ordeal had become, to him, something to be treasured. There
+is no lack of physical courage in the breed of Englishmen to which John
+Coxeter belonged. Pain, entirely unassociated with shame, holds out
+comparatively little terror to such as he. There was something rueful in
+the look he gave her.
+
+"The last boat was run down in the fog," he said briefly. "Some of the
+bodies have been washed up on the French coast."
+
+She looked at him apprehensively. "Any of the people we had spoken to?
+Any of those who were with us in the railway carriage?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sorry to say that one of the bodies washed up is that of the
+person who sat next to you."
+
+"That poor French boy?"
+
+Coxeter shook his head. "No, no--he's all right; at least I believe he's
+all right. It--the body I mean--was that of your other neighbour;" he
+added, unnecessarily, "the man who made sweets."
+
+And then for the first time Coxeter saw Nan Archdale really moved out of
+herself. What he had just said had had the power to touch her, to cause
+her greater anguish than anything which had happened during the long
+hours of terror they had gone through. She turned and, moving as if
+blindly, pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out some terrible
+and pitiful sight.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed in a low voice, "I shall never forgive myself over
+that! Do you know I had a kind of instinct that I ought to ask that man
+the name, the address"--her voice quivered and broke--"of his friend--of
+that poor young woman who saw him off at the Paris station."
+
+Till this moment Coxeter had not known that Nan had been aware of what
+had, to himself, been so odious, so ridiculous, and so grotesque, a
+scene. But now he felt differently about this, as about everything else
+that touched on the quick of life. For the first time he understood,
+even sympathized with, Nan's concern for that majority of human beings
+who are born to suffering and who are bare to the storm....
+
+"Look here," he said awkwardly, "don't be unhappy. It's all right. That
+man spoke to me on the boat--he did what you wished, he made a will
+providing for that woman; I took charge of it for him. As a matter of
+fact I went and saw his old mother yesterday. She behaved splendidly."
+
+"Then the life-saver was no good after all?"
+
+"No good," he said, and he avoided looking at her. "At least so it would
+seem, but who can tell?"
+
+Nan's eyes filled with tears; something beckoning, appealing seemed to
+pass from her to him....
+
+The door suddenly opened.
+
+"Mrs. Eaton, ma'am. She says she only heard what happened, to-day, and
+she's sure you will see her."
+
+Before Mrs. Archdale could answer, a woman had pushed her way past the
+maid into the room. "Nan? Poor darling! What an awful thing! I _am_ glad
+I came so early; now you will be able to tell me all about it!"
+
+The visitor, looking round her, saw John Coxeter, and seemed surprised.
+Fortunately she did not know him, and, feeling as if, had he stayed, he
+must have struck the woman, he escaped from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Coxeter went through the hall, filled with a perplexity and pain very
+alien from his positive nature, a good-looking, clean-shaven man, who
+gave him a quick measured glance, passed by. With him there had been no
+parleying at the door as in Coxeter's own case.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked, with a scowl, of the servant.
+
+"The doctor, sir," and he felt absurdly relieved. "We sent for him
+yesterday, for Mrs. Archdale seemed very bad last night." The servant
+dropped her voice, "It's the doctor, sir, as says Mrs. Archdale oughtn't
+to see visitors. You see it was in all the papers about the shipwreck,
+sir, and of course Mrs. Archdale's friends all come and see her to hear
+about it. They've never stopped. The doctor, he says that she ought to
+have stayed in bed and been quite quiet. But what would be the good of
+that, seeing she don't seem able to sleep? I suppose you've not suffered
+that way yourself, sir?"
+
+The young woman was staring furtively at Coxeter, but, noting his cold
+manner and imperturbable face, she felt that he was indeed a
+disappointing hero of romance--not at all the sort of gentleman with
+whom one would care to be shipwrecked, if it came to a matter of choice.
+
+"No," he said solemnly, "I can't say that I have."
+
+He looked thoughtfully out into what had never been to him a "long
+unlovely street," and which just now was the only place in the world
+where he desired to stay. Coxeter, always so sure of himself, and of
+what was the best and wisest thing to do in every circumstance of life,
+felt for the first time unable to cope with a situation presented to his
+notice.
+
+As he was hesitating, a carriage drove up, and a footman came forward
+with a card, while the occupant of the carriage called out, making
+anxious inquiries as to Mrs. Archdale's condition, and promising to call
+again the same afternoon.
+
+Coxeter suddenly told himself that it behoved him to see the doctor, and
+ascertain from him whether Mrs. Archdale was really ill.
+
+He crossed the street, and began pacing up and down, and unconsciously
+he quickened his steps as he went over every moment of his brief
+interview with Nan. All that was himself--and there was a good deal more
+of John Coxeter than even he was at all aware of--had gone out to her in
+a rapture of memory and longing, but she, or so it seemed to him, had
+purposely made herself remote.
+
+At last, after what seemed a very long time, the doctor came out of Mrs.
+Archdale's house and began walking quickly down the street.
+
+Coxeter crossed over and touched him on the arm. "If I may," he said, "I
+should like a word with you. I want to ask you--I mean I trust that Mrs.
+Archdale is recovering from the effect of the terrible experience she
+went through the other night." He spoke awkwardly, stiffly. "I saw her
+for a few minutes just before you came, and I was sorry to find her very
+unlike herself."
+
+The doctor went on walking; he looked coldly at Coxeter.
+
+"It's a great pity that Mrs. Archdale's friends can't leave her alone!
+As to being unlike herself, you and I would probably be very unlike
+ourselves if we had gone through what this poor lady had just gone
+through!"
+
+"You see, I was with her on the boat. We were not travelling together,"
+Coxeter corrected himself hastily, "I happened to meet her merely on the
+journey. My name is Coxeter."
+
+The other man's manner entirely altered. He slackened in his quick walk.
+"I beg your pardon," he said; "of course I had no notion who you were.
+She says you saved her life! That but for you she would have been in
+that boat--the boat that was lost."
+
+Coxeter tried to say something in denial of this surprising statement,
+but the doctor hurried on, "I may tell you that I'm very worried about
+Mrs. Archdale--in fact seriously concerned at her condition. If you have
+any influence with her, I beg you to persuade her to refuse herself to
+the endless busybodies who want to hear her account of what happened.
+She won't have a trained nurse, but there ought to be someone on
+guard--a human watchdog warranted to snarl and bite!"
+
+"Do you think she ought to go away from London?" asked Coxeter in a low
+voice.
+
+"No, I don't think that--at least not for the present," the medical man
+frowned thoughtfully. "What she wants is to be taken out of herself. If
+I could prescribe what I believe would be the best thing for her, I
+should advise that she go away to some other part of London with someone
+who will never speak to her of what happened, and yet who will always
+listen to her when she wants to talk about it--some sensible,
+commonplace person who could distract her mind without tiring her, and
+who would make her do things she has never done before. If she was an
+ordinary smart lady, I should prescribe philanthropy"--he made a slight
+grimace--"make her go and see some of my poorer patients--come into
+contact with a little _real_ trouble. But that would be no change to
+Mrs. Archdale. No; what she wants is someone who will force her to be
+selfish--who will take her up the Monument one day, and to a music-hall
+the next, motor her out to Richmond Park, make her take a good long
+walk, and then sit by the sofa and hold her hand if she feels like
+crying----" He stopped, a little ashamed of his energy.
+
+"Thank you," said Coxeter very seriously, "I'm much obliged to you for
+telling me this. I can see the sense of what you say."
+
+"You know, in spite of her quiet manner, Mrs. Archdale's a nervous,
+sensitive woman"--the doctor was looking narrowly at Coxeter as he
+spoke.
+
+"She was perfectly calm and--and very brave at the time----"
+
+"That means nothing! Pluck's not a matter of nerve--it ought to be, but
+it isn't! But I admit you're a remarkable example of the presence of the
+one coupled with the absence of the other. You don't seem a penny the
+worse, and yet it must have been a very terrible experience."
+
+"You see, it came at the end of my holiday," said Coxeter gravely, "and,
+as a matter of fact"--he hesitated--"I feel quite well, in fact,
+remarkably well. Do you see any objection to my calling again, I mean
+to-day, on Mrs. Archdale? I might put what you have just said before
+her."
+
+"Yes, do! Do that by all means! Seeing how well you have come through
+it"--the doctor could not help smiling a slightly satirical
+smile--"ought to be a lesson to Mrs. Archdale. It ought to show her that
+after all she is perhaps making a great deal of fuss about nothing."
+
+"Hardly that," said Coxeter with a frown.
+
+They had now come to the corner of Queen Anne Street. He put out his
+hand hesitatingly. The doctor took it, and, oddly enough, held it for a
+moment while he spoke.
+
+"Think over what I've said, Mr. Coxeter. It's a matter of hours. Mrs.
+Archdale ought to be taken in hand at once." Then he went off, crossing
+the street. "Pity the man's such a dry stick," he said to himself;
+"now's his chance, if he only knew it!"
+
+John Coxeter walked straight on. He had written the day before to say
+that he would be at his office as usual this morning, but now the fact
+quite slipped his mind.
+
+Wild thoughts were surging through his brain; they were running away
+with him and to such unexpected places!
+
+The Monument? He had never thought of going up the Monument; he would
+formerly have thought it a sad waste of time, but now the Monument
+became to John Coxeter a place of pilgrimage, a spot of secret healing.
+A man had once told him that the best way to see the City was at night,
+but that if you were taking a lady you should choose a Sunday morning,
+and go there on the top of a 'bus. He had thought the man who said this
+very eccentric, but now he remembered the advice and thought it well
+worth following.
+
+By the time Coxeter turned into Cavendish Square he had travelled far
+further than the Monument. He was in Richmond Park; Nan's hand was
+thrust through his arm, as it had been while they had watched the first
+boat fill slowly with the women and children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To lovers who remember, the streets of a great town, far more than
+country roads and lanes, hold over the long years precious, poignant
+memories, for a background of stones and mortar has about it a character
+of permanence which holds captive and echoes the scenes and words
+enacted and uttered there.
+
+Coxeter has not often occasion to go the little round he went that
+morning, but when some accidental circumstance causes him to do so, he
+finds himself again in the heart of that kingdom of romance from which
+he was so long an alien, and of which he has now become a naturalized
+subject. As most of us know, many ways lead to the kingdom of romance;
+Coxeter found his way there by a water-way.
+
+And so it is that when he reaches the turning into Queen Anne Street
+there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
+City--the City as it is at night, uncannily deserted save for the
+ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
+of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
+wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
+in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October.
+
+Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
+absorbed in his great adventure,--a far greater adventure than that with
+which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
+surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself--for he
+has not wholly cast out the old Adam--he sees himself as he was that
+memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
+ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
+found courage to do what he did--he who has always thought so much, in a
+hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.
+
+He could still tell you which lamp-post he was striding past when he
+realized, with a thrill of relief, that in any case Nan Archdale would
+not treat him as would almost certainly do one of those women whom he
+had honoured with his cold approval something less than a week ago. Any
+one of those women would have regarded what he was now going to ask Nan
+to do as an outrage on the conventions of life. But Nan Archdale would
+be guided only by what she herself thought right and seemly....
+
+And then, as he turns again into Wimpole Street, as he comes near to
+what was once his wife's house, his long steady stride becomes slower.
+Unwillingly he is living again those doubtful moments when he knocked at
+her door, when he gave the surprised maid the confused explanation that
+he had a message from the doctor for Mrs. Archdale. He hears the young
+woman say, "Mrs. Archdale is just going out, sir. The doctor thought she
+ought to take a walk;" and his muttered answer, "I won't keep her a
+moment...."
+
+Again he feels the exultant, breathless thrill which seized him when she
+slipped, neither of them exactly knew how, into his arms, and when the
+sentences he had prepared, the arguments he meant to use, in his hurried
+rush up the long street, were all forgotten. He hears himself imploring
+her to come away with him now, at once. Is she not dressed to go out?
+Instinct teaches him for the first time to make to her the one appeal to
+which she ever responds. He had meant to tell her what the doctor had
+said--to let that explain his great temerity--but instead he tells her
+only that he wants her, that he cannot go on living apart from her. Is
+there any good reason why they should not start now, this moment, for
+Doctors' Commons, in order to see how soon they can be married?
+
+So it is that when John Coxeter stands in Wimpole Street, so typical a
+Londoner belonging to the leisured and conventional class that none of
+the people passing by even glance his way, he lives again through the
+immortal moment when she said, "Very well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To this day, so transforming is the miracle of love, Nan Coxeter
+believes that during their curious honeymoon it was she who was taking
+care of John, not he of her.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in love and in terror
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Studies in love and in terror, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+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: Studies in love and in terror
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #26702]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LOVE AND IN TERROR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
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+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p class="title">STUDIES IN LOVE<br />
+AND IN TERROR<br />
+<br />
+<span class="by">BY</span><br />
+<span class="author">MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES</span><br />
+
+<span class="by">(Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes)</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pub"><i>Short Story Index Reprint Series</i></p>
+
+
+<table summary="Publisher details">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdlogo"><img src="images/logo.png" width="50" height="56" alt="" title="" /></td>
+<td class="tdlogo"><big>BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS</big><br />
+FREEPORT, NEW YORK<br />
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="pub2">
+First Published 1913<br />
+<br />
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr>
+<th class="tdr" colspan="2">PAGE</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Price of Admiralty</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Child</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#ii">99</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">St. Catherine's Eve</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iii">131</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Woman from Purgatory</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#iv">187</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Why They Married</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#v">227</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+<a name="i" id="i"></a>PRICE OF ADMIRALTY</h2>
+
+<div class="block1">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ce pays nous ennuie, O mort! Appareillons!"<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">CLAIRE DE WISSANT, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood
+in the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of
+poise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of
+the Pavillon de Wissant, the charming country house to which her husband
+had brought her, a seventeen year old bride, ten long years ago.</p>
+
+<p>She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded
+eyes with her right hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to
+which was attached a small key.</p>
+
+<p>A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It
+blotted out the low grey line on the horizon which, on the majority of
+each year's days, reminds the citizens of Falaise how near England is to
+France.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the <i>entente cordiale</i>, if only
+because it brought such a stream of tourists to the old seaport town of
+which he was now Mayor. But his beautiful wife thought of the English as
+gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not great-granddaughter to
+that admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered by
+chain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might go
+on commanding, in the hour of defeat, to the end?</p>
+
+<p>And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet
+invisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse
+of a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters had
+made them recite to her that very morning. How did it run? Aloud she
+murmured:</p>
+
+<div class="block2">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="io">"Yet this inconstancy is such,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As you too shall adore&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="noi">and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two
+concluding lines.</p>
+
+<p>To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled
+by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an
+intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the
+anguish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.</p>
+
+<p>With an abrupt, restless movement she turned and walked on till her way
+along the path was barred by a curious obstacle. This was a small
+red-brick tower, built within a few feet of the edge of the cliff. It
+was an ugly blot on the beautiful stretch of down, all the uglier that
+the bricks and tiles had not yet had time to lose their hardness of line
+and colour in the salt wind.</p>
+
+<p>On the cliff side, the small circular building, open to wind, sky and
+sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply,
+almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular
+steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a
+rough protection added by means of knotted ropes fixed on either side of
+the dangerous descent.</p>
+
+<p>In the days when the steps had started sheer from a cleft in the cliff
+path, Jacques de Wissant had never used this way of reaching a spot
+which till last year had been his property, and his favourite
+bathing-place; and he had also, in those same quiet days which now
+seemed so long ago, forbidden his daughters to use that giddy way. But
+Claire was a fearless woman; and she had always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> preferred the
+dangerous, ladder-like stairs which seemed, when gazed at from below, to
+hang 'twixt sky and sea.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, she rarely availed herself of the right retained by her
+husband of using one of the two keys which unlocked the door set in the
+new brick tower, for the cove&mdash;only by courtesy could it be called a
+bay&mdash;had been chosen, owing to its peculiar position, naturally remote
+and yet close to a great maritime port, to be the quarters of the
+Northern Submarine Flotilla.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant&mdash;and it was perhaps the only time in their joint life
+that his wife had entirely understood and sympathized with any action of
+her husband's&mdash;had refused the compensation his Government had offered
+him; more, in his cold, silent way, he had shown himself a patriot in a
+sense comparatively few modern men have the courage to be, namely, in
+that which affected both his personal comfort and his purse.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>After standing for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform
+which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the
+knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side.
+She no longer gazed out to sea, instead she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> looked straight down into
+the pale green, sun-flecked waters of the little bay, where seven out of
+the nine submarines which composed the flotilla were lying
+half-submerged, as is their wont in harbour.</p>
+
+<p>A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have
+thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight
+before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the
+placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still.</p>
+
+<p>But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the
+cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created
+monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had
+become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last
+few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they
+differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not
+only here, in these familiar waters, but in the waters of France's great
+rival on the sea....</p>
+
+<p>It ever gave her a thrill of pride to remember that it was France which
+first led the way in this, the most dangerous as also the most
+adventurous new arm of naval warfare: and she rejoiced as fiercely, as
+exultantly as any of her sea-fighting forbears would have done<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> in the
+terrible potentialities of destruction which each of these strange,
+grotesque-looking craft bore in their narrow flanks.</p>
+
+<p>It was now the hour of the crews' midday meal; there were fewer men
+standing about than usual; and so, after she had stepped down on the
+sandy strip of shore, and climbed the ladder leading to the old
+Napoleonic hulk which served as workshop and dwelling-place of the
+officers of the flotilla, Madame de Wissant for a few moments stood
+solitary, and looked musingly down into the waters of the bay.</p>
+
+<p>Each submarine, its long, fish-like shape lying prone in the almost
+still, transparent water, differed not only in size, but in make, from
+its fellows, and no two conning towers even were alike.</p>
+
+<p>Lying apart, as if sulking in a corner, was an example of the old
+"Gymnote" type of under-sea boat. She went by the name of the <i>Carp</i>,
+and she was very squat, small and ugly, her telescopic conning tower
+being of hard canvas.</p>
+
+<p>To Claire, the <i>Carp</i> always recalled an old Breton woman she had known
+as a girl. That woman had given thirteen sons to France, and of the
+thirteen five had died while serving with the colours&mdash;three at sea and
+two in Tonkin&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> a grateful country had given her a pension of ten
+francs a week, two francs for each dead son.</p>
+
+<p>Like that Breton woman, the ugly, sturdy little <i>Carp</i> had borne heroes
+in her womb, and like her, too, she had paid terrible toll of her sons
+to death.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, but very seldom now, the <i>Carp</i> was taken out to sea, and
+the men, strange to say, liked being in her, for they regarded her as a
+lucky boat; she had never had what they called a serious accident.</p>
+
+<p>Sunk deeper in the water was the broad-backed <i>Abeille</i>, significantly
+named "La P&eacute;troleuse," the heroine of four explosions, no favourite with
+either crews or commanders; and, cradled in a low dock on the farther
+strip of beach, was stretched the <i>Triton</i>, looking like a huge fish
+which had panted itself to death. The <i>Triton</i> also was not a lucky
+boat; she had been the theatre of a terrible mishap when, for some
+inexplicable cause, the conning tower had failed to close. Claire was
+always glad to see her safe in dock.</p>
+
+<p>Out in the middle of the bay was <i>La Glorieuse</i>, a submarine of the
+latest type. Had she not lain so low, little more than her flying bridge
+being above the water, she would have put her elder sisters to shame, so
+exquisitely shaped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> was she. Everything about <i>La Glorieuse</i> was made
+delicately true to scale, and she could carry a crew of over twenty men.
+But somehow Claire de Wissant did not care for this miniature leviathan
+as she did for the older kind of submarine, and, with more reason for
+his prejudice, the officer in charge of the flotilla shared her feeling.
+Commander Dupr&eacute; thought <i>La Glorieuse</i> difficult to handle under water.
+But he had had the same opinion of the <i>Neptune</i>, one of the two
+submarines which were out this fine August morning....</p>
+
+<p>An eager "Bonjour, madame," suddenly sounded in Claire de Wissant's ear,
+and she turned quickly to find one of the younger officers at her elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Neptune</i> is a few minutes late," he said smiling. "I hope your
+sister has enjoyed her cruise!" He was looking with admiring and
+grateful eyes at the young wife of the Mayor of Falaise, for Claire de
+Wissant and her widowed sister, Madeleine Baudoin, were very kind and
+hospitable to the officers of the submarine flotilla.</p>
+
+<p>The life of both officers and men who volunteer for this branch of the
+service is grim and arduous. And if this is generally true of them all,
+it was specially so of those who served under Commander Dupr&eacute;. By a
+tacit agreement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> with their chief, they took no part in the summer
+gaieties of the watering-place which has grown up round the old port of
+Falaise, and out of duty hours they would have led dull lives indeed had
+it not been for the hospitality shown them by the owners of the Pavillon
+de Wissant, and for the welcome which awaited them in the freer, gayer
+atmosphere of Madame Baudoin's villa, the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine Baudoin was a lively, cheerful woman, younger in nature if not
+in years than her beautiful sister, and so she was naturally more
+popular with the younger officers. They had felt especially flattered
+when Madame Baudoin had allowed herself to be persuaded to go out for a
+couple of hours in the <i>Neptune</i>; till this morning neither of the
+sisters had ever ventured out to sea in a submarine.</p>
+
+<p>And now 'twas true that the <i>Neptune</i> had been out longer than her
+commander had said she would be, but no touch of fear brushed Claire de
+Wissant; she would have trusted what she held most precious in the
+world&mdash;her children&mdash;to Commander Dupr&eacute;'s care, and a few moments after
+her companion had spoken she suddenly saw the little tricolor, for which
+her keen eyes had for long swept the sea, bravely riding the waves, and
+making straight for the bay.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+The flag moving swiftly over the surface of the blue water was a
+curious, almost an uncanny sight; one which never failed to fill Claire
+with a kind of spiritual exaltation. For the tiny strip of waving colour
+was a symbol of the gallantry, of the carelessness of danger, lying
+under the dancing, sun-flecked ripples which alone proved that the
+tricolor was not some illusion of sorcery.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as if the submarine had been indeed a sentient, living thing,
+the <i>Neptune</i> lifted her great shield-like back up out of the sea and
+glided through the narrow neck of the bay, and so close under the long
+deck on which Madame de Wissant and her companion were standing.</p>
+
+<p>The eager, busy hum of work slackened&mdash;discipline is not perhaps quite
+so taut in the French as it is in the British Navy&mdash;for both men and
+officers were one and all eager to see the lady who had ventured out in
+the <i>Neptune</i> with their commander. Only those actually on board had
+seen Madame Baudoin embark; there was a long, rough jetty close to her
+house, the lonely Ch&acirc;let des Dunes, and it was from there the submarine
+had picked up her honoured passenger.</p>
+
+<p>But when Commander Dupr&eacute;'s stern, sun-burnt face suddenly appeared above
+the conning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> tower, the men vanished as if by enchantment, while the
+eager, busy hum began again, much as if a lever, setting this human
+machinery in motion, had been touched by some titanic finger.</p>
+
+<p>The officers naturally held their ground.</p>
+
+<p>There was a look of strain in the Commander's blue eyes, and his mouth
+was set in hard lines; a thoughtful onlooker would have suspected that
+the exciting, dangerous life he led was trying his nerves. His men knew
+better; still, though they had no clue to the cause which had changed
+him, they all knew he had changed greatly of late; to them individually
+he had become kinder, more human, and that heightened their regret that
+he was now quitting the Northern Flotilla.</p>
+
+<p>Commander Dupr&eacute; had asked to be transferred to the Toulon Submarine
+Station; some experiments were being made there which he was anxious to
+watch. He was leaving Falaise on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Claire de Wissant reddened, and a gleam leapt into her eyes as she met
+the naval officer's grave, measuring glance. But very soon he looked
+away from her, for now he was bending down, putting out a hand to help
+his late passenger to step from the conning tower.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+Smiling, breathless, a little dishevelled, her grey linen skirt
+crumpled, Madame Baudoin looked round her, dazed for the moment by the
+bright sunlight. Then she called out gaily:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Claire! Here I am&mdash;alive and very, very hot!"</p>
+
+<p>And as she jumped off the slippery flank of the <i>Neptune</i>, she gave
+herself and her crumpled gown a little shake, and made a slight, playful
+grimace.</p>
+
+<p>The bright young faces round her broke into broad grins&mdash;those officers
+who volunteer for the submarine services of the world are chosen young,
+and they are merry boys.</p>
+
+<p>"You may well laugh, messieurs,"&mdash;she threw them all a lively
+challenging glance&mdash;"when I tell you that to-day, for the first time in
+my life, I acknowledge masculine supremacy! I think that you will admit
+that we women are not afraid of pain, but the discomfort, the&mdash;the
+stuffiness? Ah, no&mdash;I could not have borne much longer the horrible
+discomfort and stuffiness of that dreadful little <i>Neptune</i> of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>Protesting voices rose on every side. The <i>Neptune</i> was not
+uncomfortable! The <i>Neptune</i> was not stuffy!</p>
+
+<p>"And I understand"&mdash;again she made a little grimace&mdash;"that it is quite
+an exceptional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> thing for the crew to be consoled, as I was to-day, by
+an ice-pail!"</p>
+
+<p>"A most exceptional thing," said the youngest lieutenant, with a sigh.
+His name was Paritot, and he also had been out with the <i>Neptune</i> that
+morning. "In fact, it only happens in that week which sees four
+Thursdays&mdash;or when we have a lady on board, madame!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity it is," said another, "that the old woman who left a legacy
+to the inventor who devises a submarine life-saving apparatus didn't
+leave us instead a cream-ice allowance! It would have been a far more
+practical thing to do."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Baudoin turned quickly to Commander Dupr&eacute;, who now stood silent,
+smileless, at her sister's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely you're going to try for this extraordinary prize?" she cried.
+"I'm sure that you could easily devise something which would gain the
+old lady's legacy."</p>
+
+<p>"I, madame?" he answered with a start, almost as if he were wrenching
+himself free from some deep abstraction. "I should not think of trying
+to do such a thing! It would be a mere waste of time. Besides, there is
+no real risk&mdash;no risk that we are not prepared to run." He looked
+proudly round at the eager,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> laughing faces of the youngsters who were,
+till to-morrow night, still under his orders.</p>
+
+<p>"The old lady meant very well," he went on, and for the first time since
+he had stepped out of the conning tower Commander Dupr&eacute; smiled. "And I
+hope with all my heart that some poor devil will get her money! But I
+think I may promise you that it will not be an officer in the submarine
+service. We are too busy, we have too many really important things to
+do, to worry ourselves about life-saving appliances. Why, the first
+thing we should do if pressed for room would be to throw our
+life-helmets overboard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Has one of the life-helmets ever saved a life?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Claire who asked the question in her low, vibrating voice.</p>
+
+<p>Commander Dupr&eacute; turned to her, and he flushed under his sunburn. It was
+the first time she had spoken to him that day.</p>
+
+<p>"No, never," he answered shortly. And then, after a pause, he added,
+"the conditions in which these life-helmets could be utilized only occur
+in one accident in a thousand&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Still, they would have saved our comrades in the <i>Lutin</i>," objected
+Lieutenant Paritot.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Lutin</i>? There was a moment's silence.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> The evocation of that
+tricksy sprite, the Ariel of French mythology, whose name, by an
+ironical chance, had been borne by the most ill-fated of all submarine
+craft, seemed to bring the shadow of death athwart them all.</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine Baudoin felt a sudden tremor of retrospective fear. She was
+glad she had not remembered the <i>Lutin</i> when she was sitting, eating
+ices, and exchanging frivolous, chaffing talk with Lieutenant Paritot in
+that chamber of little ease, the drum-like interior of the <i>Neptune</i>,
+where not even she, a small woman, could stand upright.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! We must not keep you from your <i>d&eacute;jeuner</i>!" she cried,
+shaking off the queer, disturbing sensation. "I have to thank you
+for&mdash;shall I say a very interesting experience? I am too honest to say
+an agreeable one!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook hands with Commander Dupr&eacute; and Lieutenant Paritot, the
+officers who had accompanied her on what had been, now that she looked
+back on it, perhaps a more perilous adventure than she had realized.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming with me, Claire?" She looked at her sister&mdash;it was a
+tender, anxious, loving look; Madeleine Baudoin had been the eldest, and
+Claire de Wissant the youngest, of a Breton admiral's family of three
+daughters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> and four sons; they two were devoted to one another.</p>
+
+<p>Claire shook her head. "I came to tell you that I can't lunch with you
+to-day," she said slowly. "I promised I would be back by half-past
+twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we shall not meet till to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>Claire repeated mechanically, "No, not till to-morrow, dear Madeleine."</p>
+
+<p>"May I row you home, madame?" Lieutenant Paritot asked Madeleine
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, <i>mon ami</i>."</p>
+
+<p>And so, a very few minutes later, Claire de Wissant and Commander Dupr&eacute;
+were left alone together&mdash;alone, that is, save for fifty inquisitive, if
+kindly, pairs of eyes which saw them from every part of the bay.</p>
+
+<p>At last she held out her hand. "Good-bye, then, till to-morrow," she
+said, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not good-bye yet!" he cried imperiously. "You must let me take you
+up the cliff to-day. It may be&mdash;I suppose it is&mdash;the last time I shall
+be able to do so."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly waiting for her murmured word of assent, he led the way up the
+steep, ladder-like stairway cut in the cliff side; half-way up there
+were some very long steps, and it was from above that help could best be
+given. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> longed with a fierce, aching longing that she would allow him
+to take her two hands in his and draw her up those high, precipitous
+steps. But of late Claire had avoided accepting from him, her friend,
+this simple, trifling act of courtesy. And now twice he turned and held
+out a hand, and twice she pretended not to see it.</p>
+
+<p>At last, within ten feet of the top of the cliff, they came to the
+steepest, rudest step of all&mdash;a place some might have thought very
+dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Commander Dupr&eacute; bent down and looked into Claire's uplifted face. "Let
+me at least help you up here," he said hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head obstinately&mdash;but suddenly he felt her tremulous lips
+touch his lean, sinewy hand, and her hot tears fall upon his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>He gave a strangled cry of pain and of pride, of agony and of rapture,
+and for a long moment he battled with an awful temptation. How easy it
+would be to gather her into his arms, and, with her face hidden on his
+breast, take a great leap backwards into nothingness....</p>
+
+<p>But he conquered the persuasive devil who had been raised&mdash;women do not
+know how easy it is to rouse this devil&mdash;by Claire's moment of piteous
+self-revelation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+And at last they stood together on the narrow platform where she, less
+than an hour ago, had stood alone.</p>
+
+<p>Sheltered by the friendly, ugly red walls of the little tower, they were
+as remote from their kind as if on a rock in the midst of the sea. More,
+she was in his power in a sense she had never been before, for she had
+herself broken down the fragile barrier with which she had hitherto
+known how to keep him at bay. But he felt rather than saw that it was
+herself she would despise if now, at the eleventh hour, he took
+advantage of that tremulous kiss of renunciation, of those hot tears of
+anguished parting&mdash;and so&mdash;"Then at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"
+he said, and he felt as if it was some other man, not he himself, who
+was saying the words. He took her hand in farewell&mdash;so much he could
+allow himself&mdash;and all unknowing crushed her fingers in his strong,
+convulsive grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, "at eleven to-morrow morning Madeleine and I will be
+waiting out on the end of the jetty."</p>
+
+<p>He thought he detected a certain hesitancy in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure you still wish to come?" he said gravely. "I would not
+wish you to do anything that would cause you any fear&mdash;or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> any
+discomfort. Your sister evidently found it a very trying experience
+to-day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Claire smiled. Her hand no longer hurt her; her fingers had become quite
+numb.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid?" she said, and there was a little scorn in her voice. And then,
+"Ah me! I only wish that there were far more risk than there is about
+that which we are going to do together to-morrow." She was in a
+dangerous mood, poor soul&mdash;the mood that raises a devil in men. But
+perhaps her good angel came to help her, for suddenly, "Forgive me," she
+said humbly. "You know I did not mean that! Only cowards wish for
+death."</p>
+
+<p>And then, looking at him, she averted her eyes, for they showed her
+that, if that were so, Dupr&eacute; was indeed a craven.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Au revoir</i>," she whispered; "<i>au revoir</i> till to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>When half-way through the door, leading on to the lonely stretch of
+down, she turned round suddenly. "I do not want you to bring any ices
+for me to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of doing so," he said simply. And the words pleased
+Claire as much as anything just then could pleasure her, for they proved
+that her friend did not class her in his mind with those women who fear
+discomfort more than danger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+It had been her own wish to go out with Commander Dupr&eacute; for his last
+cruise in northern waters. She had not had the courage to deny herself
+this final glimpse of him&mdash;they were never to meet again after
+to-morrow&mdash;in his daily habit as he lived.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>At nine o'clock the next morning Jacques de Wissant stood in his wife's
+boudoir.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange and beautiful room, likely to linger in the memory of
+those who knew its strange and beautiful mistress.</p>
+
+<p>The walls were draped with old Persian shawls, the furniture was of red
+Chinese lacquer, a set acquired in the East by some Norman sailing man
+unnumbered years ago, and bought by Claire de Wissant out of her own
+slender income not long after her marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Pale blue and faded yellow silk cushions softened the formal angularity
+of the wide cane-seated couch and low, square chairs. There was a deep
+crystal bowl of midsummer flowering roses on the table, laden with
+books, by which Claire often sat long hours reading poetry and volumes
+written by modern poets and authors of whom her husband had only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+vaguely heard and of whom he definitely disapproved.</p>
+
+<p>The window was wide open, and there floated in from the garden, which
+sloped away to the edge and indeed over the crumbling cliff, fragrant,
+salt-laden odours, dominated by the clean, sharp scent thrown from huge
+shrubs of red and white geraniums. The balls of blossom set against the
+belt of blue sea, formed a band of waving tricolor.</p>
+
+<p>But Jacques de Wissant was unconscious, uncaring of the beauty round
+him, either in the room or without, and when at last he walked forward
+to the window, his face hardened as his eyes instinctively sought out
+the spot where, if hidden from his sight, he knew there lay the deep
+transparent waters of the little bay which had been selected as
+providing ideal quarters for the submarine flotilla.</p>
+
+<p>He had eagerly assented to the sacrifice of his land, and, what meant
+far more to him, of his privacy; but now he would have given much&mdash;and
+he was a careful man&mdash;to have had the submarine station swept away,
+transferred to the other side of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>Down there, out of sight of the Pavillon, and yet but a few minutes away
+(if one used the dangerous cliff-stairway), dwelt Jacques de Wissant's
+secret foe, for the man of whom he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> was acutely, miserably jealous was
+Commander Dupr&eacute;, of whose coming departure he as yet knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The owner of the Pavillon de Wissant seldom entered the room where he
+now stood impatiently waiting for his wife, and he never did so without
+looking round him with distaste, and remembering with an odd, wistful
+feeling what it had been like in his mother's time. Then "le boudoir de
+madame" had reflected the tastes and simple interests of an
+old-fashioned provincial lady born in the year that Louis Philippe came
+to the throne. Greatly did the man now standing there prefer the room as
+it had been to what it was now!</p>
+
+<p>The heavy, ugly furniture which had been there in the days of his lonely
+youth, for he had been an only child, was now in the schoolroom where
+the twin daughters of the house, Clairette and Jacqueline, did their
+lessons with Miss Doughty, their English governess.</p>
+
+<p>Clairette and Jacqueline? Jacques de Wissant's lantern-jawed,
+expressionless face quickened into feeling as he thought of his two
+little girls. They were the pride, as well as the only vivid pleasure,
+of his life. All that he dispassionately admired in his wife was, so he
+sometimes told himself with satisfaction,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> repeated in his daughters.
+Clairette and Jacqueline had inherited their mother's look of race, her
+fastidiousness and refinement of bearing, while fortunately lacking
+Claire's dangerous personal beauty, her touch of eccentricity, and her
+discontent with life&mdash;or rather with the life which Jacques de Wissant,
+in spite of a gnawing ache and longing that nothing could still or
+assuage, yet found good.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise looked strangely out of keeping with his present
+surroundings, at least so he would have seemed to the eye of any
+foreigner, especially of any Englishman, who had seen him standing
+there.</p>
+
+<p>He was a narrowly built man, forty-three years of age, and his
+clean-shaven, rather fleshy face was very pale. On this hot August
+morning he was dressed in a light grey frock-coat, under which he wore a
+yellow waistcoat, and on his wife's writing-table lay his tall hat and
+lemon-coloured gloves.</p>
+
+<p>As mayor of his native town&mdash;a position he owed to an historic name and
+to his wealth, and not to his very moderate Republican opinions&mdash;his
+duties included the celebration of civil marriages, and to-day, it being
+the 14th of August, the eve of the Assumption, and still a French
+national f&ecirc;te, there were to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> be a great many weddings celebrated in the
+H&ocirc;tel de Ville.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant considered that he owed it to himself, as well as to
+his fellow-citizens, to appear "correctly" attired on such occasions. He
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of his acquaintances who dressed
+on ceremonial occasions "&agrave; l'anglaise," that is, in loose lounge suits
+and straw hats.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing.
+It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful
+passionate words of an old sea ballad rang out, full of a desolate pain
+and sense of bitter loss.</p>
+
+<p>The sound irritated him shrewdly, and there came back to him a fragment
+of conversation he had not thought of for ten years. During a discussion
+held between his father and mother in this very room about their adored
+only son's proposed marriage with Claire de Kergou&euml;t, his father had
+said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very
+musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he
+heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "<i>Mon ami</i>, you cannot
+expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch with
+her love of music....</p>
+
+<p>He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door.</p>
+
+<p>The song broke short with an almost cruel suddenness, and yet there
+followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in."</p>
+
+<p>And then, as Jacques de Wissant slowly turned the handle of the door, he
+saw his wife, Claire, before she saw him. He had a vision, that is, of
+her as she appeared when she believed herself to be, if not alone, then
+in sight of eyes that were indifferent, unwatchful. But Jacques' eyes,
+which his wife's widowed sister, the frivolous Parisienne, Madeleine
+Baudoin, had once unkindly compared to fishes' eyes, were now filled
+with a watchful, suspicious light which gave a tragic mask to his
+pallid, plain-featured face.</p>
+
+<p>Claire de Wissant was standing before a long, narrow mirror placed at
+right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow,
+dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender
+figure, the figure which remained so supple, so&mdash;so girlish, in spite of
+her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed
+and yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and
+sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret
+tears, and in the firm, delicately modelled mouth.</p>
+
+<p>She was engaged in tucking up her dark, curling hair under a grey
+yachting cap, and, for a few moments, she neither spoke nor looked round
+to see who was standing framed in the door. But when, at last, she
+turned away from the mirror and saw her husband, the colour, rushing
+into her pale face, caused an unbecoming flush to cover it.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was one of the children," she said, a little breathlessly.
+And then she waited, assuming, or so Jacques thought, an air at once of
+patience and of surprise which sharply angered him.</p>
+
+<p>Then her look of strain, nay, of positive illness, gave him an uneasy
+twinge of discomfort. Could it be anxiety concerning her second sister,
+Marie-Anne, who, married to an Italian officer, was now ill of scarlet
+fever at Mantua? Two days ago Claire had begged very earnestly to be
+allowed to go and nurse Marie-Anne. But he, Jacques, had refused, not
+unkindly, but quite firmly. Claire's duty of course lay at Falaise, with
+her husband and children; not at Mantua, with her sister.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she again broke silence. "Well?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> she said. "Is there anything
+you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
+the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
+of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
+return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
+one instance, to follow fashion.</p>
+
+<p>She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
+sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
+chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
+be on the defensive when speaking to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
+sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
+sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
+the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
+Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
+this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
+"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
+Claire's face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+"I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?"</p>
+
+<p>She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
+the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
+each winter.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
+deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
+courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
+which she had early schooled him to endure.</p>
+
+<p>But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
+to-day&mdash;the fourteenth of August&mdash;is our wedding day! How stupid of me
+to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
+them&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
+de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
+moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
+the distance between them.</p>
+
+<p>But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
+strict code of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
+possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed
+with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that
+Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any
+passionate feeling to restrain.</p>
+
+<p>All he now did was to take a shagreen case out of his breast pocket and
+hold it out towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"Claire," he said quietly, "I have brought you, in memory of our wedding
+day, a little gift which I hope you will like. It is a medallion of the
+children." And as she at last advanced towards him, he pressed a spring,
+and revealed a dull gold medal on which, modelled in high relief, and
+superposed the one on the other, were Clairette's and Jacqueline's
+childish, delicately pure profiles.</p>
+
+<p>A softer, kindlier light came into Claire de Wissant's sad grey eyes.
+She held out a hesitating hand&mdash;and Jacques de Wissant, before placing
+his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather
+awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss
+a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage. But to Claire
+the touch of her husband's lips was hateful&mdash;so hateful indeed that she
+had to make an instant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion
+with which that touch had suddenly engulfed her in certain dark recesses
+of memory and revolt.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a charming medallion," she said hurriedly, "quite a work of art,
+Jacques; and I thank you for having thought of it. It gives me
+great&mdash;very great pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>And then something happened which was to her so utterly unexpected that
+she gave a stifled cry of pain&mdash;almost it seemed of fear.</p>
+
+<p>As she forced herself to look straight into her husband's face, the
+anguish in her own sore heart unlocked the key to his, and she perceived
+with the eyes of the soul, which see, when they are not holden, so much
+that is concealed from the eyes of the body, the suffering, the dumb
+longing she had never allowed herself to know were there.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time since her marriage&mdash;since that wedding day of which
+this was the tenth anniversary&mdash;Claire felt pity for Jacques as well as
+for herself. For the first time her rebellious heart acknowledged that
+her husband also was enmeshed in a web of tragic circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques?" she cried. "Oh, Jacques!" And as she so uttered his name
+twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution
+on her face. "I wish you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> to know," she exclaimed, "that&mdash;that&mdash;if I
+were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to
+the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word&mdash;that word
+which in French signifies woman as well as wife.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, and uttered no word of answer, of understanding, in
+response to her strange speech.</p>
+
+<p>At one time, not lately, but many years ago, Claire had sometimes tried
+his patience by the odd, unreasonable things she said, and once, stung
+beyond bearing, he had told her so. Remembering those cold, measured
+words of rebuke, she now caught with quick, exultant relief at the idea
+that Jacques had not understood the half-confession wrung from her by
+her sudden vision of his pain; and she swung back to a belief she had
+always held till just now, the belief that he was dull&mdash;dull and
+unperceptive.</p>
+
+<p>With a nervous smile she turned again to her mirror, and then Jacques de
+Wissant, with his wife's enigmatic words ringing in his ears, abruptly
+left the room.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's
+beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower,
+and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house.</p>
+
+<p>And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to
+co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions.</p>
+
+<p>Ah yes, he had understood&mdash;understood only too well Claire's strange,
+ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all
+men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but
+divine before they are actually in being.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant now believed that he was justified of the suspicions
+of which he had been ashamed. His wife&mdash;moved by some obscure desire for
+self-revelation to which he had had no clue&mdash;had flung at him the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, without doubt Claire could have made him happy&mdash;so little would
+have contented his hunger for her&mdash;had she been one of those light women
+of whom he sometimes heard, who go from their husbands' kisses to those
+of their lovers.</p>
+
+<p>But if he sometimes, nay, often heard of them, Jacques de Wissant knew
+nothing of such women. The men of his race had known how to acquire
+honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de
+Wissant family any of those ugly scandals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> which stain other clans, and
+which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those
+scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed
+by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings
+when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the
+honourable marriage of daughters difficult of achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant thanked the God of his fathers that Claire had
+nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need
+her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the
+phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of
+half-avowal racked him with jealous and, yes, suspicious pain.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for him, he was a man burdened with much business, and so at
+last he looked at his watch. Why, it was getting late&mdash;terribly late,
+and he prided himself on his punctuality. Still, if he started now, at
+once, he would be at the H&ocirc;tel de Ville a few minutes before ten
+o'clock, the time when the first of the civil marriages he had to
+celebrate that morning was timed to take place.</p>
+
+<p>Without passing through the house, he made his way rapidly round by the
+gardens to the road, winding ribbon-wise behind the cliffs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> where his
+phaeton was waiting for him; for Jacques de Wissant had as yet resisted
+the wish of his wife and the advice of those of his friends who
+considered that he ought to purchase an automobile: driving had been
+from boyhood one of his few pleasures and accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>But as he drove, keeping his fine black bays well in hand, the five
+miles into the town, and tried to fix his mind on a commercial problem
+of great importance with which he would be expected to deal that day,
+Jacques de Wissant found it impossible to think of any matter but that
+which for the moment filled his heart to the exclusion of all else. That
+matter concerned his own relations to his wife, and his wife's relations
+to Commander Dupr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>This gentleman of France was typical in more than one sense of his
+nation and of his class&mdash;quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture
+which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in
+manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his
+name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country;
+obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is
+never questioned by those about them, Jacques de Wissant's fetish was
+his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> personal honour and the honour of his name&mdash;of the name of Wissant.</p>
+
+<p>In his distress and disturbance of mind&mdash;for his wife's half confession
+had outraged his sense of what was decorous and fitting&mdash;his memory
+travelled over the map of his past life, aye, and even beyond the
+boundaries of his own life.</p>
+
+<p>Before him lay spread retrospectively the story of his parents'
+uneventful, happy marriage. They had been mated in the good old French
+way, that is, up to their wedding morning they had never met save in the
+presence of their respective parents. And yet&mdash;and yet how devoted they
+had been to each other! So completely one in thought, in interest, in
+sympathy had they grown that when, after thirty-three years of married
+life, his father had died, Jacques' mother had not known how to go on
+living. She had slipped out of life a few months later, and as she lay
+dying she had used a very curious expression: "My faithful companion is
+calling me," she had said to her only child, "and you must not try, dear
+son, to make me linger on the way."</p>
+
+<p>Now, to-day, Jacques de Wissant asked himself with perplexed pain and
+anger, why it was that his parents had led so peaceful, so dignified, so
+wholly contented a married life, while he himself&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+And yet his own marriage had been a love match&mdash;or so those about him
+had all said with nods and smiles&mdash;love marriages having suddenly become
+the fashion in the rich provincial world of which he had then been one
+of the heirs-apparent.</p>
+
+<p>His old-fashioned mother would have preferred as daughter-in-law any one
+of half a dozen girls who belonged to her own good town of Falaise, and
+whom she had known from childhood. But Jacques had been difficult to
+please, and he was already thirty-two when he had met, by a mere chance,
+Claire de Kergou&euml;t at her first ball. She was only seventeen, with but
+the promise of a beauty which was now in exquisite flower, and he had
+decided, there and then, in the course of two hours, that this
+demoiselle de Kergou&euml;t was alone worthy of becoming Madame Jacques de
+Wissant.</p>
+
+<p>And on the whole his prudent parents had blessed his choice, for the
+girl was of the best Breton stock, and came of a family famed in the
+naval annals of France. Unluckily Claire de Kergou&euml;t had had no dowry to
+speak of, for her father, the Admiral, had been a spendthrift, and, as
+is still the reckless Breton fashion, father of a large family&mdash;three
+daughters and four sons. But Jacques de Wissant had not allowed his
+parents to give the matter of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> Claire's fortune more than a regretful
+thought&mdash;indeed, he had done further, he had "recognized" a larger dowry
+than she brought him to save the pride of her family.</p>
+
+<p>But Claire&mdash;he could not help thinking of it to-day with a sense of
+bitter injury&mdash;had never seemed grateful, had never seemed to understand
+all that had been done for her....</p>
+
+<p>Had he not poured splendid gifts upon her in the beginning of their
+married life? And, what had been far more difficult, had he not, within
+reason, contented all her strange whims and fantasies?</p>
+
+<p>But nought had availed him to secure even a semblance of that steadfast,
+warm affection, that sincere interest and pride in his concerns which is
+all such a Frenchman as was Jacques de Wissant expects, or indeed
+desires, of his wedded wife. Had Claire been such a woman, Jacques' own
+passion for her would soon have dulled into a reasonable, comfortable
+affection. But his wife's cool aloofness had kept alive the hidden
+fires, the more&mdash;so ironic are the tricks which sly Dame Nature
+plays&mdash;that for many years past he had troubled her but very little with
+his company.</p>
+
+<p>Outwardly Claire de Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and
+relations on such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing
+herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed
+the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly?
+Inwardly they two were strangers.</p>
+
+<p>And yet only during the last few months had Jacques de Wissant ever felt
+jealous of his wife. There had been times when he had been angered by
+the way in which her young beauty, her indefinable, mysterious charm,
+had attracted the very few men with whom she was brought into contact.
+But Claire, so her husband had always acknowledged to himself, was no
+flirt; she was ever perfectly "correct."</p>
+
+<p>Correct was a word dear to Jacques de Wissant. It was one which he used
+as a synonym for great things&mdash;things such as honour, fineness of
+conduct, loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>But fate had suddenly introduced a stranger into the dull, decorous life
+of the Pavillon de Wissant, and it was he, Jacques himself, who had
+brought him there.</p>
+
+<p>How bitter it was to look back and remember how much he had liked&mdash;liked
+because he had respected&mdash;Commander Dupr&eacute;! He now hated and feared the
+naval officer, and he would have given much to have been able to despise
+him. But that Jacques de Wissant could not do. Commander Dupr&eacute; was still
+all that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> he had taken him to be when he first made him free of his
+house&mdash;a brilliant officer, devoted to his profession, already noted in
+the Service as having made several important improvements in submarine
+craft.</p>
+
+<p>From the first it had seemed peculiar, to Jacques de Wissant's mind
+unnatural, that such a man as was Dupr&eacute; should be so keenly interested
+in music and in modern literature. But so it was, and it had been owing
+to these strange, untoward tastes that Commander Dupr&eacute; and Claire had
+become friends.</p>
+
+<p>He now reminded himself, for the hundredth time, that he had begun by
+actually approving of the acquaintance between his wife and the naval
+officer&mdash;an acquaintance which he had naturally supposed would be of the
+most "correct" nature.</p>
+
+<p>Then, without warning, there came an hour&mdash;nay, a moment, when in that
+twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most
+torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession
+of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the
+elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always
+dwelt so snugly and unquestioningly ensconced.</p>
+
+<p>He had come home after a long afternoon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> spent at the H&ocirc;tel de Ville to
+learn with tepid pleasure that there was a visitor, Commander Dupr&eacute;, in
+the house, and as he had come hurrying towards his wife's boudoir,
+Jacques had heard Claire's low, deep voice and the other's ardent, eager
+tones mingling together....</p>
+
+<p>And then as he, the husband, had opened the door, they had stopped
+speaking, their words clipped as if a sword had fallen between them. At
+the same moment a servant had brought a lamp into the twilit room, and
+Jacques had seen the ravaged face of Commander Dupr&eacute;, a fair, tanned
+face full of revolt and of longing leashed. Claire had remained in
+shadow, but her eyes, or so the interloper thought he perceived, were
+full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Since that spring evening the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy
+moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever
+watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of
+her movements.</p>
+
+<p>True, Commander Dupr&eacute; had soon ceased to trouble the owner of the
+Pavillon de Wissant by his presence. The younger officers came and went,
+but since that hour, laden with unspoken drama, their commander only
+came when good breeding required him to pay a formal call on his nearest
+neighbour and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> sometime host. But Claire saw Dupr&eacute; constantly at the
+Ch&acirc;let des Dunes, her sister's house, and she was both too proud and too
+indifferent, it appeared, to her husband's view of what a young married
+woman's conduct should be, to conceal the fact.</p>
+
+<p>This openness on his wife's part was at once Jacques' consolation and
+opportunity for endless self-torture.</p>
+
+<p>For three long miserable months he had wrestled with those ignoble
+questionings only the jealous know, now accepting as probable, now
+rejecting with angry self-rebuke, the thought that his wife suffered,
+perhaps even returned, Dupr&eacute;'s love. And to-day, instead of finding his
+jealousy allayed by her half-confidence, he felt more wretched than he
+had ever been.</p>
+
+<p>His horses responded to his mood, and going down the steep hill which
+leads into the town of Falaise they shied violently at a heap of stones
+they had passed sedately a dozen times or more. Jacques de Wissant
+struck them several cruel blows with the whip he scarcely ever used, and
+the groom, looking furtively at his master's set face and blazing eyes,
+felt suddenly afraid.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>III</h3>
+
+<p>It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
+out of the great <i>salle</i> of the Falaise town hall and so to the
+Cathedral across the market place.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
+badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
+characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
+the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
+high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
+intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
+picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
+holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
+to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
+everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
+nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
+felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
+had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
+few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
+market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
+house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
+fads&mdash;for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion&mdash;were known.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves&mdash;and then a look
+of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
+door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.</p>
+
+<p>He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
+he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
+reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
+business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.</p>
+
+<p>But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
+his way out to <i>d&eacute;jeuner</i>; it was the chief of the employ&eacute;s in the
+telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
+young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.</p>
+
+<p>"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
+stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
+The speaker gathered up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
+news, especially of ill news.</p>
+
+<p>M. de Wissant shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible
+accident! One of the submarines&mdash;they don't yet know which it is&mdash;has
+been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the
+Channel, about two miles out!"</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When
+did it happen?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"About half an hour ago more or less. <i>I</i> said that m'sieur le maire
+ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait
+till the marriages were over."</p>
+
+<p>Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that
+he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously
+displeased.</p>
+
+<p>There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of
+Falaise&mdash;there often is in a naval port&mdash;and the mayor ought certainly
+to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.</p>
+
+<p>The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for
+the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher
+grade&mdash;that advancement which is the perpetual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> dream of every French
+Government official.</p>
+
+<p>"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not
+five minutes ago&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the
+increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The
+sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the
+tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole
+population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying
+itself out and hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.</p>
+
+<p>Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
+of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
+eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
+swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
+mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
+Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
+child.</p>
+
+<p>Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
+high, and a look of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
+manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
+at Falaise&mdash;Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
+France.</p>
+
+<p>The hurrying crowd&mdash;strangely silent in its haste&mdash;poured out on to the
+great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
+on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the harbour&mdash;crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
+little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
+the calamity&mdash;lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
+sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
+officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
+stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
+was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
+Admiral was a naval officer of the old school&mdash;of the school who called
+their men "my children"&mdash;and who detested the Republican form of
+government as being subversive of discipline.</p>
+
+<p>As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
+the Mayor of Falaise.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
+Wissant&mdash;a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
+such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
+oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergou&euml;t with whom he had first gone
+to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergou&euml;t had
+been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
+landsman.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they yet know, Admiral, which of the submarines has gone down?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant in a low tone. He was full of a burning
+curiosity edged with a longing and a suspense into whose secret sources
+he had no wish to thrust a probe.</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral's weather-beaten face was a shade less red than usual; the
+bright blue eyes he turned on the younger man were veiled with a film of
+moisture. "Yes, the news has just come in, but it isn't to be made
+public for awhile. It's the submarine <i>Neptune</i> which was struck, with
+Commander Dupr&eacute;, Lieutenant Paritot, and ten men on board. The craft is
+lying eighteen fathoms deep&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant uttered an inarticulate cry&mdash;was it of horror or only
+of surprise? And yet, gifted for that once and that once only with a
+kind of second sight, he had known that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> it was the <i>Neptune</i> and
+Commander Dupr&eacute; which lay eighteen fathoms deep on the floor of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The old seaman, moved by the mayor's emotion, relaxed into a
+confidential undertone. "Poor Dupr&eacute;! I had forgotten that you knew him.
+He is indeed pursued by a malignant fate. As of course you are aware, he
+applied a short time ago to be transferred to Toulon, and his
+appointment is in to-day's <i>Gazette</i>. In fact he was actually leaving
+Falaise this very evening in order to spend a week with his family
+before taking up his new command!"</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise stared at the Admiral. "Dupr&eacute; going away?&mdash;leaving
+Falaise?" he repeated incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant drew a long, deep breath. God! How mistaken he had
+been! Mistaken as no man, no husband, had ever been mistaken before. He
+felt overwhelmed, shaken with conflicting emotions in which shame and
+intense relief predominated.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Commander Dupr&eacute; had applied for promotion was to his mind
+absolute proof that there had been nothing&mdash;nothing and less than
+nothing&mdash;between the naval officer and Claire. The Admiral's words now
+made it clear that he, Jacques de Wissant, had built up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> a huge
+superstructure of jealousy and base thoughts on the fact that poor Dupr&eacute;
+and Claire had innocently enjoyed certain tastes in common. True, such
+friendships&mdash;friendships between unmarried men and attractive young
+married women&mdash;are generally speaking to be deprecated. Still, Claire
+had always been "correct;" of that there could now be no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there on the pier, staring out, as all those about him and
+behind him were doing, at the expanse of dark blue sun-flecked sea,
+there came over Jacques de Wissant a great lightening of the spirit....</p>
+
+<p>But all too soon his mind, his memory, swung back to the tragic business
+of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the Admiral burst into speech, addressing himself, rather than
+the silent man by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil of it is," he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances
+are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone
+responsible for that blunder. Dupr&eacute; and his comrades have, it seems,
+thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen&mdash;if, indeed, they are still living,
+which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant,
+I was at Bizerta when the <i>Lutin</i> sank. A man doesn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> want to remember
+two such incidents in his career. One is quite bad enough!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it isn't yet known how far the <i>Neptune</i> is injured?"
+inquired the Mayor of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>But he spoke mechanically; he was not really thinking of what he was
+saying. His inner and real self were still steeped in that strange
+mingled feeling of shame and relief&mdash;shame that he should have suspected
+his wife, exultant relief that his jealousy should have been so entirely
+unfounded.</p>
+
+<p>"No, as usual no one knows exactly what did happen. But we shall learn
+something of that presently. The divers are on their way. But&mdash;but even
+if the craft did sustain no injury, what can they do? Ants might as well
+attempt to pierce a cannon-ball"&mdash;he shrugged his shoulders, oppressed
+by the vision his homely simile had conjured up.</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;for no particular reason, save that his wife Claire was very
+present to him&mdash;Jacques de Wissant bethought himself that it was most
+unlikely that any tidings of the accident could yet have reached the
+Ch&acirc;let des Dunes, the lonely villa on the shore where Claire was now
+lunching with her sister. But at any moment some casual visitor from the
+town might come out there with the sad news. He told himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> uneasily
+that it would be well, if possible, to save his wife from such a shock.
+After all, Claire and that excellent Commander Dupr&eacute; had been good
+friends&mdash;so much must be admitted, nay, now he was eager to admit it.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant touched the older man on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be most grateful, Admiral, for the loan of your motor-car. I
+have just remembered that I ought to go home for an hour. This terrible
+affair made me forget it; but I shall not be long&mdash;indeed, I must soon
+be back, for there will be all sorts of arrangements to be made at the
+town hall. Of course we shall be besieged with inquiries, with messages
+from Paris, with telegrams&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My car, monsieur, is entirely at your disposal."</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral could not help feeling, even at so sad and solemn a moment
+as this, a little satirical amusement. Arrangements at the town hall,
+forsooth! If the end of the world were in sight, the claims of the
+municipality of Falaise would not be neglected or forgotten; in as far
+as Jacques de Wissant could arrange it, everything in such a case would
+be ready at the town hall, if not on the quarter-deck, for the Great
+Assize!</p>
+
+<p>What had a naval disaster to do with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> Mayor of Falaise, after all?
+But in this matter the old Admiral allowed prejudice to get the better
+of him; the men now immured in the submarine were, with two
+exceptions&mdash;their commander and his junior officer&mdash;all citizens of the
+town. It was their mothers, wives, children, sweethearts, who were now
+pressing with wild, agonized faces against the barriers drawn across the
+end of the pier....</p>
+
+<p>As Jacques de Wissant made his way through the crowd, his grey
+frock-coat was pulled by many a horny hand, and imploring faces gazed
+with piteous questioning into his. But he could give them no comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Not till he found himself actually in the Admiral's car did he give his
+instructions to the chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me to the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes as quickly as you can drive without
+danger," he said briefly. "You probably know where it is?"</p>
+
+<p>The man nodded and looked round consideringly. He had never driven so
+elegantly attired a gentleman before. Why, M. de Wissant looked like a
+bridegroom! The Mayor of Falaise should be good for a handsome tip.</p>
+
+<p>The chauffeur did not need to be told that on such a day time was of
+importance, and once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> they were out of the narrow, tortuous streets of
+the town, the Admiral's car flew.</p>
+
+<p>And then, for the first time that day, Jacques de Wissant began to feel
+pleasantly cool, nay, there even came over him a certain exhilaration.
+He had been foolish to hold out against motor-cars. There was a great
+deal to be said for them, after all. He owed his wife reparation for his
+evil thoughts of her. He resolved that he would get Claire the best
+automobile money could buy. It is always a mistake to economize in such
+matters....</p>
+
+<p>His mind took a sudden turn&mdash;he felt ashamed of his egoism, and the
+sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had
+occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How
+could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which
+should just now be absorbing his whole mind?</p>
+
+<p>Thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen? Well, it might have been worse, for
+a great deal can be done in thirty-six hours.</p>
+
+<p>True, all the salvage appliances, so the Admiral had said, were at
+Cherbourg. What a shameful lack of forethought on someone's part! Still,
+there was little doubt but that the <i>Neptune</i> would be raised in&mdash;in
+time. The British Navy would send her salvage appliances.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> Jacques de
+Wissant had a traditional distrust of the English, but at such moments
+all men are brothers, and just now the French and the English happened
+to be allies. He himself felt far more kindly to his little girls'
+governess, Miss Doughty, than he would have done five years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, without doubt the gallant English Navy would send salvage
+appliances....</p>
+
+<p>There would be some hours of suspense&mdash;terrible hours for the wives and
+mothers of the men, but those poor women would be upheld by the
+universal sympathy shown them. He himself as mayor of the town would do
+all he could. He would seek these poor women out, say consoling, hopeful
+things, and Claire would help him. She had, as he knew, a very tender
+heart, especially where seamen were concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, it was a terrible thought&mdash;that of those brave fellows down
+there beneath the surface of the waters. Terrible, that is, if they were
+alive&mdash;alive in the same measure as he, Jacques de Wissant, was now
+alive in the keen, rushing air. Alive, and waiting for a deliverance
+that might never come. The idea made him feel a queer, interior tremor.</p>
+
+<p>Then his mind, in spite of himself, swung back to its old moorings. How
+strange that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> he had not been told that Commander Dupr&eacute; had applied for
+a change of command! Doubtless the Mediterranean was better suited,
+being a tideless sea, for submarine experiments. Keen, clever Dupr&eacute;,
+absorbed as he was in his profession, had doubtless thought of that.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, how odd of Claire not to have mentioned that Dupr&eacute; was
+leaving Falaise! Of course it was possible that she also had been
+ignorant of the fact. She very seldom spoke of other people's affairs,
+and lately she had been so dreadfully worried about her sister's,
+Marie-Anne's, illness.</p>
+
+<p>If his wife had known nothing of Commander Dupr&eacute;'s plans, it proved as
+hardly anything else could have done how little real intimacy there
+could have been between them. A man never leaves the woman he loves
+unless he has grown tired of her&mdash;then, as all the world knows, except
+perchance the poor soul herself, no place is too far for him to make
+for.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Jacques de Wissant's simple, cynical philosophy concerning a
+subject to which he had never given much thought. The tender passion had
+always appeared to him in one of two shapes&mdash;the one was a grotesque and
+slightly improper shape, which makes men do silly, absurd things; the
+other came in the semblance of a sinister demon which wrecks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> the honour
+and devastates, as nothing else can do, the happiness of respectable
+families. It was this second and more hateful form which had haunted him
+these last few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled with a sick feeling of distaste the state of mind and body
+he had been in that very morning. Why, he had then been in the mood to
+kill Dupr&eacute;, or, at any rate, to welcome the news of his death with
+fierce joy! And then, simultaneously with his discovery of how
+groundless had been his jealousy, he had learnt the awful fact that the
+man whom he had wrongly accused lay out there, buried and yet alive,
+beneath the glistening sea, which was stretched out, like a great blue
+pall, on his left.</p>
+
+<p>Still, it was only proper that his wife should be spared the shock of
+hearing in some casual way of this awful accident. Claire had always
+been sensitive, curiously so, to everything that concerned the Navy.
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier had recalled the horrible submarine disaster
+of Bizerta harbour; Jacques de Wissant now remembered uncomfortably how
+very unhappy that sad affair had made Claire. Why, one day he had found
+her in a passion of tears, mourning over the tragic fate of those poor
+sailor men, the crew of the <i>Lutin</i>, of whose very names she was
+ignorant!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> At the time he had thought her betrayal of feeling very
+unreasonable, but now he understood, and even shared to a certain
+extent, the pain she had shown; but then he knew Dupr&eacute;, knew and liked
+him, and the men immured in the <i>Neptune</i> were men of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>These were the thoughts which jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's
+brain as he sat back in the Admiral's car.</p>
+
+<p>They were now rushing past the Pavilion de Wissant. What a pity it was
+that Claire had not remained quietly at home to-day! It would have been
+so much pleasanter&mdash;if one could think of anything being pleasant in
+such a connection&mdash;to have gone in and told her the sad news at home.
+Her sister, Madeleine Baudoin, though older than Claire, was foolishly
+emotional and unrestrained in the expression of her feelings. Madeleine
+was sure to make a scene when she heard of Commander Dupr&eacute;'s peril, and
+Jacques de Wissant hated scenes.</p>
+
+<p>He now asked himself whether there was any real necessity for his
+telling his wife before her sister. All he need do was to send Claire a
+message by the servant who opened the door to him. He would say that she
+was wanted at home; she would think something had happened to one of the
+children, and this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> would be a good thing, for it would prepare her in a
+measure for ill tidings.</p>
+
+<p>From what Jacques knew of his wife he believed she would receive the
+news quietly, and he, her husband, would show her every consideration;
+again he reminded himself that it would be ridiculous to deny the fact
+that Claire had made a friend, almost an intimate, of Commander Dupr&eacute;.
+It would be natural, nay "correct," for her to be greatly distressed
+when she heard of the accident.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>There came a familiar cutting in the road, and again the sea lay spread
+out, an opaque, glistening sheet of steel, before him. He gazed across,
+with a feeling of melancholy and fearful curiosity, to the swarm of
+craft great and small collected round the place where the <i>Neptune</i> lay,
+eighteen fathoms deep....</p>
+
+<p>He hoped Claire would not ask to go back into the town with him in order
+to hear the latest news. But if she did so ask, then he would raise no
+objection. Every Falaise woman, whatever her rank in life, was now full
+of suspense and anxiety, and as the mayor's wife Claire had a right to
+share that anxious suspense.</p>
+
+<p>The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and
+Jacques de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Ch&acirc;let. I want you
+to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to
+give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get
+back to Falaise as soon as I can."</p>
+
+<p>The Ch&acirc;let des Dunes had been well named. It stood enclosed in rough
+palings in a sandy wilderness. An attempt had been made to turn the
+immediate surroundings of the villa into the semblance of a garden;
+there were wind-blown flowers set in sandy flower-beds, and coarse,
+luxuriant creepers flung their long, green ropes about the wooden
+verandah. In front, stretching out into the sea, was a stone pier, built
+by Jacques' father many a year ago.</p>
+
+<p>The Ch&acirc;let looked singularly quiet and deserted, for all the shutters
+had been closed in order to shut out the midday heat.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant became vaguely uneasy. He reconsidered his plan of
+action. If the two sisters were alone together&mdash;as he supposed them to
+be&mdash;he would go in and quietly tell them of the accident. It would be
+making altogether too much of the matter to send for Claire to come out
+to him; she might very properly resent it. For the matter of that, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+was quite possible that Madeleine Baudoin had some little sentiment for
+Dupr&eacute;. That would explain so much&mdash;the officer's constant presence at
+the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes added to his absence from the Pavillon. It was odd
+he had never thought of the possibility before.</p>
+
+<p>But this new idea made Jacques grow more and more uneasy at the thought
+of the task which now lay before him. With slow, hesitating steps he
+walked up to the little front door of the Ch&acirc;let.</p>
+
+<p>He pulled the rusty bell-handle. How absurd to have ironwork in such a
+place!</p>
+
+<p>There followed what seemed to him a very long pause. He rang again.</p>
+
+<p>There came the sound of light, swift steps; he could hear them in spite
+of the rhythmical surge of the sea; and then the door was opened by his
+sister-in-law, Madame Baudoin, herself.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his own agitation and unease, Jacques de Wissant saw
+that there was a look of embarrassment on the face which Madeleine tried
+to make amiably welcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques?" she exclaimed. "Forgive me for having made you ring twice! I
+have sent the servants into Falaise to purchase a railway time-table.
+Claire will doubtless have told you that I am starting for Italy
+to-night. Our poor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> Marie-Anne is worse; and I feel that it is my duty
+to go to her."</p>
+
+<p>She did not step aside to allow him to come in. In fact, doubtless
+without meaning to do so, she was actually blocking up the door.</p>
+
+<p>No, Claire had not told Jacques that Marie-Anne was worse. That of
+course was why she had looked so unhappy this morning. He felt hurt and
+angered by his wife's reserve.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you will agree, Madeleine," he said stiffly&mdash;he was not sorry
+to gain a little time&mdash;"that it would not be wise for Claire to
+accompany you to Italy. After all, she is still quite a young woman, and
+poor Marie-Anne's disease is most infectious. I have ascertained, too,
+that there is a regular epidemic raging in Mantua."</p>
+
+<p>Madeleine nodded. Then she turned, with an uneasy side-look at her
+brother-in-law, and began leading the way down the short passage. The
+door of the dining-room was open; Jacques could not help seeing that
+only one place was laid at the round table, also that Madeleine had just
+finished her luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Claire here?" he asked, surprised. "She said she was going to
+lunch with you to-day. Hasn't she been here this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I mean yes." Madeleine spoke confusedly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> "She did not stay to
+lunch. She was only here for a very little while."</p>
+
+<p>"But has she gone home again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;she may be home by now; I really don't know"&mdash;Madeleine was
+opening the door of the little drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ugly, common-looking room; the walls were hung with Turkey
+red, and ornamented with cheap coloured prints. There were cane and
+basket chairs which Madame Baudoin had striven to make comfortable with
+the help of cushions and rugs.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant told himself that it was odd that Claire should like
+to spend so much of her time here, in the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes, instead of
+asking her sister to join her each morning or afternoon in her own
+beautiful house on the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he said stiffly, "but I can't stay a moment. I really came
+for Claire. You say I shall find her at home?"</p>
+
+<p>He held his top hat and his yellow gloves in his hand, and his
+sister-in-law thought she had never seen Jacques look so plain and
+unattractive, and&mdash;and tiresome as he looked to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Baudoin had a special reason for wishing him away; but she knew
+the slow, sure workings of his mind. If Jacques found that his wife had
+not gone back to the Pavillon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> de Wissant, and that there was no news of
+her there, he would almost certainly come back to the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes
+for further information.</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said reluctantly, "Claire has not gone back to the Pavillon. I
+believe that she has gone into the town. She had something important
+that she wished to do there."</p>
+
+<p>She looked so troubled, so&mdash;so uncomfortable that Jacques de Wissant
+leapt to the sudden conclusion that the tidings he had been at such
+pains to bring had already been brought to the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he exclaimed, "then I am too late! Ill news travels fast."</p>
+
+<p>"Ill news?" Madeleine repeated affrightedly. "Is anything the matter?
+Has anything happened to one of the children? Don't keep me in suspense,
+Jacques. I am not cold-blooded&mdash;like you!"</p>
+
+<p>"The children are all right," he said shortly. "But there has been, as
+you evidently know, an accident. The submarine <i>Neptune</i> has met with a
+serious mishap. She now lies with her crew in eighteen fathoms of water
+about two miles out."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try
+and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make
+foolish mysteries about nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+"The submarine <i>Neptune</i>?" As she stammered out the question which had
+already been answered, there came over Madame Baudoin's face a look of
+measureless terror. Twice her lips opened&mdash;and twice she closed them
+again.</p>
+
+<p>At last she uttered a few words&mdash;words of anguished protest and revolt.
+"No, no," she cried, "that can't be&mdash;it's impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Command yourself!" he said sternly. "Remember what would be thought by
+anyone who saw you in this state."</p>
+
+<p>But she went on looking at him with wild, terror-stricken eyes. "My poor
+Claire!" she moaned. "My little sister Claire&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>All Jacques de Wissant's jealousy leapt into eager, quivering life. Then
+he had been right after all? His wife loved Dupr&eacute;. Her sister's
+anguished sympathy had betrayed Claire's secret as nothing Claire
+herself was ever likely to say or do could have done.</p>
+
+<p>"You are a good sister," he said ironically, "to take Claire's distress
+so much to heart. Identifying yourself as entirely as you seem to do
+with her, I am surprised that you did not accompany her into Falaise: it
+was most wrong of you to let her go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Claire is not in Falaise," muttered Madeleine. She was grasping the
+back of one of the cane chairs with her hand as if glad of even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> that
+slight support, staring at him with a dazed look of abject misery which
+increased his anger, his disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in Falaise?" he echoed sharply. "Then where, in God's name, is
+she?"</p>
+
+<p>A most disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it
+conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the
+disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go
+alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to
+the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with jealous rage that he
+would find it very difficult ever to forgive Claire. There are things a
+woman with any self-respect, especially a woman who is the mother of
+daughters, refrains from doing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he said contemptuously. "Well, Madeleine? I am waiting to hear
+the truth. I desire no explanations&mdash;no excuses. I cannot, however,
+withhold myself from telling you that you ought to have accompanied your
+sister, even if you found it impossible to control her."</p>
+
+<p>"I was there yesterday," said Madeleine Baudoin, with a pinched, white
+face, "for over two hours."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Where were you yesterday for
+over two hours?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+"In the <i>Neptune</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him, past him, with widely open eyes, as if she were
+staring, fascinated, at some scene of unutterable horror&mdash;and there
+crept into Jacques de Wissant's mind a thought so full of shameful dread
+that he thrust it violently from him.</p>
+
+<p>"You were in the <i>Neptune</i>," he said slowly, "knowing well that it is
+absolutely forbidden for any officer to take a friend on board a
+submarine without a special permit from the Minister of Marine?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is sometimes done," she said listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Baudoin had now sat down on a low chair, and she was plucking at
+the front of her white serge skirt with a curious mechanical movement of
+the fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the submarine actually put out to sea with you on board?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head, and then very deliberately added, "Yes, I have told
+you that I was out for two hours. They all knew it&mdash;the men and officers
+of the flotilla. I was horribly frightened, but&mdash;but now I am glad
+indeed that I went. Yes, I am indeed glad!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you glad?" he asked roughly&mdash;and again a hateful suspicion
+thrust itself insistently upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad I went, because it will make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> what Claire has done to-day
+seem natural, a&mdash;a simple escapade."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment of terrible silence between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Then do all the officers and men belonging to the flotilla know that my
+wife is out there&mdash;in the <i>Neptune</i>?" Jacques de Wissant asked in a low,
+still voice.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Madeleine, and there was now a look of shame, as well as of
+terror, on her face. "They none of them know&mdash;only those who are on
+board." She hesitated a moment&mdash;"That is why I sent the servants away
+this morning. We&mdash;I mean Commander Dupr&eacute; and I&mdash;did not think it
+necessary that anyone should know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then no one&mdash;that is, only a hare-brained young officer and ten men
+belonging to the town of Falaise&mdash;were to be aware of the fact that my
+wife had accompanied her lover on this life-risking expedition? You and
+Dupr&eacute; were indeed tender of her honour&mdash;and mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques!" She took her hand off the chair, and faced her brother-in-law
+proudly. "What infamous thing is this that you are harbouring in your
+mind? My sister is an honest woman, aye, as honest, as high-minded as
+was your own mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped her with a violent gesture. "Do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> not mention Claire and my
+mother in the same breath!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, but I will&mdash;I must! You want the truth&mdash;you said just now you
+wanted only the truth. Then you shall hear the truth! Yes, it is as you
+have evidently suspected. Louis Dupr&eacute; loves Claire, and she"&mdash;her voice
+faltered, then grew firmer&mdash;"she may have had for him a little
+sentiment. Who can tell? You have not been at much pains to make her
+happy. But what is true, what is certain, is that she rejected his love.
+To-day they were to part&mdash;for ever."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice failed again, then once more it strengthened and hardened.</p>
+
+<p>"That is why he in a moment of folly&mdash;I admit it was in a moment of
+folly&mdash;asked her to come out on his last cruise in the <i>Neptune</i>. When
+you came I was expecting them back any moment. But, Jacques, do not be
+afraid. I swear to you that no one shall ever know. Admiral de Saint
+Vilquier will do anything for us Kergou&euml;ts; I myself will go to him,
+and&mdash;and explain."</p>
+
+<p>But Jacques de Wissant scarcely heard the eager, pitiful words.</p>
+
+<p>He had thrust his wife from his mind, and her place had been taken by
+his honour&mdash;his honour and that of his children, of happy,
+light-hearted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> Clairette and Jacqueline. For what seemed a long while he
+said nothing; then, with all the anger gone from his voice, he spoke,
+uttered a fiat.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said quietly. "You must leave the Admiral to me, Madeleine. You
+were going to Italy to-night, were you not? That, I take it, <i>is</i> true."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded impatiently. What did her proposed journey to Italy matter
+compared with her beloved Claire's present peril?</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you must carry out your plan, my poor Madeleine. You must go away
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him, her face at last blotched with tears, and a look of
+bewildered anguish in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must do this," Jacques de Wissant went on deliberately, "for
+Claire's sake, and for the sake of Claire's children. You haven't
+sufficient self-control to endure suspense calmly, secretly. You need
+not go farther than Paris, but those whom it concerns will be told that
+Claire has gone with you to Italy. There will always be time to tell the
+truth. Meanwhile, the Admiral and I will devise a plan. And perhaps"&mdash;he
+waited a moment&mdash;"the truth will never be known, or only known to a very
+few people&mdash;people who, as you say, will understand."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+He had spoken very slowly, as if weighing each of his words, but it was
+quickly, with a queer catch in his voice, that he added&mdash;"I ask you to
+do this, my sister"&mdash;he had never before called Madeleine Baudoin "my
+sister"&mdash;"because of Claire's children, of Clairette and Jacqueline.
+Their mother would not wish a slur to rest upon them."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with piteous, hunted eyes. But she knew that she must
+do what he asked.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV</h3>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant sat at his desk in the fine old room which is set
+aside for the mayor's sole use in the town hall of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>He was waiting for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, whom he had summoned on
+the plea of a matter both private and urgent. In his note, of which he
+had written more than one draft, he had omitted none of the punctilio
+usual in French official correspondence, and he had asked pardon, in the
+most formal language, for asking the Admiral to come to him, instead of
+proposing to go to the Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>The time that had elapsed since he had parted from his sister-in-law had
+seemed like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> years instead of hours, and yet every moment of those hours
+had been filled with action.</p>
+
+<p>From the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes Jacques had made his way straight to the
+Pavillon de Wissant, and there his had been the bitter task of lying to
+his household.</p>
+
+<p>They had accepted unquestioningly his statement that their mistress,
+without waiting even to go home, had left the Ch&acirc;let des Dunes with her
+sister for Italy owing to the arrival of sudden worse news from Mantua.</p>
+
+<p>While Claire's luggage was being by his orders hurriedly prepared, he
+had changed his clothes; and then, overcome with mortal weariness, with
+sick, sombre suspense, he had returned to Falaise, taking the railway
+station on his way to the town hall, and from there going through the
+grim comedy of despatching his wife's trunks to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Since the day war was declared by France on Germany, there had never
+been at the town hall of Falaise so busy an afternoon. Urgent messages
+of inquiry and condolence came pouring in from all over the civilized
+world, and the mayor had to compose suitable answers to them all.</p>
+
+<p>To him there also fell the painful duty of officially announcing to the
+crowd surging impatiently in the market place&mdash;though room<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> in front was
+always made and kept for those of the fisher folk who had relatives in
+the submarine service&mdash;that it was the <i>Neptune</i> which had gone down.</p>
+
+<p>He had seen the effect of that announcement painted on rough, worn,
+upturned faces; he had heard the cries of anger, the groans of despair
+of the few, and had witnessed the relief, the tears of joy of the many.
+But his heart felt numb, and his cold, stern manner kept the emotions
+and excitement of those about him in check.</p>
+
+<p>At last there had come a short respite. It was publicly announced that
+owing to the currents the divers had had to suspend their work awhile,
+but that salvage appliances from England and from Cherbourg were on
+their way to Falaise, and that it was hoped by seven that evening active
+operations would begin. With luck the <i>Neptune</i> might be raised before
+midnight.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunate people blessed with optimistic natures were already planning a
+banquet at which the crew of the <i>Neptune</i> were to be entertained within
+an hour of the rescue.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant rose from the massive First Empire table which formed
+part of the fine suite of furniture presented by the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> Napoleon
+just a hundred years ago to the municipality of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>With bent head, his hands clasped behind him, the mayor began walking up
+and down the long room.</p>
+
+<p>Admiral de Saint Vilquier might now come at any moment, but the man
+awaiting him had not yet made up his mind how to word what he had to
+say&mdash;how much to tell, how much to conceal from, his wife's old friend.
+He was only too well aware that if the desperate attempts which would
+soon be made to raise the <i>Neptune</i> were successful, and if its human
+freight were rescued alive, the fact that there had been a woman on
+board could not be concealed. Thousands would know to-night, and
+millions to-morrow morning.</p>
+
+<p>Not only would the amazing story provide newspaper readers all over the
+world with a thrilling, unexpected piece of news, but the fact that
+there had been a woman involved in the disaster would be perpetuated, as
+long as our civilization endures, in every account of subsequent
+accidents to submarine craft.</p>
+
+<p>More intimately, vividly agonizing was the knowledge that the story, the
+scandal, would be revived when there arose the all-important question of
+a suitable marriage for Clairette or Jacqueline.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+As he paced up and down the room, longing for and yet dreading the
+coming of the Admiral, he visualized what would happen. He could almost
+hear the whispered words: "Yes, dear friend, the girl is admirably
+brought up, and has a large fortune, also she and your son have taken
+quite a fancy for one another, but there is that very ugly story of the
+mother! Don't you remember that she was with her lover in the submarine
+<i>Neptune</i>? The citizens of Falaise still laugh at the story and point
+her out in the street. Like mother like daughter, you know!" Thus the
+miserable man tortured himself, turning the knife in his wound.</p>
+
+<p>But stay&mdash;&mdash; Supposing the salvage appliances failed, as they had failed
+at Bizerta, to raise the <i>Neptune</i>? Then with the help of Admiral de
+Saint Vilquier the awful truth might be kept secret.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At last the door opened.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant took a step forward, and as his hand rested loosely
+for a moment in the old seaman's firmer grasp, he would have given many
+years of his life to postpone the coming interview.</p>
+
+<p>"As you asked me so urgently to do so, I have come, M. de Wissant, to
+learn what you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> have to tell me. But I'm afraid the time I can spare you
+must be short. As you know, I am to be at the station in half an hour to
+meet the Minister of Marine. He will probably wish to go out at once to
+the scene of the calamity, and I shall have to accompany him."</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral was annoyed at having been thus sent for to the town hall.
+It was surely Jacques de Wissant's place to have come to him.</p>
+
+<p>And then, while listening to the other's murmured excuses, the old naval
+officer happened to look straight into the face of the Mayor of Falaise,
+and at once a change came over his manner, even his voice softened and
+altered.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon my saying so, M. de Wissant," he exclaimed abruptly, "but you
+look extremely ill! You mustn't allow this sad business to take such a
+hold on you. It is tragic no doubt that such things must be, but
+remember"&mdash;he uttered the words solemnly&mdash;"they are the Price of
+Admiralty."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know," muttered Jacques de Wissant.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we sit down?"</p>
+
+<p>The deadly pallor, the look of strain on the face of the man before him
+was making the Admiral feel more and more uneasy. "It would be very
+awkward," he thought to himself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> "were Jacques de Wissant to be taken
+ill, here, now, with me&mdash;&mdash; Ah, I have it!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he said aloud, "You have doubtless had nothing to eat since the
+morning?" And as de Wissant nodded&mdash;"But that's absurd! It's always
+madness to go without food. Believe me, you will want all your strength
+during the next few days. As for me, I had fortunately lunched before I
+received the sad news. I keep to the old hours; I do not care for your
+English <i>d&eacute;jeuners</i> at one o'clock. Midday is late enough for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Admiral?" said the wretched man, "Admiral&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, take your time; I am not really in such a hurry. I am quite at
+your disposal."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a question of honour," muttered Jacques de Wissant, "a question
+of honour, Admiral, or I should not trouble you with the matter."</p>
+
+<p>Admiral de Saint Vilquier leant forward, but Jacques de Wissant avoided
+meeting the shrewd, searching eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The honour of a naval family is involved." The Mayor of Falaise was now
+speaking in a low, pleading voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral stiffened. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "So you have been asked to
+intercede with me on behalf of some young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> scapegrace. Well, who is it?
+I'll look into the matter to-morrow morning. I really cannot think of
+anything to-day but of this terrible business&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash;Admiral, it concerns this business."</p>
+
+<p>"The loss of the <i>Neptune</i>? In what way can the honour of a naval family
+be possibly involved in such a matter?" There was a touch of hauteur as
+well as of indignant surprise in the fine old seaman's voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Admiral," said Jacques de Wissant deliberately, "there was&mdash;there is&mdash;a
+woman on board the <i>Neptune</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"A woman in the <i>Neptune</i>? That is quite impossible!" The Admiral got up
+from his chair. "It is one of our strictest regulations that no stranger
+be taken on board a submarine without a special permit from the Minister
+of Marine, countersigned by an admiral. No such permit has been issued
+for many months. In no case would a woman be allowed on board. Commander
+Dupr&eacute; is far too conscientious, too loyal, an officer to break such a
+regulation."</p>
+
+<p>"Commander Dupr&eacute;," said Jacques de Wissant in a low, bitter tone, "was
+not too conscientious or too loyal an officer to break that regulation,
+for there is, I repeat it, a woman in the <i>Neptune</i>."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+The Admiral sat down again. "But this is serious&mdash;very serious," he
+muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He was thinking of the effect, not only at home but abroad, of such a
+breach of discipline.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head with a pained, angry gesture&mdash;"I understand what
+happened," he said at last. "The woman was of course poor Dupr&eacute;'s"&mdash;and
+then something in Jacques de Wissant's pallid face made him substitute,
+for the plain word he meant to have used, a softer, kindlier
+phrase&mdash;"poor Dupr&eacute;'s <i>bonne amie</i>," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I am advised not," said Jacques de Wissant shortly. "I am told that the
+person in question is a young lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean an unmarried girl?" asked the Admiral. There was great
+curiosity and sincere relief in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg of you not to ask me, Admiral! The family of the lady have
+implored me to reveal as little of the truth as possible. They have
+taken their own measures, and they are good measures, to account for
+her&mdash;her disappearance." The unhappy man spoke with considerable
+agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so! Quite so! They are right. I have no wish to show indiscreet
+curiosity."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think anything can be done to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> prevent the fact becoming known?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant&mdash;and, as the other waited a moment before
+answering, the suspense became almost more than he could endure.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and instinctively stood with his back to the light. "The
+family of this young lady are willing to make any pecuniary
+sacrifice&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a question of pecuniary sacrifice," the Admiral said stiffly.
+"Money will never really purchase either secrecy or silence. But honour,
+M. de Wissant, will sometimes, nay, often, do both."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think the fact can be concealed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it will be impossible to conceal it if the <i>Neptune</i> is
+raised"&mdash;he hesitated, and his voice sank as he added the poignant words
+"<i>in time</i>. But if that happens, though I fear that it is not likely to
+happen, then I promise you that I will allow it to be thought that I had
+given this lady permission, and her improper action will be accepted for
+what it no doubt was&mdash;a foolish escapade. If Dupr&eacute; and little Paritot
+are the men of honour I take them to be, one or other of them will of
+course marry her!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if the <i>Neptune</i> is not raised&mdash;" the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> Mayor's voice also dropped
+to a whisper&mdash;"<i>in time</i>&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said the Admiral, "everything will be done by me&mdash;so you can
+assure your unlucky friends&mdash;to conceal the fact that Commander Dupr&eacute;
+failed in his duty. Not for his sake, you understand&mdash;he, I fear,
+deserves what he has suffered, what he is perhaps still suffering,"&mdash;a
+look of horror stole over his old, weather-roughened face&mdash;"but for the
+sake of the foolish girl and for the sake of her family. You say it is a
+naval family?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Jacques de Wissant. "A noted naval family."</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral got up. "And now I, on my side, must exact of you a pledge,
+M. de Wissant&mdash;" he looked searchingly at the Government official
+standing before him. "I solemnly implore you, monsieur, to keep this
+fact you have told me absolutely secret for the time being&mdash;secret even
+from the Minister of Marine."</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise bent his head. "I intend to act," he said slowly,
+"as if I had never heard it."</p>
+
+<p>"I ask it for the honour, the repute, of the Service," muttered the old
+officer. "After all, M. de Wissant, the poor fellow did not mean much
+harm. We sailors have all, at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> different times of our lives, had some
+<i>bonne amie</i> whom we found it devilish hard to leave on shore!"</p>
+
+<p>The Admiral walked slowly towards the door. To-day had aged him years.
+Then he turned and looked benignantly at Jacques de Wissant; the man
+before him might be stiff, cold, awkward in manner, but he was a
+gentleman, a man of honour.</p>
+
+<p>And as he drove to the station to meet the Minister of Marine, Admiral
+de Saint Vilquier's shrewd, practical mind began to deal with the
+difficult problem which was now added to his other cares. It was
+simplified in view of the fact&mdash;the awful fact&mdash;that according to his
+private information it was most unlikely that the submarine would be
+raised within the next few hours. He hoped with all his heart that the
+twelve men and the woman now lying beneath the sea had met death at the
+moment of the collision.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>All that summer night the caf&eacute;s and eating-houses of Falaise remained
+open, and there was a constant coming and going to the beach, where many
+people, even among those visitors who were not directly interested in
+the calamity, camped out on the stones.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor sent word to the Pavillon de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> Wissant that he would sleep in
+his town house, but though he left the town hall at two in the morning
+he was back at his post by eight, and he spent there the whole of the
+next long dragging day.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for him there was little time for thought. In addition to
+the messages of inquiry and condolence which went on pouring in,
+important members of the Government arrived from Paris and the
+provinces.</p>
+
+<p>There also came to Falaise the mother of Commander Dupr&eacute;, and the father
+and brother of Lieutenant Paritot. De Wissant made the latter his
+special care. They, the two men, were granted the relief of tears, but
+Madame Dupr&eacute;'s silent agony could not be assuaged.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when he suddenly came upon her sitting, her chin in her hand, in
+his room at the town hall, Jacques de Wissant shrank from her blazing
+eyes and ravaged face, so vividly did they recall to him the eyes, the
+face, he had seen that April evening "'twixt dog and wolf," when he had
+first leapt upon the truth.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day all hope that there could be anyone still living in the
+<i>Neptune</i> was being abandoned, and yet at noon there ran a rumour
+through the town that knocking had been heard in the submarine....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+The mayor himself drew up an official proclamation, in which it was
+pointed out that it was almost certain that all on board had perished at
+the time of the collision, and that, even if any of them had survived
+for a few hours, not one could be alive now.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as one by one the days of waiting began to wear themselves
+away, the world, apart from the town which numbered ten of her sons
+among the doomed men, relaxed its painful interest in the fate of the
+French submarine. Indeed, Falaise took on an almost winter stillness of
+aspect, for the summer visitors naturally drifted away from a spot which
+was still the heart of an awful tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>But Jacques de Wissant did not relax in his duties or in his efforts on
+behalf of the families of the men who still lay, eighteen fathoms deep,
+encased in their steel tomb; and the townspeople were deeply moved by
+their mayor's continued, if restrained, distress. He even put his
+children, his pretty twin daughters, Jacqueline and Clairette, into deep
+mourning; this touched the seafaring portion of the population very
+much.</p>
+
+<p>It also became known that M. de Wissant was suffering from domestic
+distress of a very sad and intimate kind; his sister-in-law was
+seriously ill in Italy from an infectious disease,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> and his wife, who
+had gone away at a moment's notice to help to nurse her, had caught the
+infection.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor of Falaise and Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not often have
+occasion to meet during those days spent by each of them in entertaining
+official personages and in composing answers to the messages and
+inquiries which went on dropping in, both by day and by night, at the
+town hall and at the Admiral's quarters. But there came an hour when
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier at last sought to have a private word with the
+Mayor of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I have arranged everything satisfactorily," he said briefly,
+"and you can convey the fact to your friends. I do not suppose, as
+matters are now, that there is much fear that the truth will ever come
+out."</p>
+
+<p>The old man did not look into Jacques de Wissant's face while he uttered
+the comforting words. He had become aware of many things&mdash;including
+Madeleine Baudoin's cruise in the <i>Neptune</i> the day before the accident,
+and of her own and Claire de Wissant's reported departure for Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Alone, among the people who sometimes had friendly speech of the mayor
+during those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not
+condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave
+Falaise for Mantua.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V</h3>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed. He had heard a
+knock&mdash;but, awake or sleeping, his ears were never free of the sound of
+knocking,&mdash;of muffled, regular knocking....</p>
+
+<p>It was the darkest hour of the summer night, but with a sharp sense of
+relief he became aware that what had wakened him this time was a real
+sound, not the slow, patient, rhythmical, tapping which haunted him
+incessantly. But now the knocking had been followed by the opening of
+his bedroom door, and vaguely outlined before him was the short, squat
+form of an old woman who had entered his mother's service when he was a
+little boy, and who always stayed in his town house.</p>
+
+<p>"M'sieur l'Amiral de Saint Vilquier desires to see M'sieur Jacques on
+urgent business," she whispered. "I have put him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> to wait in the great
+drawing-room. It is fortunate that I took all the covers off the
+furniture yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>Then the moment of ordeal, the moment he had begun to think would never
+come&mdash;was upon him? He knew this summons to mean that the <i>Neptune</i> had
+been finally towed into the harbour, and that now, in this still, dark
+hour before dawn, was about to begin the work of taking out the bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Every day for a week past it had been publicly announced that the
+following night would see the final scene of the dread drama, and each
+evening&mdash;even last evening&mdash;it had been as publicly announced that
+nothing could be done for the present.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant had put all his trust in the Admiral and in the
+arrangements the Admiral was making to avoid discovery. But now, as he
+got up and dressed himself&mdash;strange to say that phantom sound of
+knocking had ceased&mdash;there came over him a frightful sensation of doubt
+and fear. Had he been right to trust wholly to the old naval officer?
+Would it not have been better to have taken the Minister of Marine into
+his confidence?</p>
+
+<p>How would it be possible for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, unless backed by
+Governmental authority, to elude the vigilance, not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> of the
+Admiralty officials and of all those that were directly interested, but
+also of the journalists who, however much the public interest had
+slackened in the disaster, still stayed on at Falaise in order to be
+present at the last act of the tragedy?</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's brain. But
+whether he had been right or wrong it was too late to alter now.</p>
+
+<p>He went into the room where the Admiral stood waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>The two men shook hands, but neither spoke till they had left the house.
+Then, as they walked with firm, quick steps across the deserted
+market-place, the Admiral said suddenly, "This is the quietest hour in
+the twenty-four, and though I anticipate a little trouble with the
+journalists, I think everything will go off quite well."</p>
+
+<p>His companion muttered a word of assent, and the other went on, this
+time in a gruff whisper: "By the way, I have had to tell Dr. Tarnier&mdash;"
+and as Jacques de Wissant gave vent to a stifled exclamation of
+dismay&mdash;"of course I had to tell Dr. Tarnier! He has most nobly offered
+to go down into the <i>Neptune</i> alone&mdash;though in doing so he will run
+considerable personal risk."</p>
+
+<p>Admiral de Saint Vilquier paused a moment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> for the quick pace at which
+his companion was walking made him rather breathless. "I have simply
+told him that there was a young woman on board. He imagines her to have
+been a Parisienne,&mdash;a person of no importance, you understand,&mdash;who had
+come to spend the holiday with poor Dupr&eacute;. But he quite realizes that
+the fact must never be revealed." He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact
+tone. "There will not be room on the pontoon for more than five or six,
+including ourselves and Dr. Tarnier. Doubtless some of our newspaper
+friends will be disappointed&mdash;if one can speak of disappointment in such
+a connection&mdash;but they will have plenty of opportunities of being
+present to-morrow and the following nights. I have arranged with the
+Minister of Marine for the work to be done only at night."</p>
+
+<p>As the two men emerged on the quays, they saw that the news had leaked
+out, for knots of people stood about, talking in low hushed tones, and
+staring at the middle of the harbour.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the others, and almost dangerously close to the unguarded
+edge below which was the dark lapping water, stood a line of women
+shrouded in black, and from them came no sound.</p>
+
+<p>As the Admiral and his companion approached<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> the little group of
+officials who were apparently waiting for them, the old naval officer
+whispered to Jacques de Wissant, using for the first time the familiar
+expression, "<i>mon ami</i>," "Do not forget, <i>mon ami</i>, to thank the
+harbour-master and the pilot. They have had a very difficult task, and
+they will expect your commendation."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques de Wissant said the words required of him. And then, at the last
+moment, just as he was on the point of going down the steps leading to
+the flat-bottomed boat in which they were to be rowed to the pontoon,
+there arose an angry discussion. The harbour-master had, it seemed,
+promised the representatives of two Paris newspapers that they should be
+present when the submarine was first opened.</p>
+
+<p>But the Admiral stiffly asserted his supreme authority. "In such matters
+I can allow no favouritism! It is doubtful if any bodies will be taken
+out to-night, gentlemen, for the tide is already turning. I will see if
+other arrangements can be made to-morrow. If any of you had been in the
+harbour of Bizerta when the <i>Lutin</i> was raised, you would now thank me
+for not allowing you to view the sight which we may be about to see."</p>
+
+<p>And the weary, disappointed special correspondents,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> who had spent long
+days watching for this one hour, realized that they would have to
+content themselves with describing what could be seen from the quays.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>It will, however, surprise no one familiar with the remarkable
+enterprise of the modern press, when it is recorded that by far the most
+accurate account of what occurred during the hour that followed was
+written by a cosmopolitan war correspondent, who had had the good
+fortune of making Dr. Tarnier's acquaintance during the dull fortnight
+of waiting.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>None of those who were there will ever forget what they saw last
+night in the harbour of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>The scene, illumined by the searchlight of a destroyer, was at
+once sinister, sombre, and magnificent. Below the high, narrow
+pontoon, on the floor of the harbour, lay the wrecked submarine;
+and those who gazed down at the <i>Neptune</i> felt as though they
+were in the presence of what had once been a sentient being done
+to death by some huge Goliath of the deep.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Tarnier, the chief medical officer of the port&mdash;a man who is
+beloved and respected by the whole population of Falaise&mdash;stood
+ready to begin his dreadful task. I had ascertained that he had
+obtained permission to go down alone into the hold of death&mdash;an
+exploration attended with the utmost physical risk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> He was clad
+in a suit of india-rubber clothing, and over his arm was folded
+a large tarpaulin sheet lined with carbolic wool, one of half a
+dozen such sheets lying at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The difficult work of unsealing the conning tower was then
+proceeded with in the presence of Admiral de Saint Vilquier,
+whose prowess as a midshipman is still remembered by British
+Crimean veterans&mdash;and of the Mayor of Falaise, M. Jacques de
+Wissant.</p>
+
+<p>At last there came a guttural exclamation of "<i>&Ccedil;a y est!</i>" and
+Dr. Tarnier stepped downwards, to emerge a moment later with the
+first body, obviously that of the gallant Commander Dupr&eacute;, who
+was found, as it was expected he would be, in the conning tower.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the doctor's burly figure disappeared, once more he
+emerged, tenderly bearing a slighter, lighter burden, obviously
+the boyish form of Lieutenant Paritot, who was found close to
+Commander Dupr&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was rising rapidly, but two more bodies&mdash;this time with
+the help of a webbed band cleverly designed by Dr. Tarnier with
+a view to the purpose&mdash;were lifted from the inner portion of the
+submarine.</p>
+
+<p>The four bodies, rather to the disappointment of the large crowd
+which had gradually gathered on the quays, were not taken
+directly to the shore, to the great hall where Falaise is to
+mourn her dead sons; one by one they were reverently conveyed,
+by the Admiral's orders, to a barge which was once used as a
+hospital ward for sick sailors, and which is close to the mouth
+of the harbour. Thence, when all twelve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> bodies have been
+recovered&mdash;that is, in three or four days, for the work is only
+to be proceeded with at night,&mdash;they will be taken to the Salle
+d'Armes, there to await the official obsequies.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the morning following the night during which the last body was lifted
+from within the <i>Neptune</i>, there ran a curious rumour through the
+fishing quarter of the town. It was said that thirteen bodies&mdash;not
+twelve, as declared the official report&mdash;had been taken out of the
+<i>Neptune</i>. It was declared on the authority of one of the seamen&mdash;a
+Gascon, be it noted&mdash;who had been there on that first night, that five,
+not four, bodies had been conveyed to the hospital barge.</p>
+
+<p>But the rumour, though it found an echo in the French press, was not
+regarded as worth an official denial, and it received its final quietus
+on the day of the official obsequies, when it was at once seen that the
+number of ammunition wagons heading the great procession was twelve.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>As long as tradition endures in the life of the town, Falaise will
+remember the <i>Neptune</i> funeral procession. Not only was every navy in
+the world represented, but also every strand of that loosely woven human
+fabric we civilized peoples call a nation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+Through the long line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed,
+walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed
+the minute gun.</p>
+
+<p>First the President of the French Republic, with, to his right, the
+Minister of Marine; and close behind them the stiff, still vigorous,
+figure of old Admiral de Saint Vilquier. By his side walked the Mayor of
+Falaise&mdash;so mortally pale, so what the French call undone, that the
+Admiral felt fearful lest his neighbour should be compelled to fall out.</p>
+
+<p>But Jacques de Wissant was not minded to fall out.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd looking on, especially the wives of those substantial citizens
+of the town who stood at their windows behind half-closed shutters and
+drawn blinds, stared down at the mayor with pitying concern.</p>
+
+<p>"He has a warm heart though a cold manner," murmured these ladies to one
+another, "and just now, you know, he is in great anxiety, for his
+wife&mdash;that beautiful Claire with whom he doesn't get on very well&mdash;is in
+Italy, seriously ill of scarlet fever." "Yes, and as soon as this sad
+ceremony is over, he will leave for the south&mdash;I hear that the President
+has offered him a seat in his saloon as far as Paris."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+As the head of the procession at last stopped on the great parade ground
+where the last honours were to be rendered to the lowly yet illustrious
+dead, Jacques de Wissant straightened himself with an instinctive
+gesture, and his lips began to move. He was muttering to himself the
+speech he would soon have to deliver, and which he had that morning,
+making a great mental effort, committed to memory.</p>
+
+<p>And after the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say;
+and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a
+quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came
+to the turn of the Mayor of Falaise.</p>
+
+<p>He was there, he said, simply as the mouth-piece of his fellow-townsmen,
+and they, bowed as they were by deep personal grief, could say but
+little&mdash;they could indeed only murmur their eternal gratitude for the
+sympathy they had received, and were now receiving, from their
+countrymen and from the world.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jacques de Wissant gave a brief personal account of each of the ten
+seamen whom this vast concourse had gathered together to honour. It was
+noted by the curious in such things that he made no allusion to the two
+officers, to Commander Dupr&eacute; and Lieutenant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> Paritot; doubtless he
+thought that they, after all, had been amply honoured in the preceding
+speeches.</p>
+
+<p>But though his care for the lowly heroes proved the Mayor of Falaise a
+good republican, he showed himself in the popular estimation also a
+scholar, for he wound up with the old tag&mdash;the grand old tag which
+inspired so many noble souls in the proudest of ancient empires and
+civilizations, and which will retain the power of moving and thrilling
+generations yet unborn in both the Western and the Eastern worlds:</p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[98&ndash;100]</a></span>
+<a name="ii" id="ii"></a>THE CHILD</h2>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">IT was close on eleven o'clock; the July night was airless, and the last
+of that season's great balls was taking place in Grosvenor Square.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Elwyn's brougham came to a sudden halt in Green Street. Encompassed
+behind and before with close, intricate traffic, the carriage swung
+stiffly on its old-fashioned springs, responding to every movement of
+the fretted horse.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn, sitting by his mother's side, wondered a little impatiently
+why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could
+remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his
+thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in
+a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her
+narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> given up the world. This was
+the first time since her widowhood that she and her son had dined out
+together; but then the occasion was a very special one&mdash;they had been to
+dinner with the family of Elwyn's fianc&eacute;e, Winifred Fanshawe.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn turned and looked at his mother. As he saw in the
+half-darkness the outlines of the delicately pure profile, framed in
+grey bands of hair covering the ears as it had been worn when Mrs. Elwyn
+was a girl upwards of forty years ago, he felt stirred with an unwonted
+tenderness, added to the respect with which he habitually regarded her.</p>
+
+<p>Since leaving Cavendish Square they had scarcely spoken the one to the
+other. The drive home was a short one, for they lived in South Street.
+It was tiresome that they should be held up in this way within a hundred
+yards of their own door.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the mother spoke. She put out her frail hand and laid it across
+her son's strong brown fingers. She gazed earnestly into the
+good-looking face which was not as radiantly glad as she would have
+wished to see it&mdash;as indeed she had once seen her son's face look, and
+as she could still very vividly remember her own husband's face had
+looked during their short formal engagement nearly fifty years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> ago. "I
+could not be better pleased, Hugh, if I had myself chosen your future
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn was a little amused as well as touched; he was well aware that his
+mother, to all intents and purposes, <i>had</i> chosen Winifred. True, she
+had been but slightly acquainted with the girl before the engagement,
+but she had "known all about her," and had been on terms of friendly
+acquaintance with Winifred's grandmother all her long life. Elwyn
+remembered how his mother had pressed him to accept an invitation to a
+country house where Winifred Fanshawe was to be. But Mrs. Elwyn had
+never spoken to her son of her wishes until the day he had come and told
+her that he intended to ask Winifred to marry him, and then her
+unselfish joy had moved him and brought them very near to one another.</p>
+
+<p>When Hugh Elwyn was in London&mdash;he had been a great wanderer over the
+earth&mdash;he lived with his mother, and they were outwardly on the closest,
+most intimate terms of affection. But then Mrs. Elwyn never interfered
+with Hugh, as he understood his friends' mothers so often interfered
+with them and with their private affairs. This doubtless was why they
+were, and remained, on such ideal terms together.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mrs. Elwyn again spoke, but she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> did not turn round and look
+tenderly at her son as she had done when speaking of his future
+wife&mdash;this time she gazed straight before her: "Is not Winifred a cousin
+of Mrs. Bellair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there's some kind of connection between the Fanshawes and the
+Bellairs."</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn tried to make his voice unconcerned, but he failed, and he
+knew that he had failed. His mother's question had disturbed him, and
+taken him greatly by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered whether they are friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never heard Winifred mention her," he said shortly. "Yes, I
+have&mdash;I remember now that she told me the Bellairs had sent her a
+present the very day after our engagement was in the <i>Morning Post</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I suppose you will have to see something of them after your
+marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the Bellairs? Yes&mdash;no. I don't think that follows, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see anything of them now?"</p>
+
+<p>"No"&mdash;he again hesitated, and again ate his word&mdash;"that is&mdash;yes. I met
+them some weeks ago. But I don't think we are likely to see much of them
+after our marriage."</p>
+
+<p>He would have given the world to feel that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> his voice was betraying
+nothing of the discomfort he was feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not, Hugh. Mrs. Bellair would not be a suitable friend for
+Winifred&mdash;or&mdash;or for any young married woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother!" Elwyn only uttered the one word, but anger, shame, and
+self-reproach were struggling in the tone in which he uttered that one
+word. "You are wrong, indeed, you are quite wrong&mdash;I mean about Fanny
+Bellair."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," she said gently, but her voice quivered, "I do not think I am
+wrong. Indeed, I know I am right." Neither had ever seen the other so
+moved. "My dear," again she said the two quiet words that may mean so
+much or so little, "you know that I never spoke to you of the matter. I
+tried never even to think of it, and yet, Hugh, it made me very anxious,
+very unhappy. But to-night, looking at that sweet girl, I felt I must
+speak."</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment, and then added in a constrained voice, "I do not
+judge you, Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" he cried, "but you judge her! And it's so unfair, mother&mdash;so
+horribly unfair!"</p>
+
+<p>He had turned round; he was forcing his mother to look at his now moody,
+unhappy face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+Mrs. Elwyn shrank back and closed her lips tightly. Her expression
+recalled to her son the look which used to come over her face when, as a
+petted, over cared-for only child, he asked her for something which she
+believed it would be bad for him to have. From that look there had been,
+in old days, no appeal. But now he felt that he must say something more.
+His manhood demanded it of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," he said earnestly, "as you have spoken to me of the matter, I
+feel I must have it out with you! Please believe me when I say that you
+are being unjust&mdash;indeed, cruelly so. I was to blame all through&mdash;from
+the very beginning to the very end."</p>
+
+<p>"You must allow me," she said in a low tone, "to be the judge of that,
+Hugh." She added deprecatingly, "This discussion is painful, and&mdash;and
+very distasteful to me."</p>
+
+<p>Her son leant back, and choked down the words he was about to utter. He
+knew well that nothing he could say would change or even modify his
+mother's point of view. But oh! why had she done this? Why had she
+chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung,
+so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night&mdash;not madly,
+foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably,
+decorously pleased<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> with his present and his future. He was making a
+<i>mariage de convenance</i>, but there had been another man on the lists, a
+younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the
+pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had
+won&mdash;won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more
+could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of
+that providence which shapes our ends?</p>
+
+<p>The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.</p>
+
+<p>As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I
+ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs.
+Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful
+mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is
+seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything
+for him."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned
+prejudice against trained nurses.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent
+down and just touched her cheek with his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you come up into the drawing-room? Just for a few minutes?" she
+asked;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> there was a note of deep, yearning disappointment in her voice,
+and her face looked grey and tired, very different from the happy,
+placid air it had worn during the little dinner party.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you, mother, I won't come up just now. I think I'll go out
+again for half an hour. I haven't walked at all to-day, and it's so
+hot&mdash;I feel I shouldn't sleep if I turn in now."</p>
+
+<p>He was punishing his mother as he had seen other sons punishing their
+mothers, but as he himself had never before to-night been tempted to
+punish his. Nay, more, as Hugh Elwyn watched her slow ascent up the
+staircase, he told himself that she had hurt and angered him past entire
+forgiveness. He had sometimes suspected that she knew of that fateful
+episode in his past life, but he had never supposed that she would speak
+of it to him, especially not now, after years had gone by, and when,
+greatly to please her, he was about to make what is called a "suitable"
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>He was just enough to know that his mother had hurt herself by hurting
+him, but that did not modify his feelings of anger and of surprise at
+what she had done. Of course she thought she knew everything there was
+to know, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> how much there had been that she had never even suspected!</p>
+
+<p>Those words&mdash;that admission&mdash;as to Fanny Bellair being a good mother
+would never have passed Mrs. Elwyn's lips&mdash;they would never even have
+been credited by her had she known the truth&mdash;the truth, that is, as to
+the child to whom Mrs. Bellair was so passionately devoted, and who now,
+it seemed, was ailing. That secret, and Hugh Elwyn thanked God, not
+irreverently, that it was so, was only shared by two human beings, that
+is by Fanny and himself. And perhaps, Fanny, like himself, had managed
+by now almost to forget it....</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn swung out of the house, he walked up South Street, and so into
+Park Lane and over to the Park railings. There was still a great deal of
+traffic in the roadway, but the pavements were deserted.</p>
+
+<p>As he began to walk quickly westward, the past came back and overwhelmed
+him as with a great flood of mingled memories. And it was not, as his
+mother would probably have visioned it, a muddy spate filled with
+unclean things. Rather was it a flood of exquisite spring waters,
+instinct with the buoyant head-long rushes of youth, and filled with
+clear, happy shallows, in which retrospectively he lay and sunned
+himself in the warmth of what had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> been a great love&mdash;love such as
+Winifred Fanshawe, with her thin, complaisant nature, would never
+bestow.</p>
+
+<p>The mother's imprudent words of unnecessary warning had brought back to
+her son everything she had hoped was now, if not obliterated, then
+repented of; but Elwyn's heart was filled to-night with a vague
+tenderness for the half-forgotten woman whom he had loved awhile with so
+passionate and absorbing a love, and to whom, under cover of that poor
+and wilted thing, his conscience, he had ultimately behaved so ill.</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn's mind travelled back across the years, to the very beginning
+of his involved account with honour&mdash;that account which he believed to
+be now straightened out.</p>
+
+<p>Jim Bellair had been Elwyn's friend&mdash;first college friend and then
+favourite "pal." When Bellair had fallen head over ears in love with a
+girl still in the schoolroom, a girl not even pretty, but with wonderful
+auburn hair and dark, startled-looking eyes, and had finally persuaded,
+cajoled, badgered her into saying "Yes," it was Hugh Elwyn who had been
+Bellair's rather sulky best man. Small wonder that the bridegroom had
+half-jokingly left his young wife in Elwyn's charge when he had had to
+go half across the world on business that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> could not be delayed, while
+she stayed behind to nurse her father who was ill.</p>
+
+<p>It was then, with mysterious, uncanny suddenness, that the mischief had
+begun. There had been something wild and untamed in Fanny
+Bellair&mdash;something which had roused in Elwyn the hunter's instinct, an
+instinct hitherto unslaked by over easy victories. And then Chance, that
+great, cynical goddess which plays so great a part in civilized life,
+had flung first one opportunity and then another into his eager,
+grasping hands.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny's father had died; and she had been lonely and in sorrow. Careless
+friends, however kind, do not care to see much of those who mourn, but
+he, Hugh Elwyn, had not been careless, nay, he had been careful to see
+more, not less, of his friend's wife in this her first great grief, and
+she had been moved to the heart by his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>It was by Elwyn's advice that Mrs. Bellair had taken a house not far
+from London that lovely summer.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, that little house! Elwyn could remember every bush, almost every
+flower that had flowered, in the walled garden during those enchanted
+weeks. Against the background of his mind every ornament, every odd
+piece of furniture in that old cottage, stood out as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> having been the
+silent, it had seemed at the time the kindly, understanding witnesses of
+what had by then become an exquisite friendship. He, the man, had known
+almost from the first where they too were drifting, but she, the woman,
+had slipped into love as a wanderer at night slips suddenly into a deep
+and hidden pool.</p>
+
+<p>In a story book they would both have gone away openly together&mdash;but
+somehow the thought of doing such a thing never seriously occurred to
+Elwyn. He was far too fond of Bellair&mdash;it seemed absurd to say that now,
+but the truth, especially the truth of what has been, is often absurd.</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn had contented himself with stealing Bellair's wife; he had no
+desire to put public shame and ridicule upon his friend. And fortune,
+favouring him, had prolonged the other man's enforced absence.</p>
+
+<p>And then? And then at last Bellair had come back,&mdash;and trouble began. As
+to many things, nay, as to most things which have to do with the flesh
+rather than the spirit, men are more fastidiously delicate than are
+women. There had come months of misery, of revolt, and, on Elwyn's part,
+of dulling love....</p>
+
+<p>Then, once more, Chance gave him an unlooked-for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> opportunity&mdash;an
+opportunity of escape from what had become to him an intolerable
+position.</p>
+
+<p>The war broke out, and Hugh Elwyn was among the very first of those
+gallant fellows who volunteered during the dark November of '99.</p>
+
+<p>By a curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa
+had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision&mdash;he was
+far the cleverer man of the two&mdash;he and his friend were no longer bound
+together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie
+among men. By the time the two came back from Africa they had become
+little more than cordial acquaintances. Marriage, so Bellair sometimes
+told himself ruefully, generally plays the devil with a man's bachelor
+friendships. He was a kindly, generous hearted soul, who found much
+comfort in platitudes....</p>
+
+<p>But that, alas! had not been the end. On Elwyn's return home there had
+come to him a violent, overmastering revival of his passion. Again he
+and Fanny met&mdash;again they loved. Then one terrible day she came and told
+him, with stricken eyes, what he sometimes hoped, even now, had not been
+true&mdash;that she was about to have a child, and that it would be his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+child. At that moment, as he knew well, Mrs. Bellair had desired
+ardently to go away with him, openly. But he had drawn back, assuring
+himself&mdash;and this time honestly&mdash;that his shrinking from that course,
+now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do
+such a thing it would go far to kill his mother&mdash;worse, it would
+embitter every moment of the life which remained to her.</p>
+
+<p>For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband
+the truth. But the weeks and months drifted by, and she remained silent.
+And as he had gone about that year, petted and made much of by his
+friends and acquaintances&mdash;for did he not bear on his worn, handsome
+face that look which war paints on the face of your sensitive modern
+man?&mdash;he heard whispered the delightful news that after five years of
+marriage kind Jim and dear Fanny Bellair were at last going to be made
+happy&mdash;happy in the good old way.</p>
+
+<p>Among the other memories of that hateful time, one came back, to-night,
+with especial vividness. Hurrying home across the park one afternoon,
+seven years ago now, almost to a day, he had suddenly run up against
+Bellair.</p>
+
+<p>They had talked for a few moments on indifferent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> things, and then Jim
+had said shyly, awkwardly, but with a beaming look on his face, "You
+know about Fanny? Of course I can't help feeling a bit anxious, but
+she's so healthy&mdash;not like those women who have always something the
+matter with them!" And he, Elwyn, had gripped the other man's hand, and
+muttered the congratulation which was being asked of him.</p>
+
+<p>That meeting, so full of shameful irony, had occurred about a week
+before the child's birth. Elwyn had meant to be away from London&mdash;but
+Chance, so carelessly kind a friend to him in the past, at last proved
+cruel, for surely it was Chance and Chance alone that led him, on the
+very eve of the day he was starting for Norway, straight across the
+quiet square, composed of high Georgian houses, where the Bellairs still
+lived.</p>
+
+<p>To-night, thanks to his mother, every incident of that long, agonizing
+night came back. He could almost feel the tremor of half fear, half
+excitement, which had possessed him when he had suddenly become aware
+that his friends' house was still lit up and astir, and that fresh straw
+lay heaped up in prodigal profusion in the road where, a little past the
+door, was drawn up a doctor's one-horse brougham. Even then he might
+have taken another way, but something<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> had seemed to drive him on, past
+the house,&mdash;and there Elwyn, staying his deadened footsteps, had heard
+float down to him from widely opened windows above, certain sounds,
+muffled moans, telling of a physical extremity which even now he winced
+to remember.</p>
+
+<p>He had waited on and on&mdash;longing to escape, and yet prisoned between
+imaginary bounds within which he paced up and down, filled with an
+obscure desire to share, in the measure that was possible to him, her
+torment.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in the orange, dust-laden dawn of a London summer morning, the
+front door of the house had opened, and Elwyn had walked forward, every
+nerve quivering with suspense and fatigue, feeling that he must know....</p>
+
+<p>A great doctor, with whose face he was vaguely acquainted, had stepped
+out accompanied by Bellair&mdash;Bellair with ruffled hair and red-rimmed
+eyes, but looking if tired then content, even more, triumphant. Elwyn
+had heard him say the words, "Thanks awfully. I shall never forget how
+kind you have been, Sir Joseph. Yes, I'll go to bed at once. I know you
+must have thought me rather stupid."</p>
+
+<p>And then Bellair had suddenly seen Elwyn standing on the pavement; he
+had accepted unquestioningly the halting explanation that he was on his
+way home from a late party,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> and had happened, as it were, that way.
+"It's a boy!" he had said exultantly, although Elwyn had asked him no
+question, and then, "Of course I'm awfully pleased, but I'm dog tired!
+She's had a bad time, poor girl&mdash;but it's all right now, thank God! Come
+in and have a drink, Hugo."</p>
+
+<p>But Elwyn had shaken his head. Again he had gripped his old friend's
+hand, as he had done a week before, and again he had muttered the
+necessary words of congratulation. Then, turning on his heel, he had
+gone home, and spent the rest of the night in desultory packing.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>That was just seven years ago, and Elwyn had never seen Fanny's child.
+He had been away from England for over a year, and when he came back he
+learned that the Bellairs were away, living in the country, where they
+had taken a house for the sake of their boy.</p>
+
+<p>As time had gone on, Elwyn and his friends had somehow drifted apart, as
+people are apt to drift apart in the busy idleness of the life led by
+the fortunate Bellairs and Elwyns of this world. Fanny avoided Hugh
+Elwyn, and Elwyn avoided Fanny, but they two only were aware of this. It
+was the last of the many secrets which they had once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> shared. When he
+and Bellair by chance met alone, all the old cordiality and even the old
+affection seemed to come back, if not to Elwyn then to the other man.</p>
+
+<p>And now the child, to whom it seemed not only Fanny but Jim Bellair also
+was so devoted, was ill, and he, Hugh Elwyn, had been the last to hear
+of it. He felt vaguely remorseful that this should be so. There had been
+years when nothing that affected Bellair could have left him
+indifferent, and a time when the slightest misadventure befalling Fanny
+would have called forth his eager, helpful sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>How strange it would be&mdash;he quickened his footsteps&mdash;if this child, with
+whom he was at once remotely and intimately concerned, were to die! He
+could not help feeling, deep down in his heart, that this would be, if a
+tragic, then a natural solution of a painful and unnatural problem&mdash;and
+then, quite suddenly, he felt horribly ashamed of having allowed himself
+to think this thought, to wish this awful wish.</p>
+
+<p>Why should he not go now, at once, to Manchester Square, and inquire as
+to the little boy's condition? It was not really late, not yet midnight.
+He could go and leave a message, perhaps even scribble a line to Jim
+Bellair explaining that he had come round as soon as he had heard of the
+child's illness.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>II</h3>
+
+<p>When Hugh Elwyn reached the familiar turning whence he could see the
+Bellairs' high house, time seemed to have slipped back.</p>
+
+<p>The house was all lit up as it had been on that summer night seven years
+ago. Everything was the same&mdash;even to the heaped-up straw into which his
+half-reluctant feet now sank. There was even a doctor's carriage drawn
+up a little way from the front door, but this time it was a smart
+electric brougham.</p>
+
+<p>He rang the bell, and as the door opened, Jim Bellair suddenly came into
+the hall, out of a room which Elwyn knew to be the smoking-room&mdash;a room
+in which he and Fanny had at one time spent long hours in contented, nay
+in ecstatic, dual solitude.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to inquire&mdash;I only heard to-night&mdash;" he began awkwardly,
+but the other cut him short, "Yes, yes, I understand&mdash;it's awfully good
+of you, Elwyn! I'm awfully glad to see you. Come in here&mdash;" and perforce
+he had to follow. "The doctor's upstairs&mdash;I mean Sir Joseph Pixton.
+Fanny was determined to have him, and he very kindly came, though of
+course he's not a child's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> doctor. He's annoyed because Fanny won't have
+trained nurses; but I don't suppose anything would make any difference.
+It's just a fight&mdash;a fight for the little chap's life&mdash;that's what it
+is, and we don't know yet who'll win."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in quick, short sentences, staring with widely open eyes at his
+erstwhile friend as he spoke. "Pneumonia&mdash;I suppose you don't know
+anything about it? I thought children never had such things, especially
+not in hot weather."</p>
+
+<p>"I had a frightful illness when I was about your boy's age," said Elwyn
+eagerly. "It's the first thing I can really remember. They called it
+inflammation of the lungs. I was awfully bad. My mother talks of it now,
+sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she?" Bellair spoke wearily. "If only one could <i>do</i> something,"
+he went on. "But you see the worst of it is that I can do
+nothing&mdash;nothing! Fanny hates my being up there&mdash;she thinks it upsets
+the boy. He's such a jolly little chap, Hugo. You know we called him
+Peter after Fanny's father?"</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn moved towards the door. He felt dreadfully moved by the other's
+pain. He told himself that after all he could do no good by staying, and
+he felt so ashamed, such a cur&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to go away yet?" There was sharp chagrin, reproachful
+dismay, in Bellair's voice. Elwyn remembered that in old days Jim had
+always hated being alone. "Won't you stay and hear what Pixton says?
+Or&mdash;or are you in a hurry?"</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn turned round. "Of course I'll stay," he said briefly.</p>
+
+<p>Bellair spared him thanks, but he began walking about the room
+restlessly. At last he went to the door and set it ajar. "I want to hear
+when Sir Joseph comes down," he explained, and even as he spoke there
+came the sound of heavy, slow footsteps on the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>Bellair went out and brought the great man in.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told Mrs. Bellair that we ought to have Bewdley! He knows a great
+deal more about children than I can pretend to do; and I propose, with
+your leave, to go off now, myself, and if possible bring him back." The
+old doctor's keen eyes wandered as he spoke from Bellair's fair face to
+Hugh Elwyn's dark one. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, Mr. Bellair, you
+would get someone to telephone to Dr. Bewdley's house to say that I'm
+coming? It might save a few moments."</p>
+
+<p>As Bellair left the room, the doctor turned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> to Elwyn and said abruptly,
+"I hope you'll be able to stay with your brother? All this is very hard
+on him; Mrs. Bellair will scarcely allow him into the child's room, and
+though that, of course, is quite right, I'm sorry for the man. He's
+wrapped up in the child."</p>
+
+<p>And when Bellair came back from accompanying the old doctor to his
+carriage, there was a smile on his face&mdash;the first smile which had been
+there for a long time: "Pixton thinks you're my brother! He said, 'I
+hope your brother will manage to stay with you for a bit.' Now I'll go
+up and see Fanny. Pixton is certainly more hopeful than the last man we
+had&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bellair's voice had a confident ring. Elwyn remembered with a pang that
+Jim had always been like that&mdash;always believed, that is, that the best
+would come to pass.</p>
+
+<p>When left alone, Elwyn began walking restlessly up and down, much as his
+friend had walked up and down a few minutes ago. Something of the
+excitement of the fight going on above had entered into him; he now
+desired ardently that the child should live, should emerge victor from
+the grim struggle.</p>
+
+<p>At last Bellair came back. "Fanny believes that this is the night of
+crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But&mdash;but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+Elwyn, I hope you won't mind&mdash;the fact is she's set her heart on your
+seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your
+illness as a child, and it's cheered her up amazingly, poor girl!
+Perhaps you could tell her a little bit more about it, though I like to
+think that if the boy gets through it"&mdash;his voice broke suddenly&mdash;"she
+won't remember this&mdash;this awful time. But don't let's keep her
+waiting&mdash;" He took Elwyn's consent for granted, and quickly the two men
+walked up the stairs of the high house, on and on and on.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good way up," whispered Bellair, "but Fanny was told that a
+child's nursery couldn't be too high. So we had the four rooms at the
+top thrown into two."</p>
+
+<p>They were now on the dimly-lighted landing. "Wait one moment&mdash;wait one
+moment, Hugo." Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the
+room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his
+ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the
+house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a
+touch of grotesque horror to the situation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+Suddenly the handle of the door in front of him moved round, and he
+heard Fanny Bellair's voice, unnaturally controlled and calm. "I sent
+Nanna to bed, Jim. The poor old creature was absolutely worn out. And
+then I would so much rather be alone when Sir Joseph brings back the
+other doctor. He admits&mdash;I mean Sir Joseph does&mdash;that to-night <i>is</i> the
+crisis."</p>
+
+<p>The door swung widely open, and Elwyn, moving instinctively back,
+visualized the scene before him very distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the
+one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bellair stood between the screen and the pale blue wall. Her slim
+figure was clad in some sort of long white garment, and over it she wore
+an apron, which he noticed was far too large for her. Her hair, the
+auburn hair which had been her greatest beauty, and which he had once
+loved to praise and to caress, was fastened back, massed up in as small
+a compass as possible. That, and the fact that her face was
+expressionless, so altered her in Elwyn's eyes as to give him an uncanny
+feeling that the woman before him was not the woman he had known, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+loved, had left,&mdash;but a stranger, only bound to him by the slender link
+of a common humanity.</p>
+
+<p>She waited some moments as if listening, then she came out on to the
+landing, and shut the door behind her very softly.</p>
+
+<p>The sentence of conventional sympathy half formed on Elwyn's lips died
+into nothingness; as little could he have offered words of cheer to one
+who was being tortured; but in the dim light their hands met and clasped
+tightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugo?" she said, "I want to ask you something. You told Jim just now
+that you were once very ill as a child,&mdash;ill like this, ill like my
+child. I want you to tell me honestly if that is true? I mean, were you
+very, very ill?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered her in the same way, without preamble, baldly: "It is quite
+true," he said. "I was very ill&mdash;so ill that my mother for one moment
+thought that I was dead. But remember, Fanny, that in those days they
+did not know nearly as much as they do now. Your boy has two chances for
+every one that I had then."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind coming in and seeing him?" Her voice faltered, it had
+become more human, more conventional, in quality.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I will see him," he said. "I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> want to see him,&mdash;dear." She
+had suddenly become to him once more the thing nearest his heart; once
+more the link between them became of the closest, most intimate nature,
+and yet, or perhaps because of its intensity, the sense of nearness
+which had sprung at her touch into being was passionless.</p>
+
+<p>The face which had been drained of all expression quickened into
+agonized feeling. She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held
+it firmly, and it was hand in hand that together they walked into the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>As they came round the screen behind which lay the sick child, Bellair
+went over to the farthest of the three windows and stood there with
+crossed arms staring out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the
+edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat,
+became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his
+ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium. But the
+small, dark face, framed by the white pillow, was set in lines of deep,
+unchildlike gravity, and in the eyes which now gazed incuriously at
+Elwyn there was a strange, watchful light which seemed to illumine that
+which was within rather than that which was without.</p>
+
+<p>As is always the case with a living creature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> near to death, little
+Peter Bellair looked very lonely.</p>
+
+<p>Then Elwyn, moving nearer still, seemed&mdash;or so at least Fanny Bellair
+will ever believe&mdash;to take possession of the moribund child, yielding
+him as he did so something of his own strength to help him through the
+crisis then imminent. And indeed the little creature whose forehead,
+whose clenched left hand lying on the sheet were beginning to glisten
+with sweat, appeared to become merged in some strange way with himself.
+Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of
+thirty years back, who, as a lonely only child, had lived so intensely
+secret, imaginative a life, peopling the prim alleys of Hyde Park with
+fairies, imps, tricksy hobgoblins in whom he more than half believed,
+and longing even then, as ever after, for the unattainable, never
+carelessly happy as his father and mother believed him to be....</p>
+
+<p>Hugh Elwyn stayed with the Bellairs all that night. He shared the sick
+suspense the hour of the crisis brought, and he was present when the
+specialist said the fateful words, "I think, under God, this child will
+live."</p>
+
+<p>When at last Elwyn left the house, clad in an old light coat of
+Bellair's in order that the folk early astir should not see that he was
+wearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> evening clothes, he felt happier, more light-hearted, than he
+had done for years.</p>
+
+<p>His life had been like a crowded lumber-room, full of useless and
+worn-out things he had accounted precious, while he had ignored the one
+possession that really mattered and that linked him, not only with the
+future, but with the greatest reality of his past.</p>
+
+<p>The inevitable pain which this suddenly discovered treasure was to bring
+was mercifully concealed from him, as also the sombre fact that he would
+henceforth go lonely all his life, perforce obliged to content himself
+with the crumbs of another man's feast. For Peter Bellair, high-strung,
+imaginative, as he will ever be, will worship the strong, kindly, simple
+man he believes to be his father, but to that dear father's friend he
+will only yield the careless affection born of gratitude for much
+kindness.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>In the matter of the broken engagement, Hugh Elwyn was more fairly
+treated by the men and women whom the matter concerned, or who thought
+it concerned them, than are the majority of recusant lovers.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh Elwyn has never been quite the same since the war, and you know
+Winifred Fanshawe really liked the other man the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> best," so said those
+who spent an idle moment in discussing the matter, and they generally
+added, "It's a good thing that he's spending the summer with his old
+friends, the Bellairs. They're living very quietly just now, for their
+little boy has been dreadfully ill, so it's just the place for poor old
+Hugo to get over it all!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[130&ndash;132]</a></span><a name="iii" id="iii"></a>ST. CATHERINE'S EVE</h2>
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>I</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 8px;">
+<img src="images/quote.png" width="8" height="7" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="cap">In this matter of the railway James Mottram has proved a false friend,
+a very traitor to me!"</p>
+
+<p>Charles Nagle's brown eyes shone with anger; he looked loweringly at his
+companions, and they, a beautiful young woman and an old man dressed in
+the sober garb of a Catholic ecclesiastic of that day, glanced at one
+another apprehensively.</p>
+
+<p>All England was then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of
+those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which
+obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the
+coming of the railroads.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Nagle got up and walked to the end of the terrace. He stared
+down into the wooded combe, or ravine, below, and noted with sullen
+anger the signs of stir and activity in the narrow strip of wood which
+till a few weeks before had been so still, so entirely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> remote from
+even the quiet human activities of 1835.</p>
+
+<p>At last he turned round, pirouetting on his heel with a quick movement,
+and his good looks impressed anew each of the two who sat there with
+him. Eighty years ago beauty of line and colour were allowed to tell in
+masculine apparel, and this young Dorset squire delighted in fine
+clothes. Though November was far advanced it was a mild day, and Charles
+Nagle wore a bright blue coat, cut, as was then the fashion, to show off
+the points of his elegant figure&mdash;of his slender waist and his broad
+shoulders; as for the elaborately frilled waistcoat, it terminated in an
+India muslin stock, wound many times round his neck. He looked a foppish
+Londoner rather than what he was&mdash;an honest country gentleman who had
+not journeyed to the capital for some six years, and then only to see a
+great physician.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas a most unneighbourly act on the part of James&mdash;he knows it well
+enough, for we hardly see him now!" He addressed his words more
+particularly to his wife, and he spoke more gently than before.</p>
+
+<p>The old priest&mdash;his name was Dorriforth&mdash;looked uneasily from his host
+to his hostess. He felt that both these young people, whom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> he had known
+from childhood, and whom he loved well, had altered during the few weeks
+which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather&mdash;he mentally
+corrected himself&mdash;it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles
+Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he
+belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are
+mentally infirm, and shunned by their more fortunate fellows.</p>
+
+<p>But Charles Nagle's wife, the sweet young woman who for so long had been
+content, nay glad, to share this pitiful exile, seemed now to have
+escaped, if not in body then in mind, from the place where her sad,
+monotonous duty lay.</p>
+
+<p>She did not at once answer her husband; but she looked at him fixedly,
+her hand smoothing nervously the skirt of her pretty gown.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle's dress also showed a care and research unusual in that of
+the country lady of those days. This was partly no doubt owing to her
+French blood&mdash;her grandparents had been <i>&eacute;migr&eacute;s</i>&mdash;and to the fact that
+Charles liked to see her in light colours. The gown she was now wearing
+on this mild November day was a French flowered silk, the spoil of a
+smuggler who pursued his profitable calling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> on the coast hard by. The
+short, high bodice and puffed sleeves were draped with a scarf of
+Buckinghamshire lace which left, as was the fashion of those days, the
+wearer's lovely shoulders bare.</p>
+
+<p>"James Mottram," she said at last, and with a heightened colour,
+"believes in progress, Charles. It is the one thing concerning which you
+and your friend will never agree."</p>
+
+<p>"Friend?" he repeated moodily. "Friend! James Mottram has shown himself
+no friend of ours. And then I had rights in this matter&mdash;am I not his
+heir-at-law? I could prevent my cousin from touching a stone, or felling
+a tree, at the Eype. But 'tis his indifference to my feelings that
+angers me so. Why, I trusted the fellow as if he had been my brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"And James Mottram," said the old priest authoritatively, "has always
+felt the same to you, Charles. Never forget that! In all but name you
+are brothers. Were you not brought up together? Had I not the schooling
+of you both as lads?" He spoke with a good deal of feeling; he had
+noticed&mdash;and the fact disturbed him&mdash;that Charles Nagle spoke in the
+past tense when referring to his affection for the absent man.</p>
+
+<p>"But surely, sir, you cannot approve that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> this iron monster should
+invade our quiet neighbourhood?" exclaimed Charles impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle looked at the priest entreatingly. Did she by any chance
+suppose that he would be able to modify her husband's violent feeling?</p>
+
+<p>"If I am to say the truth, Charles," said Mr. Dorriforth mildly, "and
+you would not have me conceal my sentiments, then I believe the time
+will come when even you will be reconciled to this marvellous invention.
+Those who surely know declare that, thanks to these railroads, our
+beloved country will soon be all cultivated as is a garden. Nay, perhaps
+others of our Faith, strangers, will settle here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Strangers?" repeated Charles Nagle sombrely, "I wish no strangers here.
+Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he
+expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear
+suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing
+Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which
+stood the old manor-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, nay," he repeated, returning to his grievance, "never had I
+expected to find James Mottram a traitor to his order. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> for the folk
+about here, they're bewitched! They believe that this puffing devil will
+make them all rich! I could tell them different; but, as you know, there
+are reasons why I should not."</p>
+
+<p>The priest bent his head gravely. The Catholic gentry of those days were
+not on comfortable terms with their neighbours. In spite of the fact
+that legally they were now "emancipated," any malicious person could
+still make life intolerable to them. The railway mania was at its
+beginnings, and it would have been especially dangerous for Charles
+Nagle to take, in an active sense, the unpopular side.</p>
+
+<p>In other parts of England, far from this Dorset countryside, railroads
+had brought with them a revival of trade. It was hoped that the same
+result would follow here, and a long strip of James Mottram's estate had
+been selected as being peculiarly suitable for the laying down of the
+iron track which was to connect the nearest town with the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the land in question consisted of a wood which formed the
+boundary-line where Charles Nagle's property marched with that of his
+kinsman and co-religionist, James Mottram; and Nagle had taken the
+matter very ill indeed. He was now still suffering,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> in a physical
+sense, from the effects of the violent fit of passion which the matter
+had induced, and which even his wife, Catherine, had not been able to
+allay....</p>
+
+<p>As he started walking up and down with caged, impatient steps, she
+watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head
+with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the
+opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle,
+James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds
+which swept up from the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he again strode over to the edge of the terrace: "I think I'll
+go down and have a talk to those railroad fellows," he muttered
+uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>Charles knew well that this was among the forbidden things&mdash;the things
+he must not do; yet occasionally Catherine, who was, as the poor fellow
+dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
+submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
+decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
+to Mr. Dorriforth."</p>
+
+<p>"They were making hellish noises all last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> night; I had no rest at all,"
+Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
+and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'&mdash;that's what they call it, reverend
+sir," he turned to the priest.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
+she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
+losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
+priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
+first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
+the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
+knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
+during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
+strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
+servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.</p>
+
+<p>She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
+not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
+railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
+now done."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> love! And if they're going off
+at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
+I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
+no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
+on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
+in a child, so pardonable.</p>
+
+<p>She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
+wound about her soft dark hair&mdash;hair dressed high, turned back from her
+forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
+fashion, arranged in stiff curls.</p>
+
+<p>The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
+out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
+planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
+quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this
+closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing
+two fields, terminated in the beech-wood where now ran the iron track of
+the new railroad.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle unlocked the orchard gate, and went through on to the
+field path. And then she slackened her steps.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+For hours, nay, for days, she had been longing for solitude, and now,
+for a brief space, solitude was hers. But, instead of bringing her
+peace, this respite from the companionship of Charles and of Mr.
+Dorriforth brought increased tumult and revolt.</p>
+
+<p>She had ardently desired the visit of the old priest, but his presence
+had bestowed, instead of solace, fret and discomfort. When he fixed on
+her his mild, penetrating eyes, she felt as if he were dragging into the
+light certain secret things which had been so far closely hidden within
+her heart, and concerning which she had successfully dulled her once
+sensitive conscience.</p>
+
+<p>The waking hours of the last two days had each been veined with torment.
+Her soul sickened as she thought of the morrow, St. Catherine's Day,
+that is, her feast-day. The <i>&eacute;migr&eacute;s</i>, Mrs. Nagle's own people, had in
+exile jealousy kept up their own customs, and to Charles Nagle's wife
+the twenty-fifth day of November had always been a day of days, what her
+birthday is to a happy Englishwoman. Even Charles always remembered the
+date, and in concert with his faithful man-servant, Collins, sent to
+London each year for a pretty jewel. The housefolk, all of whom had
+learnt to love their mistress, and who helped her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> loyally in her
+difficult, sometimes perilous, task, also made of the feast a holiday.</p>
+
+<p>But now, on this St. Catherine's Eve, Mrs. Nagle told herself that she
+was at the end of her strength. And yet only a month ago&mdash;so she now
+reminded herself piteously&mdash;all had been well with her; she had been
+strangely, pathetically happy a month since; content with all the
+conditions of her singular and unnatural life....</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stopped walking. As if in answer to a word spoken by an
+invisible companion she turned aside, and, stooping, picked a weed
+growing by the path. She held it up for a moment to her cheek, and then
+spoke aloud. "Were it not for James Mottram," she said slowly, and very
+clearly, "I, too, should become mad."</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked round in sudden fear. Catherine Nagle had never before
+uttered, or permitted another to utter aloud in her presence, that awful
+word. But she knew that their neighbours were not so scrupulous. One
+cruel enemy, and, what was especially untoward, a close relation, Mrs.
+Felwake, own sister to Charles Nagle's dead father, often uttered it.
+This lady desired her son to reign at Edgecombe; it was she who in the
+last few years had spread abroad the notion that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> Charles Nagle, in the
+public interest, should be asylumed.</p>
+
+<p>In his own house, and among his own tenants, the slander was angrily
+denied. When Charles was stranger, more suspicious, moodier than usual,
+those about him would tell one another that "the squire was ill to-day,"
+or that "the master was ailing." That he had a mysterious illness was
+admitted. Had not a famous London doctor persuaded Mr. Nagle that it
+would be dangerous for him to ride, even to walk outside the boundary of
+his small estate,&mdash;in brief, to run any risks which might affect his
+heart? He had now got out of the way of wishing to go far afield;
+contentedly he would pace up and down for hours on the long terrace
+which overhung the wood&mdash;talking, talking, talking, with Catherine on
+his arm.</p>
+
+<p>But he was unselfish&mdash;sometimes. "Take a walk, dear heart, with James,"
+he would say, and then Catherine Nagle and James Mottram would go out
+and make their way to some lonely farmhouse or cottage where Mottram had
+estate business. Yet during these expeditions they never forgot Charles,
+so Catherine now reminded herself sorely,&mdash;nay, it was then that they
+talked of him the most, discussing him kindly, tenderly, as they
+went....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+Catherine walked quickly on, her eyes on the ground. With a feeling of
+oppressed pain she recalled the last time she and Mottram had been alone
+together. Bound for a distant spot on the coast, they had gone on and on
+for miles, almost up to the cliffs below which lay the sea. Ah, how
+happy, how innocent she had felt that day!</p>
+
+<p>Then they had come to a stile&mdash;Mottram had helped her up, helped her
+down, and for a moment her hand had lain and fluttered in his hand....</p>
+
+<p>During the long walk back, each had been very silent; and Catherine&mdash;she
+could not answer for her companion&mdash;when she had seen Charles waiting
+for her patiently, had felt a pained, shamed beat of the heart. As for
+James Mottram, he had gone home at once, scarce waiting for good-nights.</p>
+
+<p>That evening&mdash;Catherine remembered it now with a certain comfort&mdash;she
+had been very kind to Charles; she was ever kind, but she had then been
+kinder than usual, and he had responded by becoming suddenly clearer in
+mind than she had known him to be for a long time. For some days he had
+been the old Charles&mdash;tender, whimsical, gallant, the Charles with whom,
+at a time when every girl is in love with love, she had alack! fallen in
+love. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> once more the cloud had come down, shadowing a dreary waste
+of days&mdash;dark days of oppression and of silence, alternating with sudden
+bursts of unreasonable and unreasoning rage.</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram had come, and come frequently, during that time of misery.
+But his manner had changed. He had become restrained, as if watchful of
+himself; he was no longer the free, the happy, the lively companion he
+had used to be. Catherine scarcely saw him out of Charles's presence,
+and when they were by chance alone they talked of Charles, only of
+Charles and of his unhappy condition, and of what could be done to
+better it.</p>
+
+<p>And now James Mottram had given up coming to Edgecombe in the old
+familiar way; or rather&mdash;and this galled Catherine shrewdly&mdash;he came
+only sufficiently often not to rouse remark among their servants and
+humble neighbours.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle was on the edge of the wood, and looking about her she
+saw with surprise that the railway men she had come down to see had
+finished work for the day. There were signs of their immediate
+occupation, a fire was still smouldering, and the door<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> of one of the
+shanties they occupied was open. But complete stillness reigned in this
+kingdom of high trees. To the right and left, as far as she could see,
+stretched the twin lines of rude iron rails laid down along what had
+been a cart-track, as well as a short cut between Edgecombe Manor and
+Eype Castle. A dun drift, to-day's harvest of dead leaves, had settled
+on the rails; even now it was difficult to follow their course.</p>
+
+<p>As she stood there, about to turn and retrace her steps, Catherine
+suddenly saw James Mottram advancing quickly towards her, and the
+mingled revolt and sadness which had so wholly possessed her gave way to
+a sudden, overwhelming feeling of security and joy.</p>
+
+<p>She moved from behind the little hut near which she had been standing,
+and a moment later they stood face to face.</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram was as unlike Charles Nagle as two men of the same age, of
+the same breed, and of the same breeding could well be. He was shorter,
+and of sturdier build, than his cousin; and he was plain, whereas
+Charles Nagle was strikingly handsome. Also his face was tanned by
+constant exposure to sun, salt-wind, and rain; his hair was cut short,
+his face shaven.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+The very clothes James Mottram wore were in almost ludicrous contrast to
+those which Charles Nagle affected, for Mottram's were always of
+serviceable homespun. But for the fact that they and he were
+scrupulously clean, the man now walking by Catherine Nagle's side might
+have been a prosperous farmer or bailiff instead of the owner of such
+large property in those parts as made him, in spite of his unpopular
+faith, lord of the little world about him.</p>
+
+<p>On his plain face and strong, sturdy figure Catherine's beautiful eyes
+dwelt with unconscious relief. She was so weary of Charles's absorption
+in his apparel, and of his interest in the hundred and one fal-lals
+which then delighted the cosmopolitan men of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>A simple, almost childish gladness filled her heart. Conscience, but
+just now so insistent and disturbing a familiar, vanished for a space,
+nay more, assumed the garb of a meddling busybody who seeks to discover
+harm where no harm is.</p>
+
+<p>Was not James Mottram Charles's friend, almost, as the old priest had
+said, Charles's brother? Had she not herself deliberately chosen Charles
+in place of James when both young men had been in ardent pursuit of
+her&mdash;James's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> pursuit almost wordless, Charles's conducted with all the
+eloquence of the poet he had then set out to be?</p>
+
+<p>Mottram, seeing her in the wood, uttered a word of surprise. She
+explained her presence there. Their hands scarce touched in greeting,
+and then they started walking side by side up the field path.</p>
+
+<p>Mottram carried a stout ash stick. Had the priest been there he would
+perchance have noticed that the man's hand twitched and moved restlessly
+as he swung his stick about; but Catherine only became aware that her
+companion was preoccupied and uneasy after they had gone some way.</p>
+
+<p>When, however, the fact of his unease seemed forced upon her notice, she
+felt suddenly angered. There was a quality in Mrs. Nagle that made her
+ever ready to rise to meet and conquer circumstance. She told herself,
+with heightened colour, that James Mottram should and must return to his
+old ways&mdash;to his old familiar footing with her. Anything else would be,
+nay was, intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>"James,"&mdash;she turned to him frankly&mdash;"why have you not come over to see
+us lately as often as you did? Charles misses you sadly, and so do I.
+Prepare to find him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> in a bad mood to-day. But just now he distressed
+Mr. Dorriforth by his unreasonableness touching the railroad." She
+smiled and went on lightly, "He said that you were a false friend to
+him&mdash;a traitor!"</p>
+
+<p>And then Catherine Nagle stopped and caught her breath. God! Why had she
+said that? But Mottram had evidently not caught the sinister word, and
+Catherine in haste drove back conscience into the lair whence conscience
+had leapt so suddenly to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I ought, in this matter of the railroad," he said musingly, "to
+have humoured Charles. I am now sorry I did not do so. After all,
+Charles may be right&mdash;and all we others wrong. The railroad may not
+bring us lasting good!"</p>
+
+<p>Catherine looked at him surprised. James Mottram had always been so sure
+of himself in this matter; but now there was dejection, weariness in his
+voice; and he was walking quickly, more quickly up the steep incline
+than Mrs. Nagle found agreeable. But she also hastened her steps,
+telling herself, with wondering pain, that he was evidently in no mood
+for her company.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dorriforth has already been here two days," she observed
+irrelevantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+"Aye, I know that. It was to see him I came to-day; and I will ask you
+to spare him to me for two or three hours. Indeed, I propose that he
+should walk back with me to the Eype. I wish him to witness my new will.
+And then I may as well go to confession, for it is well to be shriven
+before a journey, though for my part I feel ever safer on sea than
+land!"</p>
+
+<p>Mottram looked straight before him as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"A journey?" Catherine repeated the words in a low, questioning tone.
+There had come across her heart a feeling of such anguish that it was as
+though her body instead of her soul were being wrenched asunder. In her
+extremity she called on pride&mdash;and pride, ever woman's most loyal
+friend, flew to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he repeated, still staring straight in front of him, "I leave
+to-morrow for Plymouth. I have had letters from my agent in Jamaica
+which make it desirable that I should return there without delay." He
+dug his stick into the soft earth as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram was absorbed in himself, in his own desire to carry
+himself well in his fierce determination to avoid betraying what he
+believed to be his secret. But Catherine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> Nagle knew nothing of this.
+She almost thought him indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>They had come to a steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly
+quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he
+could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she
+desired to say were strangled, at birth, in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Charles will not mind; he will not miss me as he would have missed me
+before this unhappy business of the railroad came between us," Mottram
+said lamely.</p>
+
+<p>She still made no answer; instead she shook her head with an impatient
+gesture. Her silence made him sorry. After all, he had been a good
+friend to Catherine Nagle&mdash;so much he could tell himself without shame.
+He stepped aside on to the grass, and striding forward turned round and
+faced her.</p>
+
+<p>The tears were rolling down her cheeks; but she threw back her head and
+met his gaze with a cold, almost a defiant look. "You startled me
+greatly," she said breathlessly, "and took me so by surprise, James! I
+am grieved to think how Charles&mdash;nay, how we shall both&mdash;miss you. It is
+of Charles I think, James; it is for Charles I weep&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>As she uttered the lying words, she still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> looked proudly into his face
+as if daring him to doubt her. "But I shall never forget&mdash;I shall ever
+think with gratitude of your great goodness to my poor Charles. Two
+years out of your life&mdash;that's what it's been, James. Too much&mdash;too much
+by far!" She had regained control over her quivering heart, and it was
+with a wan smile that she added, "But we shall miss you, dear, kind
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>Her smile stung him. "Catherine," he said sternly, "I go because I
+must&mdash;because I dare not stay. You are a woman and a saint, I a man and
+a sinner. I've been a fool and worse than a fool. You say that Charles
+to-day called me false friend, traitor! Catherine&mdash;Charles spoke more
+truly than he knew."</p>
+
+<p>His burning eyes held her fascinated. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
+She was thirstily absorbing the words as they fell now slowly, now
+quickly, from his lips.</p>
+
+<p>But what was this he was saying? "Catherine, do you wish me to go on?"
+Oh, cruel! Cruel to put this further weight on her conscience! But she
+made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent&mdash;and again he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Years ago I thought I loved you. I went away, as you know well, because
+of that love.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> You had chosen Charles&mdash;Charles in many ways the better
+fellow of the two. I went away thinking myself sick with love of you,
+but it was false&mdash;only my pride had been hurt. I did not love you as I
+loved myself. And when I got clear away, in a new place, among new
+people"&mdash;he hesitated and reddened darkly&mdash;"I forgot you! I vow that
+when I came back I was cured&mdash;cured if ever a man was! It was of
+Charles, not of you, Catherine, that I thought on my way home. To me
+Charles and you had become one. I swear it!" He repeated: "To me you and
+Charles were one."</p>
+
+<p>He waited a long moment, and then, more slowly, he went on, as if
+pleading with himself&mdash;with her: "You know what I found here in place of
+what I had left? I found Charles a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle shrank back. She put up her right hand to ward off the
+word, and Mottram, seizing her hand, held it in his with a convulsive
+clasp. "'Twas not the old feeling that came back to me&mdash;that I again
+swear, Catherine. 'Twas something different&mdash;something infinitely
+stronger&mdash;something that at first I believed to be all noble&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped speaking, and Catherine Nagle uttered one word&mdash;a curious
+word. "When?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> she asked, and more urgently again she whispered, "When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Long before I knew!" he said hoarsely. "At first I called the passion
+that possessed me by the false name of 'friendship.' But that poor
+hypocrisy soon left me! A month ago, Catherine, I found myself
+wishing&mdash;I'll say this for myself, it was for the first time&mdash;that
+Charles was dead. And then I knew for sure what I had already long
+suspected&mdash;that the time had come for me to go&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He dropped her hand, and stood before her, abased in his own eyes, but
+one who, if a criminal, had had the strength to be his own judge and
+pass heavy sentence on himself.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Catherine&mdash;now that you understand why I go, you will bid me
+God-speed. Nay, more"&mdash;he looked at her, and smiled wryly&mdash;"if you are
+kind, as I know you to be kind, you will pray for me, for I go from you
+a melancholy, as well as a foolish man."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a strange little wavering smile, and Mottram was deeply moved
+by the gentleness with which Catherine Nagle had listened to his story.
+He had been prepared for an averted glance, for words of cold
+rebuke&mdash;such words as his own long-dead mother would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> surely have
+uttered to a man who had come to her with such a tale.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>They walked on for a while, and Catherine again broke the silence by a
+question which disturbed her companion. "Then your agent's letter was
+not really urgent, James?"</p>
+
+<p>"The letters of an honest agent always call for the owner," he muttered
+evasively.</p>
+
+<p>They reached the orchard gate. Catherine held the key in her hand, but
+she did not place it in the lock&mdash;instead she paused awhile. "Then there
+is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James&mdash;forgive me for asking
+it&mdash;are you, indeed, leaving England because of this&mdash;this matter of
+which you have just told me?"</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head in answer.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
+I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
+Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
+voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
+disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
+charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
+house. You have been nursing the sick&mdash;nay, more, you have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> been
+tending"&mdash;she waited, then in a low voice she added&mdash;"the dead&mdash;the dead
+that are yet alive."</p>
+
+<p>Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
+is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."</p>
+
+<p>"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
+fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.</p>
+
+<p>And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
+felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
+shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
+which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
+over scrupulous.</p>
+
+<p>There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
+poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
+another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
+presence. It was when he was alone&mdash;alone in his great house on the
+hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
+thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> her
+beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
+Nagle&mdash;poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
+kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
+Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
+man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.</p>
+
+<p>"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
+he bowed his head in reverence.</p>
+
+<p>They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
+terrace.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
+bright, and that the rose-red colour in her cheeks had deepened as if
+she had been standing before a great fire.</p>
+
+<p>As they came within sight of Charles Nagle and of the old priest,
+Catherine put out her hand. She touched Mottram on the arm&mdash;it was a
+fleeting touch, but it brought them both, with beating hearts, to a
+stand. "James," she said, and then she stopped for a moment&mdash;a moment
+that seemed to contain &aelig;ons of mingled rapture and pain&mdash;"one word about
+Mr. Dorriforth." The commonplace words dropped them back to earth. "Did
+you wish him to stay with you till to-morrow? That<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> will scarcely be
+possible, for to-morrow is St. Catherine's Day."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," he said quickly. "I will not take him home with me to-night.
+All my plans are now changed. My will can wait"&mdash;he smiled at her&mdash;"and
+so can my confession."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she cried almost violently. "Your confession must not wait,
+James&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, but it must," he said, and again he smiled. "I am in no mood for
+confession, Catherine." He added in a lower tone, "you've purged me of
+my sin, my dear&mdash;I feel already shriven."</p>
+
+<p>Shame of a very poignant quality suddenly seared Catherine Nagle's soul.
+"Go on, you," she said breathlessly, though to his ears she seemed to
+speak in her usual controlled and quiet tones, "I have some orders to
+give in the house. Join Charles and Mr. Dorriforth. I will come out
+presently."</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram obeyed her. He walked quickly forward. "Good news,
+Charles," he cried. "These railway men whose presence so offends you go
+for good to-morrow! Reverend sir, accept my hearty greeting."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle turned to the right and went into the house. She
+hastened through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> the rooms in which, year in and year out, she spent
+her life, with Charles as her perpetual, her insistent companion. She
+now longed for a time of recollection and secret communion, and so she
+instinctively made for the one place where no one, not even Charles,
+would come and disturb her.</p>
+
+<p>Walking across the square hall, she ran up the broad staircase leading
+to the gallery, out of which opened the doors of her bedroom and of her
+husband's dressing-room. But she went swiftly past these two closed
+doors, and made her way along a short passage which terminated abruptly
+with a faded red baize door giving access to the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Long, low-ceilinged and windowless, the chapel of Edgecombe Manor had
+remained unaltered since the time when there were heavy penalties
+attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
+of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
+opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
+on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
+congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
+permitted of Mass being celebrated there.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine went up close to the altar rails,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> and sat down on the
+arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
+to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
+been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
+taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
+a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
+exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
+the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
+moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
+things to her&mdash;of happiness and shrinking shame....</p>
+
+<p>But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
+her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
+Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
+of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit&mdash;but Catherine Nagle called
+it by a harsher name&mdash;which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
+on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
+appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
+the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
+honour,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> who was playing traitor&mdash;and traitor to one at once confiding
+and defenceless....</p>
+
+<p>Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
+conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
+care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
+never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
+Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
+Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
+been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
+and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk&mdash;only a few hours later to
+come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
+I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided his caresses had
+kissed him of her own accord with tears, and cried, "No, no, Charles,
+you never offend me&mdash;you are always good to me!"</p>
+
+<p>There had been a moment to-day, just before she had taunted James
+Mottram with being over-scrupulous, when she had told herself that she
+could be loyal to both of these men she loved and who loved her, giving
+to each a different part of her heart.</p>
+
+<p>But that bargain with conscience had never been struck; while
+considering it she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> found herself longing for some convulsion of the
+earth which should throw her and Mottram in each other's arms.</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram traitor? That was what she was about to make him be.
+Catherine forced herself to face the remorse, the horror, the loathing
+of himself which would ensue.</p>
+
+<p>It was for Mottram's sake, far more than in response to the command laid
+on her by her own soul, that Catherine Nagle finally determined on the
+act of renunciation which she knew was being immediately required of
+her.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>When Mrs. Nagle came out on the terrace the three men rose
+ceremoniously. She glanced at Charles, even now her first thought and
+her first care. His handsome face was overcast with the look of gloomy
+preoccupation which she had learnt to fear, though she knew that in
+truth it signified but little. At James Mottram she did not look, for
+she wished to husband her strength for what she was about to do.</p>
+
+<p>Making a sign to the others to sit down, she herself remained standing
+behind Charles's chair. It was from there that she at last spoke,
+instinctively addressing her words to the old priest.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," she said, "if James has told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> you of his approaching
+departure? He has heard from his agent in Jamaica that his presence is
+urgently required there."</p>
+
+<p>Charles Nagle looked up eagerly. "This is news indeed!" he exclaimed.
+"Lucky fellow! Why, you'll escape all the trouble that you've put on us
+with regard to that puffing devil!" He spoke more cordially than he had
+done for a long time to his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dorriforth glanced for a moment up at Catherine's face. Then quickly
+he averted his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>James Mottram rose to his feet. His limbs seemed to have aged. He gave
+Catherine a long, probing look.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he said deliberately. "You mistook my meaning. The matter
+is not as urgent, Catherine, as you thought." He turned to Charles, "I
+will not desert my friends&mdash;at any rate not for the present. I'll face
+the puffing devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
+boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
+thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
+comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
+immediately.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
+looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
+come over to-morrow morning&mdash;to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
+is St. Catherine's Day&mdash;that this is St. Catherine's Eve."</p>
+
+<p>Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
+heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
+breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
+matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."</p>
+
+<p>For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
+with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
+Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
+service!"</p>
+
+<p>Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
+"No need for you to go round by the road."</p>
+
+<p>They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
+stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
+to part, he spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"You bid me go&mdash;at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
+tone; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
+following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
+their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
+Nagle uttered sounded very cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
+"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
+wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
+Charles&mdash;I swear it solemnly. Catherine!&mdash;do not bid me leave you.
+Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
+become beseeching and imperious.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
+"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own&mdash;&mdash;" And as she thus made
+surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
+womanly reticence, Mottram's face&mdash;the plain-featured face so
+exquisitely dear to her&mdash;became transfigured. He said no word, he made
+no step forward, and yet Catherine felt as if the whole of his being was
+calling her, drawing her to him....</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there rang through the still air a discordant cry: "Catherine!
+Catherine!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+Mrs. Nagle sighed, a long convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit
+had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she
+whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I must not keep him waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"God forgive me," Mottram said huskily, "and bless you, Catherine, for
+all your goodness to me." He took her hand in farewell, and she felt the
+firm, kind grasp to be that of the kinsman and friend, not that of the
+lover.</p>
+
+<p>Then came over her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She
+realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to
+her&mdash;of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human
+being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely.
+Charles had been their common charge, the link as well as the barrier
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come to-morrow morning?" she said, and she tried to withdraw her
+hand from his. His impersonal touch hurt her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come to-morrow, and rather early, Catherine. Then I'll be able to
+confess before Mass." He was speaking in his usual voice, but he still
+held her hand, and she felt his grip on it tightening, bringing welcome
+hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll leave&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+"For Plymouth to-morrow afternoon," he said briefly. He dropped her
+hand, which now felt numbed and maimed, and passed through the gate
+without looking back.</p>
+
+<p>She stood a moment watching him as he strode down the field path. It had
+suddenly become, from day, night,&mdash;high time for Charles to be indoors.</p>
+
+<p>Forgetting to lock the gate, she turned and retraced her steps through
+the orchard, and so made her way up to where her husband and the old
+priest were standing awaiting her.</p>
+
+<p>As she approached them, she became aware that something going on in the
+valley below was absorbing their close attention. She felt glad that
+this was so.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is!" cried Charles Nagle angrily. "I told you that they'd
+begin their damned practice again to-night!"</p>
+
+<p>Slowly through the stretch of open country which lay spread to their
+right, the Bridport Wonder went puffing its way. Lanterns had been hung
+in front of the engine, and as it crawled sinuously along it looked like
+some huge monster with myriad eyes. As it entered the wood below, the
+dark barrel-like body of the engine seemed to give a bound, a lurch
+forward, and the men that manned it laughed out suddenly and loudly. The
+sound of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> uncouth mirth floated upwards through the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>"James's ale has made them merry!" exclaimed Charles, wagging his head.
+"And he, going through the wood, will just have met the puffing devil. I
+wish him the joy of the meeting!"</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>It was five hours later. Mrs. Nagle had bidden her reverend guest good
+night, and she was now moving about her large, barely furnished
+bedchamber, waiting for her husband to come upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>The hours which had followed James Mottram's departure had seemed
+intolerably long. Catherine felt as if she had gone through some
+terrible physical exertion which had left her worn out&mdash;stupefied. And
+yet she could not rest. Even now her day was not over; Charles often
+grew restless and talkative at night. He and Mr. Dorriforth were no
+doubt still sitting talking together downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle could hear her husband's valet moving about in the next room,
+and the servant's proximity disturbed her.</p>
+
+<p>She waited awhile and then went and opened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> the door of the
+dressing-room. "You need not sit up, Collins," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The man looked vaguely disturbed. "I fear that Mr. Nagle, madam, has
+gone out of doors," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine felt dismayed. The winter before Charles had once stayed out
+nearly all night.</p>
+
+<p>"Go you to bed, Collins," she said. "I will wait up till Mr. Nagle comes
+in, and I will make it right with him."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her doubtingly. Was it possible that Mrs. Nagle was unaware
+of how much worse than usual his master had been the last few days?</p>
+
+<p>"I fear Mr. Nagle is not well to-day," he ventured. "He seems much
+disturbed to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Your master is disturbed because Mr. Mottram is again leaving England
+for the Indies." Catherine forced herself to say the words. She was
+dully surprised to see how quietly news so momentous to her was received
+by her faithful servant.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be it," said the man consideringly, "but I can't help thinking
+that the master is still much concerned about the railroad. I fear that
+he has gone down to the wood to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Catherine was startled. "Oh, surely he would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> not do that, Collins?" She
+added in a lower tone, "I myself locked the orchard gate."</p>
+
+<p>"If that is so," he answered, obviously relieved, "then with your leave,
+madam, I'll be off to bed."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle went back into her room, and sat down by the fire, and then,
+sooner than she had expected to do so, she heard a familiar sound. It
+came from the chapel, for Charles was fond of using that strange and
+secret entry into his house.</p>
+
+<p>She got up and quietly opened her bedroom door.</p>
+
+<p>From the hall below was cast up the dim light of the oil-lamp which
+always burnt there at night, and suddenly Catherine saw her husband
+emerge from the chapel passage, and begin walking slowly round the
+opposite side of the gallery. She watched him with languid curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Nagle was treading softly, his head bent as if in thought.
+Suddenly he stayed his steps by a half-moon table on which stood a large
+Chinese bowl filled with pot-pourri; and into this he plunged his hands,
+seeming to lave them in the dry rose-leaves. Catherine felt no surprise,
+she was so used to his strange ways; and more than once he had hidden
+things&mdash;magpie fashion&mdash;in that great bowl.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> She turned and closed her
+door noiselessly; Charles much disliked being spied on.</p>
+
+<p>At last she heard him go into his dressing-room. Then came the sounds of
+cupboard doors being flung open, and the hurried pouring out of
+water.... But long before he could have had time to undress, she heard
+the familiar knock.</p>
+
+<p>She said feebly, "Come in," and the door opened.</p>
+
+<p>It was as she had feared; her husband had no thought, no intention, of
+going yet to bed. Not only was he fully dressed, but the white evening
+waistcoat he had been wearing had been changed by him within the last
+few moments for a waistcoat she had not seen before, though she had
+heard of its arrival from London. It was of cashmere, the latest freak
+of fashion. She also saw with surprise that his nankeen trousers were
+stained, as if he had been kneeling on damp ground. He looked very hot,
+his wavy hair lay damply on his brow, and he appeared excited,
+oppressively alive.</p>
+
+<p>"Catherine!" he exclaimed, hurrying up to the place where she was
+standing near the fire. "You will bear witness that I was always and
+most positively averse to the railroad being brought here?" He did not
+wait for her to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> answer him. "Did I not always say that trouble would
+come of it&mdash;trouble to us all? Yet sometimes it's an ill thing to be
+proved right."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is, Charles," she answered gently. "But let us talk of this
+to-morrow. It's time for bed, my dear, and I am very weary."</p>
+
+<p>He was now standing by her, staring down into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he turned and seized her left arm. He brought her unresisting
+across the room, then dragged aside the heavy yellow curtains which had
+been drawn before the central window.</p>
+
+<p>"Look over there, Catherine," he said meaningly. "Can you see the Eype?
+The moon gives but little light to-night, but the stars are bright. I
+can see a glimmer at yon window. They must be still waiting for James to
+come home."</p>
+
+<p>"I see the glimmer you mean," she said dully. "No doubt they leave a
+lamp burning all night, as we do. James must have got home hours ago,
+Charles." She saw that the cuff of her husband's coat was also covered
+with dark, damp stains, and again she wondered uneasily what he had been
+doing out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>"Catherine?" Charles Nagle turned her round, ungently, and forced her to
+look up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> into his face. "Have you ever thought what 'twould be like to
+live at the Eype?"</p>
+
+<p>The question startled her. She roused herself to refute what she felt to
+be an unworthy accusation. "No, Charles," she said, looking at him
+steadily. "God is my witness that at no time did I think of living at
+the Eype! Such a wish never came to me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor to me!" he cried, "nor to me, Catherine! All the long years that
+James Mottram was in Jamaica the thought never once came to me that he
+might die, and I survive him. After all we were much of an age, he had
+but two years the advantage of me. I always thought that the boy&mdash;my
+aunt's son, curse him!&mdash;would get it all. Then, had I thought of it&mdash;and
+I swear I never did think of it&mdash;I should have told myself that any day
+James might bring a wife to the Eype&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He was staring through the leaded panes with an intent, eager gaze. "It
+is a fine house, Catherine, and commodious. Larger, airier than
+ours&mdash;though perhaps colder," he added thoughtfully. "Cold I always
+found it in winter when I used to stay there as a boy&mdash;colder than this
+house. You prefer Edgecombe, Catherine? If you were given a choice, is
+it here that you would live?" He looked at her, as if impatient for an
+answer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+"Every stone of Edgecombe, our home, is dear to me," she said solemnly.
+"I have never admired the Eype. It is too large, too cold for my taste.
+It stands too much exposed to the wind."</p>
+
+<p>"It does! it does!" There was a note of regret in his voice. He let the
+curtain fall and looked about him rather wildly.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Charles," she said, "shall we not say our prayers and retire
+to rest."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had only thought of it," he said, "I might have said my prayers in
+the chapel. But there was much to do. I thought of calling you,
+Catherine, for you make a better sacristan than I. Then I remembered
+Boney&mdash;poor little Boney crushed by the miller's dray&mdash;and how you cried
+all night, and that though I promised you a far finer, cleverer dog than
+that poor old friend had ever been. Collins said, 'Why, sir, you should
+have hid the old dog's death from the mistress till the morning!' A
+worthy fellow, Collins. He meant no disrespect to me. At that time,
+d'you remember, Collins had only been in my service a few months?"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>It was an hour later. From where she lay in bed, Catherine Nagle with
+dry, aching eyes stared into the fire, watching the wood embers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> turn
+from red to grey. By her side, his hand in hers, Charles slept the
+dreamless, heavy slumber of a child.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely breathing, in her anxiety lest he should wake, she loosened her
+hand, and with a quick movement slipped out of bed. The fire was burning
+low, but Catherine saw everything in the room very clearly, and she
+threw over her night-dress a long cloak, and wound about her head the
+scarf which she had worn during her walk to the wood.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time Mrs. Nagle had risen thus in the still night
+and sought refuge from herself and from her thoughts in the chapel; and
+her husband had never missed her from his side.</p>
+
+<p>As she crept round the dimly lit gallery she passed by the great bowl of
+pot-pourri by which Charles Nagle had lingered, and there came to her
+the thought that it might perchance be well for her to discover, before
+the servants should have a chance of doing so, what he had doubtless
+hidden there.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine plunged both her hands into the scented rose-leaves, and she
+gave a sudden cry of pain&mdash;for her fingers had closed on the sharp edge
+of a steel blade. Then she drew out a narrow damascened knife, one
+which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> her husband, taken by its elegant shape, had purchased long
+before in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Nagle's brow furrowed in vexation&mdash;Collins should have put the
+dangerous toy out of his master's reach. Slipping the knife into the
+deep pocket of her cloak, she hurried on into the unlit passage leading
+to the chapel.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Save for the hanging lamp, which since Mr. Dorriforth had said Mass
+there that morning signified the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the
+chapel should have been in darkness. But as Catherine passed through the
+door she saw, with sudden, uneasy amazement, the farther end of the
+chapel in a haze of brightness.</p>
+
+<p>Below the altar, striking upwards from the floor of the sanctuary,
+gleamed a corona of light. Charles&mdash;she could not for a moment doubt
+that it was Charles's doing&mdash;had moved the six high, heavy silver
+candlesticks which always stood on either side of the altar, and had
+placed them on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>There, in a circle, the wax candles blazed, standing sentinel-wise about
+a dark, round object which was propped up on a pile of altar-linen
+carefully arranged to support it.</p>
+
+<p>Fear clutched at Catherine's heart&mdash;such fear as even in the early days
+of Charles's madness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> had never clutched it. She was filled with a
+horrible dread, and a wild, incredulous dismay.</p>
+
+<p>What was the Thing, at once so familiar and so terribly strange, that
+Charles had brought out of the November night and placed with so much
+care below the altar?</p>
+
+<p>But the thin flames of the candles, now shooting up, now guttering low,
+blown on by some invisible current of strong air, gave no steady light.</p>
+
+<p>Staying still close to the door, she sank down on her knees, and
+desiring to shut out, obliterate, the awful sight confronting her, she
+pressed both her hands to her eyes. But that availed her nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly there rose up before Catherine Nagle a dreadful scene of that
+great Revolution drama of which she had been so often told as a child.
+She saw, with terrible distinctness, the severed heads of men and women
+borne high on iron pikes, and one of these blood-streaked, livid faces
+was that of James Mottram&mdash;the wide-open, sightless eyes, his eyes....</p>
+
+<p>There also came back to her as she knelt there, shivering with cold and
+anguish, the story of a French girl of noble birth who, having bought
+her lover's head from the executioner, had walked with it in her arms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+to the village near Paris where stood his deserted ch&acirc;teau.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly she rose from her knees, and with her hands thrown out before
+her, she groped her way to the wall and there crept along, as if a
+precipice lay on her other side.</p>
+
+<p>At last she came to the narrow oak door which gave on to the staircase
+leading into the open air. The door was ajar; it was from there that
+blew the current of air which caused those thin, fantastic flames to
+flare and gutter in the awful stillness.</p>
+
+<p>She drew the door to, and went on her way, so round to the altar. In the
+now steadier light Catherine saw that the large missal lay open at the
+Office for the Dead.</p>
+
+<p>She laid her hands with a blind instinct upon the altar, and felt a
+healing touch upon their palms. Henceforth&mdash;and Catherine Nagle was
+fated to live many long years&mdash;she remained persuaded that it was then
+there had come to her a shaft of divine light piercing the dark recesses
+of her soul. For it was at that moment that there came to her the
+conviction, and one which never faltered, that Charles Nagle had done no
+injury to James Mottram. And there also came to her then the swift
+understanding of what others would believe, were there to be found in
+the private chapel of Edgecombe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> Manor that which now lay on the ground
+behind her, close to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>So understanding, Catherine suddenly saw the way open before her, and
+the dread thing which she must do if Charles were to be saved from a
+terrible suspicion&mdash;one which would undoubtedly lead to his being taken
+away from her and from all that his poor, atrophied heart held dear, to
+be asylumed.</p>
+
+<p>With steps that did not falter, Catherine Nagle went behind the altar
+into the little sacristy, there to seek in the darkness an altar-cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Holding the cloth up before her face she went back into the lighted
+chapel, and kneeling down, she uncovered her face and threw the cloth
+over what lay before her.</p>
+
+<p>And then Catherine's teeth began to chatter, and a mortal chill overtook
+her. She was being faced by a new and to her a most dread enemy, for
+till to-night she and that base physical fear which is the coward's foe
+had never met. Pressing her hands together, she whispered the short,
+simple prayer for the Faithful Departed that she had said so often and,
+she now felt, so unmeaningly. Even as she uttered the familiar words,
+base Fear slunk away, leaving in his place her soul's old companion,
+Courage, and his attendant, Peace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+She rose to her feet, and opening wide her eyes forced herself to think
+out what must be done by her in order that no trace of Charles's
+handiwork should remain in the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Snuffing out the wicks, Catherine lifted the candlesticks from the
+ground and put them back in their accustomed place upon the altar. Then,
+stooping, she forced herself to wrap up closely in the altar-cloth that
+which must be her burden till she found James Mottram's headless body
+where Charles had left it, and placing that same precious burden within
+the ample folds of her cloak, she held it with her left hand and arm
+closely pressed to her bosom....</p>
+
+<p>With her right hand she gathered up the pile of stained altar-linen from
+the ground, and going once more into the sacristy she thrust it into the
+oak chest in which were kept the Lenten furnishings of the altar. Having
+done that, and walking slowly lest she should trip and fall, she made
+her way to the narrow door Charles had left open to the air, and going
+down the steep stairway was soon out of doors in the dark and windy
+night.</p>
+
+<p>Charles had been right, the moon gave but little light; enough, however,
+so she told herself, for the accomplishment of her task.</p>
+
+<p>She sped swiftly along the terrace, keeping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> close under the house, and
+then more slowly walked down the stone steps where last time she trod
+them Mottram had been her companion, his living lips as silent as were
+his dead lips now.</p>
+
+<p>The orchard gate was wide open, and as she passed through there came to
+Catherine Nagle the knowledge why Charles on his way back from the wood
+had not even latched it; he also, when passing through it, had been
+bearing a burden....</p>
+
+<p>She walked down the field path; and when she came to the steep place
+where Mottram had told her that he was going away, the tears for the
+first time began running down Catherine's face. She felt again the
+sharp, poignant pain which his then cold and measured words had dealt
+her, and the blow this time fell on a bruised heart. With a convulsive
+gesture she pressed more closely that which she was holding to her
+desolate breast.</p>
+
+<p>At night the woodland is strangely, curiously alive. Catherine shuddered
+as she heard the stuffless sounds, the tiny rustlings and burrowings of
+those wild, shy creatures whose solitude had lately been so rudely
+invaded, and who now of man's night made their day. Their myriad
+presence made her human loneliness more intense than it had been in the
+open<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> fields, and as she started walking by the side of the iron rails,
+her eyes fixed on the dark drift of dead leaves which dimly marked the
+path, she felt solitary indeed, and beset with vague and fearsome
+terrors.</p>
+
+<p>At last she found herself nearing the end of the wood. Soon would come
+the place where what remained of the cart-track struck sharply to the
+left, up the hill towards the Eype.</p>
+
+<p>It was there, close to the open, that Catherine Nagle's quest ended; and
+that she was able to accomplish the task she had set herself, of making
+that which Charles had rendered incomplete, complete as men, considering
+the flesh, count completeness.</p>
+
+<p>Within but a few yards of safety, James Mottram had met with death; a
+swift, merciful death, due to the negligence of an engine-driver not
+only new to his work but made blindly merry by Mottram's gift of ale.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Charles Nagle woke late on the morning of St. Catherine's Day, and the
+pale November sun fell on the fully dressed figures of his wife and Mr.
+Dorriforth standing by his bedside.</p>
+
+<p>But Charles, absorbed as always in himself, saw nothing untoward in
+their presence.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a dream!" he exclaimed. "A most horrible and gory dream this
+night! I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> thought I was in the wood; James Mottram lay before me, done
+to death by that puffing devil we saw slithering by so fast. His head
+nearly severed&mdash;<i>&agrave; la guillotine</i>, you understand, my love?&mdash;from his
+poor body&mdash;&mdash;" There was a curious, secretive smile on Charles Nagle's
+pale, handsome face.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Nagle gave a cry, a stifled shriek of horror.</p>
+
+<p>The priest caught her by the arm and led her to the couch which stood
+across the end of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Charles," he said sternly, "this is no light matter. Your
+dream&mdash;there's not a doubt of it&mdash;was sent you in merciful preparation
+for the awful truth. Your kinsman, your almost brother, Charles, was
+found this morning in the wood, dead as you saw him in your dream."</p>
+
+<p>The face of the man sitting up in bed stiffened&mdash;was it with fear or
+grief? "They found James Mottram dead?" he repeated with an uneasy
+glance in the direction of the couch where crouched his wife. "And his
+head, most reverend sir&mdash;what of his head?"</p>
+
+<p>"James Mottram's body was terribly mangled. But his head," answered the
+priest solemnly, "was severed from his body, as you saw it in your
+dream, Charles. A strangely clean cut, it seems&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+"Ay," said Charles Nagle. "That was in my dream too; if I said nearly
+severed, I said wrong."</p>
+
+<p>Catherine was now again standing by the priest's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Charles," she said gravely, "you must now get up; Mr. Dorriforth is
+only waiting for you, to say Mass for James's soul."</p>
+
+<p>She made the sign of the cross, and then, with her right hand shading
+her sunken eyes, she went on, "My dear, I entreat you to tell no
+one&mdash;not even faithful Collins&mdash;of this awful dream. We want no such
+tale spread about the place&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the old priest entreatingly, and he at once responded.
+"Catherine is right, Charles. We of the Faith should be more careful
+with regard to such matters than are the ignorant and superstitious."</p>
+
+<p>But he was surprised to hear the woman by his side say insistently,
+"Charles, if only to please me, vow that you will keep most secret this
+dreadful dream. I fear that if it should come to your Aunt Felwake's
+ears&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That I swear it shall not," said Charles sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>And he kept his word.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[186&ndash;189]</a></span>
+<a name="iv" id="iv"></a>THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY</h2>
+
+<div class="block3">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"... not dead, this friend&mdash;not dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, in the path we mortals tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Got some few, little steps ahead<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And nearer to the end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So that you, too, once past the bend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You fancy dead."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">MRS. BARLOW, the prettiest and the happiest and the best dressed of the
+young wives of Summerfield, was walking toward the Catholic Church. She
+was going to consult the old priest as to her duty to an unsatisfactory
+servant; for Agnes Barlow was a conscientious as well as a pretty and a
+happy woman.</p>
+
+<p>Foolish people are fond of quoting a foolish gibe: "Be good, and you may
+be happy; but you will not have a good time." The wise, however, soon
+become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve
+goodness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> and happiness, you will almost certainly have a good time too.</p>
+
+<p>So, at least, Agnes Barlow had found in her own short life. Her
+excellent parents had built one of the first new houses in what had then
+been the pretty, old-fashioned village of Summerfield, some fifteen
+miles from London. There she had been born; there she had spent
+delightful years at the big convent school over the hill; there she had
+grown up into a singularly pretty girl; and there, finally&mdash;it had
+seemed quite final to Agnes&mdash;she had met the clever, fascinating young
+lawyer, Frank Barlow.</p>
+
+<p>Frank had soon become the lover all her girl friends had envied her, and
+then the husband who was still&mdash;so he was fond of saying and of proving
+in a dozen dear little daily ways&mdash;as much in love with her as on the
+day they were married. They lived in a charming house called The Haven,
+and they were the proud parents of a fine little boy, named Francis
+after his father, who never had any of the tiresome ailments which
+afflict other people's children.</p>
+
+<p>But strange, dreadful things do happen&mdash;not often, of course, but just
+now and again&mdash;even in this delightful world! So thought Agnes Barlow on
+this pleasant May afternoon; for, as she walked to church, this pretty,
+happy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> good woman found her thoughts dwelling uncomfortably on another
+woman, her sometime intimate friend and contemporary, who was neither
+good nor happy.</p>
+
+<p>This was Teresa Maldo, the lovely half-Spanish girl who had been her
+favourite schoolmate at the convent over the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Poor, foolish, unhappy, wicked Teresa! Only ten days ago Teresa had done
+a thing so extraordinary, so awful, so unprecedented, that Agnes Barlow
+had thought of little else ever since. Teresa Maldo had eloped, gone
+right away from her home and her husband, and with a married man!</p>
+
+<p>Teresa and Agnes were the same age; they had had the same upbringing;
+they were both&mdash;in a very different way, however&mdash;beautiful, and they
+had each been married, six years before, on the same day of the month.</p>
+
+<p>But how different had been their subsequent fates!</p>
+
+<p>Teresa had at once discovered that her husband drank. But she loved him,
+and for a while it seemed as if marriage would reform Maldo.
+Unfortunately, this better state of things did not last: he again began
+to drink: and the matrons of Summerfield soon had reason to shake their
+heads over the way Teresa Maldo went on.</p>
+
+<p>(<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>)
+Men, you see, were so sorry for this lovely young woman, blessed (or
+cursed) with what old-fashioned folk call "the come-hither eye," that
+they made it their business to console her for such a worthless husband
+as was Maldo. No wonder Teresa and Agnes drifted apart; no wonder Frank
+Barlow soon forbade his spotless Agnes to accept Mrs. Maldo's
+invitations. And Agnes knew that her dear Frank was right; she had never
+much enjoyed her visits to Teresa's house.</p>
+
+<p>But an odd thing had happened about a fortnight ago. And it was to this
+odd happening that Agnes's mind persistently recurred each time she
+found herself alone.</p>
+
+<p>About three days before Teresa Maldo had done the mad and wicked thing
+of which all Summerfield was still talking, she had paid a long call on
+Agnes Barlow.</p>
+
+<p>The unwelcome guest had stayed a very long time; she had talked, as she
+generally did talk now, wildly and rather strangely; and Agnes, looking
+back, was glad to remember that no one else had come in while her old
+schoolfellow was there.</p>
+
+<p>When, at last, Teresa Maldo had made up her mind to go (luckily, some
+minutes before Frank was due home from town), Agnes accompanied her to
+the gate of The Haven, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> there the other had turned round and made
+such odd remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to tell you something!" she had exclaimed. "But, now that I see
+you looking so happy, so pretty, and&mdash;forgive me for saying so,
+Agnes&mdash;so horribly good, I feel that I can't tell you! But, Agnes,
+whatever happens, you must pity, and&mdash;and, if you can, understand me."</p>
+
+<p>It was now painfully clear to Agnes Barlow that Teresa had come that day
+intending to tell her once devoted friend of the wicked thing she meant
+to do; and more than once pretty and good Mrs. Barlow had asked herself
+uneasily whether she could have done anything to stop Teresa on her
+downward course.</p>
+
+<p>But no; Agnes felt her conscience clear. How would it have been possible
+for her even to discuss with Teresa so shameful a possibility as that of
+a woman leaving her husband with another man?</p>
+
+<p>Agnes thought of the two sinners with a touch of fascinated curiosity.
+They were said to be in Paris, and Teresa was probably having a very
+good time&mdash;a wildly amusing, exciting time.</p>
+
+<p>She even told herself, did this pretty, happy, fortunate young married
+woman, that it was strange, and not very fair, that vice and pleasure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+should always go together! It was just a little irritating to know that
+Teresa would never again be troubled by the kind of worries that played
+quite an important part in Agnes's own blameless life. Never again, for
+instance, would Teresa's cook give her notice, as Agnes's cook had given
+her notice that morning. It was about that matter she wished to see
+Father Ferguson, for it was through the priest she had heard of the
+impertinent Irish girl who cooked so well, but who had such an
+independent manner, and who would <i>not</i> wear a cap!</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it certainly seemed unfair that Teresa would now be rid of all
+domestic worries&mdash;nay, more, that the woman who had sinned would live in
+luxurious hotels, motoring and shopping all day, going to the theatre or
+to a music-hall each night.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, Agnes dismissed Teresa Maldo from her mind. She knew
+that it is not healthy to dwell overmuch on such people and their
+doings.</p>
+
+<p>The few acquaintances Mrs. Barlow met on her way smiled and nodded, but,
+as she was walking rather quickly, no one tried to stop her. She had
+chosen the back way to the church because it was the prettiest way, and
+also because it would take her by a house where a friend of hers was
+living in lodgings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+And suddenly the very friend in question&mdash;his name was Ferrier&mdash;came out
+of his lodgings. He had a tall, slight, active figure; he was dressed in
+a blue serge suit, and, though it was still early spring, he wore a
+straw hat.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes smiled a little inward smile. She was, as we already know, a very
+good as well as a happy woman. But a woman as pretty as was Agnes Barlow
+meets with frequent pleasant occasions of withstanding temptation, of
+which those about her, especially her dear parents and her kind husband,
+are often curiously unknowing. And the tall, well-set-up masculine
+figure now hurrying toward her with such eager steps played a
+considerable part in Agnes's life, if only as constantly providing her
+with occasions of acquiring merit.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes knew very well&mdash;even the least imaginative woman is always acutely
+conscious of such a fact&mdash;that, had she not been a prudent and a
+ladylike as well as (of course) a very good woman, this clever,
+agreeable, interesting young man would have made love to her. As it was,
+he (of course) did nothing of the kind. He did not even try to flirt
+with her, as our innocent Agnes understood that much-tried verb; and she
+regarded their friendship as a pleasant interlude in her placid,
+well-regulated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> existence, and as a most excellent influence on his more
+agitated life.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat. He smiled down into Agnes's blue eyes. What
+very charming, nay, what beautiful eyes they were! Deeply, exquisitely
+blue, but unshadowed, as innocent of guile, as are a child's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow, I had a kind of feeling that you would be coming by just now,"
+he said in a rather hesitating voice; "so I left my work and came out on
+chance."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Agnes was very much interested in Mr. Ferrier's work. Mr. Ferrier
+was not only a writer&mdash;the only writer she had ever known; he was also a
+poet. She had been pleasantly thrilled the day he had given her a slim
+little book, on each page of which was a poem. This gift had been made
+when they had known each other only two months, and he had inscribed it:
+"From G. G. F. to A. M. B."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ferrier had a charming studio flat in Chelsea, that odd, remote
+place where London artists live, far from the pleasant London of the
+shops and theatres which was all Agnes knew of the great City near which
+she dwelt. But he always spent the summer in the country, and his summer
+lasted from the 1st of May till the 1st of October. He had already<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+spent two holidays at Summerfield, and had been a great deal at The
+Haven.</p>
+
+<p>When with Mr. Ferrier, and they were much together during the long
+week-days when Summerfield is an Adamless Eden, Agnes Barlow made a
+point of often speaking of dear Frank and of Frank's love for her,&mdash;not,
+of course, in a way that any one could have regarded as silly, but in a
+natural, happy, simple way.</p>
+
+<p>How easy, how very easy, it is to keep this kind of
+friendship&mdash;friendship between a man and a woman&mdash;within bounds! And how
+terribly sad it was to think that Teresa Maldo had not known how to do
+that easy thing! But then, Teresa's lover had been a married man
+separated from his wife, and that doubtless made all the difference.
+Agnes Barlow could assure herself in all sincerity that, had Mr. Ferrier
+been the husband of another woman, she would never have allowed him to
+become her friend to the extent that he was now.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ferrier&mdash;Agnes never allowed herself to think of him as Gerald
+(although he had once asked her to call him by his Christian name)&mdash;held
+an evening paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I was really on my way to The Haven," he observed, "for there are a few
+verses of mine in this paper which I am anxious you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> should read. Shall
+I go on and leave it at your house, or will you take it now? And then,
+if I may, I will call for it some time to-morrow. Should I be likely to
+find you in about four o'clock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll be in about four, and I think I'll take the paper now."</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;for she was walking very slowly, and Ferrier, with his hands
+behind his back, kept pace with her&mdash;Agnes could not resist the pleasure
+of looking down at the open sheet, for the newspaper was so turned about
+that she could see the little set of verses quite plainly.</p>
+
+<p>The poem was called "My Lady of the Snow," and it told in very pretty,
+complicated language of a beautiful, pure woman whom the writer loved in
+a desperate but quite respectful way.</p>
+
+<p>She grew rather red. "I must hurry on, for I am going to church," she
+said a little stiffly. "Good evening, Mr. Ferrier. Yes, I will keep the
+paper till to-morrow, if I may. I should like to show it to Frank. He
+hasn't been to the office to-day, for he isn't very well, and he will
+like to see an evening paper."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat with a rather sad look, and turned back
+toward the house where he lodged. And as Agnes walked on she felt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+disturbed and a little uncomfortable. Her clever friend had evidently
+been grieved by her apparent lack of appreciation of his poem.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached the church her parents had helped to build, she went
+in, knelt down, and said a prayer. Then she got up and walked through
+into the sacristy. Father Ferguson was almost certain to be there just
+now.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes Barlow had known the old priest all her life. He had baptized her;
+he had been chaplain at the convent during the years she had been at
+school there; and now he had come back to be parish priest at
+Summerfield.</p>
+
+<p>When with Father Ferguson, Agnes somehow never felt quite so good as she
+did when she was by herself or with a strange priest; and yet Father
+Ferguson was always very kind to her.</p>
+
+<p>As she came into the sacristy he looked round with a smile. "Well?" he
+said. "Well, Agnes, my child, what can I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Agnes put the newspaper she was holding down on a chair. And then, to
+her surprise, Father Ferguson took up the paper and glanced over the
+front page. He was an intelligent man, and sometimes he found
+Summerfield a rather shut-in, stifling sort of place.</p>
+
+<p>But the priest's instinctive wish to know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> something of what was passing
+in the great world outside the suburb where it was his duty to dwell did
+him an ill turn, for something he read in the paper caused him to utter
+a low, quick exclamation of intense pain and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" cried Agnes Barlow, frightened out of her usual
+self-complacency. "Whatever has happened, Father Ferguson?"</p>
+
+<p>He pointed with shaking finger to a small paragraph. It was headed
+"Suicide of a Lady at Dover," and Agnes read the few lines with
+bewildered and shocked amazement.</p>
+
+<p>Teresa Maldo, whom she had visioned, only a few minutes ago, as leading
+a merry, gloriously careless life with her lover, was dead. She had
+thrown herself out of a bedroom window in a hotel at Dover, and she had
+been killed instantly, dashed into a shapeless mass on the stones below.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes stared down at the curt, cold little paragraph with excited
+horror. She was six-and-twenty, but she had never seen death, and, as
+far as she knew, the girls with whom she had been at school were all
+living. Teresa&mdash;poor unhappy, sinful Teresa&mdash;had been the first to die,
+and by her own hand.</p>
+
+<p>The old priest's eyes slowly brimmed over with tears. "Poor, unhappy
+child!" he said, with a break in his voice. "Poor, unfortunate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> Teresa!
+I did not think, I should never have believed, that she would seek&mdash;and
+find&mdash;this terrible way out."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes was a little shocked at his broken words. True, Teresa had been
+very unhappy, and it was right to pity her; but she had also been very
+wicked; and now she had put, as it were, the seal on her wickedness by
+killing herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Three or four days before she went away she came and saw me," the
+priest went on, in a low, pained voice. "I did everything in my power to
+stop her, but I could do nothing&mdash;she had given her word!"</p>
+
+<p>"Given her word?" repeated Agnes wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Father Ferguson; "she had given that wretched, that wickedly
+selfish man her promise. She believed that if she broke her word he
+would kill himself. I begged her to go and see some woman&mdash;some kind,
+pitiful, understanding woman&mdash;but I suppose she feared lest such a one
+would dissuade her to more purpose than I was able to do."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes looked at him with troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"She was very dear to my heart," the priest went on. "She was always a
+generous, unselfish child, and she was very, very fond of you, Agnes."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+Agnes's throat tightened. What Father Ferguson said was only too true.
+Teresa had always been a very generous and unselfish girl, and very,
+very fond of her. She wondered remorsefully if she had omitted to do or
+say anything she could have done or said on the day that poor Teresa had
+come and spoken such strange, wild words&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so awful," she said in a low voice, "so very, very awful to
+think that we may not even pray for her soul, Father Ferguson."</p>
+
+<p>"Not pray for her soul?" the priest repeated. "Why should we not pray
+for the poor child's soul? I shall certainly pray for Teresa's soul
+every day till I die."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but how can you do that, when she killed herself?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her surprised. "And do you really so far doubt God's mercy?
+Surely we may hope&mdash;nay, trust&mdash;that Teresa had time to make an act of
+contrition?" And then he muttered something&mdash;it sounded like a line or
+two of poetry&mdash;which Agnes did not quite catch; but she felt, as she
+often did feel when with Father Ferguson, at once rebuked and
+rebellious.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there <i>might</i> have been time for Teresa to make an act of
+contrition. But every one knows that to take one's life is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> deadly
+sin. Agnes felt quite sure that if it ever occurred to herself to do
+such a thing she would go straight to hell. Still, she was used to obey
+this old priest, and that even when she did not agree with him. So she
+followed him into the church, and side by side they knelt down and each
+said a separate prayer for the soul of Teresa Maldo.</p>
+
+<p>As Agnes Barlow walked slowly and soberly home, this time by the high
+road, she tried to remember the words, the lines of poetry, that Father
+Ferguson had muttered. They at once haunted and eluded her memory.
+Surely they could not be</p>
+
+<div class="block3">
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Between the window and the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She mercy sought and mercy found.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>No, Agnes was sure that he had not said "window," and yet window seemed
+the only word that would fit the case. And he had not said, "<i>she</i> mercy
+found"; he had said, "<i>he</i> mercy sought and mercy found"&mdash;of that Agnes
+felt sure, and that, too, was odd. But then, Father Ferguson was very
+odd sometimes, and he was fond of quoting in his sermons queer little
+bits of verse of which no one had ever heard.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she bethought herself, with more annoyance than the matter was
+worth, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> in her agitation she had left Mr. Ferrier's newspaper in
+the sacristy. She did not like the thought that Father Ferguson would
+probably read those pretty, curious verses, "My Lady of the Snow."</p>
+
+<p>Also, Agnes had actually forgotten to speak to the old priest of her
+impertinent cook!</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>We find Agnes Barlow again walking in Summerfield; but this time she is
+hurrying along the straight, unlovely cinder-strewn path which forms a
+short cut from the back of The Haven to Summerfield station; and the
+still, heavy calm of a late November afternoon broods over the rough
+ground on either side of her.</p>
+
+<p>It is nearly six months since Teresa Maldo's elopement and subsequent
+suicide, and now no one ever speaks of poor Teresa, no one seems to
+remember that she ever lived, excepting, perhaps, Father Ferguson....</p>
+
+<p>As for Agnes herself, life had crowded far too many happenings into the
+last few weeks for her to give more than a passing thought to Teresa;
+indeed, the image of her dead friend rose before her only when she was
+saying her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> prayers. And as Agnes, strange to say, had grown rather
+careless as to her prayers, the memory of Teresa Maldo was now very
+faint indeed.</p>
+
+<p>An awful, and to her an incredible, thing had happened to Agnes Barlow.
+The roof of her snug and happy House of Life had fallen in, and she lay,
+blinded and maimed, beneath the fragments which had been hurled down on
+her in one terrible moment.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it had all happened in a moment&mdash;so she now reminded herself, with
+the dull ache which never left her.</p>
+
+<p>It was just after she had come back from Westgate with little Francis.
+The child had been ailing for the first time in his life, and she had
+taken him to the seaside for six weeks.</p>
+
+<p>There, in a day, it had turned from summer to winter, raining as it only
+rains at the seaside; and suddenly Agnes had made up her mind to go back
+to her own nice, comfortable home a whole week before Frank expected her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes sometimes acted like that&mdash;on a quick impulse; she did so to her
+own undoing on that dull, rainy day.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached Summerfield, it was to find her telegram to her husband
+lying unopened on the hall table of The Haven.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> Frank, it seemed, had
+slept in town the night before. Not that that mattered, so she told
+herself gleefully, full of the pleasant joy of being again in her own
+home; the surprise would be the greater and the more welcome when Frank
+did come back.</p>
+
+<p>Having nothing better to do that first afternoon, Agnes had gone up to
+her husband's dressing-room in order to look over his summer clothes
+before sending them to the cleaner. In her careful,
+playing-at-housewifely fashion, she had turned out the pockets of his
+cricketing coat. There, a little to her surprise, she had found three
+letters, and idle curiosity as to Frank's invitations during her long
+stay away&mdash;Frank was deservedly popular with the ladies of Summerfield
+and, indeed, with all women&mdash;caused her to take the three letters out of
+their envelopes.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment&mdash;how terrible that it should take but a moment to shatter
+the fabric of a human being's innocent House of Life!&mdash;Agnes had seen
+what had happened to her&mdash;to him. For each of these letters, written in
+the same sloping woman's hand, was a love letter signed "Janey"; and in
+each the writer, in a plaintive, delicate, but insistent and reproachful
+way, asked Frank for money.</p>
+
+<p>Even now, though nearly seven weeks had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> gone by since then, Agnes could
+recall with painful vividness the sick, cold feeling that had come over
+her&mdash;a feeling of fear rather than anger, of fear and desperate
+humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>Locking the door of the dressing-room, she had searched eagerly&mdash;a
+dishonourable thing to do, as she knew well. And soon she had found
+other letters&mdash;letters and bills; bills of meals at restaurants, showing
+that her husband and a companion had constantly dined and supped at the
+Savoy, the Carlton, and Prince's. To those restaurants where he had
+taken her, Agnes, two or three times a year, laughing and grumbling at
+the expense, he had taken this&mdash;this <i>person</i> again and again in the
+short time his wife had been away.</p>
+
+<p>As to the further letters, all they proved was that Frank had first met
+"Janey Cartwright" over some law business of hers, connected&mdash;even Agnes
+saw the irony of it&mdash;in some shameful way with another man; for, tied
+together, were a few notes signed with the writer's full name, of which
+the first began:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="noi">Dear Mr. Barlow:</p>
+
+<p>Forgive me for writing to your private address [etc., etc.].</p></div>
+
+<p>The ten days that followed her discovery had seared Agnes's soul. Frank
+had been so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> dreadfully affectionate. He had pretended&mdash;she felt sure it
+was all pretence&mdash;to be so glad to see her again, though sometimes she
+caught him looking at her with cowed, miserable eyes.</p>
+
+<p>More than once he had asked her solicitously if she felt ill, and she
+had said yes, she did feel ill, and the time at the seaside had not done
+her any good.</p>
+
+<p>And then, on the last of those terrible ten days, Gerald Ferrier had
+come down to Summerfield, and both she and Frank had pressed him to stay
+on to dinner. He had done so, though aware that something was wrong, and
+he had been extraordinarily kind, sympathetic, unquestioning. But as he
+was leaving he had said a word to his host: "I feel worried about Mrs.
+Barlow"&mdash;Agnes had heard him through the window. "She doesn't look the
+thing, somehow! How would it be if I asked her to go with me to a
+private view? It might cheer her up, and perhaps she would lunch with me
+afterwards?" Frank had eagerly assented.</p>
+
+<p>Since then Agnes had gone up to London, if not every day, very nearly
+every day, and Mr. Ferrier had done his best, without much success, to
+"cheer her up."</p>
+
+<p>Though they soon became more intimate than they had ever been, Agnes
+never told Ferrier what it was that had turned her from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> a happy,
+unquestioning child into a miserable woman; but, of course, he guessed.</p>
+
+<p>And gradually Frank also had come to know that she knew, and, man-like,
+he spent less and less time in his now uncomfortable home. He would go
+away in the morning an hour earlier than usual, and then, under pretext
+of business keeping him late at the office, he would come back after
+having dined, doubtless with "Janey," in town.</p>
+
+<p>Soon Agnes began to draw a terrible comparison between these two
+men&mdash;between the husband who had all she had of heart, and the friend
+whom she now acknowledged to herself&mdash;for hypocrisy had fallen away from
+her&mdash;had lived only for her, and for the hours they were able to spend
+together, during two long years, and yet who had never told her of his
+love, or tried to disturb her trust in Frank.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Gerald Ferrier was all that was noble&mdash;Frank Barlow all that was
+ignoble. So she told herself with trembling lip a dozen times a day,
+taking fierce comfort in the knowledge that Ferrier was noble. But she
+was destined even to lose that comfort; for one day, a week before the
+day when we find her walking to Summerfield station, Ferrier's nobility,
+or what poor Agnes took to be such, suddenly broke down.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+They had been walking together in Battersea Park, and, after one of
+those long silences which bespeak true intimacy between a man and a
+woman, he had asked her if she would come back to his rooms&mdash;for tea.</p>
+
+<p>She had shaken her head smilingly. And then he had turned on her with a
+torrent of impetuous, burning words&mdash;words of ardent love, of anguished
+longing, of eager pleading. And Agnes had been frightened, fascinated,
+allured.</p>
+
+<p>And that had not been all.</p>
+
+<p>More quietly he had gone on to speak as if the code of morality in which
+his friend had been bred, and which had hitherto so entirely satisfied
+her, was, after all, nothing but a narrow counsel of perfection, suited
+to those who were sheltered and happy, but wretchedly inadequate to meet
+the needs of the greater number of human beings who are, as Agnes now
+was, humiliated and miserable. His words had found an echo in her sore
+heart, but she had not let him see how much they moved her. On the
+contrary, she had rebuked him, and for the first time they had
+quarrelled.</p>
+
+<p>"If you ever speak to me like that again," she had said coldly, "I will
+not come again."</p>
+
+<p>And once more he had turned on her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> violently. "I think you had better
+not come again! I am but a man after all!"</p>
+
+<p>They parted enemies; but the same night Ferrier wrote Agnes a very
+piteous letter asking pardon on his knees for having spoken as he had
+done. And his letter moved her to the heart. Her own deep misery&mdash;never
+for one moment did she forget Frank, and Frank's treachery&mdash;made her
+understand the torment that Ferrier was going through.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time she realized, what so few of her kind ever realize,
+that it is a mean thing to take everything and give nothing in exchange.
+And gradually, as her long, solitary hours wore themselves away, Agnes
+came to believe that if she did what she now knew Ferrier desired her to
+do,&mdash;if, casting the past behind her, she started a new life with
+him&mdash;she would not only be doing a generous thing by the man who had
+loved her silently and faithfully for so long, but she would also be
+punishing Frank&mdash;hurting him in his honour, as he had hurt her in hers.</p>
+
+<p>And then the stars that fight in their courses for those lovers who are
+also poets fought for Ferrier.</p>
+
+<p>The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous
+letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> to
+write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling
+very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which
+had been vouchsafed to him.</p>
+
+<p>In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door
+of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had
+slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him
+peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe
+must never come to him through her.</p>
+
+<p>The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision
+brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a
+pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank.</p>
+
+<p>For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel
+and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her
+husband thought to purchase her forgiveness?</p>
+
+<p>If Ferrier's letter had never been written, if Frank's gift had never
+been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we
+now find her doing&mdash;hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier's
+dream come true.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+One of her father's many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a
+season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a
+ticket at the booking-office instead.</p>
+
+<p>The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind
+that pretty Mrs. Barlow&mdash;she wore to-day a curiously thick veil&mdash;had a
+friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and
+flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her
+face?</p>
+
+<p>She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got
+into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening
+Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun.</p>
+
+<p>And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her
+husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that
+filled her sad, embittered heart.</p>
+
+<p>Old memories&mdash;memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love
+for him&mdash;became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced
+themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her
+marriage day, the start for the honeymoon,&mdash;a start made amid a crowd of
+laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left.</p>
+
+<p>She remembered the delicious tremor which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> had come over her when she
+had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old
+bridegroom.</p>
+
+<p>How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her!</p>
+
+<p>And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like
+Frank Barlow are always kind&mdash;too kind&mdash;to women.</p>
+
+<p>Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and
+especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis's
+birth.</p>
+
+<p>Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station&mdash;but
+only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts
+just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his
+wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea,
+that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor.</p>
+
+<p>And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway
+carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way!
+She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman's prim
+remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was
+certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her
+purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more
+tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had
+known nothing of the simpler human sanctities and joys, and who had
+never&mdash;so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself&mdash;been
+loved by any woman whom he himself could love.</p>
+
+<p>In her ears there sounded Ferrier's quick, hoarsely uttered words:
+"D'you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this&mdash;if you
+had gone on being happy? D'you think I'd ask you to come to me if I
+thought you had any chance of being happy with him&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never
+have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried
+during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and
+when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though
+it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only
+"friendship."</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>III</h3>
+
+<p>The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
+Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
+oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks
+Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her,
+eager to hurry her into a cab&mdash;to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of
+late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town
+still leaves her lovers.</p>
+
+<p>But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely
+rooms which he called "home."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station.</p>
+
+<p>Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a
+curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet
+some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in
+town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense,
+stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather
+than on that of his neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very
+slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> her. He took off
+his hat and peered insolently into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No
+doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank's. "I&mdash;I don't think
+so," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," he said. "Don't you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in
+Regent Street? I don't <i>think</i> I can be wrong."</p>
+
+<p>And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said
+breathlessly, and quickened her steps.</p>
+
+<p>The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further
+attempt to molest her.</p>
+
+<p>She was trembling&mdash;shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd,
+but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She
+was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a
+foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had
+just repulsed.</p>
+
+<p>She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the
+way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Miss. It's a good step from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> here, but you can't mistake it.
+You've only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you've
+been walking about twenty minutes. You can't mistake it." And she
+hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight
+adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She
+thrilled with angry fear lest that&mdash;that brute should still be stalking
+her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was
+nearly bare of walkers.</p>
+
+<p>At last the broad thoroughfare narrowed to a point where four streets
+converged. Agnes glanced fearfully this way and that. Which of those
+shadowy black-coated figures hurrying past, intent on their business,
+would direct her rightly? Within the last half-hour Agnes had grown
+horribly afraid of men.</p>
+
+<p>And then, with more relief than the fact warranted, across the narrow
+roadway she saw emerge, between two parting waves of fog, the shrouded
+figure of a woman leaning against a dead wall.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes crossed the street, but as she stepped up on to the kerb, suddenly
+there broke from her, twice repeated, a low, involuntary cry of dread.</p>
+
+<p>"Teresa!" she cried. And then, again, "Teresa!" For in the shrouded
+figure before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> her she had recognized, with a thrill of incredulous
+terror, the form and lineaments of Teresa Maldo.</p>
+
+<p>But there came no answering cry; and Agnes gave a long, gasping,
+involuntary sigh of relief as she realized that what had seemed to be
+her dead friend's dark, glowing face was the face of a little child&mdash;a
+black-haired beggar child, with large startled eyes wide open on a
+living world.</p>
+
+<p>The tall woman whose statuesque figure had so strangely recalled
+Teresa's supple, powerful form was holding up the child, propping it on
+the wall behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Still shaking with the chill terror induced by the vision she now
+believed she had not seen, Agnes went up closer to the melancholy group.</p>
+
+<p>Even now she longed to hear the woman speak. "Can you tell me the way to
+Flood Street?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The woman looked at her fixedly. "No, that I can't," she said
+listlessly. "I'm a stranger here." And then, with a passionate energy
+which startled Agnes, "For God's sake, give me something, lady, to help
+me to get home! I've walked all the way from Essex; it's taken me, oh!
+so long with the child, though we've had a lift here and a lift<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> there,
+and I haven't a penny left. I came to find my husband; but he's lost
+himself&mdash;on purpose!"</p>
+
+<p>A week ago, Agnes Barlow would have shaken her head and passed on. She
+had always held the theory, carefully inculcated by her careful parents,
+that it is wrong to give money to beggars in the street.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the queer illusion that she had just experienced made her
+remember Father Ferguson. In a flash she recalled a sermon of the old
+priest's which had shocked and disturbed his prosperous congregation,
+for in it the preacher had advanced the astounding theory that it is
+better to give to nine impostors than to refuse the one just man; nay,
+more, he had reminded his hearers of the old legend that Christ
+sometimes comes, in the guise of a beggar, to the wealthy.</p>
+
+<p>She took five shillings out of her purse, and put them, not in the
+woman's hand, but in that of the little child.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said the woman dully. "May God bless you!" That was all,
+but Agnes went on, vaguely comforted.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>And now at last, helped on her way by more than one good-natured
+wayfarer, she reached the quiet, but shabby Chelsea street where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+Ferrier lived. The fog had drifted towards the river, and in the
+lamplight Agnes Barlow was not long in finding a large open door, above
+which was inscribed: "The Thomas More Studios."</p>
+
+<p>Agnes walked timorously through into the square, empty, gas-lit hall,
+and looked round her with distaste. The place struck her as very ugly
+and forlorn, utterly lacking in what she had always taken to be the
+amenities of flat life&mdash;an obsequious porter, a lift, electric light.</p>
+
+<p>How strange of Ferrier to have told her that he lived in a building that
+was beautiful!</p>
+
+<p>Springing in bold and simple curves, rose a wrought-iron staircase,
+filling up the centre of the narrow, towerlike building. Agnes knew that
+Ferrier lived high up, somewhere near the top.</p>
+
+<p>She waited a moment at the foot of the staircase. She was gathering up
+her strength, throwing behind her everything that had meant life,
+happiness, and&mdash;what signified so very much to such a woman as
+herself&mdash;personal repute.</p>
+
+<p>But, even so, Agnes did not falter in her purpose. She was still
+possessed, driven onward, by a passion of jealous misery.</p>
+
+<p>But, though her spirit was willing, ay, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> more than willing, for
+revenge, her flesh was weak; and as she began slowly walking up the
+staircase she started nervously at the grotesque shapes cast by her own
+shadow, and at the muffled sounds of her own footfalls.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way up the high building the gas-jets burned low, and Agnes felt
+aggrieved. What a mean, stupid economy on the part of the owners of this
+strange, unnatural dwelling-place.</p>
+
+<p>How dreadful it would be if she were to meet any one she knew&mdash;any one
+belonging to what she was already unconsciously teaching herself to call
+her old, happy life! As if in cruel answer to her fear, a door opened,
+and an old man, clad in a big shabby fur coat and broad-brimmed hat,
+came out.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes's heart gave a bound in her bosom. Yes; this was what she had
+somehow thought would happen. In the half-light she took the old man to
+be an eccentric acquaintance of her father's.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Willis?" she whispered hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, surprised, resentful.</p>
+
+<p>"My name's not Willis," he said gruffly, as he passed her on his way
+down, and her heart became stilled. How could she have been so foolish
+as to take that disagreeable old man for kindly-natured Mr. Willis?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+She was now very near the top. Only a storey and a half more, and she
+would be there. Her steps were flagging, but a strange kind of peace had
+fallen on her. In a few moments she would be safe, for ever, in
+Ferrier's arms. How strange and unreal the notion seemed!</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;and then, as if fashioned by some potent incantation from the
+vaporous fog outside, a tall, grey figure rose out of nothingness, and
+stood, barring the way, on the steel floor of the landing above her.</p>
+
+<p>Agnes clutched the iron railing, too oppressed rather than too
+frightened to speak. Out in the fog-laden street she had involuntarily
+called out the other's name. "Teresa?" she had cried, "Teresa!" But this
+time no word broke from her lips, for she feared that if she spoke the
+other would answer.</p>
+
+<p>Teresa Maldo's love, the sisterly love of which Agnes had been so little
+worthy, had broken down the gateless barrier which stretches its dense
+length between the living and the dead. What she, the living woman, had
+not known how to do for Teresa, the dead woman had come back to do for
+her&mdash;for now Agnes seemed suddenly able to measure the depth of the gulf
+into which she had been about to throw herself....</p>
+
+<p>She stared with fearful, fascinated eyes at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> the immobile figure swathed
+in grey, cere-like garments, and her gaze travelled stealthfully up to
+the white, passionless face, drained of all expression save that of
+watchful concern and understanding tenderness....</p>
+
+<p>With a swift movement Agnes turned round. Clinging to the iron rail, she
+stumbled down the stairway to the deserted hall, and with swift
+terror-hastened steps rushed out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>Through the fog she plunged, not even sparing a moment to look back and
+up to the dimly lighted window behind which poor Ferrier stood,&mdash;as a
+softer, a truer-natured woman might have done. Violently she put all
+thought of her lover from her, and as she hurried along with tightening
+breath, the instinct of self-preservation alone possessing her, she
+became more and more absorbed in measuring the fathomless depth of the
+pit in which she had so nearly fallen.</p>
+
+<p>Her one wish now was to get home&mdash;to get home&mdash;to get home&mdash;before Frank
+got back.</p>
+
+<p>But the fulfilment of that wish was denied her&mdash;for as Agnes Barlow
+walked, crying softly as she went, in the misty darkness along the road
+which led from Summerfield station to the gate of The Haven, there fell
+on her ear the rhythmical tramp of well-shod feet.</p>
+
+<p>She shrank near to the hedge, in no mood to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> greet or to accept greeting
+from a neighbour. But the walker was now close to her. He struck a
+match.</p>
+
+<p>"Agnes?" It was Frank Barlow's voice&mdash;shamed, eager, questioning. "Is
+that you? I thought&mdash;I hoped you would come home by this train."</p>
+
+<p>And as she gave no immediate answer, as he missed&mdash;God alone knew with
+what relief&mdash;the prim, cold accents to which his wife had accustomed him
+of late, he hurried forward and took her masterfully in his arms. "Oh!
+my darling," he whispered huskily, "I know I've been a beast&mdash;but I've
+never left off loving you&mdash;and I can't stand your coldness, Agnes; it's
+driving me to the devil! Forgive me, my pure angel&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And Frank Barlow's pure angel did forgive him, and with a spontaneity
+and generous forgetfulness which he will ever remember. Nay, more;
+Agnes&mdash;and this touched her husband deeply&mdash;even gave up her pleasant
+acquaintance with that writing fellow, Ferrier, because Ferrier, through
+no fault of his, was associated, in both their minds, with the terrible
+time each would have given so much to obliterate from the record of
+their otherwise cloudless married life.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[226&ndash;229]</a></span><a name="v" id="v"></a>WHY THEY MARRIED</h2>
+
+
+<p class="center">"God doeth all things well, though by what strange,<br />
+solemn, and murderous contrivances."</p>
+
+
+<h3>I</h3>
+
+<p class="cap">JOHN COXETER was sitting with his back to the engine in a first-class
+carriage in the Paris-Boulogne night train. Not only Englishman, but
+Englishman of a peculiarly definite class, that of the London civil
+servant, was written all over his spare, still active figure.</p>
+
+<p>It was late September, and the rush homewards had begun; so Coxeter,
+being a man of precise and careful habit, had reserved a corner seat.
+Then, just before the train had started, a certain Mrs. Archdale, a
+young widowed lady with whom he was acquainted, had come up to him on
+the Paris platform, and to her he had given up his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter had willingly made the little sacrifice of his personal comfort,
+but he had felt annoyed when Mrs. Archdale in her turn had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> yielded the
+corner place with foolish altruism to a French lad exchanging vociferous
+farewells with his parents. When the train started the boy did not give
+the seat back to the courteous Englishwoman to whom it belonged, and
+Coxeter, more vexed by the matter than it was worth, would have liked to
+punch the boy's head.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, as he now looked straight before him, sitting upright in the
+carriage which was rocking and jolting as only a French railway carriage
+can rock and jolt, he realized that he himself had gained by the lad's
+lack of honesty. By having thus given away something which did not
+belong to her, Mrs. Archdale was now seated, if uncomfortably hemmed in
+and encompassed on each side, just opposite to Coxeter himself.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter was well aware that to stare at a woman is the height of bad
+breeding, but unconsciously he drew a great distinction between what is
+good taste to do when one is being observed, and that which one does
+when no one can catch one doing it. Without making the slightest effort,
+in fact by looking straight before him, Nan Archdale fell into his
+direct line of vision, and he allowed his eyes to rest on her with an
+unwilling sense that there was nothing in the world he had rather<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> they
+rested on. Her appearance pleased his fastidious, rather old-fashioned
+taste. Mrs. Archdale was wearing a long grey cloak. On her head was
+poised a dark hat trimmed with Mercury wings; it rested lightly on the
+pale golden hair which formed so agreeable a contrast to her deep blue
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter did not believe in luck; the word which means so much to many
+men had no place in his vocabulary, or even in his imagination. But,
+still, the sudden appearance of Mrs. Archdale in the great Paris station
+had been an agreeable surprise, one of those incidents which, just
+because of their unexpectedness, make a man feel not only pleased with
+himself, but at one with the world.</p>
+
+<p>Before Mrs. Archdale had come up to the carriage door at which he was
+standing, several things had contributed to put Coxeter in an
+ill-humour.</p>
+
+<p>It had seemed to his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded,
+immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow
+travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they
+talked&mdash;jabbered would be the better word&mdash;laughed and cried! How they
+hugged and embraced one another! Coxeter thanked God he was an
+Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>His feeling of bored disgust was intensified<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> by the conduct of a
+long-nosed, sallow man, who had put his luggage into the same carriage
+as that where Coxeter's seat had been reserved.</p>
+
+<p>Strange how the peculiar characteristics common to the Jewish race
+survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was
+saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a
+very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered
+idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was
+half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm,
+now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face,
+while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and
+extravagant terms of affection. "<i>Adieu, mon petit homme ador&eacute;!</i>" she
+finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to
+Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice,
+albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my
+dear girl. It's only for a fortnight after all."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter felt a pang of sincere pity for the poor fellow; a cad, no
+doubt&mdash;but an English cad, cursed with an emotional French wife!</p>
+
+<p>Then his attention had been most happily diverted by the unexpected
+appearance of Mrs. Archdale. She had come up behind him very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> quietly,
+and he had heard her speak before actually seeing her. "Mr. Coxeter, are
+you going back to England, or have you only come to see someone off?"</p>
+
+<p>Not even then had Coxeter&mdash;to use a phrase which he himself would not
+have used, for he avoided the use of slang&mdash;"given himself away." Over
+his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had
+still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been
+looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the
+compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved
+for himself, not even she&mdash;noted though she was for her powers of
+sympathy and understanding&mdash;had divined the delicious tremor, the
+curious state of mingled joy and discomfort into which her sudden
+presence had thrown the man whom she had greeted a little doubtfully, by
+no means sure that he would welcome her companionship on a long journey.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, in spite of the effect she produced upon him, in spite of
+the fact that she was the only human being who had ever had, or was ever
+likely to have, the power of making him feel humble, not quite satisfied
+with himself&mdash;Coxeter disapproved of Mrs. Archdale. At the present
+moment he disapproved of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> rather more than usual, for if she meant
+to give up that corner seat, why had she not so arranged as to sit by
+him? Instead, she was now talking to the French boy who occupied what
+should have been her seat.</p>
+
+<p>But Nan Archdale, as all her friends called her, was always like that.
+Coxeter never saw her, never met her at the houses to which he went
+simply in order that he might meet her, without wondering why she wasted
+so much of the time she might have spent in talking to him, and above
+all in listening to him, in talking and listening to other people.</p>
+
+<p>Four years ago, not long after their first acquaintance, he had made her
+an offer of marriage, impelled by something which had appeared at the
+time quite outside himself and his usual wise, ponderate view of life.
+He had been relieved, as well as keenly hurt, when she had refused him.</p>
+
+<p>Everything that concerned himself appeared to John Coxeter of such
+moment and importance that at the time it had seemed incredible that Nan
+Archdale would be able to keep to herself the peculiar honour which had
+befallen her,&mdash;one, by the way, which Coxeter had never seriously
+thought of conferring on any other woman. But as time went on he became
+aware that she had actually kept the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> secret which was not hers to
+betray, and, emboldened by the knowledge that she alone knew of his
+humiliating bondship, he had again, after a certain interval, written
+and asked her if she would marry him. Again she had refused, in a kind,
+impersonal little note, and this last time she had gone so far as to
+declare that in this matter she really knew far better than he did
+himself what was good for him, and once more something deep in his heart
+had said "Amen."</p>
+
+<p>When he thought about it, and he went on thinking about it more than was
+quite agreeable for his own comfort or peace of mind, Coxeter would tell
+himself, with what he believed to be a vicarious pang of regret, that
+Mrs. Archdale had made a sad mistake as regarded her own interest. He
+felt sure she was not fit to live alone; he knew she ought to be
+surrounded by the kind of care and protection which only a husband can
+properly bestow on a woman. He, Coxeter, would have known how to detach
+her from the unsuitable people by whom she was always surrounded.</p>
+
+<p>Nan Archdale, and Coxeter was much concerned that it was so, had an
+instinctive attraction for those poor souls who lead forlorn hopes, and
+of whom&mdash;they being unsuccessful in their fine endeavours&mdash;the world
+never hears.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> She also had a strange patience and tenderness for those
+ne'er-do-wells of whom even the kindest grow weary after a time. Nan had
+a mass of queer friends, old prot&eacute;g&eacute;s for whom she worked unceasingly in
+a curious, detached fashion, which was quite her own, and utterly apart
+from any of the myriad philanthropic societies with which the world she
+lived in, and to which she belonged by birth, interests its prosperous
+and intelligent leisure.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic that Nan's liking for John Coxeter often took the
+form of asking him to help these queer, unsatisfactory people. Why, even
+in this last week, while he had been in Paris, he had come into close
+relation with one of Mrs. Archdale's "odd-come-shorts." This time the
+man was an inventor, and of all unpractical and useless things he had
+patented an appliance for saving life at sea!</p>
+
+<p>Nan Archdale had given the man a note to Coxeter, and it was
+characteristic of the latter that, while resenting what Mrs. Archdale
+had done, he had been at some pains when in Paris to see the man in
+question. The invention&mdash;as Coxeter had of course known would be the
+case&mdash;was a ridiculous affair, but for Nan's sake he had agreed to
+submit it to the Admiralty expert whose business it is to consider and
+pronounce on such futile things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> The queer little model which its maker
+believed would in time supersede the life-belts now carried on every
+British ship, had but one merit, it was small and portable: at the
+present moment it lay curled up, looking like a cross between a
+serpent's cast skin and a child's spent balloon, in Coxeter's
+portmanteau. Even while he had accepted the parcel with a coolly civil
+word of thanks, he had mentally composed the letter with which he would
+ultimately dash the poor inventor's hopes.</p>
+
+<p>To-night, however, sitting opposite to her, he felt glad that he had
+been to see the man, and he looked forward to telling her about it.
+Scarcely consciously to himself, it always made Coxeter glad to feel
+that he had given Nan pleasure, even pleasure of which he disapproved.</p>
+
+<p>And yet how widely apart were these two people's sympathies and
+interests! Putting Nan aside, John Coxeter was only concerned with two
+things in life&mdash;his work at the Treasury and himself&mdash;and people only
+interested him in relation to these two major problems of existence. Nan
+Archdale was a citizen of the world&mdash;a freewoman of that dear kingdom of
+romance which still contains so many fragrant byways and sunny oases for
+those who have the will to find them. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> for her freedom of this
+kingdom she would have been a very sad woman, oppressed by the griefs
+and sorrows of that other world to which she also belonged, for Nan's
+human circle was ever widening, and in her strange heart there seemed
+always room for those whom others rejected and despised.</p>
+
+<p>She had the power no human being had ever had&mdash;that of making John
+Coxeter jealous. This was the harder to bear inasmuch as he was well
+aware that jealousy is a very ridiculous human failing, and one with
+which he had no sympathy or understanding when it affected&mdash;as it
+sometimes did&mdash;his acquaintances and colleagues. Fortunately for
+himself, he was not retrospectively jealous&mdash;jealous that is of the dead
+man of whom certain people belonging to his and to Nan's circle
+sometimes spoke of as "poor Jim Archdale." Coxeter knew vaguely that
+Archdale had been a bad lot, though never actually unkind to his wife;
+nay, more, during the short time their married life had lasted,
+Archdale, it seemed, had to a certain extent reformed.</p>
+
+<p>Although he was unconscious of it, John Coxeter was a very material
+human being, and this no doubt was why this woman had so compelling an
+attraction for him; for Nan Archdale appeared to be all spirit, and that
+in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> spite of her eager, sympathetic concern in the lives which circled
+about hers.</p>
+
+<p>And yet? Yet there was certainly a strong, unspoken link between them,
+this man and woman who had so little in common the one with the other.
+They met often, if only because they both lived in Marylebone, that most
+conventional quarter of old Georgian London, she in Wimpole Street, he
+in a flat in Wigmore Street. She always was glad to see him, and seemed
+a little sorry when he left her. Coxeter was one of the rare human
+beings to whom Nan ever spoke of herself and of her own concerns. But,
+in spite of that curious kindliness, she did not do what so many people
+who knew John Coxeter instinctively did&mdash;ask his advice, and, what was,
+of course, more seldom done&mdash;take it. In fact he had sometimes angrily
+told himself that Nan attached no weight to his opinion, and as time had
+gone on he had almost given up offering her unsought advice.</p>
+
+<p>John Coxeter attached great importance to health. He realized that a
+perfect physical condition is a great possession, and he took
+considerable pains to keep himself what he called "fit." Now Mrs.
+Archdale was recklessly imprudent concerning her health, the health,
+that is, which was of so great a value<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> to him, her friend. She took her
+meals at such odd times; she did not seem to mind, hardly to know, what
+she ate and drank!</p>
+
+<p>Of the many strange things Coxeter had known her to do, by far the
+strangest, and one which he could scarcely think of without an inward
+tremor, had happened only a few months ago.</p>
+
+<p>Nan had been with an ailing friend, and the ailing friend's only son, in
+the Highlands, and this friend, a foolish woman,&mdash;when recalling the
+matter Coxeter never omitted to call this lady a foolish woman&mdash;on
+sending her boy back to school, had given him what she had thought to be
+a dose of medicine out of the wrong bottle, a bottle marked "Poison."
+Nothing could be done, for the boy had started on his long railway
+journey south before the mistake had been discovered, and even Coxeter,
+when hearing the story told, had realized that had he been there he
+would have been sorry, really sorry, for the foolish mother.</p>
+
+<p>But Nan's sympathy&mdash;and on this point Coxeter always dwelt with a
+special sense of injury&mdash;had taken a practical shape. She had poured out
+a similar dose from the bottle marked "Poison" and had calmly drunk it,
+observing as she did so, "I don't believe it <i>is</i> poison in the real
+sense of the word, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> at any rate we shall soon be able to find out
+exactly what is happening to Dick."</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, or at least nothing but a bad headache, had followed, and so
+far had Nan been justified of her folly. But to Coxeter it was terrible
+to think of what might have happened, and he had not shared in any
+degree the mingled amusement and admiration which the story, as told
+afterwards by the culpable mother, had drawn forth. In fact, so deeply
+had he felt about it that he had not trusted himself to speak of the
+matter to Mrs. Archdale.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Archdale was not only reckless of her health; she was also
+reckless&mdash;perhaps uncaring would be the truer word&mdash;of something which
+John Coxeter supposed every nice woman to value even more than her
+health or appearance, that is the curiously intangible, and yet so
+easily frayed, human vesture termed reputation.</p>
+
+<p>To John Coxeter the women of his own class, if worthy, that is, of
+consideration and respect, went clad in a delicate robe of ermine, and
+the thought that this ermine should have even a shade cast on its
+fairness was most repugnant to him. Now Nan Archdale was not as careful
+in this matter of keeping her ermine unspoiled and delicately white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> as
+she ought to have been, and this was the stranger inasmuch as even
+Coxeter realized that there was about his friend a Una-like quality
+which made her unafraid, because unsuspecting, of evil.</p>
+
+<p>Another of the cardinal points of Coxeter's carefully thought-out
+philosophy of life was that in this world no woman can touch pitch
+without being defiled. And yet on one occasion, at least, the woman who
+now sat opposite to him had proved the falsity of this view. Nan
+Archdale, apparently indifferent to the opinion of those who wished her
+well, had allowed herself to be closely associated with one of those
+unfortunate members of her own sex who, at certain intervals in the
+history of the civilized world, become heroines of a drama of which each
+act takes place in the Law Courts. Of these dramas every whispered word,
+every piece of "business"&mdash;to pursue the analogy to its logical end&mdash;is
+overheard and visualized not by thousands but by millions,&mdash;in fact by
+all those of an age to read a newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Had the woman in the case been Mrs. Archdale's sister, Coxeter with a
+groan would have admitted that she owed her a duty, though a duty which
+he would fain have had her shirk or rather delegate to another. But this
+woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> was no sister, not even a friend, simply an old acquaintance
+known to Nan, 'tis true, over many years. Nan had done what she had
+done, had taken her in and sheltered her, going to the Court with her
+every day, simply because there seemed absolutely no one else willing to
+do it.</p>
+
+<p>When he had first heard of what Mrs. Archdale was undertaking to do,
+Coxeter had been so dismayed that he had felt called upon to expostulate
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>Very few words had passed between them. "Is it possible," he had asked,
+"that you think her innocent? That you believe her own story?"</p>
+
+<p>To this Mrs. Archdale had answered with some distress, "I don't know, I
+haven't thought about it&mdash;&mdash; As she says she is&mdash;I hope she is. If she's
+not, I'd rather not know it."</p>
+
+<p>It had been a confused utterance, and somehow she had made him feel
+sorry that he had said anything. Afterwards, to his surprise and
+unwilling relief, he discovered that Mrs. Archdale had not suffered in
+reputation as he had expected her to do. But it made him feel, more than
+ever, that she needed a strong, wise man to take care of her, and to
+keep her out of the mischief into which her unfortunate
+good-nature&mdash;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> was the way Coxeter phrased it to himself&mdash;was so apt
+to lead her.</p>
+
+<p>It was just after this incident that he had again asked her to marry
+him, and that she had again refused him. But it was since then that he
+had become really her friend.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>At last Mrs. Archdale turned away, or else the French boy had come to an
+end of his eloquence. Perhaps she would now lean a little forward and
+speak to him&mdash;the friend whom she had not seen for some weeks and whom
+she had seemed so sincerely glad to see half an hour ago? But no; she
+remained silent, her face full of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter leant back; as a rule he never read in a train, for he was aware
+that it is injurious to the eyesight to do so. But to-night he suddenly
+told himself that after all he might just as well look at the English
+paper he had bought at the station. He might at least see what sort of
+crossing they were going to have to-night. Not that he minded for
+himself. He was a good sailor and always stayed on deck whatever the
+weather, but he hoped it would be smooth for Mrs. Archdale's sake. It
+was so unpleasant for a lady to have a rough passage.</p>
+
+<p>Again, before opening the paper, he glanced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> across at her. She did not
+look strong; that air of delicacy, combined as it was with perfect
+health&mdash;for Mrs. Archdale was never ill&mdash;was one of the things that made
+her attractive to John Coxeter. When he was with a woman, he liked to
+feel that he was taking care of her, and that she was more or less
+dependent on his good offices. Somehow or other he always felt this
+concerning Nan Archdale, and that even when she was doing something of
+which he disapproved and which he would fain have prevented her doing.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter turned round so that the light should fall on the page at which
+he had opened his newspaper, which, it need hardly be said, was the
+<i>Morning Post</i>. Presently there came to him the murmuring of two voices,
+Mrs. Archdale's clear, low utterances, and another's, guttural and full.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! then he had been right; the fellow sitting there, on Nan's other
+side, was a Jew: probably something financial, connected with the Stock
+Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a
+financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his
+knowledge of human beings,&mdash;or rather of men, for even his
+self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he
+entirely understood women; there had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> been a time when he had thought
+so, but that was a long while ago.</p>
+
+<p>He began reading his newspaper. There was a most interesting article on
+education. After having glanced at this, he studied more carefully
+various little items of social news which reminded him that he had been
+away from London for some weeks. Then, as he read on, the conversation
+between Nan Archdale and the man next to her became more audible to him.
+All the other people in the carriage were French, and so first one, and
+then the other, window had been closed.</p>
+
+<p>His ears had grown accustomed to the muffled, thundering sounds caused
+by the train, and gradually he became aware that Nan Archdale was
+receiving some singular confidences from the man with whom she was now
+speaking. The fellow was actually unrolling before her the whole of his
+not very interesting life, and by degrees Coxeter began rather to
+overhear than to listen consciously to what was being said.</p>
+
+<p>The Jew, though English by birth, now lived in France. As a young man he
+had failed in business in London, and then he had made a fresh start
+abroad, apparently impelled thereto by his great affection for his
+mother. The Jewish race, so Coxeter reminded himself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> are admirable in
+every relation of private life, and it was apparently in order that his
+mother might not have to alter her style of living that the person on
+whom Mrs. Archdale was now fixing her attention had finally accepted a
+post in a Paris house of business&mdash;no, not financial, something
+connected with the sweetmeat trade.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter gathered that the speaker had at last saved enough money to make
+a start for himself, and that now he was very prosperous. He spoke of
+what he had done with legitimate pride, and when describing the struggle
+he had gone through, the fellow used a very odd expression, "It wasn't
+all jam!" he said. Now he was in a big way of business, going over to
+London every three months, partly in connection with his work, partly to
+see his old mother.</p>
+
+<p>Behind his newspaper Coxeter told himself that it was amazing any human
+being should tell so much of his private concerns to a stranger. Even
+more amazing was it that a refined, rather peculiar, woman like Nan
+Archdale should care to listen to such a commonplace story. But
+listening she was, saying a word here and there, asking, too, very
+quaint, practical questions concerning the sweetmeat trade. Why, even
+Coxeter became interested in spite of himself, for the Jew was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> an
+intelligent man, and as he talked on Coxeter learned with surprise that
+there is a romantic and exciting side even to making sweets.</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity it is," he heard Nan say at last in her low, even voice,
+"that you can't now come back to England and settle down there. Surely
+it would make your mother much happier, and you don't seem to like Paris
+so very much?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said the man, "but&mdash;well, unluckily there's an obstacle
+to my doing that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter looked up from his paper. The stranger's face had become
+troubled, preoccupied, and his eyes were fixed, or so Coxeter fancied
+them to be, on Nan Archdale's left hand, the slender bare hand on which
+the only ring was her wedding ring.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter once more returned to his paper, but for some minutes he made no
+attempt to follow the dancing lines of print.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust you won't be offended if I ask whether you are, or are not, a
+married lady?" The sweetmeat man's voice had a curious note of shamed
+interrogation threading itself through the words.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter felt surprised and rather shocked. This was what came of
+allowing oneself to become familiar with an underbred stranger! But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> Nan
+had apparently not so taken the impertinent question, for, "I am a
+widow," Coxeter heard her answer gently, in a voice that had no touch of
+offence in it.</p>
+
+<p>And then, after a few moments, staring with frowning eyes at the
+spread-out sheet of newspaper before him, Coxeter, with increasing
+distaste and revolt, became aware that Mrs. Archdale was now receiving
+very untoward confidences&mdash;confidences which Coxeter had always imagined
+were never made save under the unspoken seal of secrecy by one man to
+another. This objectionable stranger was telling Nan Archdale the story
+of the woman who had seen him off at the station, and whose absurd
+phrase, "<i>Adieu, mon petit homme ador&eacute;</i>," had rung so unpleasantly in
+his, Coxeter's, ears.</p>
+
+<p>The eavesdropper was well aware that such stories are among the everyday
+occurrences of life, but his knowledge was largely theoretical; John
+Coxeter was not the sort of man to whom other men are willing to confide
+their shames, sorrows, or even successes in a field of which the
+aftermath is generally bitter.</p>
+
+<p>In as far as such a tale can be told with decent ambiguity it was so
+told by this man of whose refinement Coxeter had formed so poor an
+opinion, but still the fact that he was telling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> it remained&mdash;and it was
+a fact which to such a man as Coxeter constituted an outrage on the
+decencies of life.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Archdale, by her foolish good-nature, had placed herself in such a
+position as to be consulted in a case of conscience concerning a Jewish
+tradesman and his light o' love, and now the man was debating with her
+as with himself, as to whether he should marry this woman, as to whether
+he should force on his respectable English mother a French
+daughter-in-law of unmentionable antecedents! Coxeter gathered that the
+liaison had lasted ten years&mdash;that it had begun, in fact, very soon
+after the man had first come to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to his feeling of wrath that Nan Archdale should become
+cognisant of so sordid a tale, there was associated a feeling of shame
+that he, Coxeter, had overheard what it had not been meant that he
+should hear.</p>
+
+<p>Perforce the story went on to its melancholy and inconclusive end, and
+then, suddenly, Coxeter became possessed with a desire to see Nan
+Archdale's face. He glanced across at her. To his surprise her face was
+expressionless; but her left hand was no longer lying on her knee, it
+was supporting her chin, and she was looking straight before her.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she said at last, "that you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> have made a proper provision
+for your&mdash;your friend? I mean in case of your death. I hope you have so
+arranged matters that if anything should happen to you, this poor woman
+who loves you would not have to go back to the kind of life from which
+you took her." Even Coxeter divined that Nan had not found it easy to
+say this thing.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, I haven't done anything of that sort. I never thought of doing
+it; she's always been the delicate party. I am as strong as a horse!"</p>
+
+<p>"Still&mdash;still, life's very uncertain." Mrs. Archdale was now looking
+straight into the face of the stranger on whom she was thrusting
+unsought advice.</p>
+
+<p>"She has no claim on me, none at all&mdash;&mdash;" the man spoke defensively. "I
+don't think she'd expect anything of that sort. She's had a very good
+time with me. After all, I haven't treated her badly."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you haven't," Nan spoke very gently. "I am sure you have been
+always kind to her. But, if I may use the simile you used just now,
+life, even to the happiest, the most sheltered, of women, isn't all
+jam!"</p>
+
+<p>The man looked at her with a doubting, shame-faced glance. "I expect
+you're right," he said abruptly. "I ought to have thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> of it. I'll
+make my will when I'm in England this time&mdash;I ought to have done so
+before."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Coxeter leant forward. He felt the time had come when he really
+must put an end to this most unseemly conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Archdale?" he spoke loudly, insistently. She looked up, startled
+at the sharpness of the tone, and the man next her, whose eyes had been
+fixed on her face with so moved and doubting a look, sat back. "I want
+to tell you that I've seen your inventor, and that I've promised to put
+his invention before the right quarter at the Admiralty."</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Nan was all eagerness. "It really is a very wonderful
+thing," she said; "I'm so grateful, Mr. Coxeter. Did you go and see it
+tried? <i>I</i> did, last time I was in Paris; the man took me to a
+swimming-bath on the Seine&mdash;such an odd place&mdash;and there he tested it
+before me. I was really very much impressed. I do hope you will say a
+word for it. I am sure they would value your opinion."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter looked at her rather grimly. "No, I didn't see it tested." To
+think that she should have wasted even an hour of her time in such a
+foolish manner, and in such a queer place, too! "I didn't see the use of
+doing so, though of course the man was very anxious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> I should. I'm
+afraid the thing's no good. How could it be?" He smiled superciliously,
+and he saw her redden.</p>
+
+<p>"How unfair that is!" she exclaimed. "How can you possibly tell whether
+it's no good if you haven't seen it tried? Now I <i>have</i> seen the thing
+tried."</p>
+
+<p>There was such a tone of protest in her voice that Coxeter felt called
+upon to defend himself. "I daresay the thing's all right in theory," he
+said quickly, "and I believe what he says about the ordinary life-belts;
+it's quite true, I mean, that they drown more people than they save: but
+that's only because people don't know how to put them on. This thing's a
+toy&mdash;not practical at all." He spoke more irritably than he generally
+allowed himself to speak, for he could see that the Jew was listening to
+all that they were saying.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, Mrs. Archdale actually included the sweetmeat stranger in
+their conversation, and Coxeter at last found himself at her request
+most unwillingly taking the absurd model out of his bag. "Of course
+you've got to imagine this in a rough sea," he said sulkily, playing the
+devil's advocate, "and not in a fresh water river bath."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I</i> wouldn't mind trying it in a rough sea, Mr. Coxeter." Nan
+smiled as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+Coxeter wondered if she was really serious. Sometimes he suspected that
+Mrs. Archdale was making fun of him&mdash;but that surely was impossible.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II</h3>
+
+<p>When at last they reached Boulogne and went on board the packet,
+Coxeter's ill-humour vanished. It was cold, raw, and foggy, and most of
+their fellow-passengers at once hurried below, but Mrs. Archdale decided
+to stay on the upper deck. This pleased her companion; now at last he
+would have her to himself.</p>
+
+<p>In his precise and formal way he went to a good deal of trouble to make
+Nan comfortable; and she, so accustomed to take thought for others,
+stood aside and watched him find a sheltered corner, secure with some
+difficulty a deck chair, and then defend it with grim determination
+against two or three people who tried to lay hands upon it.</p>
+
+<p>At last he beckoned to her to sit down. "Where's your rug?" he asked.
+She answered meekly, "I haven't brought one."</p>
+
+<p>He put his own rug,&mdash;large, light, warm, the best money could buy&mdash;round
+her knees; and in the pleasure it gave him to wait on her thus he did
+not utter aloud the reproof which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> had been on his lips. But she saw him
+shake his head over a more unaccountable omission&mdash;on the journey she
+had somehow lost her gloves. He took his own off, and with a touch of
+masterfulness made her put them on, himself fastening the big bone
+buttons over each of her small, childish wrists; but his manner while he
+did all these things&mdash;he would have scorned himself had it been
+otherwise&mdash;was impersonal, businesslike.</p>
+
+<p>There are men whose every gesture in connection with a woman becomes an
+instinctive caress. Such men, as every woman learns in time, are not
+good "stayers," but they make the time go by very quickly&mdash;sometimes.</p>
+
+<p>With Coxeter every minute lasted sixty seconds. But Nan Archdale found
+herself looking at him with unwonted kindliness. At last she said, a
+little tremulously, and with a wondering tone in her voice, "You're very
+kind to me, Mr. Coxeter." Those who spend their lives in speeding others
+on their way are generally allowed to trudge along alone; so at least
+this woman had found it to be. Coxeter made no answer to her
+words&mdash;perhaps he did not hear them.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the few minutes which had elapsed since they came on board, the
+fog had deepened. The shadowy figures moving about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> deck only took
+substance when they stepped into the circle of brightness cast by a
+swinging globe of light which hung just above Nan Archdale's head.
+Coxeter moved forward and took up his place in front of the deck-chair,
+protecting its occupant from the jostling of the crowd, for the
+sheltered place he had found stood but a little way back from the
+passage between the land gangway and the iron staircase leading to the
+lower deck.</p>
+
+<p>There were more passengers that night than usual. They passed, a
+seemingly endless procession, moving slowly out of the darkness into the
+circle of light and then again into the white, engulfing mist.</p>
+
+<p>At last the deck became clear of moving figures; the cold, raw fog had
+driven almost everyone below. But Coxeter felt curiously content, rather
+absurdly happy. This was to him a great adventure....</p>
+
+<p>He took out his watch. If the boat started to time they would be off in
+another five minutes. He told himself that this was turning out a very
+pleasant journey; as a rule when crossing the Channel one meets tiresome
+people one knows, and they insist on talking to one. And then, just as
+he was thinking this, there suddenly surged forward out of the foggy
+mist two people, a newly married couple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> named Rendel, with whom both he
+and Mrs. Archdale were acquainted, at whose wedding indeed they had both
+been present some six or seven weeks ago. So absorbed in earnest talk
+with one another were the bride and bridegroom that they did not seem to
+see where they were going; but when close to Mrs. Archdale they stopped
+short, and turned towards one another, still talking so eagerly as to be
+quite oblivious of possible eavesdroppers.</p>
+
+<p>John Coxeter, standing back in the shadow, felt a sudden gust of envious
+pain. They were evidently on their way home from their honeymoon, these
+happy young people, blessed with good looks, money, health, and love;
+their marriage had been the outcome of quite a pretty romance.</p>
+
+<p>But stay,&mdash;what was this they were saying? Both he and Nan unwillingly
+heard the quick interchange of words, the wife's shrill, angry
+utterances, the husband's good-humoured expostulations. "I won't stay on
+the boat, Bob. I don't see why we should risk our lives in order that
+you may be back in town to-morrow. I know it's not safe&mdash;my great-uncle,
+the Admiral, always said that the worst storm at sea was not as bad as
+quite a small fog!" Then the gruff answer: "My dear child, don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> be a
+fool! The boat wouldn't start if there was the slightest danger. You
+heard what that man told us. The fog was much worse this morning, and
+the boat was only an hour late!" "Well, you can do as you like, but <i>I</i>
+won't cross to-night. Where's the use of taking any risk? Mother's
+uncle, the Admiral&mdash;&mdash;" and Coxeter heard with shocked approval the
+man's "Damn your great-uncle, the Admiral!"</p>
+
+<p>There they stood, not more than three yards off, the pretty, angry
+little spitfire looking up at her indignant, helpless husband. Coxeter,
+if disgusted, was amused; there was also the comfort of knowing that
+they would certainly pretend not to see him, even if by chance they
+recognized him, intent as they were on their absurd difference.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go back and spend the night at the station hotel. No, you
+needn't trouble to find Stockton for me&mdash;there's no time." Coxeter and
+Nan heard the laughing gibe, "Then you don't mind your poor maid being
+drowned as well as your poor husband," but the bride went on as if he
+hadn't spoken&mdash;"I've quite enough money with me; you needn't give me
+anything&mdash;<i>good-bye</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She disappeared into the fog in the direction of the gangway, and
+Coxeter moved hastily to one side. He wished to save Bob Rendel the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+annoyance of recognizing him; but then, with amazing suddenness,
+something happened which made Coxeter realize that after all women were
+even more inexplicable, unreasonable beings than even he had always
+known them to be.</p>
+
+<p>There came the quick patter of feet over the damp deck, and Mrs. Rendel
+was back again, close to where her husband was standing.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made up my mind to stay on the boat," she said quietly. "I think
+you are very unwise, as well as very obstinate, to cross in this fog;
+but if you won't give way, then I'd rather be with you, and share the
+danger."</p>
+
+<p>Bob Rendel laughed, not very kindly, and together they went across to
+the stair leading below.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter opened his mouth to speak, then he closed it again. What a
+scene! What a commentary on married life! And these two people were
+supposed to be "in love" with one another.</p>
+
+<p>The little episode had shocked him, jarred his contentment. "If you
+don't mind, I'll go and smoke a pipe," he said stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Archdale looked up. "Oh yes, please do," and yet she felt suddenly
+bereft of something warm, enveloping, kindly. The words formed
+themselves on her lips, "Don't go too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span> far away," but she did not speak
+them aloud. But, as if in answer to her unspoken request, Coxeter called
+out, "I'm just here, close by, if you want anything," and the
+commonplace words gave her a curious feeling of security,&mdash;a feeling,
+though she herself was unaware of it, which her own care and tenderness
+for others often afforded to those round whom she threw the sheltering
+mantle of her kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps because he was so near, John Coxeter remained in her thoughts.
+Almost alone of those human beings with whom life brought her in
+contact, he made no demand on her sympathy, and very little on her time.
+In fact, his first offer of marriage had taken her so much by surprise
+as to strike her as slightly absurd; she had also felt it, at the time,
+to be an offence, for she had given him no right to encroach on the
+inner shrine of her being.</p>
+
+<p>Trying to account for what he had done, she had supposed that John
+Coxeter, being a man who evidently ordered his life according to some
+kind of system, had believed himself ripe for the honourable estate of
+marriage, and had chosen her as being "suitable."</p>
+
+<p>When writing her cold letter of refusal, she had expected to hear within
+a few weeks of his engagement to some "nice" girl. But time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> had gone by
+and nothing of the sort had happened. Coxeter's second offer, conveyed,
+as had been the first, in a formal letter, had found her in a very
+different mood, for it had followed very closely on that done by her of
+which he, John Coxeter, had so greatly disapproved. She had been touched
+this second time and not at all offended, and gradually they had become
+friends. It was after his second offer that Nan began making use of him,
+not so much for herself as on behalf of other people.</p>
+
+<p>Nan Archdale led her life without reference to what those about her
+considered appropriate or desirable; and years had gone by since the
+boldest busybody among them would have ventured a word of rebuke. Her
+social background was composed of happy, prosperous people. They had but
+little to do with her, however, save when by some amazing mischance
+things went wrong with them; when all went well they were apt to forget
+Nan Archdale. But John Coxeter, though essentially one of them by birth
+and instinct, and though it had been through them that she had first met
+him, never forgot her.</p>
+
+<p>Yet though they had become, in a sense, intimate, he made on her none of
+those demands which endear a man to a woman. Living up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> on a pleasant
+tableland of self-approval, he never touched the heights or depths which
+go to form the relief map of most human beings' lives. He always did his
+duty and generally enjoyed doing it, and he had no patience, only
+contempt, for those who shirked theirs.</p>
+
+<p>The passion of love, that greatest of the Protean riddles set by nature
+to civilized man and woman, played no part, or so Nan Archdale believed,
+in John Coxeter's life. At the time she had received the letter in which
+he had first asked her to marry him, there had come to her, seen through
+the softening mists of time, a sharp, poignant remembrance of Jim
+Archdale's offer, "If you won't have me, Nan, I'll do something
+desperate! You'll be sorry then!" So poor Jim Archdale had conquered
+her; and looking back, when she recalled their brief married life, she
+forgot the selfishness and remembered only the love, the love which had
+made Jim so dependent on her presence and her sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>But if John Coxeter were incapable of love, she now knew him to be a
+good friend, and it was the friend&mdash;so she believed, and was grateful to
+him for it,&mdash;who had asked her to accept what he had quixotically
+supposed would be the shelter of his name when she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> had done that thing
+of which he had disapproved.</p>
+
+<p>To-night Nan could not help wondering if he would ever again ask her to
+marry him. She thought not&mdash;she hoped not. She told herself quite
+seriously that he was one of those men who are far happier unwedded. His
+standard, not so much of feminine virtue as of feminine behaviour, was
+too high. Take what had happened just now; she had listened indulgently,
+tenderly, to the quarrel of the newly married couple, but she had seen
+the effect it had produced on John Coxeter. To him it had been a
+tragedy, and an ugly, ignoble tragedy to boot.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>The deck was now clear of passengers. Out in the open sea the fog had
+become so thick as to be impenetrable, and the boat seemed to be groping
+its way, heralded by the mournful screaming of the siren. Mrs. Archdale
+felt drowsy; she leant back and closed her eyes. Coxeter was close by,
+puffing steadily at his pipe. She felt a pleasant sensation of security.</p>
+
+<p>She was roused, rather startled, by a man bending over her, while a
+voice said gruffly, "I think, ma'am, that you'd better get into shelter.
+The deck saloon is close by. Allow me to lead you to it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+Nan rose obediently. With the petty officer on one side and Coxeter on
+the other, she made a slow progress across the deck, and so to the
+large, brilliantly lighted saloon. There the fog had been successfully
+shut out, and some fifteen to twenty people sat on the velvet benches;
+among them was the sweetmeat merchant to whom Nan had talked in the
+train.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter found a comfortable place for Nan rather apart from the others,
+and sitting down he began to talk to her. The fog-horn, which was
+trumpeting more loudly, more insistently than ever, did not, he thought,
+interfere with their conversation as much as it might have done.</p>
+
+<p>"We shan't be there till morning," Coxeter heard a man say, "till
+morning doth appear, at this rate!"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we're all right. There's no <i>real</i> danger in a fog&mdash;not in
+the Channel; there never has been an accident on the Channel
+passage&mdash;not an accident of any serious kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, there was&mdash;to one of the Dieppe boats&mdash;a very bad accident!"</p>
+
+<p>And then several of those present joined in the discussion. The man who
+had recalled the Dieppe boat accident could be heard, self-assertive,
+pragmatical, his voice raised above the voices around him. "I've been
+all over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> the world in my time, and when I'm caught in a fog at sea I
+always get up, dress, and go up on deck, however sleepy I may be."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter, sitting apart by Nan's side, listened with some amusement. His
+rather thin sense of humour was roused by the fact that the people
+around him were talking in so absurd a manner. This delay was not
+pleasant; it might even mean that he would be a few hours late at the
+Treasury, a thing he had never once been after a holiday, for Coxeter
+prided himself on his punctuality in the little as well as the great
+things of life. But, of course, all traffic in the Channel would be
+delayed by this fog, and his absence would be accounted for by the fact.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting there, close to Mrs. Archdale, with no one sufficiently near to
+attract her attention, or, what was more likely, to appeal to her for
+sympathy, he felt he could well afford to wait till the fog cleared off.
+As for the loud, insistent screaming of the siren, that sound which
+apparently got on the nerves of most of those present in the deck
+saloon, of course it was a disagreeable noise, but then they all knew it
+was a necessary precaution, so why make a fuss about it?</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter turned and looked at his companion, and as he looked at her he
+felt a little possessive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> thrill of pride. Mrs. Archdale alone among the
+people there seemed content and at ease, indeed she was now smiling,
+smiling very brightly and sweetly, and, following the direction of her
+eyes, he saw that they rested on a child lying asleep in its mother's
+arms....</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps after all it was a good thing that Nan was so detached from
+material things. Before that burst of foolish talk provoked by the fog,
+he had been speaking to her about a matter very interesting to
+himself&mdash;something connected with his work, something, by the way, of
+which he would not have thought of speaking to any other woman; but then
+Mrs. Archdale, as Coxeter had good reason to know, was exceptionally
+discreet.... She had evidently been very much interested in all he had
+told her, and he had enjoyed the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter became dimly conscious of what it would mean to him to have Nan
+to come back to when work, and the couple of hours he usually spent at
+his club, were over. Perhaps if Nan were waiting for him, he would not
+wish to stay as long as two hours at his club. But then of course he
+would want Nan all to himself. Jealous? Certainly not. He was far too
+sensible a man to feel jealous, but he would expect his wife to put him
+first&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> very long way in front of anybody else. It might be
+old-fashioned, but he was that sort of man.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Coxeter's thoughts leapt back into the present with disagreeable
+abruptness. Their Jewish fellow-traveller, the man who had thrust on
+Mrs. Archdale such unseemly confidences, had got up. He was now heading
+straight for the place where Mrs. Archdale was sitting.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter quickly decided that the fellow must not be allowed to bore Mrs.
+Archdale. She was in his, Coxeter's, care to-night, and he alone had a
+right to her interest and attention. So he got up and walked down the
+saloon. To his surprise the other, on seeing him come near, stopped
+dead. "I want to speak to you," he said in a low voice,
+"Mr.&mdash;er&mdash;Coxeter."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter looked at him, surprised, then reminded himself that his full
+name, "John Coxeter," was painted on his portmanteau. Also that Mrs.
+Archdale had called him "Mr. Coxeter" at least once, when discussing
+that life-saving toy. Still, sharp, observant fellows, Jews! One should
+always be on one's guard with them. "Yes?" he said interrogatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Coxeter, I want to ask you to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> do me a little favour. The
+truth is I've just made my will&mdash;only a few lines&mdash;and I want you to be
+my second witness. I've no objection, none in the world, to your seeing
+what I want you to witness."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke very deliberately, as if he had prepared the form of words in
+which he made his strange request, and as he spoke he held out a sheet
+of paper apparently torn out of a notebook. "I asked that gentleman over
+there"&mdash;he jerked his thumb over his shoulder&mdash;"to be my first witness,
+and he kindly consented. I'd be much obliged if you'd sign your name
+just here. I'll also ask you to take charge of it&mdash;only a small
+envelope, as you see. It's addressed to my mother. I've made her
+executor and residuary legatee."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter felt a strong impulse to refuse. He never mixed himself up with
+other people's affairs; he always refused to do so on principle.</p>
+
+<p>The man standing opposite to him divined what was passing through his
+mind, and broke in, "Only just while we're on this boat. You can tear it
+up and chuck the pieces away once we're on land again&mdash;" he spoke
+nervously, and with contemptuous amazement Coxeter told himself that the
+fellow was <i>afraid</i>. "Surely you don't think there's any danger?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> he
+asked. "D'you mean you've made this will because you think something may
+happen to the boat?"</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded, "Accidents do happen"; he smiled rather foolishly as
+he said the words, pronouncing the last one, as Coxeter noted with
+disapproval, "habben." He was holding out a fountain pen; he had an
+ingratiating manner, and Coxeter, to his own surprise, suddenly gave
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, and taking the paper in his hand he glanced over
+it. He had no desire to pry into any man's private affairs, but he
+wasn't going to sign anything without first reading it.</p>
+
+<p>This odd little will consisted of only two sentences, written in a
+clear, clerkly hand. The first bequeathed an annuity of &pound;240 (six
+thousand francs) to L&eacute;onie Lenoir, of Rue Lafayette, Paris; the second
+appointed the testator's mother, Mrs. Solomon Munich, of Scott Terrace,
+Maida Vale, residuary legatee and executor. The will was signed "Victor
+Munich."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I'll sign it," said Coxeter, at last, "and I'll take charge
+of it till we're on land. But look here&mdash;I won't keep it a moment
+longer!" Then, perhaps a little ashamed of his ungraciousness, "I say,
+Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> Munich, if I were you I'd go below and take a stiffish glass of
+brandy and water. I once had a fright, I was nearly run over by a
+brewer's dray at Charing Cross, and I did that&mdash;took some brandy I
+mean&mdash;" he jerked the words out, conscious that the other's sallow face
+had reddened.</p>
+
+<p>Then he signed his name at the bottom of the sheet of paper, and busied
+himself with putting the envelope carefully into his pocketbook.
+"There," he said, with the slight supercilious smile which was his most
+marked physical peculiarity, but of which he was quite unconscious,
+"your will is quite safe now! If we meet at Folkestone I'll hand it you
+back; if we miss one another in the&mdash;er&mdash;fog I'll destroy it, as
+arranged."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and began walking back to where Nan Archdale was sitting. What
+a very odd thing! How extraordinary, how unexpected!</p>
+
+<p>Then a light broke in on him. Why, of course, it was Nan who had brought
+this about! She had touched up the Jew fellow's conscience, frightened
+him about that woman&mdash;the woman who had so absurdly termed him her
+"<i>petit homme ador&eacute;</i>." That's what came of mixing up in other people's
+business; but Coxeter's eyes nevertheless rested on the sitting figure
+of his friend with a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> curious indulgence. Odd, sentimental,
+sensitive creatures&mdash;women! But brave&mdash;not lacking in moral courage
+anyway.</p>
+
+<p>As he came close up to her, Mrs. Archdale moved a little, making room
+for him to sit down by her. It was a graceful, welcoming gesture, and
+John Coxeter's pulse began to quicken.... He told himself that this also
+was an extraordinary thing&mdash;this journey with the woman he had wished to
+make his wife. He felt her to be so tantalizingly near, and yet in a
+sense so very far away.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes fell on her right hand, still encased in his large brown glove.
+As he had buttoned that glove, he had touched her soft wrist, and a wild
+impulse had come to him to bend yet a little closer and press his lips
+to the white triangle of yielding flesh. Of course he had resisted the
+temptation, reminding himself sternly that it was a caddish thing even
+to have thought of taking advantage of Nan's confiding friendliness. Yet
+now he wondered whether he had been a fool not to do it. Other men did
+those things.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>There came a dragging, grating sound, the boat shuddering as if in
+response. Coxeter had the odd sensation that he was being gently but
+irresistibly pushed round, and yet he sat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> quite still, with nothing in
+the saloon changed in relation to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Someone near him exclaimed in a matter-of-fact voice, "We've struck;
+we're on a rock." Everyone stood up, and he saw an awful look of doubt,
+of unease, cross the faces of the men and women about him.</p>
+
+<p>The fog-horn ceased trumpeting, and there rose confused sounds, loud
+hoarse shouts and thin shrill cries, accompanying the dull thunder
+caused by the tramping of feet. Then the lights went out, all but the
+yellow flame of a small oil lamp which none of them had known was there.</p>
+
+<p>The glass-panelled door opened widely, and a burly figure holding a
+torch, which flared up in the still, moist air, was outlined against the
+steamy waves of fog.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out of here!" he cried; and then, as some people tried to push
+past him, "Steady, keep cool! There'll be room in the boats for every
+soul on board," and Coxeter, looking at the pale, glistening face, told
+himself that the man was lying, and that he knew he lied.</p>
+
+<p>They stumbled out, one by one, and joined the great company which was
+now swarming over the upper deck, each man and woman forlorn and lonely
+as human beings must ever be when individually face to face with death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+Coxeter's right hand gripped firmly Mrs. Archdale's arm. She was
+pressing closely to his side, shrinking back from the rough crowd
+surging about them, and he was filled with a fierce protective
+tenderness which left no room in his mind for any thought of self. His
+one thought was how to preserve his companion from contact with some of
+those about them; wild-eyed, already distraught creatures, swayed with a
+terror which set them apart from the mass of quiet, apparently dazed
+people who stood patiently waiting to do what they were told.</p>
+
+<p>Close to Nan and Coxeter two men were talking Spanish; they were
+gesticulating, and seemed to be disagreeing angrily as to what course to
+pursue. Presently one of them suddenly produced a long knife which
+glittered in the torchlight; with it he made a gesture as if to show the
+other that he meant to cut his way through the crowd towards the spot,
+now railed off with rope barriers, where the boats were being got ready
+for the water.</p>
+
+<p>With a quick movement Coxeter unbuttoned his cloak and drew Nan within
+its folds; putting his arms round her he held her, loosely and yet how
+firmly clasped to his breast. "I can't help it," he muttered
+apologetically. "Forgive me!" As only answer she seemed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> draw yet
+closer to him, and then she lay, still and silent, within his sheltering
+arms,&mdash;and at that moment he remembered to be glad he had not kissed her
+wrist.</p>
+
+<p>They two stood there, encompassed by a living wall, and yet how
+strangely alone. The fog had become less dense, or else the resin
+torches which flared up all about them cleared the air.</p>
+
+<p>From the captain's bridge there whistled every quarter minute a high
+rocket, and soon from behind the wall of fog came in answer distant
+signals full of a mingled mockery and hope to the people waiting there.</p>
+
+<p>But for John Coxeter the drama of his own soul took precedence of that
+going on round him. Had he been alone he would have shared to the full
+the awful, exasperating feeling of being trapped, of there being nothing
+to be done, which possessed all the thinking minds about him. But he was
+not alone&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Nan, lying on his breast, seemed to pour virtue into him&mdash;to make him
+extraordinarily alive. Never had he felt death, extinction so near, and
+yet there seemed to be something outside himself, a spirit informing,
+uplifting, and conquering the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>Perceptions, sympathies, which had lain dormant during the whole of his
+thirty-nine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> years of life, now sprang into being. His imagination
+awoke. He saw that it was this woman, now standing, with such complete
+trust in the niceness of his honour, heart to heart with him, who had
+made the best of that at once solitary and companioned journey which we
+call life. He had thought her to be a fool; he now saw that, if a fool,
+she had been a divine fool, ever engaged while on her pilgrimage with
+the only things that now mattered. How great was the sum of her
+achievement compared with his. She had been a beacon diffusing light and
+warmth; he a shadow among shadows. If to-night he were engulfed in the
+unknown, for so death was visioned by John Coxeter, who would miss him,
+who would feel the poorer for his sudden obliteration?</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Coxeter came back into the present; he looked round him, and for the
+first time he felt the disabling clutch of physical fear. The life-belts
+were being given out, and there came to him a horrid vision of the
+people round him as they might be an hour hence, drowned, heads down,
+legs up, done to death by those monstrous yellow bracelets which they
+were now putting on with such clumsy, feverish eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>He was touched on the arm, and a husky voice, with which he was by now
+familiar, said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> urgently, "Mr. Coxeter&mdash;see, I've brought your bag out
+of the saloon." The man whose name he knew to be Victor Munich was
+standing at his elbow. "Look here, don't take offence, Mr. Coxeter, I
+think better of the&mdash;&mdash;" he hesitated&mdash;"the life-saver that you've got
+in this bag of yours than you do. I'm willing to give you a fancy price
+for it&mdash;what would you say to a thousand pounds? I daresay I shan't have
+occasion to use it, but of course I take that risk."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter, with a quick, unobtrusive movement, released Mrs. Archdale. He
+turned and stared, not pleasantly, at the man who was making him so odd
+an offer. Damn the fellow's impudence! "The life-saver is not for sale,"
+he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>Nan had heard but little of the quick colloquy. She did not connect it
+with the fact that the strong protecting arms which had been about her
+were now withdrawn,&mdash;and the tears came into her eyes. She felt both in
+a physical and in a spiritual sense suddenly alone. John Coxeter, the
+one human being who ever attempted to place himself on a more intimate,
+personal plane with her, happened, by a strange irony of fate, to be her
+companion in this awful adventure. But even he had now turned away from
+her....</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+Nay, that was not quite true. He was again looking down at her, and she
+felt his hand groping for hers. As he found and clasped it, he made a
+movement as if he wished again to draw her towards him. Gently she
+resisted, and at once she felt that he responded to her feeling of
+recoil, and Nan, with a confused sense of shame and anger, was now hurt
+by his submission. Most men in his place would have made short work of
+her resistance,&mdash;would have taken her, masterfully, into the shelter of
+his arms.</p>
+
+<p>There came a little stir among the people on the deck. Coxeter heard a
+voice call out in would-be-cheery tones, "Now then, ladies! Please step
+out&mdash;ladies and children only. Look sharp!" A sailor close by whispered
+gruffly to his mate, "I'll stick to her anyhow. No crowded boats for me!
+I expect she'll be a good hour settling&mdash;perhaps a bit longer."</p>
+
+<p>As the first boat-load swung into the water, some of the people about
+them gave a little cheer. Coxeter thought, but he will never be quite
+sure, that in that cheer Nan joined. There was a delay of a minute; then
+again the captain's voice rang out, this time in a sharper, more
+peremptory tone, "Now, ladies, look sharp! Come along, please."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter unclasped Nan's hand&mdash;he did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> know how tightly he had been
+holding it. He loved her. God, how he loved her! And now he must send
+her away&mdash;away into the shrouding fog&mdash;away, just as he had found her.
+If what he had overheard were true, might he not be sending Nan to a
+worse fate than that of staying to take the risk with him?</p>
+
+<p>But the very man who had spoken so doubtfully of the boats just now came
+forward. "You'd best hurry your lady forward, sir. There's no time to
+lose." There was an anxious, warning note in the rough voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go now," said Coxeter heavily. "I shall be all right, Mrs.
+Archdale," for she was making no movement forward. "There'll be plenty
+of room for the men in the next boat. I'd walk across the deck with you,
+but I'm afraid they won't allow that." He spoke in his usual
+matter-of-fact, rather dry tone, and Nan looked up at him doubtingly.
+Did he really wish her to leave him?</p>
+
+<p>Flickering streaks of light fell on his face. It was convulsed with
+feeling,&mdash;with what had become an agony of renunciation. She withdrew
+her eyes, feeling a shamed, exultant pang of joy. "I'll wait till
+there's room for you, too, Mr. Coxeter." She breathed rather than
+actually uttered the words aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Another woman standing close by was saying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> the same thing to her
+companion, but in far more eager, more vociferous tones. "Is it likely
+that I should go away now and leave you, Bob? Of course not&mdash;don't be
+ridiculous!" But the Rendels pushed forward, and finally both found
+places in this, the last boat but one.</p>
+
+<p>Victor Munich was still standing close to John Coxeter, and Mrs.
+Archdale, glancing at his sallow, terror-stricken face, felt a thrill of
+generous pity for the man. "Mr. Coxeter," she whispered, "do give him
+that life-saver! Did he not ask you for it just now? We don't want it."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter bent down and unstrapped his portmanteau. He handed to Nan the
+odd, toy-like thing by which he had set so little store, but which now
+he let go with a touch of reluctance. He saw her move close to the man
+whose name she did not know. "Here is the life-saver," she said kindly;
+"I heard you say you would like it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you?"&mdash;he stammered&mdash;"how about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want it. I shall be all right. I shouldn't put it on in any
+case."</p>
+
+<p>He took it then, avidly; and they saw him go forward with a quick,
+stealthy movement to the place where the last boat was being got ready
+for the water.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+"There's plenty of room for you and the lady now, sir!" Coxeter hurried
+Nan across the deck, but suddenly they were pushed roughly back. The
+rope barriers had been cut, and a hand-to-hand struggle was taking place
+round the boat,&mdash;an ugly scrimmage to which as little reference as
+possible was made at the wreck inquiry afterwards. To those who looked
+on it was a horrible, an unnerving sight; and this time Coxeter with
+sudden strength took Nan back into his arms. He felt her trembling,
+shuddering against him,&mdash;what she had just seen had loosed fear from its
+leash.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm frightened," she moaned. "Oh, Mr. Coxeter, I'm so horribly
+frightened of those men! Are they all gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said grimly, "most of them managed to get into the boat. Don't
+be frightened. I think we're safer here than we should be with those
+ruffians."</p>
+
+<p>Another man would have found easy terms of endearment and comfort for
+almost any woman so thrust on his protection and care, but the very
+depth of Coxeter's feeling seemed to make him dumb,&mdash;that and his
+anguished fear lest by his fault, by his own want of quickness, she had
+perhaps missed her chance of being saved.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+But what he was lacking another man supplied. This was the captain, and
+Nan, listening to the cheering, commonplace words, felt her nerve, her
+courage, come back.</p>
+
+<p>"Stayed with your husband?" he said, coming up to them. "Quite right,
+mum! Don't you be frightened. Look at me and my men, we're not
+frightened&mdash;not a bit of it! My boat will last right enough for us to be
+picked off ten times over. I tell you quite fairly and squarely, if I'd
+my wife aboard I'd 'a kept her with me. I'd rather be on this boat of
+mine than I would be out there, on the open water, in this fog." But as
+he walked back to the place where stood the rocket apparatus, Coxeter
+heard him mutter, "The brutes! Not all seconds or thirds either. I wish
+I had 'em here, I'd give 'em what for!"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>Later, when reading the narratives supplied by some of the passengers
+who perforce had remained on the doomed boat, Coxeter was surprised to
+learn how many thrilling experiences he had apparently missed during the
+long four hours which elapsed before their rescue. And yet the time of
+waiting and suspense probably appeared as long to him as it did to any
+of the fifty odd souls who stayed, all close together, on the upper
+deck<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> waiting with what seemed a stolid resignation for what might next
+befall them.</p>
+
+<p>From the captain, Coxeter, leaving Mrs. Archdale for a moment, had
+extracted the truth. They had drifted down the French coast. They were
+on a dangerous reef of rock, and the rising of the wind, the lifting of
+the fog, for which they all looked so eagerly, might be the signal for
+the breaking up of the boat. On the other hand, the boat might hold for
+days. It was all a chance.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter kept what he had learnt to himself, but he was filled with a
+dull, aching sensation of suspense. His remorse that he had not hurried
+Mrs. Archdale into one of the first boats became almost intolerable. Why
+had he not placed her in the care even of the Jew, Victor Munich, who
+was actually seated in the last boat before the scramble round it had
+begun?</p>
+
+<p>More fortunate than he, Mrs. Archdale found occupation in tending the
+few forlorn women who had been thrust back. He watched her moving among
+them with an admiration no longer unwilling; she looked bright, happy,
+almost gay, and the people to whom she talked, to whom she listened,
+caught something of her spirit. Coxeter would have liked to follow her
+example, but though he saw that some of the men round him were eager to
+talk<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> and to discuss the situation, his tongue refused to form words of
+commonplace cheer.</p>
+
+<p>When with the coming of the dawn the fog lifted, Nan came up to Coxeter
+as he stood apart, while the other passengers were crowding round a fire
+which had been lit on the open deck. Together in silence they watched
+the rolling away of the enshrouding mist; together they caught sight of
+the fleet of French fishing boats from which was to come succour.</p>
+
+<p>As he turned and clasped her hand, he heard her say, more to herself
+than to him, "I did not think we should be saved."</p>
+
+
+<h3>III</h3>
+
+<p>John Coxeter was standing in the library of Mrs. Archdale's home in
+Wimpole Street. Two nights had elapsed since their arrival in London,
+and now he was to see her for the first time since they had parted on
+the Charing Cross platform, in the presence of the crowd of people
+comprised of unknown sympathisers, acquaintances, and friends who had
+come to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>He looked round him with a curious sense of unfamiliarity. The colouring
+of the room was grey and white, with touches of deep-toned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> mahogany. It
+was Nan's favourite sitting-room, though it still looked what it had
+been ever since Nan could remember it&mdash;a man's room. In his day her
+father had been a collector of books, medals, and engravings connected
+with the severer type of eighteenth-century art and letters.</p>
+
+<p>In a sense this room always pleased Coxeter's fancy, partly because it
+implied a great many things that money and even modern culture cannot
+buy. But now, this morning&mdash;for it was still early, and he was on his
+way to his office for the first time since what an aunt of his had
+called his mysterious preservation from death&mdash;he seemed to see
+everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been
+to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential.</p>
+
+<p>He had sometimes secretly wondered why Mrs. Archdale, possessed as she
+was of considerable means, had not altered the old house, had not made
+it pretty as her friends' houses and rooms were pretty; but to-day he no
+longer wondered at this. His knowledge of the fleetingness of life, and
+of the unimportance of all he had once thought so important, was too
+vividly present....</p>
+
+<p>She came into the room, and he saw that she was dressed in a more
+feminine kind of garment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> than that in which he generally saw her. It
+was white, and though girdled with a black ribbon, it made her look very
+young, almost girlish.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale
+also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware,
+as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had
+brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she was more
+absorbed in her own sensations than in those of the person with her.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing John Coxeter standing there waiting for her, looking so like his
+old self, so absolutely unchanged, confused her and made her feel
+desperately shy.</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand, but Coxeter scarcely touched it. After having
+held her so long in his arms, he did not care to take her hand in formal
+greeting. She mistook his gesture, thought that he was annoyed at having
+received no word from her since they had parted. The long day in between
+had been to Nan Archdale full of nervous horror, for relations, friends,
+acquaintances had come in troops to see her, and would not be denied.</p>
+
+<p>Already she had received two or three angry notes from people who
+thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had
+refused to see them when they had rushed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> hear her account of an
+adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the
+mistake of confusing Coxeter with these selfish people.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice, "that when you called
+yesterday I was supposed to be asleep. I have been most anxious to see
+you"&mdash;she waited a moment and then added his name&mdash;"Mr. Coxeter. I knew
+that you would have the latest news, and that you would tell it me."</p>
+
+<p>"There is news," he said, "of all the boats; good news&mdash;with the
+exception of the last boat&mdash;&mdash;" His voice sounded strangely to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that must be all right too, Mr. Coxeter! The captain said the
+boats might drift about for a long time."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "In fact"&mdash;he waited
+a moment, and she came close up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she commanded in a low voice, "tell me what you know. They
+say I ought to put it all out of my mind, but I can think of nothing
+else. Whenever I close my eyes I see the awful struggle that went on
+round that last boat!" She gave a quick, convulsive sob.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter was dismayed. How wildly she spoke, how unlike herself she
+seemed to-day&mdash;how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> unlike what she had been during the whole of their
+terrible ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>Already that ordeal had become, to him, something to be treasured. There
+is no lack of physical courage in the breed of Englishmen to which John
+Coxeter belonged. Pain, entirely unassociated with shame, holds out
+comparatively little terror to such as he. There was something rueful in
+the look he gave her.</p>
+
+<p>"The last boat was run down in the fog," he said briefly. "Some of the
+bodies have been washed up on the French coast."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him apprehensively. "Any of the people we had spoken to?
+Any of those who were with us in the railway carriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm sorry to say that one of the bodies washed up is that of the
+person who sat next to you."</p>
+
+<p>"That poor French boy?"</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter shook his head. "No, no&mdash;he's all right; at least I believe he's
+all right. It&mdash;the body I mean&mdash;was that of your other neighbour;" he
+added, unnecessarily, "the man who made sweets."</p>
+
+<p>And then for the first time Coxeter saw Nan Archdale really moved out of
+herself. What he had just said had had the power to touch her, to cause
+her greater anguish than anything which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> had happened during the long
+hours of terror they had gone through. She turned and, moving as if
+blindly, pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out some terrible
+and pitiful sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she exclaimed in a low voice, "I shall never forgive myself over
+that! Do you know I had a kind of instinct that I ought to ask that man
+the name, the address"&mdash;her voice quivered and broke&mdash;"of his friend&mdash;of
+that poor young woman who saw him off at the Paris station."</p>
+
+<p>Till this moment Coxeter had not known that Nan had been aware of what
+had, to himself, been so odious, so ridiculous, and so grotesque, a
+scene. But now he felt differently about this, as about everything else
+that touched on the quick of life. For the first time he understood,
+even sympathized with, Nan's concern for that majority of human beings
+who are born to suffering and who are bare to the storm....</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said awkwardly, "don't be unhappy. It's all right. That
+man spoke to me on the boat&mdash;he did what you wished, he made a will
+providing for that woman; I took charge of it for him. As a matter of
+fact I went and saw his old mother yesterday. She behaved splendidly."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the life-saver was no good after all?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+"No good," he said, and he avoided looking at her. "At least so it would
+seem, but who can tell?"</p>
+
+<p>Nan's eyes filled with tears; something beckoning, appealing seemed to
+pass from her to him....</p>
+
+<p>The door suddenly opened.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Eaton, ma'am. She says she only heard what happened, to-day, and
+she's sure you will see her."</p>
+
+<p>Before Mrs. Archdale could answer, a woman had pushed her way past the
+maid into the room. "Nan? Poor darling! What an awful thing! I <i>am</i> glad
+I came so early; now you will be able to tell me all about it!"</p>
+
+<p>The visitor, looking round her, saw John Coxeter, and seemed surprised.
+Fortunately she did not know him, and, feeling as if, had he stayed, he
+must have struck the woman, he escaped from the room.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>As Coxeter went through the hall, filled with a perplexity and pain very
+alien from his positive nature, a good-looking, clean-shaven man, who
+gave him a quick measured glance, passed by. With him there had been no
+parleying at the door as in Coxeter's own case.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that?" he asked, with a scowl, of the servant.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+"The doctor, sir," and he felt absurdly relieved. "We sent for him
+yesterday, for Mrs. Archdale seemed very bad last night." The servant
+dropped her voice, "It's the doctor, sir, as says Mrs. Archdale oughtn't
+to see visitors. You see it was in all the papers about the shipwreck,
+sir, and of course Mrs. Archdale's friends all come and see her to hear
+about it. They've never stopped. The doctor, he says that she ought to
+have stayed in bed and been quite quiet. But what would be the good of
+that, seeing she don't seem able to sleep? I suppose you've not suffered
+that way yourself, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>The young woman was staring furtively at Coxeter, but, noting his cold
+manner and imperturbable face, she felt that he was indeed a
+disappointing hero of romance&mdash;not at all the sort of gentleman with
+whom one would care to be shipwrecked, if it came to a matter of choice.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said solemnly, "I can't say that I have."</p>
+
+<p>He looked thoughtfully out into what had never been to him a "long
+unlovely street," and which just now was the only place in the world
+where he desired to stay. Coxeter, always so sure of himself, and of
+what was the best and wisest thing to do in every circumstance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> of life,
+felt for the first time unable to cope with a situation presented to his
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>As he was hesitating, a carriage drove up, and a footman came forward
+with a card, while the occupant of the carriage called out, making
+anxious inquiries as to Mrs. Archdale's condition, and promising to call
+again the same afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter suddenly told himself that it behoved him to see the doctor, and
+ascertain from him whether Mrs. Archdale was really ill.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the street, and began pacing up and down, and unconsciously
+he quickened his steps as he went over every moment of his brief
+interview with Nan. All that was himself&mdash;and there was a good deal more
+of John Coxeter than even he was at all aware of&mdash;had gone out to her in
+a rapture of memory and longing, but she, or so it seemed to him, had
+purposely made herself remote.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after what seemed a very long time, the doctor came out of Mrs.
+Archdale's house and began walking quickly down the street.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter crossed over and touched him on the arm. "If I may," he said, "I
+should like a word with you. I want to ask you&mdash;I mean I trust that Mrs.
+Archdale is recovering from the effect of the terrible experience she
+went through the other night." He spoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> awkwardly, stiffly. "I saw her
+for a few minutes just before you came, and I was sorry to find her very
+unlike herself."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor went on walking; he looked coldly at Coxeter.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great pity that Mrs. Archdale's friends can't leave her alone!
+As to being unlike herself, you and I would probably be very unlike
+ourselves if we had gone through what this poor lady had just gone
+through!"</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I was with her on the boat. We were not travelling together,"
+Coxeter corrected himself hastily, "I happened to meet her merely on the
+journey. My name is Coxeter."</p>
+
+<p>The other man's manner entirely altered. He slackened in his quick walk.
+"I beg your pardon," he said; "of course I had no notion who you were.
+She says you saved her life! That but for you she would have been in
+that boat&mdash;the boat that was lost."</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter tried to say something in denial of this surprising statement,
+but the doctor hurried on, "I may tell you that I'm very worried about
+Mrs. Archdale&mdash;in fact seriously concerned at her condition. If you have
+any influence with her, I beg you to persuade her to refuse herself to
+the endless busybodies who want to hear her account of what happened.
+She won't have a trained nurse,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> but there ought to be someone on
+guard&mdash;a human watchdog warranted to snarl and bite!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think she ought to go away from London?" asked Coxeter in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think that&mdash;at least not for the present," the medical man
+frowned thoughtfully. "What she wants is to be taken out of herself. If
+I could prescribe what I believe would be the best thing for her, I
+should advise that she go away to some other part of London with someone
+who will never speak to her of what happened, and yet who will always
+listen to her when she wants to talk about it&mdash;some sensible,
+commonplace person who could distract her mind without tiring her, and
+who would make her do things she has never done before. If she was an
+ordinary smart lady, I should prescribe philanthropy"&mdash;he made a slight
+grimace&mdash;"make her go and see some of my poorer patients&mdash;come into
+contact with a little <i>real</i> trouble. But that would be no change to
+Mrs. Archdale. No; what she wants is someone who will force her to be
+selfish&mdash;who will take her up the Monument one day, and to a music-hall
+the next, motor her out to Richmond Park, make her take a good long
+walk, and then sit by the sofa and hold her hand if she feels like
+crying&mdash;&mdash;" He stopped, a little ashamed of his energy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+"Thank you," said Coxeter very seriously, "I'm much obliged to you for
+telling me this. I can see the sense of what you say."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, in spite of her quiet manner, Mrs. Archdale's a nervous,
+sensitive woman"&mdash;the doctor was looking narrowly at Coxeter as he
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"She was perfectly calm and&mdash;and very brave at the time&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That means nothing! Pluck's not a matter of nerve&mdash;it ought to be, but
+it isn't! But I admit you're a remarkable example of the presence of the
+one coupled with the absence of the other. You don't seem a penny the
+worse, and yet it must have been a very terrible experience."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it came at the end of my holiday," said Coxeter gravely, "and,
+as a matter of fact"&mdash;he hesitated&mdash;"I feel quite well, in fact,
+remarkably well. Do you see any objection to my calling again, I mean
+to-day, on Mrs. Archdale? I might put what you have just said before
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do! Do that by all means! Seeing how well you have come through
+it"&mdash;the doctor could not help smiling a slightly satirical
+smile&mdash;"ought to be a lesson to Mrs. Archdale. It ought to show her that
+after all she is perhaps making a great deal of fuss about nothing."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+"Hardly that," said Coxeter with a frown.</p>
+
+<p>They had now come to the corner of Queen Anne Street. He put out his
+hand hesitatingly. The doctor took it, and, oddly enough, held it for a
+moment while he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Think over what I've said, Mr. Coxeter. It's a matter of hours. Mrs.
+Archdale ought to be taken in hand at once." Then he went off, crossing
+the street. "Pity the man's such a dry stick," he said to himself;
+"now's his chance, if he only knew it!"</p>
+
+<p>John Coxeter walked straight on. He had written the day before to say
+that he would be at his office as usual this morning, but now the fact
+quite slipped his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Wild thoughts were surging through his brain; they were running away
+with him and to such unexpected places!</p>
+
+<p>The Monument? He had never thought of going up the Monument; he would
+formerly have thought it a sad waste of time, but now the Monument
+became to John Coxeter a place of pilgrimage, a spot of secret healing.
+A man had once told him that the best way to see the City was at night,
+but that if you were taking a lady you should choose a Sunday morning,
+and go there on the top of a 'bus. He had thought the man who said this
+very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> eccentric, but now he remembered the advice and thought it well
+worth following.</p>
+
+<p>By the time Coxeter turned into Cavendish Square he had travelled far
+further than the Monument. He was in Richmond Park; Nan's hand was
+thrust through his arm, as it had been while they had watched the first
+boat fill slowly with the women and children.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>To lovers who remember, the streets of a great town, far more than
+country roads and lanes, hold over the long years precious, poignant
+memories, for a background of stones and mortar has about it a character
+of permanence which holds captive and echoes the scenes and words
+enacted and uttered there.</p>
+
+<p>Coxeter has not often occasion to go the little round he went that
+morning, but when some accidental circumstance causes him to do so, he
+finds himself again in the heart of that kingdom of romance from which
+he was so long an alien, and of which he has now become a naturalized
+subject. As most of us know, many ways lead to the kingdom of romance;
+Coxeter found his way there by a water-way.</p>
+
+<p>And so it is that when he reaches the turning into Queen Anne Street
+there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
+City&mdash;the City as it is at night, uncannily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span> deserted save for the
+ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
+of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
+wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
+in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October.</p>
+
+<p>Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
+absorbed in his great adventure,&mdash;a far greater adventure than that with
+which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
+surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself&mdash;for he
+has not wholly cast out the old Adam&mdash;he sees himself as he was that
+memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
+ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
+found courage to do what he did&mdash;he who has always thought so much, in a
+hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.</p>
+
+<p>He could still tell you which lamp-post he was striding past when he
+realized, with a thrill of relief, that in any case Nan Archdale would
+not treat him as would almost certainly do one of those women whom he
+had honoured with his cold approval something less than a week ago. Any
+one of those women would have regarded what he was now going to ask<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> Nan
+to do as an outrage on the conventions of life. But Nan Archdale would
+be guided only by what she herself thought right and seemly....</p>
+
+<p>And then, as he turns again into Wimpole Street, as he comes near to
+what was once his wife's house, his long steady stride becomes slower.
+Unwillingly he is living again those doubtful moments when he knocked at
+her door, when he gave the surprised maid the confused explanation that
+he had a message from the doctor for Mrs. Archdale. He hears the young
+woman say, "Mrs. Archdale is just going out, sir. The doctor thought she
+ought to take a walk;" and his muttered answer, "I won't keep her a
+moment...."</p>
+
+<p>Again he feels the exultant, breathless thrill which seized him when she
+slipped, neither of them exactly knew how, into his arms, and when the
+sentences he had prepared, the arguments he meant to use, in his hurried
+rush up the long street, were all forgotten. He hears himself imploring
+her to come away with him now, at once. Is she not dressed to go out?
+Instinct teaches him for the first time to make to her the one appeal to
+which she ever responds. He had meant to tell her what the doctor had
+said&mdash;to let that explain his great temerity&mdash;but instead he tells her
+only that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> wants her, that he cannot go on living apart from her. Is
+there any good reason why they should not start now, this moment, for
+Doctors' Commons, in order to see how soon they can be married?</p>
+
+<p>So it is that when John Coxeter stands in Wimpole Street, so typical a
+Londoner belonging to the leisured and conventional class that none of
+the people passing by even glance his way, he lives again through the
+immortal moment when she said, "Very well."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+<p>To this day, so transforming is the miracle of love, Nan Coxeter
+believes that during their curious honeymoon it was she who was taking
+care of John, not he of her.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in love and in terror
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
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+Project Gutenberg's Studies in love and in terror, by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+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: Studies in love and in terror
+
+Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
+Release Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #26702]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN LOVE AND IN TERROR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    STUDIES IN LOVE
+    AND IN TERROR
+
+    BY
+
+    MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
+
+    (Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes)
+
+    _Short Story Index Reprint Series_
+
+
+    BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
+    FREEPORT, NEW YORK
+
+
+    First Published 1913
+
+    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                 PAGE
+
+    PRICE OF ADMIRALTY              1
+
+    THE CHILD                      99
+
+    ST. CATHERINE'S EVE           131
+
+    THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY      187
+
+    WHY THEY MARRIED              227
+
+
+
+
+PRICE OF ADMIRALTY
+
+    "O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!
+     Ce pays nous ennuie, O mort! Appareillons!"
+
+
+I
+
+Claire de Wissant, wife of Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood
+in the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of
+poise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of the cliff.
+
+At some little distance to her left rose the sloping, mansard roofs of
+the Pavillon de Wissant, the charming country house to which her husband
+had brought her, a seventeen year old bride, ten long years ago.
+
+She was now gazing eagerly out to sea, shielding her grey, heavy-lidded
+eyes with her right hand. From her left hand hung a steel chain, to
+which was attached a small key.
+
+A hot haze lay heavily over the great sweep of deep blue waters. It
+blotted out the low grey line on the horizon which, on the majority of
+each year's days, reminds the citizens of Falaise how near England is to
+France.
+
+Jacques de Wissant had rejoiced in the _entente cordiale_, if only
+because it brought such a stream of tourists to the old seaport town of
+which he was now Mayor. But his beautiful wife thought of the English as
+gallant foes rather than as friends. Was she not great-granddaughter to
+that admiral who at Trafalgar, when both his legs were shattered by
+chain-shot, bade his men place him in a barrel of bran that he might go
+on commanding, in the hour of defeat, to the end?
+
+And yet as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet
+invisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse
+of a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters had
+made them recite to her that very morning. How did it run? Aloud she
+murmured:
+
+    "Yet this inconstancy is such,
+     As you too shall adore--"
+
+and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two
+concluding lines.
+
+To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled
+by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an
+intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the
+anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.
+
+With an abrupt, restless movement she turned and walked on till her way
+along the path was barred by a curious obstacle. This was a small
+red-brick tower, built within a few feet of the edge of the cliff. It
+was an ugly blot on the beautiful stretch of down, all the uglier that
+the bricks and tiles had not yet had time to lose their hardness of line
+and colour in the salt wind.
+
+On the cliff side, the small circular building, open to wind, sky and
+sea, formed the unnatural apex of a natural stairway which led steeply,
+almost vertically, down to a deep land-locked cove below. The irregular
+steps carved by nature out of the chalk had been strengthened, and a
+rough protection added by means of knotted ropes fixed on either side of
+the dangerous descent.
+
+In the days when the steps had started sheer from a cleft in the cliff
+path, Jacques de Wissant had never used this way of reaching a spot
+which till last year had been his property, and his favourite
+bathing-place; and he had also, in those same quiet days which now
+seemed so long ago, forbidden his daughters to use that giddy way. But
+Claire was a fearless woman; and she had always preferred the
+dangerous, ladder-like stairs which seemed, when gazed at from below, to
+hang 'twixt sky and sea.
+
+Now, however, she rarely availed herself of the right retained by her
+husband of using one of the two keys which unlocked the door set in the
+new brick tower, for the cove--only by courtesy could it be called a
+bay--had been chosen, owing to its peculiar position, naturally remote
+and yet close to a great maritime port, to be the quarters of the
+Northern Submarine Flotilla.
+
+Jacques de Wissant--and it was perhaps the only time in their joint life
+that his wife had entirely understood and sympathized with any action of
+her husband's--had refused the compensation his Government had offered
+him; more, in his cold, silent way, he had shown himself a patriot in a
+sense comparatively few modern men have the courage to be, namely, in
+that which affected both his personal comfort and his purse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After standing for a moment on the perilously small and narrow platform
+which made the floor of the tower, Claire grasped firmly a strand of the
+knotted rope and began descending the long steps cut in the cliff side.
+She no longer gazed out to sea, instead she looked straight down into
+the pale green, sun-flecked waters of the little bay, where seven out of
+the nine submarines which composed the flotilla were lying
+half-submerged, as is their wont in harbour.
+
+A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have
+thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight
+before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the
+placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still.
+
+But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant. As she went down the
+cliff-side her lovely eyes rested on these sinister, man-created
+monsters with a feeling of sisterly, possessive affection. She had
+become so familiarly acquainted with each and all of them in the last
+few months; she knew with such a curious, intimate knowledge where they
+differed, both from each other and also from other submarine craft, not
+only here, in these familiar waters, but in the waters of France's great
+rival on the sea....
+
+It ever gave her a thrill of pride to remember that it was France which
+first led the way in this, the most dangerous as also the most
+adventurous new arm of naval warfare: and she rejoiced as fiercely, as
+exultantly as any of her sea-fighting forbears would have done in the
+terrible potentialities of destruction which each of these strange,
+grotesque-looking craft bore in their narrow flanks.
+
+It was now the hour of the crews' midday meal; there were fewer men
+standing about than usual; and so, after she had stepped down on the
+sandy strip of shore, and climbed the ladder leading to the old
+Napoleonic hulk which served as workshop and dwelling-place of the
+officers of the flotilla, Madame de Wissant for a few moments stood
+solitary, and looked musingly down into the waters of the bay.
+
+Each submarine, its long, fish-like shape lying prone in the almost
+still, transparent water, differed not only in size, but in make, from
+its fellows, and no two conning towers even were alike.
+
+Lying apart, as if sulking in a corner, was an example of the old
+"Gymnote" type of under-sea boat. She went by the name of the _Carp_,
+and she was very squat, small and ugly, her telescopic conning tower
+being of hard canvas.
+
+To Claire, the _Carp_ always recalled an old Breton woman she had known
+as a girl. That woman had given thirteen sons to France, and of the
+thirteen five had died while serving with the colours--three at sea and
+two in Tonkin--and a grateful country had given her a pension of ten
+francs a week, two francs for each dead son.
+
+Like that Breton woman, the ugly, sturdy little _Carp_ had borne heroes
+in her womb, and like her, too, she had paid terrible toll of her sons
+to death.
+
+Occasionally, but very seldom now, the _Carp_ was taken out to sea, and
+the men, strange to say, liked being in her, for they regarded her as a
+lucky boat; she had never had what they called a serious accident.
+
+Sunk deeper in the water was the broad-backed _Abeille_, significantly
+named "La Petroleuse," the heroine of four explosions, no favourite with
+either crews or commanders; and, cradled in a low dock on the farther
+strip of beach, was stretched the _Triton_, looking like a huge fish
+which had panted itself to death. The _Triton_ also was not a lucky
+boat; she had been the theatre of a terrible mishap when, for some
+inexplicable cause, the conning tower had failed to close. Claire was
+always glad to see her safe in dock.
+
+Out in the middle of the bay was _La Glorieuse_, a submarine of the
+latest type. Had she not lain so low, little more than her flying bridge
+being above the water, she would have put her elder sisters to shame, so
+exquisitely shaped was she. Everything about _La Glorieuse_ was made
+delicately true to scale, and she could carry a crew of over twenty men.
+But somehow Claire de Wissant did not care for this miniature leviathan
+as she did for the older kind of submarine, and, with more reason for
+his prejudice, the officer in charge of the flotilla shared her feeling.
+Commander Dupre thought _La Glorieuse_ difficult to handle under water.
+But he had had the same opinion of the _Neptune_, one of the two
+submarines which were out this fine August morning....
+
+An eager "Bonjour, madame," suddenly sounded in Claire de Wissant's ear,
+and she turned quickly to find one of the younger officers at her elbow.
+
+"The _Neptune_ is a few minutes late," he said smiling. "I hope your
+sister has enjoyed her cruise!" He was looking with admiring and
+grateful eyes at the young wife of the Mayor of Falaise, for Claire de
+Wissant and her widowed sister, Madeleine Baudoin, were very kind and
+hospitable to the officers of the submarine flotilla.
+
+The life of both officers and men who volunteer for this branch of the
+service is grim and arduous. And if this is generally true of them all,
+it was specially so of those who served under Commander Dupre. By a
+tacit agreement with their chief, they took no part in the summer
+gaieties of the watering-place which has grown up round the old port of
+Falaise, and out of duty hours they would have led dull lives indeed had
+it not been for the hospitality shown them by the owners of the Pavillon
+de Wissant, and for the welcome which awaited them in the freer, gayer
+atmosphere of Madame Baudoin's villa, the Chalet des Dunes.
+
+Madeleine Baudoin was a lively, cheerful woman, younger in nature if not
+in years than her beautiful sister, and so she was naturally more
+popular with the younger officers. They had felt especially flattered
+when Madame Baudoin had allowed herself to be persuaded to go out for a
+couple of hours in the _Neptune_; till this morning neither of the
+sisters had ever ventured out to sea in a submarine.
+
+And now 'twas true that the _Neptune_ had been out longer than her
+commander had said she would be, but no touch of fear brushed Claire de
+Wissant; she would have trusted what she held most precious in the
+world--her children--to Commander Dupre's care, and a few moments after
+her companion had spoken she suddenly saw the little tricolor, for which
+her keen eyes had for long swept the sea, bravely riding the waves, and
+making straight for the bay.
+
+The flag moving swiftly over the surface of the blue water was a
+curious, almost an uncanny sight; one which never failed to fill Claire
+with a kind of spiritual exaltation. For the tiny strip of waving colour
+was a symbol of the gallantry, of the carelessness of danger, lying
+under the dancing, sun-flecked ripples which alone proved that the
+tricolor was not some illusion of sorcery.
+
+And then, as if the submarine had been indeed a sentient, living thing,
+the _Neptune_ lifted her great shield-like back up out of the sea and
+glided through the narrow neck of the bay, and so close under the long
+deck on which Madame de Wissant and her companion were standing.
+
+The eager, busy hum of work slackened--discipline is not perhaps quite
+so taut in the French as it is in the British Navy--for both men and
+officers were one and all eager to see the lady who had ventured out in
+the _Neptune_ with their commander. Only those actually on board had
+seen Madame Baudoin embark; there was a long, rough jetty close to her
+house, the lonely Chalet des Dunes, and it was from there the submarine
+had picked up her honoured passenger.
+
+But when Commander Dupre's stern, sun-burnt face suddenly appeared above
+the conning tower, the men vanished as if by enchantment, while the
+eager, busy hum began again, much as if a lever, setting this human
+machinery in motion, had been touched by some titanic finger.
+
+The officers naturally held their ground.
+
+There was a look of strain in the Commander's blue eyes, and his mouth
+was set in hard lines; a thoughtful onlooker would have suspected that
+the exciting, dangerous life he led was trying his nerves. His men knew
+better; still, though they had no clue to the cause which had changed
+him, they all knew he had changed greatly of late; to them individually
+he had become kinder, more human, and that heightened their regret that
+he was now quitting the Northern Flotilla.
+
+Commander Dupre had asked to be transferred to the Toulon Submarine
+Station; some experiments were being made there which he was anxious to
+watch. He was leaving Falaise on the morrow.
+
+Claire de Wissant reddened, and a gleam leapt into her eyes as she met
+the naval officer's grave, measuring glance. But very soon he looked
+away from her, for now he was bending down, putting out a hand to help
+his late passenger to step from the conning tower.
+
+Smiling, breathless, a little dishevelled, her grey linen skirt
+crumpled, Madame Baudoin looked round her, dazed for the moment by the
+bright sunlight. Then she called out gaily:
+
+"Well, Claire! Here I am--alive and very, very hot!"
+
+And as she jumped off the slippery flank of the _Neptune_, she gave
+herself and her crumpled gown a little shake, and made a slight, playful
+grimace.
+
+The bright young faces round her broke into broad grins--those officers
+who volunteer for the submarine services of the world are chosen young,
+and they are merry boys.
+
+"You may well laugh, messieurs,"--she threw them all a lively
+challenging glance--"when I tell you that to-day, for the first time in
+my life, I acknowledge masculine supremacy! I think that you will admit
+that we women are not afraid of pain, but the discomfort, the--the
+stuffiness? Ah, no--I could not have borne much longer the horrible
+discomfort and stuffiness of that dreadful little _Neptune_ of yours!"
+
+Protesting voices rose on every side. The _Neptune_ was not
+uncomfortable! The _Neptune_ was not stuffy!
+
+"And I understand"--again she made a little grimace--"that it is quite
+an exceptional thing for the crew to be consoled, as I was to-day, by
+an ice-pail!"
+
+"A most exceptional thing," said the youngest lieutenant, with a sigh.
+His name was Paritot, and he also had been out with the _Neptune_ that
+morning. "In fact, it only happens in that week which sees four
+Thursdays--or when we have a lady on board, madame!"
+
+"What a pity it is," said another, "that the old woman who left a legacy
+to the inventor who devises a submarine life-saving apparatus didn't
+leave us instead a cream-ice allowance! It would have been a far more
+practical thing to do."
+
+Madame Baudoin turned quickly to Commander Dupre, who now stood silent,
+smileless, at her sister's side.
+
+"Surely you're going to try for this extraordinary prize?" she cried.
+"I'm sure that you could easily devise something which would gain the
+old lady's legacy."
+
+"I, madame?" he answered with a start, almost as if he were wrenching
+himself free from some deep abstraction. "I should not think of trying
+to do such a thing! It would be a mere waste of time. Besides, there is
+no real risk--no risk that we are not prepared to run." He looked
+proudly round at the eager, laughing faces of the youngsters who were,
+till to-morrow night, still under his orders.
+
+"The old lady meant very well," he went on, and for the first time since
+he had stepped out of the conning tower Commander Dupre smiled. "And I
+hope with all my heart that some poor devil will get her money! But I
+think I may promise you that it will not be an officer in the submarine
+service. We are too busy, we have too many really important things to
+do, to worry ourselves about life-saving appliances. Why, the first
+thing we should do if pressed for room would be to throw our
+life-helmets overboard!"
+
+"Has one of the life-helmets ever saved a life?"
+
+It was Claire who asked the question in her low, vibrating voice.
+
+Commander Dupre turned to her, and he flushed under his sunburn. It was
+the first time she had spoken to him that day.
+
+"No, never," he answered shortly. And then, after a pause, he added,
+"the conditions in which these life-helmets could be utilized only occur
+in one accident in a thousand----"
+
+"Still, they would have saved our comrades in the _Lutin_," objected
+Lieutenant Paritot.
+
+The _Lutin_? There was a moment's silence. The evocation of that
+tricksy sprite, the Ariel of French mythology, whose name, by an
+ironical chance, had been borne by the most ill-fated of all submarine
+craft, seemed to bring the shadow of death athwart them all.
+
+Madeleine Baudoin felt a sudden tremor of retrospective fear. She was
+glad she had not remembered the _Lutin_ when she was sitting, eating
+ices, and exchanging frivolous, chaffing talk with Lieutenant Paritot in
+that chamber of little ease, the drum-like interior of the _Neptune_,
+where not even she, a small woman, could stand upright.
+
+"Well, well! We must not keep you from your _dejeuner_!" she cried,
+shaking off the queer, disturbing sensation. "I have to thank you
+for--shall I say a very interesting experience? I am too honest to say
+an agreeable one!"
+
+She shook hands with Commander Dupre and Lieutenant Paritot, the
+officers who had accompanied her on what had been, now that she looked
+back on it, perhaps a more perilous adventure than she had realized.
+
+"You're coming with me, Claire?" She looked at her sister--it was a
+tender, anxious, loving look; Madeleine Baudoin had been the eldest, and
+Claire de Wissant the youngest, of a Breton admiral's family of three
+daughters and four sons; they two were devoted to one another.
+
+Claire shook her head. "I came to tell you that I can't lunch with you
+to-day," she said slowly. "I promised I would be back by half-past
+twelve."
+
+"Then we shall not meet till to-morrow?"
+
+Claire repeated mechanically, "No, not till to-morrow, dear Madeleine."
+
+"May I row you home, madame?" Lieutenant Paritot asked Madeleine
+eagerly.
+
+"Certainly, _mon ami_."
+
+And so, a very few minutes later, Claire de Wissant and Commander Dupre
+were left alone together--alone, that is, save for fifty inquisitive, if
+kindly, pairs of eyes which saw them from every part of the bay.
+
+At last she held out her hand. "Good-bye, then, till to-morrow," she
+said, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
+
+"No, not good-bye yet!" he cried imperiously. "You must let me take you
+up the cliff to-day. It may be--I suppose it is--the last time I shall
+be able to do so."
+
+Hardly waiting for her murmured word of assent, he led the way up the
+steep, ladder-like stairway cut in the cliff side; half-way up there
+were some very long steps, and it was from above that help could best be
+given. He longed with a fierce, aching longing that she would allow him
+to take her two hands in his and draw her up those high, precipitous
+steps. But of late Claire had avoided accepting from him, her friend,
+this simple, trifling act of courtesy. And now twice he turned and held
+out a hand, and twice she pretended not to see it.
+
+At last, within ten feet of the top of the cliff, they came to the
+steepest, rudest step of all--a place some might have thought very
+dangerous.
+
+Commander Dupre bent down and looked into Claire's uplifted face. "Let
+me at least help you up here," he said hoarsely.
+
+She shook her head obstinately--but suddenly he felt her tremulous lips
+touch his lean, sinewy hand, and her hot tears fall upon his fingers.
+
+He gave a strangled cry of pain and of pride, of agony and of rapture,
+and for a long moment he battled with an awful temptation. How easy it
+would be to gather her into his arms, and, with her face hidden on his
+breast, take a great leap backwards into nothingness....
+
+But he conquered the persuasive devil who had been raised--women do not
+know how easy it is to rouse this devil--by Claire's moment of piteous
+self-revelation.
+
+And at last they stood together on the narrow platform where she, less
+than an hour ago, had stood alone.
+
+Sheltered by the friendly, ugly red walls of the little tower, they were
+as remote from their kind as if on a rock in the midst of the sea. More,
+she was in his power in a sense she had never been before, for she had
+herself broken down the fragile barrier with which she had hitherto
+known how to keep him at bay. But he felt rather than saw that it was
+herself she would despise if now, at the eleventh hour, he took
+advantage of that tremulous kiss of renunciation, of those hot tears of
+anguished parting--and so--"Then at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"
+he said, and he felt as if it was some other man, not he himself, who
+was saying the words. He took her hand in farewell--so much he could
+allow himself--and all unknowing crushed her fingers in his strong,
+convulsive grasp.
+
+"Yes," she said, "at eleven to-morrow morning Madeleine and I will be
+waiting out on the end of the jetty."
+
+He thought he detected a certain hesitancy in her voice.
+
+"Are you sure you still wish to come?" he said gravely. "I would not
+wish you to do anything that would cause you any fear--or any
+discomfort. Your sister evidently found it a very trying experience
+to-day----"
+
+Claire smiled. Her hand no longer hurt her; her fingers had become quite
+numb.
+
+"Afraid?" she said, and there was a little scorn in her voice. And then,
+"Ah me! I only wish that there were far more risk than there is about
+that which we are going to do together to-morrow." She was in a
+dangerous mood, poor soul--the mood that raises a devil in men. But
+perhaps her good angel came to help her, for suddenly, "Forgive me," she
+said humbly. "You know I did not mean that! Only cowards wish for
+death."
+
+And then, looking at him, she averted her eyes, for they showed her
+that, if that were so, Dupre was indeed a craven.
+
+"_Au revoir_," she whispered; "_au revoir_ till to-morrow morning."
+
+When half-way through the door, leading on to the lonely stretch of
+down, she turned round suddenly. "I do not want you to bring any ices
+for me to-morrow."
+
+"I never thought of doing so," he said simply. And the words pleased
+Claire as much as anything just then could pleasure her, for they proved
+that her friend did not class her in his mind with those women who fear
+discomfort more than danger.
+
+It had been her own wish to go out with Commander Dupre for his last
+cruise in northern waters. She had not had the courage to deny herself
+this final glimpse of him--they were never to meet again after
+to-morrow--in his daily habit as he lived.
+
+
+II
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning Jacques de Wissant stood in his wife's
+boudoir.
+
+It was a strange and beautiful room, likely to linger in the memory of
+those who knew its strange and beautiful mistress.
+
+The walls were draped with old Persian shawls, the furniture was of red
+Chinese lacquer, a set acquired in the East by some Norman sailing man
+unnumbered years ago, and bought by Claire de Wissant out of her own
+slender income not long after her marriage.
+
+Pale blue and faded yellow silk cushions softened the formal angularity
+of the wide cane-seated couch and low, square chairs. There was a deep
+crystal bowl of midsummer flowering roses on the table, laden with
+books, by which Claire often sat long hours reading poetry and volumes
+written by modern poets and authors of whom her husband had only
+vaguely heard and of whom he definitely disapproved.
+
+The window was wide open, and there floated in from the garden, which
+sloped away to the edge and indeed over the crumbling cliff, fragrant,
+salt-laden odours, dominated by the clean, sharp scent thrown from huge
+shrubs of red and white geraniums. The balls of blossom set against the
+belt of blue sea, formed a band of waving tricolor.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant was unconscious, uncaring of the beauty round
+him, either in the room or without, and when at last he walked forward
+to the window, his face hardened as his eyes instinctively sought out
+the spot where, if hidden from his sight, he knew there lay the deep
+transparent waters of the little bay which had been selected as
+providing ideal quarters for the submarine flotilla.
+
+He had eagerly assented to the sacrifice of his land, and, what meant
+far more to him, of his privacy; but now he would have given much--and
+he was a careful man--to have had the submarine station swept away,
+transferred to the other side of Falaise.
+
+Down there, out of sight of the Pavillon, and yet but a few minutes away
+(if one used the dangerous cliff-stairway), dwelt Jacques de Wissant's
+secret foe, for the man of whom he was acutely, miserably jealous was
+Commander Dupre, of whose coming departure he as yet knew nothing.
+
+The owner of the Pavillon de Wissant seldom entered the room where he
+now stood impatiently waiting for his wife, and he never did so without
+looking round him with distaste, and remembering with an odd, wistful
+feeling what it had been like in his mother's time. Then "le boudoir de
+madame" had reflected the tastes and simple interests of an
+old-fashioned provincial lady born in the year that Louis Philippe came
+to the throne. Greatly did the man now standing there prefer the room as
+it had been to what it was now!
+
+The heavy, ugly furniture which had been there in the days of his lonely
+youth, for he had been an only child, was now in the schoolroom where
+the twin daughters of the house, Clairette and Jacqueline, did their
+lessons with Miss Doughty, their English governess.
+
+Clairette and Jacqueline? Jacques de Wissant's lantern-jawed,
+expressionless face quickened into feeling as he thought of his two
+little girls. They were the pride, as well as the only vivid pleasure,
+of his life. All that he dispassionately admired in his wife was, so he
+sometimes told himself with satisfaction, repeated in his daughters.
+Clairette and Jacqueline had inherited their mother's look of race, her
+fastidiousness and refinement of bearing, while fortunately lacking
+Claire's dangerous personal beauty, her touch of eccentricity, and her
+discontent with life--or rather with the life which Jacques de Wissant,
+in spite of a gnawing ache and longing that nothing could still or
+assuage, yet found good.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise looked strangely out of keeping with his present
+surroundings, at least so he would have seemed to the eye of any
+foreigner, especially of any Englishman, who had seen him standing
+there.
+
+He was a narrowly built man, forty-three years of age, and his
+clean-shaven, rather fleshy face was very pale. On this hot August
+morning he was dressed in a light grey frock-coat, under which he wore a
+yellow waistcoat, and on his wife's writing-table lay his tall hat and
+lemon-coloured gloves.
+
+As mayor of his native town--a position he owed to an historic name and
+to his wealth, and not to his very moderate Republican opinions--his
+duties included the celebration of civil marriages, and to-day, it being
+the 14th of August, the eve of the Assumption, and still a French
+national fete, there were to be a great many weddings celebrated in the
+Hotel de Ville.
+
+Jacques de Wissant considered that he owed it to himself, as well as to
+his fellow-citizens, to appear "correctly" attired on such occasions. He
+had a deep, wordless contempt for those of his acquaintances who dressed
+on ceremonial occasions "a l'anglaise," that is, in loose lounge suits
+and straw hats.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Suddenly there broke on his ear the sound of a low, full voice, singing.
+It came from the next room, his wife's bedroom, and the mournful
+passionate words of an old sea ballad rang out, full of a desolate pain
+and sense of bitter loss.
+
+The sound irritated him shrewdly, and there came back to him a fragment
+of conversation he had not thought of for ten years. During a discussion
+held between his father and mother in this very room about their adored
+only son's proposed marriage with Claire de Kergouet, his father had
+said: "There is one thing I do not much care for; she is, they say, very
+musical, and Jacques, even as a baby, howled like a dog whenever he
+heard singing!" And his mother had laughed, "_Mon ami_, you cannot
+expect to get perfection, even for our Jacques!" And Claire, so he now
+admitted unwillingly to himself, had never troubled him overmuch with
+her love of music....
+
+He knocked twice, sharply, on his wife's door.
+
+The song broke short with an almost cruel suddenness, and yet there
+followed a perceptible pause before he heard her say, "Come in."
+
+And then, as Jacques de Wissant slowly turned the handle of the door, he
+saw his wife, Claire, before she saw him. He had a vision, that is, of
+her as she appeared when she believed herself to be, if not alone, then
+in sight of eyes that were indifferent, unwatchful. But Jacques' eyes,
+which his wife's widowed sister, the frivolous Parisienne, Madeleine
+Baudoin, had once unkindly compared to fishes' eyes, were now filled
+with a watchful, suspicious light which gave a tragic mask to his
+pallid, plain-featured face.
+
+Claire de Wissant was standing before a long, narrow mirror placed at
+right angles to a window looking straight out to sea. Her short, narrow,
+dark blue skirt and long blue silk jersey silhouetted her slender
+figure, the figure which remained so supple, so--so girlish, in spite of
+her nine-year-old daughters. There was something shy and wild, untamed
+and yet beckoning, in the oval face now drawn with pain and
+sleeplessness, in the grey, almond-shaped eyes reddened with secret
+tears, and in the firm, delicately modelled mouth.
+
+She was engaged in tucking up her dark, curling hair under a grey
+yachting cap, and, for a few moments, she neither spoke nor looked round
+to see who was standing framed in the door. But when, at last, she
+turned away from the mirror and saw her husband, the colour, rushing
+into her pale face, caused an unbecoming flush to cover it.
+
+"I thought it was one of the children," she said, a little breathlessly.
+And then she waited, assuming, or so Jacques thought, an air at once of
+patience and of surprise which sharply angered him.
+
+Then her look of strain, nay, of positive illness, gave him an uneasy
+twinge of discomfort. Could it be anxiety concerning her second sister,
+Marie-Anne, who, married to an Italian officer, was now ill of scarlet
+fever at Mantua? Two days ago Claire had begged very earnestly to be
+allowed to go and nurse Marie-Anne. But he, Jacques, had refused, not
+unkindly, but quite firmly. Claire's duty of course lay at Falaise, with
+her husband and children; not at Mantua, with her sister.
+
+Suddenly she again broke silence. "Well?" she said. "Is there anything
+you wish to tell me?" They had never used the familiar "thee" and "thou"
+the one to the other, for at the time of their marriage an absurd whim
+of fashion had ordained on the part of French wives and husbands a
+return to eighteenth-century formality, and Claire had chosen, in that
+one instance, to follow fashion.
+
+She added, seeing that he still did not speak, "I am lunching with my
+sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the
+chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to
+be on the defensive when speaking to her husband.
+
+Jacques de Wissant frowned. He did not like either of his wife's
+sisters, neither the one who was now lying ill in Italy, nor his widowed
+sister-in-law, Madeleine Baudoin. In the villa which she had hired for
+the summer, and which stood on a lonely stretch of beach beyond the bay,
+Madeleine often entertained the officers of the submarine flotilla, and
+this, from her brother-in-law's point of view, was very far from
+"correct" conduct on the part of one who could still pass as a young
+widow.
+
+In response to his frown there had come a slight, mocking smile on
+Claire's face.
+
+"I suppose you are on your way to some important town function?"
+
+She disliked the town of Falaise, the town-folk bored her, and she hated
+the vast old family house in the Market Place, where she had to spend
+each winter.
+
+"To-day is the fourteenth of August," observed Jacques de Wissant in his
+deliberate voice; "and I have a great many marriages to celebrate this
+morning."
+
+"Yes, I suppose that is so." And again Claire de Wissant spoke with the
+courteous indifference, the lack of interest in her husband's concerns,
+which she had early schooled him to endure.
+
+But all at once there came a change in her voice, in her manner. "Why
+to-day--the fourteenth of August--is our wedding day! How stupid of me
+to forget! We must tell Jacqueline and Clairette. It will amuse
+them----"
+
+She uttered the words a little breathlessly, and as she spoke, Jacques
+de Wissant walked quickly forward into the room. As he did so his wife
+moved abruptly away from where she had been standing, thus maintaining
+the distance between them.
+
+But Claire de Wissant need not have been afraid; her husband had his own
+strict code of manners, and to this code he ever remained faithful. He
+possessed a remarkable mastery of his emotions, and he had always showed
+with regard to herself so singular a power of self-restraint that
+Claire, not unreasonably, doubted if he had any emotions to master, any
+passionate feeling to restrain.
+
+All he now did was to take a shagreen case out of his breast pocket and
+hold it out towards her.
+
+"Claire," he said quietly, "I have brought you, in memory of our wedding
+day, a little gift which I hope you will like. It is a medallion of the
+children." And as she at last advanced towards him, he pressed a spring,
+and revealed a dull gold medal on which, modelled in high relief, and
+superposed the one on the other, were Clairette's and Jacqueline's
+childish, delicately pure profiles.
+
+A softer, kindlier light came into Claire de Wissant's sad grey eyes.
+She held out a hesitating hand--and Jacques de Wissant, before placing
+his gift in it, took that soft hand in his, and, bending rather
+awkwardly, kissed it lightly. In France, even now, a man will often kiss
+a woman's hand by way of conventional, respectful homage. But to Claire
+the touch of her husband's lips was hateful--so hateful indeed that she
+had to make an instant effort to hide the feeling of physical repulsion
+with which that touch had suddenly engulfed her in certain dark recesses
+of memory and revolt.
+
+"It is a charming medallion," she said hurriedly, "quite a work of art,
+Jacques; and I thank you for having thought of it. It gives me
+great--very great pleasure."
+
+And then something happened which was to her so utterly unexpected that
+she gave a stifled cry of pain--almost it seemed of fear.
+
+As she forced herself to look straight into her husband's face, the
+anguish in her own sore heart unlocked the key to his, and she perceived
+with the eyes of the soul, which see, when they are not holden, so much
+that is concealed from the eyes of the body, the suffering, the dumb
+longing she had never allowed herself to know were there.
+
+For the first time since her marriage--since that wedding day of which
+this was the tenth anniversary--Claire felt pity for Jacques as well as
+for herself. For the first time her rebellious heart acknowledged that
+her husband also was enmeshed in a web of tragic circumstance.
+
+"Jacques?" she cried. "Oh, Jacques!" And as she so uttered his name
+twice, there came a look of acute distress and then of sudden resolution
+on her face. "I wish you to know," she exclaimed, "that--that--if I
+were a wicked woman I should perhaps be to you a better wife!" Thanks to
+the language in which she spoke, there was a play on the word--that word
+which in French signifies woman as well as wife.
+
+He stared at her, and uttered no word of answer, of understanding, in
+response to her strange speech.
+
+At one time, not lately, but many years ago, Claire had sometimes tried
+his patience by the odd, unreasonable things she said, and once, stung
+beyond bearing, he had told her so. Remembering those cold, measured
+words of rebuke, she now caught with quick, exultant relief at the idea
+that Jacques had not understood the half-confession wrung from her by
+her sudden vision of his pain; and she swung back to a belief she had
+always held till just now, the belief that he was dull--dull and
+unperceptive.
+
+With a nervous smile she turned again to her mirror, and then Jacques de
+Wissant, with his wife's enigmatic words ringing in his ears, abruptly
+left the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As if pursued by some baneful presence, he hastened through Claire's
+beautiful boudoir, across the dining-room hung with the Gobelins
+tapestries which his wife had brought him as part of her slender dower,
+and so into the oval hall which formed the centre of the house.
+
+And there Jacques de Wissant waited for a while, trying to still and to
+co-ordinate his troubled thoughts and impressions.
+
+Ah yes, he had understood--understood only too well Claire's strange,
+ambiguous utterance! There are subtle, unbreathed temptations which all
+men and all women, when tortured by jealousy, not only understand but
+divine before they are actually in being.
+
+Jacques de Wissant now believed that he was justified of the suspicions
+of which he had been ashamed. His wife--moved by some obscure desire for
+self-revelation to which he had had no clue--had flung at him the truth.
+
+Yes, without doubt Claire could have made him happy--so little would
+have contented his hunger for her--had she been one of those light women
+of whom he sometimes heard, who go from their husbands' kisses to those
+of their lovers.
+
+But if he sometimes, nay, often heard of them, Jacques de Wissant knew
+nothing of such women. The men of his race had known how to acquire
+honest wives, aye, and keep them so. There had never been in the de
+Wissant family any of those ugly scandals which stain other clans, and
+which are remembered over generations in French provincial towns. Those
+scandals which, if they provoke a laugh and cruel sneer when discussed
+by the indifferent, are recalled with long faces and anxious whisperings
+when a young girl's future is being discussed, and which make the
+honourable marriage of daughters difficult of achievement.
+
+Jacques de Wissant thanked the God of his fathers that Claire had
+nothing in common with such women as those: he thought he did not need
+her assurance to know that his honour, in the usual, narrow sense of the
+phrase, was safe in her hands, but still her strange, imprudent words of
+half-avowal racked him with jealous and, yes, suspicious pain.
+
+Fortunately for him, he was a man burdened with much business, and so at
+last he looked at his watch. Why, it was getting late--terribly late,
+and he prided himself on his punctuality. Still, if he started now, at
+once, he would be at the Hotel de Ville a few minutes before ten
+o'clock, the time when the first of the civil marriages he had to
+celebrate that morning was timed to take place.
+
+Without passing through the house, he made his way rapidly round by the
+gardens to the road, winding ribbon-wise behind the cliffs, where his
+phaeton was waiting for him; for Jacques de Wissant had as yet resisted
+the wish of his wife and the advice of those of his friends who
+considered that he ought to purchase an automobile: driving had been
+from boyhood one of his few pleasures and accomplishments.
+
+But as he drove, keeping his fine black bays well in hand, the five
+miles into the town, and tried to fix his mind on a commercial problem
+of great importance with which he would be expected to deal that day,
+Jacques de Wissant found it impossible to think of any matter but that
+which for the moment filled his heart to the exclusion of all else. That
+matter concerned his own relations to his wife, and his wife's relations
+to Commander Dupre.
+
+This gentleman of France was typical in more than one sense of his
+nation and of his class--quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture
+which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in
+manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his
+name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country;
+obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is
+never questioned by those about them, Jacques de Wissant's fetish was
+his personal honour and the honour of his name--of the name of Wissant.
+
+In his distress and disturbance of mind--for his wife's half confession
+had outraged his sense of what was decorous and fitting--his memory
+travelled over the map of his past life, aye, and even beyond the
+boundaries of his own life.
+
+Before him lay spread retrospectively the story of his parents'
+uneventful, happy marriage. They had been mated in the good old French
+way, that is, up to their wedding morning they had never met save in the
+presence of their respective parents. And yet--and yet how devoted they
+had been to each other! So completely one in thought, in interest, in
+sympathy had they grown that when, after thirty-three years of married
+life, his father had died, Jacques' mother had not known how to go on
+living. She had slipped out of life a few months later, and as she lay
+dying she had used a very curious expression: "My faithful companion is
+calling me," she had said to her only child, "and you must not try, dear
+son, to make me linger on the way."
+
+Now, to-day, Jacques de Wissant asked himself with perplexed pain and
+anger, why it was that his parents had led so peaceful, so dignified, so
+wholly contented a married life, while he himself----?
+
+And yet his own marriage had been a love match--or so those about him
+had all said with nods and smiles--love marriages having suddenly become
+the fashion in the rich provincial world of which he had then been one
+of the heirs-apparent.
+
+His old-fashioned mother would have preferred as daughter-in-law any one
+of half a dozen girls who belonged to her own good town of Falaise, and
+whom she had known from childhood. But Jacques had been difficult to
+please, and he was already thirty-two when he had met, by a mere chance,
+Claire de Kergouet at her first ball. She was only seventeen, with but
+the promise of a beauty which was now in exquisite flower, and he had
+decided, there and then, in the course of two hours, that this
+demoiselle de Kergouet was alone worthy of becoming Madame Jacques de
+Wissant.
+
+And on the whole his prudent parents had blessed his choice, for the
+girl was of the best Breton stock, and came of a family famed in the
+naval annals of France. Unluckily Claire de Kergouet had had no dowry to
+speak of, for her father, the Admiral, had been a spendthrift, and, as
+is still the reckless Breton fashion, father of a large family--three
+daughters and four sons. But Jacques de Wissant had not allowed his
+parents to give the matter of Claire's fortune more than a regretful
+thought--indeed, he had done further, he had "recognized" a larger dowry
+than she brought him to save the pride of her family.
+
+But Claire--he could not help thinking of it to-day with a sense of
+bitter injury--had never seemed grateful, had never seemed to understand
+all that had been done for her....
+
+Had he not poured splendid gifts upon her in the beginning of their
+married life? And, what had been far more difficult, had he not, within
+reason, contented all her strange whims and fantasies?
+
+But nought had availed him to secure even a semblance of that steadfast,
+warm affection, that sincere interest and pride in his concerns which is
+all such a Frenchman as was Jacques de Wissant expects, or indeed
+desires, of his wedded wife. Had Claire been such a woman, Jacques' own
+passion for her would soon have dulled into a reasonable, comfortable
+affection. But his wife's cool aloofness had kept alive the hidden
+fires, the more--so ironic are the tricks which sly Dame Nature
+plays--that for many years past he had troubled her but very little with
+his company.
+
+Outwardly Claire de Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and
+relations on such occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing
+herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed
+the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly?
+Inwardly they two were strangers.
+
+And yet only during the last few months had Jacques de Wissant ever felt
+jealous of his wife. There had been times when he had been angered by
+the way in which her young beauty, her indefinable, mysterious charm,
+had attracted the very few men with whom she was brought into contact.
+But Claire, so her husband had always acknowledged to himself, was no
+flirt; she was ever perfectly "correct."
+
+Correct was a word dear to Jacques de Wissant. It was one which he used
+as a synonym for great things--things such as honour, fineness of
+conduct, loyalty.
+
+But fate had suddenly introduced a stranger into the dull, decorous life
+of the Pavillon de Wissant, and it was he, Jacques himself, who had
+brought him there.
+
+How bitter it was to look back and remember how much he had liked--liked
+because he had respected--Commander Dupre! He now hated and feared the
+naval officer, and he would have given much to have been able to despise
+him. But that Jacques de Wissant could not do. Commander Dupre was still
+all that he had taken him to be when he first made him free of his
+house--a brilliant officer, devoted to his profession, already noted in
+the Service as having made several important improvements in submarine
+craft.
+
+From the first it had seemed peculiar, to Jacques de Wissant's mind
+unnatural, that such a man as was Dupre should be so keenly interested
+in music and in modern literature. But so it was, and it had been owing
+to these strange, untoward tastes that Commander Dupre and Claire had
+become friends.
+
+He now reminded himself, for the hundredth time, that he had begun by
+actually approving of the acquaintance between his wife and the naval
+officer--an acquaintance which he had naturally supposed would be of the
+most "correct" nature.
+
+Then, without warning, there came an hour--nay, a moment, when in that
+twilight hour which the French call "'Twixt dog and wolf," the most
+torturing and shameful of human passions, jealousy, had taken possession
+of Jacques de Wissant, disintegrating, rather than shattering, the
+elaborate fabric of his House of Life, that house in which he had always
+dwelt so snugly and unquestioningly ensconced.
+
+He had come home after a long afternoon spent at the Hotel de Ville to
+learn with tepid pleasure that there was a visitor, Commander Dupre, in
+the house, and as he had come hurrying towards his wife's boudoir,
+Jacques had heard Claire's low, deep voice and the other's ardent, eager
+tones mingling together....
+
+And then as he, the husband, had opened the door, they had stopped
+speaking, their words clipped as if a sword had fallen between them. At
+the same moment a servant had brought a lamp into the twilit room, and
+Jacques had seen the ravaged face of Commander Dupre, a fair, tanned
+face full of revolt and of longing leashed. Claire had remained in
+shadow, but her eyes, or so the interloper thought he perceived, were
+full of tears.
+
+Since that spring evening the Mayor of Falaise had not had an easy
+moment. While scorning to act the spy upon his wife, he was for ever
+watching her, and keeping an eager and yet scarcely conscious count of
+her movements.
+
+True, Commander Dupre had soon ceased to trouble the owner of the
+Pavillon de Wissant by his presence. The younger officers came and went,
+but since that hour, laden with unspoken drama, their commander only
+came when good breeding required him to pay a formal call on his nearest
+neighbour and sometime host. But Claire saw Dupre constantly at the
+Chalet des Dunes, her sister's house, and she was both too proud and too
+indifferent, it appeared, to her husband's view of what a young married
+woman's conduct should be, to conceal the fact.
+
+This openness on his wife's part was at once Jacques' consolation and
+opportunity for endless self-torture.
+
+For three long miserable months he had wrestled with those ignoble
+questionings only the jealous know, now accepting as probable, now
+rejecting with angry self-rebuke, the thought that his wife suffered,
+perhaps even returned, Dupre's love. And to-day, instead of finding his
+jealousy allayed by her half-confidence, he felt more wretched than he
+had ever been.
+
+His horses responded to his mood, and going down the steep hill which
+leads into the town of Falaise they shied violently at a heap of stones
+they had passed sedately a dozen times or more. Jacques de Wissant
+struck them several cruel blows with the whip he scarcely ever used, and
+the groom, looking furtively at his master's set face and blazing eyes,
+felt suddenly afraid.
+
+
+III
+
+It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
+out of the great _salle_ of the Falaise town hall and so to the
+Cathedral across the market place.
+
+Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
+badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
+characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
+the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
+high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
+intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
+picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
+holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
+to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
+everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
+nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
+felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
+had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
+few moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
+market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
+house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
+fads--for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion--were known.
+
+He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves--and then a look
+of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
+door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.
+
+He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
+he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
+reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
+business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.
+
+But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
+his way out to _dejeuner_; it was the chief of the employes in the
+telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
+young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.
+
+"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
+stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
+The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
+news, especially of ill news.
+
+M. de Wissant shook his head.
+
+"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible
+accident! One of the submarines--they don't yet know which it is--has
+been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the
+Channel, about two miles out!"
+
+The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When
+did it happen?" he asked quickly.
+
+"About half an hour ago more or less. _I_ said that m'sieur le maire
+ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait
+till the marriages were over."
+
+Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that
+he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously
+displeased.
+
+There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of
+Falaise--there often is in a naval port--and the mayor ought certainly
+to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.
+
+The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for
+the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher
+grade--that advancement which is the perpetual dream of every French
+Government official.
+
+"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not
+five minutes ago----"
+
+But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the
+increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The
+sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the
+tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole
+population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying
+itself out and hurrying towards the harbour and the shore.
+
+Shaking off the bearer of ill news with a curt word of thanks, the Mayor
+of Falaise strode out of the town hall into the street and joined the
+eager crowd, mostly consisting of fisher folk, which grew denser as it
+swept down the tortuous narrow streets leading to the sea.
+
+The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their
+mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de
+Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a
+child.
+
+Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held
+high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face. The men who
+manned the Northern Submarine Flotilla were almost all men born and bred
+at Falaise--Falaise famed for the gallant sailors she has ever given to
+France.
+
+The hurrying crowd--strangely silent in its haste--poured out on to the
+great stone-paved quays in which is set the harbour so finely encircled
+on two sides by the cliffs which give the town its name.
+
+Beyond the harbour--crowded with shipping, and now alive with eager
+little craft and fishing-boats making ready to start for the scene of
+the calamity--lay a vast expanse of glistening sea, and on that
+sun-flecked blue pall every eye was fixed.
+
+The end of the harbour jetty was already roped off, only those
+officially privileged being allowed through to the platform where now
+stood Admiral de Saint Vilquier impatiently waiting for the tug which
+was to take him out to the spot where the disaster had taken place. The
+Admiral was a naval officer of the old school--of the school who called
+their men "my children"--and who detested the Republican form of
+government as being subversive of discipline.
+
+As Jacques de Wissant hurried up to him, he turned and stiffly saluted
+the Mayor of Falaise. Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de
+Wissant--a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful,
+such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's
+oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouet with whom he had first gone
+to sea a matter of fifty years ago! The lovely Claire de Kergouet had
+been worthy of a better fate than to be wife to this plain, cold-blooded
+landsman.
+
+"Do they yet know, Admiral, which of the submarines has gone down?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant in a low tone. He was full of a burning
+curiosity edged with a longing and a suspense into whose secret sources
+he had no wish to thrust a probe.
+
+The Admiral's weather-beaten face was a shade less red than usual; the
+bright blue eyes he turned on the younger man were veiled with a film of
+moisture. "Yes, the news has just come in, but it isn't to be made
+public for awhile. It's the submarine _Neptune_ which was struck, with
+Commander Dupre, Lieutenant Paritot, and ten men on board. The craft is
+lying eighteen fathoms deep----"
+
+Jacques de Wissant uttered an inarticulate cry--was it of horror or only
+of surprise? And yet, gifted for that once and that once only with a
+kind of second sight, he had known that it was the _Neptune_ and
+Commander Dupre which lay eighteen fathoms deep on the floor of the sea.
+
+The old seaman, moved by the mayor's emotion, relaxed into a
+confidential undertone. "Poor Dupre! I had forgotten that you knew him.
+He is indeed pursued by a malignant fate. As of course you are aware, he
+applied a short time ago to be transferred to Toulon, and his
+appointment is in to-day's _Gazette_. In fact he was actually leaving
+Falaise this very evening in order to spend a week with his family
+before taking up his new command!"
+
+The Mayor of Falaise stared at the Admiral. "Dupre going away?--leaving
+Falaise?" he repeated incredulously.
+
+The other nodded.
+
+Jacques de Wissant drew a long, deep breath. God! How mistaken he had
+been! Mistaken as no man, no husband, had ever been mistaken before. He
+felt overwhelmed, shaken with conflicting emotions in which shame and
+intense relief predominated.
+
+The fact that Commander Dupre had applied for promotion was to his mind
+absolute proof that there had been nothing--nothing and less than
+nothing--between the naval officer and Claire. The Admiral's words now
+made it clear that he, Jacques de Wissant, had built up a huge
+superstructure of jealousy and base thoughts on the fact that poor Dupre
+and Claire had innocently enjoyed certain tastes in common. True, such
+friendships--friendships between unmarried men and attractive young
+married women--are generally speaking to be deprecated. Still, Claire
+had always been "correct;" of that there could now be no doubt.
+
+As he stood there on the pier, staring out, as all those about him and
+behind him were doing, at the expanse of dark blue sun-flecked sea,
+there came over Jacques de Wissant a great lightening of the spirit....
+
+But all too soon his mind, his memory, swung back to the tragic business
+of the moment.
+
+Suddenly the Admiral burst into speech, addressing himself, rather than
+the silent man by his side.
+
+"The devil of it is," he exclaimed, "that the nearest salvage appliances
+are at Cherbourg! Thank God, the Ministry of Marine are alone
+responsible for that blunder. Dupre and his comrades have, it seems,
+thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen--if, indeed, they are still living,
+which I feel tempted to hope they are not. You see, Monsieur de Wissant,
+I was at Bizerta when the _Lutin_ sank. A man doesn't want to remember
+two such incidents in his career. One is quite bad enough!"
+
+"I suppose it isn't yet known how far the _Neptune_ is injured?"
+inquired the Mayor of Falaise.
+
+But he spoke mechanically; he was not really thinking of what he was
+saying. His inner and real self were still steeped in that strange
+mingled feeling of shame and relief--shame that he should have suspected
+his wife, exultant relief that his jealousy should have been so entirely
+unfounded.
+
+"No, as usual no one knows exactly what did happen. But we shall learn
+something of that presently. The divers are on their way. But--but even
+if the craft did sustain no injury, what can they do? Ants might as well
+attempt to pierce a cannon-ball"--he shrugged his shoulders, oppressed
+by the vision his homely simile had conjured up.
+
+And then--for no particular reason, save that his wife Claire was very
+present to him--Jacques de Wissant bethought himself that it was most
+unlikely that any tidings of the accident could yet have reached the
+Chalet des Dunes, the lonely villa on the shore where Claire was now
+lunching with her sister. But at any moment some casual visitor from the
+town might come out there with the sad news. He told himself uneasily
+that it would be well, if possible, to save his wife from such a shock.
+After all, Claire and that excellent Commander Dupre had been good
+friends--so much must be admitted, nay, now he was eager to admit it.
+
+Jacques de Wissant touched the older man on the arm.
+
+"I should be most grateful, Admiral, for the loan of your motor-car. I
+have just remembered that I ought to go home for an hour. This terrible
+affair made me forget it; but I shall not be long--indeed, I must soon
+be back, for there will be all sorts of arrangements to be made at the
+town hall. Of course we shall be besieged with inquiries, with messages
+from Paris, with telegrams----"
+
+"My car, monsieur, is entirely at your disposal."
+
+The Admiral could not help feeling, even at so sad and solemn a moment
+as this, a little satirical amusement. Arrangements at the town hall,
+forsooth! If the end of the world were in sight, the claims of the
+municipality of Falaise would not be neglected or forgotten; in as far
+as Jacques de Wissant could arrange it, everything in such a case would
+be ready at the town hall, if not on the quarter-deck, for the Great
+Assize!
+
+What had a naval disaster to do with the Mayor of Falaise, after all?
+But in this matter the old Admiral allowed prejudice to get the better
+of him; the men now immured in the submarine were, with two
+exceptions--their commander and his junior officer--all citizens of the
+town. It was their mothers, wives, children, sweethearts, who were now
+pressing with wild, agonized faces against the barriers drawn across the
+end of the pier....
+
+As Jacques de Wissant made his way through the crowd, his grey
+frock-coat was pulled by many a horny hand, and imploring faces gazed
+with piteous questioning into his. But he could give them no comfort.
+
+Not till he found himself actually in the Admiral's car did he give his
+instructions to the chauffeur.
+
+"Take me to the Chalet des Dunes as quickly as you can drive without
+danger," he said briefly. "You probably know where it is?"
+
+The man nodded and looked round consideringly. He had never driven so
+elegantly attired a gentleman before. Why, M. de Wissant looked like a
+bridegroom! The Mayor of Falaise should be good for a handsome tip.
+
+The chauffeur did not need to be told that on such a day time was of
+importance, and once they were out of the narrow, tortuous streets of
+the town, the Admiral's car flew.
+
+And then, for the first time that day, Jacques de Wissant began to feel
+pleasantly cool, nay, there even came over him a certain exhilaration.
+He had been foolish to hold out against motor-cars. There was a great
+deal to be said for them, after all. He owed his wife reparation for his
+evil thoughts of her. He resolved that he would get Claire the best
+automobile money could buy. It is always a mistake to economize in such
+matters....
+
+His mind took a sudden turn--he felt ashamed of his egoism, and the
+sensation disturbed him, for the Mayor of Falaise very seldom had
+occasion to feel ashamed, either of his thoughts or of his actions. How
+could he have allowed his attention to stray from the subject which
+should just now be absorbing his whole mind?
+
+Thirty-six hours' supply of oxygen? Well, it might have been worse, for
+a great deal can be done in thirty-six hours.
+
+True, all the salvage appliances, so the Admiral had said, were at
+Cherbourg. What a shameful lack of forethought on someone's part! Still,
+there was little doubt but that the _Neptune_ would be raised in--in
+time. The British Navy would send her salvage appliances. Jacques de
+Wissant had a traditional distrust of the English, but at such moments
+all men are brothers, and just now the French and the English happened
+to be allies. He himself felt far more kindly to his little girls'
+governess, Miss Doughty, than he would have done five years ago.
+
+Yes, without doubt the gallant English Navy would send salvage
+appliances....
+
+There would be some hours of suspense--terrible hours for the wives and
+mothers of the men, but those poor women would be upheld by the
+universal sympathy shown them. He himself as mayor of the town would do
+all he could. He would seek these poor women out, say consoling, hopeful
+things, and Claire would help him. She had, as he knew, a very tender
+heart, especially where seamen were concerned.
+
+Indeed, it was a terrible thought--that of those brave fellows down
+there beneath the surface of the waters. Terrible, that is, if they were
+alive--alive in the same measure as he, Jacques de Wissant, was now
+alive in the keen, rushing air. Alive, and waiting for a deliverance
+that might never come. The idea made him feel a queer, interior tremor.
+
+Then his mind, in spite of himself, swung back to its old moorings. How
+strange that he had not been told that Commander Dupre had applied for
+a change of command! Doubtless the Mediterranean was better suited,
+being a tideless sea, for submarine experiments. Keen, clever Dupre,
+absorbed as he was in his profession, had doubtless thought of that.
+
+But, again, how odd of Claire not to have mentioned that Dupre was
+leaving Falaise! Of course it was possible that she also had been
+ignorant of the fact. She very seldom spoke of other people's affairs,
+and lately she had been so dreadfully worried about her sister's,
+Marie-Anne's, illness.
+
+If his wife had known nothing of Commander Dupre's plans, it proved as
+hardly anything else could have done how little real intimacy there
+could have been between them. A man never leaves the woman he loves
+unless he has grown tired of her--then, as all the world knows, except
+perchance the poor soul herself, no place is too far for him to make
+for.
+
+Such was Jacques de Wissant's simple, cynical philosophy concerning a
+subject to which he had never given much thought. The tender passion had
+always appeared to him in one of two shapes--the one was a grotesque and
+slightly improper shape, which makes men do silly, absurd things; the
+other came in the semblance of a sinister demon which wrecks the honour
+and devastates, as nothing else can do, the happiness of respectable
+families. It was this second and more hateful form which had haunted him
+these last few weeks.
+
+He recalled with a sick feeling of distaste the state of mind and body
+he had been in that very morning. Why, he had then been in the mood to
+kill Dupre, or, at any rate, to welcome the news of his death with
+fierce joy! And then, simultaneously with his discovery of how
+groundless had been his jealousy, he had learnt the awful fact that the
+man whom he had wrongly accused lay out there, buried and yet alive,
+beneath the glistening sea, which was stretched out, like a great blue
+pall, on his left.
+
+Still, it was only proper that his wife should be spared the shock of
+hearing in some casual way of this awful accident. Claire had always
+been sensitive, curiously so, to everything that concerned the Navy.
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier had recalled the horrible submarine disaster
+of Bizerta harbour; Jacques de Wissant now remembered uncomfortably how
+very unhappy that sad affair had made Claire. Why, one day he had found
+her in a passion of tears, mourning over the tragic fate of those poor
+sailor men, the crew of the _Lutin_, of whose very names she was
+ignorant! At the time he had thought her betrayal of feeling very
+unreasonable, but now he understood, and even shared to a certain
+extent, the pain she had shown; but then he knew Dupre, knew and liked
+him, and the men immured in the _Neptune_ were men of Falaise.
+
+These were the thoughts which jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's
+brain as he sat back in the Admiral's car.
+
+They were now rushing past the Pavilion de Wissant. What a pity it was
+that Claire had not remained quietly at home to-day! It would have been
+so much pleasanter--if one could think of anything being pleasant in
+such a connection--to have gone in and told her the sad news at home.
+Her sister, Madeleine Baudoin, though older than Claire, was foolishly
+emotional and unrestrained in the expression of her feelings. Madeleine
+was sure to make a scene when she heard of Commander Dupre's peril, and
+Jacques de Wissant hated scenes.
+
+He now asked himself whether there was any real necessity for his
+telling his wife before her sister. All he need do was to send Claire a
+message by the servant who opened the door to him. He would say that she
+was wanted at home; she would think something had happened to one of the
+children, and this would be a good thing, for it would prepare her in a
+measure for ill tidings.
+
+From what Jacques knew of his wife he believed she would receive the
+news quietly, and he, her husband, would show her every consideration;
+again he reminded himself that it would be ridiculous to deny the fact
+that Claire had made a friend, almost an intimate, of Commander Dupre.
+It would be natural, nay "correct," for her to be greatly distressed
+when she heard of the accident.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a familiar cutting in the road, and again the sea lay spread
+out, an opaque, glistening sheet of steel, before him. He gazed across,
+with a feeling of melancholy and fearful curiosity, to the swarm of
+craft great and small collected round the place where the _Neptune_ lay,
+eighteen fathoms deep....
+
+He hoped Claire would not ask to go back into the town with him in order
+to hear the latest news. But if she did so ask, then he would raise no
+objection. Every Falaise woman, whatever her rank in life, was now full
+of suspense and anxiety, and as the mayor's wife Claire had a right to
+share that anxious suspense.
+
+The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and
+Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder.
+
+"Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Chalet. I want you
+to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to
+give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get
+back to Falaise as soon as I can."
+
+The Chalet des Dunes had been well named. It stood enclosed in rough
+palings in a sandy wilderness. An attempt had been made to turn the
+immediate surroundings of the villa into the semblance of a garden;
+there were wind-blown flowers set in sandy flower-beds, and coarse,
+luxuriant creepers flung their long, green ropes about the wooden
+verandah. In front, stretching out into the sea, was a stone pier, built
+by Jacques' father many a year ago.
+
+The Chalet looked singularly quiet and deserted, for all the shutters
+had been closed in order to shut out the midday heat.
+
+Jacques de Wissant became vaguely uneasy. He reconsidered his plan of
+action. If the two sisters were alone together--as he supposed them to
+be--he would go in and quietly tell them of the accident. It would be
+making altogether too much of the matter to send for Claire to come out
+to him; she might very properly resent it. For the matter of that, it
+was quite possible that Madeleine Baudoin had some little sentiment for
+Dupre. That would explain so much--the officer's constant presence at
+the Chalet des Dunes added to his absence from the Pavillon. It was odd
+he had never thought of the possibility before.
+
+But this new idea made Jacques grow more and more uneasy at the thought
+of the task which now lay before him. With slow, hesitating steps he
+walked up to the little front door of the Chalet.
+
+He pulled the rusty bell-handle. How absurd to have ironwork in such a
+place!
+
+There followed what seemed to him a very long pause. He rang again.
+
+There came the sound of light, swift steps; he could hear them in spite
+of the rhythmical surge of the sea; and then the door was opened by his
+sister-in-law, Madame Baudoin, herself.
+
+In the midst of his own agitation and unease, Jacques de Wissant saw
+that there was a look of embarrassment on the face which Madeleine tried
+to make amiably welcoming.
+
+"Jacques?" she exclaimed. "Forgive me for having made you ring twice! I
+have sent the servants into Falaise to purchase a railway time-table.
+Claire will doubtless have told you that I am starting for Italy
+to-night. Our poor Marie-Anne is worse; and I feel that it is my duty
+to go to her."
+
+She did not step aside to allow him to come in. In fact, doubtless
+without meaning to do so, she was actually blocking up the door.
+
+No, Claire had not told Jacques that Marie-Anne was worse. That of
+course was why she had looked so unhappy this morning. He felt hurt and
+angered by his wife's reserve.
+
+"I am sure you will agree, Madeleine," he said stiffly--he was not sorry
+to gain a little time--"that it would not be wise for Claire to
+accompany you to Italy. After all, she is still quite a young woman, and
+poor Marie-Anne's disease is most infectious. I have ascertained, too,
+that there is a regular epidemic raging in Mantua."
+
+Madeleine nodded. Then she turned, with an uneasy side-look at her
+brother-in-law, and began leading the way down the short passage. The
+door of the dining-room was open; Jacques could not help seeing that
+only one place was laid at the round table, also that Madeleine had just
+finished her luncheon.
+
+"Isn't Claire here?" he asked, surprised. "She said she was going to
+lunch with you to-day. Hasn't she been here this morning?"
+
+"No--I mean yes." Madeleine spoke confusedly. "She did not stay to
+lunch. She was only here for a very little while."
+
+"But has she gone home again?"
+
+"Well--she may be home by now; I really don't know"--Madeleine was
+opening the door of the little drawing-room.
+
+It was an ugly, common-looking room; the walls were hung with Turkey
+red, and ornamented with cheap coloured prints. There were cane and
+basket chairs which Madame Baudoin had striven to make comfortable with
+the help of cushions and rugs.
+
+Jacques de Wissant told himself that it was odd that Claire should like
+to spend so much of her time here, in the Chalet des Dunes, instead of
+asking her sister to join her each morning or afternoon in her own
+beautiful house on the cliff.
+
+"Forgive me," he said stiffly, "but I can't stay a moment. I really came
+for Claire. You say I shall find her at home?"
+
+He held his top hat and his yellow gloves in his hand, and his
+sister-in-law thought she had never seen Jacques look so plain and
+unattractive, and--and tiresome as he looked to-day.
+
+Madame Baudoin had a special reason for wishing him away; but she knew
+the slow, sure workings of his mind. If Jacques found that his wife had
+not gone back to the Pavillon de Wissant, and that there was no news of
+her there, he would almost certainly come back to the Chalet des Dunes
+for further information.
+
+"No," she said reluctantly, "Claire has not gone back to the Pavillon. I
+believe that she has gone into the town. She had something important
+that she wished to do there."
+
+She looked so troubled, so--so uncomfortable that Jacques de Wissant
+leapt to the sudden conclusion that the tidings he had been at such
+pains to bring had already been brought to the Chalet des Dunes.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed, "then I am too late! Ill news travels fast."
+
+"Ill news?" Madeleine repeated affrightedly. "Is anything the matter?
+Has anything happened to one of the children? Don't keep me in suspense,
+Jacques. I am not cold-blooded--like you!"
+
+"The children are all right," he said shortly. "But there has been, as
+you evidently know, an accident. The submarine _Neptune_ has met with a
+serious mishap. She now lies with her crew in eighteen fathoms of water
+about two miles out."
+
+He spoke with cold acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try
+and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make
+foolish mysteries about nothing.
+
+"The submarine _Neptune_?" As she stammered out the question which had
+already been answered, there came over Madame Baudoin's face a look of
+measureless terror. Twice her lips opened--and twice she closed them
+again.
+
+At last she uttered a few words--words of anguished protest and revolt.
+"No, no," she cried, "that can't be--it's impossible!"
+
+"Command yourself!" he said sternly. "Remember what would be thought by
+anyone who saw you in this state."
+
+But she went on looking at him with wild, terror-stricken eyes. "My poor
+Claire!" she moaned. "My little sister Claire----"
+
+All Jacques de Wissant's jealousy leapt into eager, quivering life. Then
+he had been right after all? His wife loved Dupre. Her sister's
+anguished sympathy had betrayed Claire's secret as nothing Claire
+herself was ever likely to say or do could have done.
+
+"You are a good sister," he said ironically, "to take Claire's distress
+so much to heart. Identifying yourself as entirely as you seem to do
+with her, I am surprised that you did not accompany her into Falaise: it
+was most wrong of you to let her go alone."
+
+"Claire is not in Falaise," muttered Madeleine. She was grasping the
+back of one of the cane chairs with her hand as if glad of even that
+slight support, staring at him with a dazed look of abject misery which
+increased his anger, his disgust.
+
+"Not in Falaise?" he echoed sharply. "Then where, in God's name, is
+she?"
+
+A most disagreeable possibility had flashed into his mind. Was it
+conceivable that his wife had had herself rowed to the scene of the
+disaster? If she had done that, if her sister had allowed her to go
+alone, or accompanied maybe by one or other of the officers belonging to
+the submarine flotilla, then he told himself with jealous rage that he
+would find it very difficult ever to forgive Claire. There are things a
+woman with any self-respect, especially a woman who is the mother of
+daughters, refrains from doing.
+
+"Well?" he said contemptuously. "Well, Madeleine? I am waiting to hear
+the truth. I desire no explanations--no excuses. I cannot, however,
+withhold myself from telling you that you ought to have accompanied your
+sister, even if you found it impossible to control her."
+
+"I was there yesterday," said Madeleine Baudoin, with a pinched, white
+face, "for over two hours."
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously. "Where were you yesterday for
+over two hours?"
+
+"In the _Neptune_."
+
+She gazed at him, past him, with widely open eyes, as if she were
+staring, fascinated, at some scene of unutterable horror--and there
+crept into Jacques de Wissant's mind a thought so full of shameful dread
+that he thrust it violently from him.
+
+"You were in the _Neptune_," he said slowly, "knowing well that it is
+absolutely forbidden for any officer to take a friend on board a
+submarine without a special permit from the Minister of Marine?"
+
+"It is sometimes done," she said listlessly.
+
+Madame Baudoin had now sat down on a low chair, and she was plucking at
+the front of her white serge skirt with a curious mechanical movement of
+the fingers.
+
+"Did the submarine actually put out to sea with you on board?"
+
+She nodded her head, and then very deliberately added, "Yes, I have told
+you that I was out for two hours. They all knew it--the men and officers
+of the flotilla. I was horribly frightened, but--but now I am glad
+indeed that I went. Yes, I am indeed glad!"
+
+"Why are you glad?" he asked roughly--and again a hateful suspicion
+thrust itself insistently upon him.
+
+"I am glad I went, because it will make what Claire has done to-day
+seem natural, a--a simple escapade."
+
+There was a moment of terrible silence between them.
+
+"Then do all the officers and men belonging to the flotilla know that my
+wife is out there--in the _Neptune_?" Jacques de Wissant asked in a low,
+still voice.
+
+"No," said Madeleine, and there was now a look of shame, as well as of
+terror, on her face. "They none of them know--only those who are on
+board." She hesitated a moment--"That is why I sent the servants away
+this morning. We--I mean Commander Dupre and I--did not think it
+necessary that anyone should know."
+
+"Then no one--that is, only a hare-brained young officer and ten men
+belonging to the town of Falaise--were to be aware of the fact that my
+wife had accompanied her lover on this life-risking expedition? You and
+Dupre were indeed tender of her honour--and mine."
+
+"Jacques!" She took her hand off the chair, and faced her brother-in-law
+proudly. "What infamous thing is this that you are harbouring in your
+mind? My sister is an honest woman, aye, as honest, as high-minded as
+was your own mother----"
+
+He stopped her with a violent gesture. "Do not mention Claire and my
+mother in the same breath!" he cried.
+
+"Ah, but I will--I must! You want the truth--you said just now you
+wanted only the truth. Then you shall hear the truth! Yes, it is as you
+have evidently suspected. Louis Dupre loves Claire, and she"--her voice
+faltered, then grew firmer--"she may have had for him a little
+sentiment. Who can tell? You have not been at much pains to make her
+happy. But what is true, what is certain, is that she rejected his love.
+To-day they were to part--for ever."
+
+Her voice failed again, then once more it strengthened and hardened.
+
+"That is why he in a moment of folly--I admit it was in a moment of
+folly--asked her to come out on his last cruise in the _Neptune_. When
+you came I was expecting them back any moment. But, Jacques, do not be
+afraid. I swear to you that no one shall ever know. Admiral de Saint
+Vilquier will do anything for us Kergouets; I myself will go to him,
+and--and explain."
+
+But Jacques de Wissant scarcely heard the eager, pitiful words.
+
+He had thrust his wife from his mind, and her place had been taken by
+his honour--his honour and that of his children, of happy,
+light-hearted Clairette and Jacqueline. For what seemed a long while he
+said nothing; then, with all the anger gone from his voice, he spoke,
+uttered a fiat.
+
+"No," he said quietly. "You must leave the Admiral to me, Madeleine. You
+were going to Italy to-night, were you not? That, I take it, _is_ true."
+
+She nodded impatiently. What did her proposed journey to Italy matter
+compared with her beloved Claire's present peril?
+
+"Well, you must carry out your plan, my poor Madeleine. You must go away
+to-night."
+
+She stared at him, her face at last blotched with tears, and a look of
+bewildered anguish in her eyes.
+
+"You must do this," Jacques de Wissant went on deliberately, "for
+Claire's sake, and for the sake of Claire's children. You haven't
+sufficient self-control to endure suspense calmly, secretly. You need
+not go farther than Paris, but those whom it concerns will be told that
+Claire has gone with you to Italy. There will always be time to tell the
+truth. Meanwhile, the Admiral and I will devise a plan. And perhaps"--he
+waited a moment--"the truth will never be known, or only known to a very
+few people--people who, as you say, will understand."
+
+He had spoken very slowly, as if weighing each of his words, but it was
+quickly, with a queer catch in his voice, that he added--"I ask you to
+do this, my sister"--he had never before called Madeleine Baudoin "my
+sister"--"because of Claire's children, of Clairette and Jacqueline.
+Their mother would not wish a slur to rest upon them."
+
+She looked at him with piteous, hunted eyes. But she knew that she must
+do what he asked.
+
+
+IV
+
+Jacques de Wissant sat at his desk in the fine old room which is set
+aside for the mayor's sole use in the town hall of Falaise.
+
+He was waiting for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, whom he had summoned on
+the plea of a matter both private and urgent. In his note, of which he
+had written more than one draft, he had omitted none of the punctilio
+usual in French official correspondence, and he had asked pardon, in the
+most formal language, for asking the Admiral to come to him, instead of
+proposing to go to the Admiral.
+
+The time that had elapsed since he had parted from his sister-in-law had
+seemed like years instead of hours, and yet every moment of those hours
+had been filled with action.
+
+From the Chalet des Dunes Jacques had made his way straight to the
+Pavillon de Wissant, and there his had been the bitter task of lying to
+his household.
+
+They had accepted unquestioningly his statement that their mistress,
+without waiting even to go home, had left the Chalet des Dunes with her
+sister for Italy owing to the arrival of sudden worse news from Mantua.
+
+While Claire's luggage was being by his orders hurriedly prepared, he
+had changed his clothes; and then, overcome with mortal weariness, with
+sick, sombre suspense, he had returned to Falaise, taking the railway
+station on his way to the town hall, and from there going through the
+grim comedy of despatching his wife's trunks to Paris.
+
+Since the day war was declared by France on Germany, there had never
+been at the town hall of Falaise so busy an afternoon. Urgent messages
+of inquiry and condolence came pouring in from all over the civilized
+world, and the mayor had to compose suitable answers to them all.
+
+To him there also fell the painful duty of officially announcing to the
+crowd surging impatiently in the market place--though room in front was
+always made and kept for those of the fisher folk who had relatives in
+the submarine service--that it was the _Neptune_ which had gone down.
+
+He had seen the effect of that announcement painted on rough, worn,
+upturned faces; he had heard the cries of anger, the groans of despair
+of the few, and had witnessed the relief, the tears of joy of the many.
+But his heart felt numb, and his cold, stern manner kept the emotions
+and excitement of those about him in check.
+
+At last there had come a short respite. It was publicly announced that
+owing to the currents the divers had had to suspend their work awhile,
+but that salvage appliances from England and from Cherbourg were on
+their way to Falaise, and that it was hoped by seven that evening active
+operations would begin. With luck the _Neptune_ might be raised before
+midnight.
+
+Fortunate people blessed with optimistic natures were already planning a
+banquet at which the crew of the _Neptune_ were to be entertained within
+an hour of the rescue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jacques de Wissant rose from the massive First Empire table which formed
+part of the fine suite of furniture presented by the great Napoleon
+just a hundred years ago to the municipality of Falaise.
+
+With bent head, his hands clasped behind him, the mayor began walking up
+and down the long room.
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier might now come at any moment, but the man
+awaiting him had not yet made up his mind how to word what he had to
+say--how much to tell, how much to conceal from, his wife's old friend.
+He was only too well aware that if the desperate attempts which would
+soon be made to raise the _Neptune_ were successful, and if its human
+freight were rescued alive, the fact that there had been a woman on
+board could not be concealed. Thousands would know to-night, and
+millions to-morrow morning.
+
+Not only would the amazing story provide newspaper readers all over the
+world with a thrilling, unexpected piece of news, but the fact that
+there had been a woman involved in the disaster would be perpetuated, as
+long as our civilization endures, in every account of subsequent
+accidents to submarine craft.
+
+More intimately, vividly agonizing was the knowledge that the story, the
+scandal, would be revived when there arose the all-important question of
+a suitable marriage for Clairette or Jacqueline.
+
+As he paced up and down the room, longing for and yet dreading the
+coming of the Admiral, he visualized what would happen. He could almost
+hear the whispered words: "Yes, dear friend, the girl is admirably
+brought up, and has a large fortune, also she and your son have taken
+quite a fancy for one another, but there is that very ugly story of the
+mother! Don't you remember that she was with her lover in the submarine
+_Neptune_? The citizens of Falaise still laugh at the story and point
+her out in the street. Like mother like daughter, you know!" Thus the
+miserable man tortured himself, turning the knife in his wound.
+
+But stay---- Supposing the salvage appliances failed, as they had failed
+at Bizerta, to raise the _Neptune_? Then with the help of Admiral de
+Saint Vilquier the awful truth might be kept secret.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last the door opened.
+
+Jacques de Wissant took a step forward, and as his hand rested loosely
+for a moment in the old seaman's firmer grasp, he would have given many
+years of his life to postpone the coming interview.
+
+"As you asked me so urgently to do so, I have come, M. de Wissant, to
+learn what you have to tell me. But I'm afraid the time I can spare you
+must be short. As you know, I am to be at the station in half an hour to
+meet the Minister of Marine. He will probably wish to go out at once to
+the scene of the calamity, and I shall have to accompany him."
+
+The Admiral was annoyed at having been thus sent for to the town hall.
+It was surely Jacques de Wissant's place to have come to him.
+
+And then, while listening to the other's murmured excuses, the old naval
+officer happened to look straight into the face of the Mayor of Falaise,
+and at once a change came over his manner, even his voice softened and
+altered.
+
+"Pardon my saying so, M. de Wissant," he exclaimed abruptly, "but you
+look extremely ill! You mustn't allow this sad business to take such a
+hold on you. It is tragic no doubt that such things must be, but
+remember"--he uttered the words solemnly--"they are the Price of
+Admiralty."
+
+"I know, I know," muttered Jacques de Wissant.
+
+"Shall we sit down?"
+
+The deadly pallor, the look of strain on the face of the man before him
+was making the Admiral feel more and more uneasy. "It would be very
+awkward," he thought to himself, "were Jacques de Wissant to be taken
+ill, here, now, with me---- Ah, I have it!"
+
+Then he said aloud, "You have doubtless had nothing to eat since the
+morning?" And as de Wissant nodded--"But that's absurd! It's always
+madness to go without food. Believe me, you will want all your strength
+during the next few days. As for me, I had fortunately lunched before I
+received the sad news. I keep to the old hours; I do not care for your
+English _dejeuners_ at one o'clock. Midday is late enough for me!"
+
+"Admiral?" said the wretched man, "Admiral----?"
+
+"Yes, take your time; I am not really in such a hurry. I am quite at
+your disposal."
+
+"It is a question of honour," muttered Jacques de Wissant, "a question
+of honour, Admiral, or I should not trouble you with the matter."
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier leant forward, but Jacques de Wissant avoided
+meeting the shrewd, searching eyes.
+
+"The honour of a naval family is involved." The Mayor of Falaise was now
+speaking in a low, pleading voice.
+
+The Admiral stiffened. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "So you have been asked to
+intercede with me on behalf of some young scapegrace. Well, who is it?
+I'll look into the matter to-morrow morning. I really cannot think of
+anything to-day but of this terrible business----"
+
+"----Admiral, it concerns this business."
+
+"The loss of the _Neptune_? In what way can the honour of a naval family
+be possibly involved in such a matter?" There was a touch of hauteur as
+well as of indignant surprise in the fine old seaman's voice.
+
+"Admiral," said Jacques de Wissant deliberately, "there was--there is--a
+woman on board the _Neptune_."
+
+"A woman in the _Neptune_? That is quite impossible!" The Admiral got up
+from his chair. "It is one of our strictest regulations that no stranger
+be taken on board a submarine without a special permit from the Minister
+of Marine, countersigned by an admiral. No such permit has been issued
+for many months. In no case would a woman be allowed on board. Commander
+Dupre is far too conscientious, too loyal, an officer to break such a
+regulation."
+
+"Commander Dupre," said Jacques de Wissant in a low, bitter tone, "was
+not too conscientious or too loyal an officer to break that regulation,
+for there is, I repeat it, a woman in the _Neptune_."
+
+The Admiral sat down again. "But this is serious--very serious," he
+muttered.
+
+He was thinking of the effect, not only at home but abroad, of such a
+breach of discipline.
+
+He shook his head with a pained, angry gesture--"I understand what
+happened," he said at last. "The woman was of course poor Dupre's"--and
+then something in Jacques de Wissant's pallid face made him substitute,
+for the plain word he meant to have used, a softer, kindlier
+phrase--"poor Dupre's _bonne amie_," he said.
+
+"I am advised not," said Jacques de Wissant shortly. "I am told that the
+person in question is a young lady."
+
+"Do you mean an unmarried girl?" asked the Admiral. There was great
+curiosity and sincere relief in his voice.
+
+"I beg of you not to ask me, Admiral! The family of the lady have
+implored me to reveal as little of the truth as possible. They have
+taken their own measures, and they are good measures, to account for
+her--her disappearance." The unhappy man spoke with considerable
+agitation.
+
+"Quite so! Quite so! They are right. I have no wish to show indiscreet
+curiosity."
+
+"Do you think anything can be done to prevent the fact becoming known?"
+asked Jacques de Wissant--and, as the other waited a moment before
+answering, the suspense became almost more than he could endure.
+
+He got up and instinctively stood with his back to the light. "The
+family of this young lady are willing to make any pecuniary
+sacrifice----"
+
+"It is not a question of pecuniary sacrifice," the Admiral said stiffly.
+"Money will never really purchase either secrecy or silence. But honour,
+M. de Wissant, will sometimes, nay, often, do both."
+
+"Then you think the fact can be concealed?"
+
+"I think it will be impossible to conceal it if the _Neptune_ is
+raised"--he hesitated, and his voice sank as he added the poignant words
+"_in time_. But if that happens, though I fear that it is not likely to
+happen, then I promise you that I will allow it to be thought that I had
+given this lady permission, and her improper action will be accepted for
+what it no doubt was--a foolish escapade. If Dupre and little Paritot
+are the men of honour I take them to be, one or other of them will of
+course marry her!"
+
+"And if the _Neptune_ is not raised--" the Mayor's voice also dropped
+to a whisper--"_in time_--what then?"
+
+"Then," said the Admiral, "everything will be done by me--so you can
+assure your unlucky friends--to conceal the fact that Commander Dupre
+failed in his duty. Not for his sake, you understand--he, I fear,
+deserves what he has suffered, what he is perhaps still suffering,"--a
+look of horror stole over his old, weather-roughened face--"but for the
+sake of the foolish girl and for the sake of her family. You say it is a
+naval family?"
+
+"Yes," said Jacques de Wissant. "A noted naval family."
+
+The Admiral got up. "And now I, on my side, must exact of you a pledge,
+M. de Wissant--" he looked searchingly at the Government official
+standing before him. "I solemnly implore you, monsieur, to keep this
+fact you have told me absolutely secret for the time being--secret even
+from the Minister of Marine."
+
+The Mayor of Falaise bent his head. "I intend to act," he said slowly,
+"as if I had never heard it."
+
+"I ask it for the honour, the repute, of the Service," muttered the old
+officer. "After all, M. de Wissant, the poor fellow did not mean much
+harm. We sailors have all, at different times of our lives, had some
+_bonne amie_ whom we found it devilish hard to leave on shore!"
+
+The Admiral walked slowly towards the door. To-day had aged him years.
+Then he turned and looked benignantly at Jacques de Wissant; the man
+before him might be stiff, cold, awkward in manner, but he was a
+gentleman, a man of honour.
+
+And as he drove to the station to meet the Minister of Marine, Admiral
+de Saint Vilquier's shrewd, practical mind began to deal with the
+difficult problem which was now added to his other cares. It was
+simplified in view of the fact--the awful fact--that according to his
+private information it was most unlikely that the submarine would be
+raised within the next few hours. He hoped with all his heart that the
+twelve men and the woman now lying beneath the sea had met death at the
+moment of the collision.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that summer night the cafes and eating-houses of Falaise remained
+open, and there was a constant coming and going to the beach, where many
+people, even among those visitors who were not directly interested in
+the calamity, camped out on the stones.
+
+The mayor sent word to the Pavillon de Wissant that he would sleep in
+his town house, but though he left the town hall at two in the morning
+he was back at his post by eight, and he spent there the whole of the
+next long dragging day.
+
+Fortunately for him there was little time for thought. In addition to
+the messages of inquiry and condolence which went on pouring in,
+important members of the Government arrived from Paris and the
+provinces.
+
+There also came to Falaise the mother of Commander Dupre, and the father
+and brother of Lieutenant Paritot. De Wissant made the latter his
+special care. They, the two men, were granted the relief of tears, but
+Madame Dupre's silent agony could not be assuaged.
+
+Once, when he suddenly came upon her sitting, her chin in her hand, in
+his room at the town hall, Jacques de Wissant shrank from her blazing
+eyes and ravaged face, so vividly did they recall to him the eyes, the
+face, he had seen that April evening "'twixt dog and wolf," when he had
+first leapt upon the truth.
+
+On the third day all hope that there could be anyone still living in the
+_Neptune_ was being abandoned, and yet at noon there ran a rumour
+through the town that knocking had been heard in the submarine....
+
+The mayor himself drew up an official proclamation, in which it was
+pointed out that it was almost certain that all on board had perished at
+the time of the collision, and that, even if any of them had survived
+for a few hours, not one could be alive now.
+
+And then, as one by one the days of waiting began to wear themselves
+away, the world, apart from the town which numbered ten of her sons
+among the doomed men, relaxed its painful interest in the fate of the
+French submarine. Indeed, Falaise took on an almost winter stillness of
+aspect, for the summer visitors naturally drifted away from a spot which
+was still the heart of an awful tragedy.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant did not relax in his duties or in his efforts on
+behalf of the families of the men who still lay, eighteen fathoms deep,
+encased in their steel tomb; and the townspeople were deeply moved by
+their mayor's continued, if restrained, distress. He even put his
+children, his pretty twin daughters, Jacqueline and Clairette, into deep
+mourning; this touched the seafaring portion of the population very
+much.
+
+It also became known that M. de Wissant was suffering from domestic
+distress of a very sad and intimate kind; his sister-in-law was
+seriously ill in Italy from an infectious disease, and his wife, who
+had gone away at a moment's notice to help to nurse her, had caught the
+infection.
+
+The Mayor of Falaise and Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not often have
+occasion to meet during those days spent by each of them in entertaining
+official personages and in composing answers to the messages and
+inquiries which went on dropping in, both by day and by night, at the
+town hall and at the Admiral's quarters. But there came an hour when
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier at last sought to have a private word with the
+Mayor of Falaise.
+
+"I think I have arranged everything satisfactorily," he said briefly,
+"and you can convey the fact to your friends. I do not suppose, as
+matters are now, that there is much fear that the truth will ever come
+out."
+
+The old man did not look into Jacques de Wissant's face while he uttered
+the comforting words. He had become aware of many things--including
+Madeleine Baudoin's cruise in the _Neptune_ the day before the accident,
+and of her own and Claire de Wissant's reported departure for Italy.
+
+Alone, among the people who sometimes had friendly speech of the mayor
+during those sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not
+condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave
+Falaise for Mantua.
+
+
+V
+
+Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed. He had heard a
+knock--but, awake or sleeping, his ears were never free of the sound of
+knocking,--of muffled, regular knocking....
+
+It was the darkest hour of the summer night, but with a sharp sense of
+relief he became aware that what had wakened him this time was a real
+sound, not the slow, patient, rhythmical, tapping which haunted him
+incessantly. But now the knocking had been followed by the opening of
+his bedroom door, and vaguely outlined before him was the short, squat
+form of an old woman who had entered his mother's service when he was a
+little boy, and who always stayed in his town house.
+
+"M'sieur l'Amiral de Saint Vilquier desires to see M'sieur Jacques on
+urgent business," she whispered. "I have put him to wait in the great
+drawing-room. It is fortunate that I took all the covers off the
+furniture yesterday."
+
+Then the moment of ordeal, the moment he had begun to think would never
+come--was upon him? He knew this summons to mean that the _Neptune_ had
+been finally towed into the harbour, and that now, in this still, dark
+hour before dawn, was about to begin the work of taking out the bodies.
+
+Every day for a week past it had been publicly announced that the
+following night would see the final scene of the dread drama, and each
+evening--even last evening--it had been as publicly announced that
+nothing could be done for the present.
+
+Jacques de Wissant had put all his trust in the Admiral and in the
+arrangements the Admiral was making to avoid discovery. But now, as he
+got up and dressed himself--strange to say that phantom sound of
+knocking had ceased--there came over him a frightful sensation of doubt
+and fear. Had he been right to trust wholly to the old naval officer?
+Would it not have been better to have taken the Minister of Marine into
+his confidence?
+
+How would it be possible for Admiral de Saint Vilquier, unless backed by
+Governmental authority, to elude the vigilance, not only of the
+Admiralty officials and of all those that were directly interested, but
+also of the journalists who, however much the public interest had
+slackened in the disaster, still stayed on at Falaise in order to be
+present at the last act of the tragedy?
+
+These thoughts jostled each other in Jacques de Wissant's brain. But
+whether he had been right or wrong it was too late to alter now.
+
+He went into the room where the Admiral stood waiting for him.
+
+The two men shook hands, but neither spoke till they had left the house.
+Then, as they walked with firm, quick steps across the deserted
+market-place, the Admiral said suddenly, "This is the quietest hour in
+the twenty-four, and though I anticipate a little trouble with the
+journalists, I think everything will go off quite well."
+
+His companion muttered a word of assent, and the other went on, this
+time in a gruff whisper: "By the way, I have had to tell Dr. Tarnier--"
+and as Jacques de Wissant gave vent to a stifled exclamation of
+dismay--"of course I had to tell Dr. Tarnier! He has most nobly offered
+to go down into the _Neptune_ alone--though in doing so he will run
+considerable personal risk."
+
+Admiral de Saint Vilquier paused a moment, for the quick pace at which
+his companion was walking made him rather breathless. "I have simply
+told him that there was a young woman on board. He imagines her to have
+been a Parisienne,--a person of no importance, you understand,--who had
+come to spend the holiday with poor Dupre. But he quite realizes that
+the fact must never be revealed." He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact
+tone. "There will not be room on the pontoon for more than five or six,
+including ourselves and Dr. Tarnier. Doubtless some of our newspaper
+friends will be disappointed--if one can speak of disappointment in such
+a connection--but they will have plenty of opportunities of being
+present to-morrow and the following nights. I have arranged with the
+Minister of Marine for the work to be done only at night."
+
+As the two men emerged on the quays, they saw that the news had leaked
+out, for knots of people stood about, talking in low hushed tones, and
+staring at the middle of the harbour.
+
+Apart from the others, and almost dangerously close to the unguarded
+edge below which was the dark lapping water, stood a line of women
+shrouded in black, and from them came no sound.
+
+As the Admiral and his companion approached the little group of
+officials who were apparently waiting for them, the old naval officer
+whispered to Jacques de Wissant, using for the first time the familiar
+expression, "_mon ami_," "Do not forget, _mon ami_, to thank the
+harbour-master and the pilot. They have had a very difficult task, and
+they will expect your commendation."
+
+Jacques de Wissant said the words required of him. And then, at the last
+moment, just as he was on the point of going down the steps leading to
+the flat-bottomed boat in which they were to be rowed to the pontoon,
+there arose an angry discussion. The harbour-master had, it seemed,
+promised the representatives of two Paris newspapers that they should be
+present when the submarine was first opened.
+
+But the Admiral stiffly asserted his supreme authority. "In such matters
+I can allow no favouritism! It is doubtful if any bodies will be taken
+out to-night, gentlemen, for the tide is already turning. I will see if
+other arrangements can be made to-morrow. If any of you had been in the
+harbour of Bizerta when the _Lutin_ was raised, you would now thank me
+for not allowing you to view the sight which we may be about to see."
+
+And the weary, disappointed special correspondents, who had spent long
+days watching for this one hour, realized that they would have to
+content themselves with describing what could be seen from the quays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will, however, surprise no one familiar with the remarkable
+enterprise of the modern press, when it is recorded that by far the most
+accurate account of what occurred during the hour that followed was
+written by a cosmopolitan war correspondent, who had had the good
+fortune of making Dr. Tarnier's acquaintance during the dull fortnight
+of waiting.
+
+He wrote:
+
+    None of those who were there will ever forget what they saw last
+    night in the harbour of Falaise.
+
+    The scene, illumined by the searchlight of a destroyer, was at
+    once sinister, sombre, and magnificent. Below the high, narrow
+    pontoon, on the floor of the harbour, lay the wrecked submarine;
+    and those who gazed down at the _Neptune_ felt as though they
+    were in the presence of what had once been a sentient being done
+    to death by some huge Goliath of the deep.
+
+    Dr. Tarnier, the chief medical officer of the port--a man who is
+    beloved and respected by the whole population of Falaise--stood
+    ready to begin his dreadful task. I had ascertained that he had
+    obtained permission to go down alone into the hold of death--an
+    exploration attended with the utmost physical risk. He was clad
+    in a suit of india-rubber clothing, and over his arm was folded
+    a large tarpaulin sheet lined with carbolic wool, one of half a
+    dozen such sheets lying at his feet.
+
+    The difficult work of unsealing the conning tower was then
+    proceeded with in the presence of Admiral de Saint Vilquier,
+    whose prowess as a midshipman is still remembered by British
+    Crimean veterans--and of the Mayor of Falaise, M. Jacques de
+    Wissant.
+
+    At last there came a guttural exclamation of "_Ca y est!_" and
+    Dr. Tarnier stepped downwards, to emerge a moment later with the
+    first body, obviously that of the gallant Commander Dupre, who
+    was found, as it was expected he would be, in the conning tower.
+
+    Once more the doctor's burly figure disappeared, once more he
+    emerged, tenderly bearing a slighter, lighter burden, obviously
+    the boyish form of Lieutenant Paritot, who was found close to
+    Commander Dupre.
+
+    The tide was rising rapidly, but two more bodies--this time with
+    the help of a webbed band cleverly designed by Dr. Tarnier with
+    a view to the purpose--were lifted from the inner portion of the
+    submarine.
+
+    The four bodies, rather to the disappointment of the large crowd
+    which had gradually gathered on the quays, were not taken
+    directly to the shore, to the great hall where Falaise is to
+    mourn her dead sons; one by one they were reverently conveyed,
+    by the Admiral's orders, to a barge which was once used as a
+    hospital ward for sick sailors, and which is close to the mouth
+    of the harbour. Thence, when all twelve bodies have been
+    recovered--that is, in three or four days, for the work is only
+    to be proceeded with at night,--they will be taken to the Salle
+    d'Armes, there to await the official obsequies.
+
+On the morning following the night during which the last body was lifted
+from within the _Neptune_, there ran a curious rumour through the
+fishing quarter of the town. It was said that thirteen bodies--not
+twelve, as declared the official report--had been taken out of the
+_Neptune_. It was declared on the authority of one of the seamen--a
+Gascon, be it noted--who had been there on that first night, that five,
+not four, bodies had been conveyed to the hospital barge.
+
+But the rumour, though it found an echo in the French press, was not
+regarded as worth an official denial, and it received its final quietus
+on the day of the official obsequies, when it was at once seen that the
+number of ammunition wagons heading the great procession was twelve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As long as tradition endures in the life of the town, Falaise will
+remember the _Neptune_ funeral procession. Not only was every navy in
+the world represented, but also every strand of that loosely woven human
+fabric we civilized peoples call a nation.
+
+Through the long line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed,
+walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed
+the minute gun.
+
+First the President of the French Republic, with, to his right, the
+Minister of Marine; and close behind them the stiff, still vigorous,
+figure of old Admiral de Saint Vilquier. By his side walked the Mayor of
+Falaise--so mortally pale, so what the French call undone, that the
+Admiral felt fearful lest his neighbour should be compelled to fall out.
+
+But Jacques de Wissant was not minded to fall out.
+
+The crowd looking on, especially the wives of those substantial citizens
+of the town who stood at their windows behind half-closed shutters and
+drawn blinds, stared down at the mayor with pitying concern.
+
+"He has a warm heart though a cold manner," murmured these ladies to one
+another, "and just now, you know, he is in great anxiety, for his
+wife--that beautiful Claire with whom he doesn't get on very well--is in
+Italy, seriously ill of scarlet fever." "Yes, and as soon as this sad
+ceremony is over, he will leave for the south--I hear that the President
+has offered him a seat in his saloon as far as Paris."
+
+As the head of the procession at last stopped on the great parade ground
+where the last honours were to be rendered to the lowly yet illustrious
+dead, Jacques de Wissant straightened himself with an instinctive
+gesture, and his lips began to move. He was muttering to himself the
+speech he would soon have to deliver, and which he had that morning,
+making a great mental effort, committed to memory.
+
+And after the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say;
+and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a
+quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came
+to the turn of the Mayor of Falaise.
+
+He was there, he said, simply as the mouth-piece of his fellow-townsmen,
+and they, bowed as they were by deep personal grief, could say but
+little--they could indeed only murmur their eternal gratitude for the
+sympathy they had received, and were now receiving, from their
+countrymen and from the world.
+
+Then Jacques de Wissant gave a brief personal account of each of the ten
+seamen whom this vast concourse had gathered together to honour. It was
+noted by the curious in such things that he made no allusion to the two
+officers, to Commander Dupre and Lieutenant Paritot; doubtless he
+thought that they, after all, had been amply honoured in the preceding
+speeches.
+
+But though his care for the lowly heroes proved the Mayor of Falaise a
+good republican, he showed himself in the popular estimation also a
+scholar, for he wound up with the old tag--the grand old tag which
+inspired so many noble souls in the proudest of ancient empires and
+civilizations, and which will retain the power of moving and thrilling
+generations yet unborn in both the Western and the Eastern worlds:
+
+    "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILD
+
+
+I
+
+It was close on eleven o'clock; the July night was airless, and the last
+of that season's great balls was taking place in Grosvenor Square.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn's brougham came to a sudden halt in Green Street. Encompassed
+behind and before with close, intricate traffic, the carriage swung
+stiffly on its old-fashioned springs, responding to every movement of
+the fretted horse.
+
+Hugh Elwyn, sitting by his mother's side, wondered a little impatiently
+why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could
+remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his
+thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in
+a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her
+narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had given up the world. This was
+the first time since her widowhood that she and her son had dined out
+together; but then the occasion was a very special one--they had been to
+dinner with the family of Elwyn's fiancee, Winifred Fanshawe.
+
+Hugh Elwyn turned and looked at his mother. As he saw in the
+half-darkness the outlines of the delicately pure profile, framed in
+grey bands of hair covering the ears as it had been worn when Mrs. Elwyn
+was a girl upwards of forty years ago, he felt stirred with an unwonted
+tenderness, added to the respect with which he habitually regarded her.
+
+Since leaving Cavendish Square they had scarcely spoken the one to the
+other. The drive home was a short one, for they lived in South Street.
+It was tiresome that they should be held up in this way within a hundred
+yards of their own door.
+
+Suddenly the mother spoke. She put out her frail hand and laid it across
+her son's strong brown fingers. She gazed earnestly into the
+good-looking face which was not as radiantly glad as she would have
+wished to see it--as indeed she had once seen her son's face look, and
+as she could still very vividly remember her own husband's face had
+looked during their short formal engagement nearly fifty years ago. "I
+could not be better pleased, Hugh, if I had myself chosen your future
+wife."
+
+Elwyn was a little amused as well as touched; he was well aware that his
+mother, to all intents and purposes, _had_ chosen Winifred. True, she
+had been but slightly acquainted with the girl before the engagement,
+but she had "known all about her," and had been on terms of friendly
+acquaintance with Winifred's grandmother all her long life. Elwyn
+remembered how his mother had pressed him to accept an invitation to a
+country house where Winifred Fanshawe was to be. But Mrs. Elwyn had
+never spoken to her son of her wishes until the day he had come and told
+her that he intended to ask Winifred to marry him, and then her
+unselfish joy had moved him and brought them very near to one another.
+
+When Hugh Elwyn was in London--he had been a great wanderer over the
+earth--he lived with his mother, and they were outwardly on the closest,
+most intimate terms of affection. But then Mrs. Elwyn never interfered
+with Hugh, as he understood his friends' mothers so often interfered
+with them and with their private affairs. This doubtless was why they
+were, and remained, on such ideal terms together.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Elwyn again spoke, but she did not turn round and look
+tenderly at her son as she had done when speaking of his future
+wife--this time she gazed straight before her: "Is not Winifred a cousin
+of Mrs. Bellair?"
+
+"Yes, there's some kind of connection between the Fanshawes and the
+Bellairs."
+
+Hugh Elwyn tried to make his voice unconcerned, but he failed, and he
+knew that he had failed. His mother's question had disturbed him, and
+taken him greatly by surprise.
+
+"I wondered whether they are friends?"
+
+"I have never heard Winifred mention her," he said shortly. "Yes, I
+have--I remember now that she told me the Bellairs had sent her a
+present the very day after our engagement was in the _Morning Post_."
+
+"Then I suppose you will have to see something of them after your
+marriage?"
+
+"You mean the Bellairs? Yes--no. I don't think that follows, mother."
+
+"Do you see anything of them now?"
+
+"No"--he again hesitated, and again ate his word--"that is--yes. I met
+them some weeks ago. But I don't think we are likely to see much of them
+after our marriage."
+
+He would have given the world to feel that his voice was betraying
+nothing of the discomfort he was feeling.
+
+"I hope not, Hugh. Mrs. Bellair would not be a suitable friend for
+Winifred--or--or for any young married woman."
+
+"Mother!" Elwyn only uttered the one word, but anger, shame, and
+self-reproach were struggling in the tone in which he uttered that one
+word. "You are wrong, indeed, you are quite wrong--I mean about Fanny
+Bellair."
+
+"My dear," she said gently, but her voice quivered, "I do not think I am
+wrong. Indeed, I know I am right." Neither had ever seen the other so
+moved. "My dear," again she said the two quiet words that may mean so
+much or so little, "you know that I never spoke to you of the matter. I
+tried never even to think of it, and yet, Hugh, it made me very anxious,
+very unhappy. But to-night, looking at that sweet girl, I felt I must
+speak."
+
+She waited a moment, and then added in a constrained voice, "I do not
+judge you, Hugh."
+
+"No!" he cried, "but you judge her! And it's so unfair, mother--so
+horribly unfair!"
+
+He had turned round; he was forcing his mother to look at his now moody,
+unhappy face.
+
+Mrs. Elwyn shrank back and closed her lips tightly. Her expression
+recalled to her son the look which used to come over her face when, as a
+petted, over cared-for only child, he asked her for something which she
+believed it would be bad for him to have. From that look there had been,
+in old days, no appeal. But now he felt that he must say something more.
+His manhood demanded it of him.
+
+"Mother," he said earnestly, "as you have spoken to me of the matter, I
+feel I must have it out with you! Please believe me when I say that you
+are being unjust--indeed, cruelly so. I was to blame all through--from
+the very beginning to the very end."
+
+"You must allow me," she said in a low tone, "to be the judge of that,
+Hugh." She added deprecatingly, "This discussion is painful, and--and
+very distasteful to me."
+
+Her son leant back, and choked down the words he was about to utter. He
+knew well that nothing he could say would change or even modify his
+mother's point of view. But oh! why had she done this? Why had she
+chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung,
+so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night--not madly,
+foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably,
+decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a
+_mariage de convenance_, but there had been another man on the lists, a
+younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the
+pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had
+won--won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more
+could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of
+that providence which shapes our ends?
+
+The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.
+
+As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I
+ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs.
+Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful
+mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is
+seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything
+for him."
+
+Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned
+prejudice against trained nurses.
+
+Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent
+down and just touched her cheek with his lips.
+
+"Won't you come up into the drawing-room? Just for a few minutes?" she
+asked; there was a note of deep, yearning disappointment in her voice,
+and her face looked grey and tired, very different from the happy,
+placid air it had worn during the little dinner party.
+
+"No, thank you, mother, I won't come up just now. I think I'll go out
+again for half an hour. I haven't walked at all to-day, and it's so
+hot--I feel I shouldn't sleep if I turn in now."
+
+He was punishing his mother as he had seen other sons punishing their
+mothers, but as he himself had never before to-night been tempted to
+punish his. Nay, more, as Hugh Elwyn watched her slow ascent up the
+staircase, he told himself that she had hurt and angered him past entire
+forgiveness. He had sometimes suspected that she knew of that fateful
+episode in his past life, but he had never supposed that she would speak
+of it to him, especially not now, after years had gone by, and when,
+greatly to please her, he was about to make what is called a "suitable"
+marriage.
+
+He was just enough to know that his mother had hurt herself by hurting
+him, but that did not modify his feelings of anger and of surprise at
+what she had done. Of course she thought she knew everything there was
+to know, but how much there had been that she had never even suspected!
+
+Those words--that admission--as to Fanny Bellair being a good mother
+would never have passed Mrs. Elwyn's lips--they would never even have
+been credited by her had she known the truth--the truth, that is, as to
+the child to whom Mrs. Bellair was so passionately devoted, and who now,
+it seemed, was ailing. That secret, and Hugh Elwyn thanked God, not
+irreverently, that it was so, was only shared by two human beings, that
+is by Fanny and himself. And perhaps, Fanny, like himself, had managed
+by now almost to forget it....
+
+Elwyn swung out of the house, he walked up South Street, and so into
+Park Lane and over to the Park railings. There was still a great deal of
+traffic in the roadway, but the pavements were deserted.
+
+As he began to walk quickly westward, the past came back and overwhelmed
+him as with a great flood of mingled memories. And it was not, as his
+mother would probably have visioned it, a muddy spate filled with
+unclean things. Rather was it a flood of exquisite spring waters,
+instinct with the buoyant head-long rushes of youth, and filled with
+clear, happy shallows, in which retrospectively he lay and sunned
+himself in the warmth of what had been a great love--love such as
+Winifred Fanshawe, with her thin, complaisant nature, would never
+bestow.
+
+The mother's imprudent words of unnecessary warning had brought back to
+her son everything she had hoped was now, if not obliterated, then
+repented of; but Elwyn's heart was filled to-night with a vague
+tenderness for the half-forgotten woman whom he had loved awhile with so
+passionate and absorbing a love, and to whom, under cover of that poor
+and wilted thing, his conscience, he had ultimately behaved so ill.
+
+Hugh Elwyn's mind travelled back across the years, to the very beginning
+of his involved account with honour--that account which he believed to
+be now straightened out.
+
+Jim Bellair had been Elwyn's friend--first college friend and then
+favourite "pal." When Bellair had fallen head over ears in love with a
+girl still in the schoolroom, a girl not even pretty, but with wonderful
+auburn hair and dark, startled-looking eyes, and had finally persuaded,
+cajoled, badgered her into saying "Yes," it was Hugh Elwyn who had been
+Bellair's rather sulky best man. Small wonder that the bridegroom had
+half-jokingly left his young wife in Elwyn's charge when he had had to
+go half across the world on business that could not be delayed, while
+she stayed behind to nurse her father who was ill.
+
+It was then, with mysterious, uncanny suddenness, that the mischief had
+begun. There had been something wild and untamed in Fanny
+Bellair--something which had roused in Elwyn the hunter's instinct, an
+instinct hitherto unslaked by over easy victories. And then Chance, that
+great, cynical goddess which plays so great a part in civilized life,
+had flung first one opportunity and then another into his eager,
+grasping hands.
+
+Fanny's father had died; and she had been lonely and in sorrow. Careless
+friends, however kind, do not care to see much of those who mourn, but
+he, Hugh Elwyn, had not been careless, nay, he had been careful to see
+more, not less, of his friend's wife in this her first great grief, and
+she had been moved to the heart by his sympathy.
+
+It was by Elwyn's advice that Mrs. Bellair had taken a house not far
+from London that lovely summer.
+
+Ah, that little house! Elwyn could remember every bush, almost every
+flower that had flowered, in the walled garden during those enchanted
+weeks. Against the background of his mind every ornament, every odd
+piece of furniture in that old cottage, stood out as having been the
+silent, it had seemed at the time the kindly, understanding witnesses of
+what had by then become an exquisite friendship. He, the man, had known
+almost from the first where they too were drifting, but she, the woman,
+had slipped into love as a wanderer at night slips suddenly into a deep
+and hidden pool.
+
+In a story book they would both have gone away openly together--but
+somehow the thought of doing such a thing never seriously occurred to
+Elwyn. He was far too fond of Bellair--it seemed absurd to say that now,
+but the truth, especially the truth of what has been, is often absurd.
+
+Elwyn had contented himself with stealing Bellair's wife; he had no
+desire to put public shame and ridicule upon his friend. And fortune,
+favouring him, had prolonged the other man's enforced absence.
+
+And then? And then at last Bellair had come back,--and trouble began. As
+to many things, nay, as to most things which have to do with the flesh
+rather than the spirit, men are more fastidiously delicate than are
+women. There had come months of misery, of revolt, and, on Elwyn's part,
+of dulling love....
+
+Then, once more, Chance gave him an unlooked-for opportunity--an
+opportunity of escape from what had become to him an intolerable
+position.
+
+The war broke out, and Hugh Elwyn was among the very first of those
+gallant fellows who volunteered during the dark November of '99.
+
+By a curious irony of fate, the troopship that bore him to South Africa
+had Bellair also on board, but owing to Elwyn's secret decision--he was
+far the cleverer man of the two--he and his friend were no longer bound
+together by that wordless intimacy which is the basis of any close tie
+among men. By the time the two came back from Africa they had become
+little more than cordial acquaintances. Marriage, so Bellair sometimes
+told himself ruefully, generally plays the devil with a man's bachelor
+friendships. He was a kindly, generous hearted soul, who found much
+comfort in platitudes....
+
+But that, alas! had not been the end. On Elwyn's return home there had
+come to him a violent, overmastering revival of his passion. Again he
+and Fanny met--again they loved. Then one terrible day she came and told
+him, with stricken eyes, what he sometimes hoped, even now, had not been
+true--that she was about to have a child, and that it would be his
+child. At that moment, as he knew well, Mrs. Bellair had desired
+ardently to go away with him, openly. But he had drawn back, assuring
+himself--and this time honestly--that his shrinking from that course,
+now surely the only honest course, was not wholly ignoble. Were he to do
+such a thing it would go far to kill his mother--worse, it would
+embitter every moment of the life which remained to her.
+
+For a while Elwyn went in deadly fear lest Fanny should tell her husband
+the truth. But the weeks and months drifted by, and she remained silent.
+And as he had gone about that year, petted and made much of by his
+friends and acquaintances--for did he not bear on his worn, handsome
+face that look which war paints on the face of your sensitive modern
+man?--he heard whispered the delightful news that after five years of
+marriage kind Jim and dear Fanny Bellair were at last going to be made
+happy--happy in the good old way.
+
+Among the other memories of that hateful time, one came back, to-night,
+with especial vividness. Hurrying home across the park one afternoon,
+seven years ago now, almost to a day, he had suddenly run up against
+Bellair.
+
+They had talked for a few moments on indifferent things, and then Jim
+had said shyly, awkwardly, but with a beaming look on his face, "You
+know about Fanny? Of course I can't help feeling a bit anxious, but
+she's so healthy--not like those women who have always something the
+matter with them!" And he, Elwyn, had gripped the other man's hand, and
+muttered the congratulation which was being asked of him.
+
+That meeting, so full of shameful irony, had occurred about a week
+before the child's birth. Elwyn had meant to be away from London--but
+Chance, so carelessly kind a friend to him in the past, at last proved
+cruel, for surely it was Chance and Chance alone that led him, on the
+very eve of the day he was starting for Norway, straight across the
+quiet square, composed of high Georgian houses, where the Bellairs still
+lived.
+
+To-night, thanks to his mother, every incident of that long, agonizing
+night came back. He could almost feel the tremor of half fear, half
+excitement, which had possessed him when he had suddenly become aware
+that his friends' house was still lit up and astir, and that fresh straw
+lay heaped up in prodigal profusion in the road where, a little past the
+door, was drawn up a doctor's one-horse brougham. Even then he might
+have taken another way, but something had seemed to drive him on, past
+the house,--and there Elwyn, staying his deadened footsteps, had heard
+float down to him from widely opened windows above, certain sounds,
+muffled moans, telling of a physical extremity which even now he winced
+to remember.
+
+He had waited on and on--longing to escape, and yet prisoned between
+imaginary bounds within which he paced up and down, filled with an
+obscure desire to share, in the measure that was possible to him, her
+torment.
+
+At last, in the orange, dust-laden dawn of a London summer morning, the
+front door of the house had opened, and Elwyn had walked forward, every
+nerve quivering with suspense and fatigue, feeling that he must know....
+
+A great doctor, with whose face he was vaguely acquainted, had stepped
+out accompanied by Bellair--Bellair with ruffled hair and red-rimmed
+eyes, but looking if tired then content, even more, triumphant. Elwyn
+had heard him say the words, "Thanks awfully. I shall never forget how
+kind you have been, Sir Joseph. Yes, I'll go to bed at once. I know you
+must have thought me rather stupid."
+
+And then Bellair had suddenly seen Elwyn standing on the pavement; he
+had accepted unquestioningly the halting explanation that he was on his
+way home from a late party, and had happened, as it were, that way.
+"It's a boy!" he had said exultantly, although Elwyn had asked him no
+question, and then, "Of course I'm awfully pleased, but I'm dog tired!
+She's had a bad time, poor girl--but it's all right now, thank God! Come
+in and have a drink, Hugo."
+
+But Elwyn had shaken his head. Again he had gripped his old friend's
+hand, as he had done a week before, and again he had muttered the
+necessary words of congratulation. Then, turning on his heel, he had
+gone home, and spent the rest of the night in desultory packing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was just seven years ago, and Elwyn had never seen Fanny's child.
+He had been away from England for over a year, and when he came back he
+learned that the Bellairs were away, living in the country, where they
+had taken a house for the sake of their boy.
+
+As time had gone on, Elwyn and his friends had somehow drifted apart, as
+people are apt to drift apart in the busy idleness of the life led by
+the fortunate Bellairs and Elwyns of this world. Fanny avoided Hugh
+Elwyn, and Elwyn avoided Fanny, but they two only were aware of this. It
+was the last of the many secrets which they had once shared. When he
+and Bellair by chance met alone, all the old cordiality and even the old
+affection seemed to come back, if not to Elwyn then to the other man.
+
+And now the child, to whom it seemed not only Fanny but Jim Bellair also
+was so devoted, was ill, and he, Hugh Elwyn, had been the last to hear
+of it. He felt vaguely remorseful that this should be so. There had been
+years when nothing that affected Bellair could have left him
+indifferent, and a time when the slightest misadventure befalling Fanny
+would have called forth his eager, helpful sympathy.
+
+How strange it would be--he quickened his footsteps--if this child, with
+whom he was at once remotely and intimately concerned, were to die! He
+could not help feeling, deep down in his heart, that this would be, if a
+tragic, then a natural solution of a painful and unnatural problem--and
+then, quite suddenly, he felt horribly ashamed of having allowed himself
+to think this thought, to wish this awful wish.
+
+Why should he not go now, at once, to Manchester Square, and inquire as
+to the little boy's condition? It was not really late, not yet midnight.
+He could go and leave a message, perhaps even scribble a line to Jim
+Bellair explaining that he had come round as soon as he had heard of the
+child's illness.
+
+
+II
+
+When Hugh Elwyn reached the familiar turning whence he could see the
+Bellairs' high house, time seemed to have slipped back.
+
+The house was all lit up as it had been on that summer night seven years
+ago. Everything was the same--even to the heaped-up straw into which his
+half-reluctant feet now sank. There was even a doctor's carriage drawn
+up a little way from the front door, but this time it was a smart
+electric brougham.
+
+He rang the bell, and as the door opened, Jim Bellair suddenly came into
+the hall, out of a room which Elwyn knew to be the smoking-room--a room
+in which he and Fanny had at one time spent long hours in contented, nay
+in ecstatic, dual solitude.
+
+"I have come to inquire--I only heard to-night--" he began awkwardly,
+but the other cut him short, "Yes, yes, I understand--it's awfully good
+of you, Elwyn! I'm awfully glad to see you. Come in here--" and perforce
+he had to follow. "The doctor's upstairs--I mean Sir Joseph Pixton.
+Fanny was determined to have him, and he very kindly came, though of
+course he's not a child's doctor. He's annoyed because Fanny won't have
+trained nurses; but I don't suppose anything would make any difference.
+It's just a fight--a fight for the little chap's life--that's what it
+is, and we don't know yet who'll win."
+
+He spoke in quick, short sentences, staring with widely open eyes at his
+erstwhile friend as he spoke. "Pneumonia--I suppose you don't know
+anything about it? I thought children never had such things, especially
+not in hot weather."
+
+"I had a frightful illness when I was about your boy's age," said Elwyn
+eagerly. "It's the first thing I can really remember. They called it
+inflammation of the lungs. I was awfully bad. My mother talks of it now,
+sometimes."
+
+"Does she?" Bellair spoke wearily. "If only one could _do_ something,"
+he went on. "But you see the worst of it is that I can do
+nothing--nothing! Fanny hates my being up there--she thinks it upsets
+the boy. He's such a jolly little chap, Hugo. You know we called him
+Peter after Fanny's father?"
+
+Elwyn moved towards the door. He felt dreadfully moved by the other's
+pain. He told himself that after all he could do no good by staying, and
+he felt so ashamed, such a cur----
+
+"You don't want to go away yet?" There was sharp chagrin, reproachful
+dismay, in Bellair's voice. Elwyn remembered that in old days Jim had
+always hated being alone. "Won't you stay and hear what Pixton says?
+Or--or are you in a hurry?"
+
+Elwyn turned round. "Of course I'll stay," he said briefly.
+
+Bellair spared him thanks, but he began walking about the room
+restlessly. At last he went to the door and set it ajar. "I want to hear
+when Sir Joseph comes down," he explained, and even as he spoke there
+came the sound of heavy, slow footsteps on the staircase.
+
+Bellair went out and brought the great man in.
+
+"I've told Mrs. Bellair that we ought to have Bewdley! He knows a great
+deal more about children than I can pretend to do; and I propose, with
+your leave, to go off now, myself, and if possible bring him back." The
+old doctor's keen eyes wandered as he spoke from Bellair's fair face to
+Hugh Elwyn's dark one. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps, Mr. Bellair, you
+would get someone to telephone to Dr. Bewdley's house to say that I'm
+coming? It might save a few moments."
+
+As Bellair left the room, the doctor turned to Elwyn and said abruptly,
+"I hope you'll be able to stay with your brother? All this is very hard
+on him; Mrs. Bellair will scarcely allow him into the child's room, and
+though that, of course, is quite right, I'm sorry for the man. He's
+wrapped up in the child."
+
+And when Bellair came back from accompanying the old doctor to his
+carriage, there was a smile on his face--the first smile which had been
+there for a long time: "Pixton thinks you're my brother! He said, 'I
+hope your brother will manage to stay with you for a bit.' Now I'll go
+up and see Fanny. Pixton is certainly more hopeful than the last man we
+had--"
+
+Bellair's voice had a confident ring. Elwyn remembered with a pang that
+Jim had always been like that--always believed, that is, that the best
+would come to pass.
+
+When left alone, Elwyn began walking restlessly up and down, much as his
+friend had walked up and down a few minutes ago. Something of the
+excitement of the fight going on above had entered into him; he now
+desired ardently that the child should live, should emerge victor from
+the grim struggle.
+
+At last Bellair came back. "Fanny believes that this is the night of
+crisis," he said slowly. All the buoyancy had left his voice. "But--but
+Elwyn, I hope you won't mind--the fact is she's set her heart on your
+seeing him. I told her what you told me about yourself, I mean your
+illness as a child, and it's cheered her up amazingly, poor girl!
+Perhaps you could tell her a little bit more about it, though I like to
+think that if the boy gets through it"--his voice broke suddenly--"she
+won't remember this--this awful time. But don't let's keep her
+waiting--" He took Elwyn's consent for granted, and quickly the two men
+walked up the stairs of the high house, on and on and on.
+
+"It's a good way up," whispered Bellair, "but Fanny was told that a
+child's nursery couldn't be too high. So we had the four rooms at the
+top thrown into two."
+
+They were now on the dimly-lighted landing. "Wait one moment--wait one
+moment, Hugo." Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper.
+
+Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the
+room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his
+ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the
+house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a
+touch of grotesque horror to the situation.
+
+Suddenly the handle of the door in front of him moved round, and he
+heard Fanny Bellair's voice, unnaturally controlled and calm. "I sent
+Nanna to bed, Jim. The poor old creature was absolutely worn out. And
+then I would so much rather be alone when Sir Joseph brings back the
+other doctor. He admits--I mean Sir Joseph does--that to-night _is_ the
+crisis."
+
+The door swung widely open, and Elwyn, moving instinctively back,
+visualized the scene before him very distinctly.
+
+There was a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the
+one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over.
+
+Mrs. Bellair stood between the screen and the pale blue wall. Her slim
+figure was clad in some sort of long white garment, and over it she wore
+an apron, which he noticed was far too large for her. Her hair, the
+auburn hair which had been her greatest beauty, and which he had once
+loved to praise and to caress, was fastened back, massed up in as small
+a compass as possible. That, and the fact that her face was
+expressionless, so altered her in Elwyn's eyes as to give him an uncanny
+feeling that the woman before him was not the woman he had known, had
+loved, had left,--but a stranger, only bound to him by the slender link
+of a common humanity.
+
+She waited some moments as if listening, then she came out on to the
+landing, and shut the door behind her very softly.
+
+The sentence of conventional sympathy half formed on Elwyn's lips died
+into nothingness; as little could he have offered words of cheer to one
+who was being tortured; but in the dim light their hands met and clasped
+tightly.
+
+"Hugo?" she said, "I want to ask you something. You told Jim just now
+that you were once very ill as a child,--ill like this, ill like my
+child. I want you to tell me honestly if that is true? I mean, were you
+very, very ill?"
+
+He answered her in the same way, without preamble, baldly: "It is quite
+true," he said. "I was very ill--so ill that my mother for one moment
+thought that I was dead. But remember, Fanny, that in those days they
+did not know nearly as much as they do now. Your boy has two chances for
+every one that I had then."
+
+"Would you mind coming in and seeing him?" Her voice faltered, it had
+become more human, more conventional, in quality.
+
+"Of course I will see him," he said. "I want to see him,--dear." She
+had suddenly become to him once more the thing nearest his heart; once
+more the link between them became of the closest, most intimate nature,
+and yet, or perhaps because of its intensity, the sense of nearness
+which had sprung at her touch into being was passionless.
+
+The face which had been drained of all expression quickened into
+agonized feeling. She tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he held
+it firmly, and it was hand in hand that together they walked into the
+room.
+
+As they came round the screen behind which lay the sick child, Bellair
+went over to the farthest of the three windows and stood there with
+crossed arms staring out into the night.
+
+The little boy lay on his right side, and as they moved round to the
+edge of the large cot, Elwyn, with a sudden tightening of the throat,
+became aware that the child was neither asleep nor, as he in his
+ignorance had expected to find him, sunk in stupor or delirium. But the
+small, dark face, framed by the white pillow, was set in lines of deep,
+unchildlike gravity, and in the eyes which now gazed incuriously at
+Elwyn there was a strange, watchful light which seemed to illumine that
+which was within rather than that which was without.
+
+As is always the case with a living creature near to death, little
+Peter Bellair looked very lonely.
+
+Then Elwyn, moving nearer still, seemed--or so at least Fanny Bellair
+will ever believe--to take possession of the moribund child, yielding
+him as he did so something of his own strength to help him through the
+crisis then imminent. And indeed the little creature whose forehead,
+whose clenched left hand lying on the sheet were beginning to glisten
+with sweat, appeared to become merged in some strange way with himself.
+Merged, not with the man he was to-day, but with the Hugh Elwyn of
+thirty years back, who, as a lonely only child, had lived so intensely
+secret, imaginative a life, peopling the prim alleys of Hyde Park with
+fairies, imps, tricksy hobgoblins in whom he more than half believed,
+and longing even then, as ever after, for the unattainable, never
+carelessly happy as his father and mother believed him to be....
+
+Hugh Elwyn stayed with the Bellairs all that night. He shared the sick
+suspense the hour of the crisis brought, and he was present when the
+specialist said the fateful words, "I think, under God, this child will
+live."
+
+When at last Elwyn left the house, clad in an old light coat of
+Bellair's in order that the folk early astir should not see that he was
+wearing evening clothes, he felt happier, more light-hearted, than he
+had done for years.
+
+His life had been like a crowded lumber-room, full of useless and
+worn-out things he had accounted precious, while he had ignored the one
+possession that really mattered and that linked him, not only with the
+future, but with the greatest reality of his past.
+
+The inevitable pain which this suddenly discovered treasure was to bring
+was mercifully concealed from him, as also the sombre fact that he would
+henceforth go lonely all his life, perforce obliged to content himself
+with the crumbs of another man's feast. For Peter Bellair, high-strung,
+imaginative, as he will ever be, will worship the strong, kindly, simple
+man he believes to be his father, but to that dear father's friend he
+will only yield the careless affection born of gratitude for much
+kindness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the matter of the broken engagement, Hugh Elwyn was more fairly
+treated by the men and women whom the matter concerned, or who thought
+it concerned them, than are the majority of recusant lovers.
+
+"Hugh Elwyn has never been quite the same since the war, and you know
+Winifred Fanshawe really liked the other man the best," so said those
+who spent an idle moment in discussing the matter, and they generally
+added, "It's a good thing that he's spending the summer with his old
+friends, the Bellairs. They're living very quietly just now, for their
+little boy has been dreadfully ill, so it's just the place for poor old
+Hugo to get over it all!"
+
+
+
+
+ST. CATHERINE'S EVE
+
+
+I
+
+"In this matter of the railway James Mottram has proved a false friend,
+a very traitor to me!"
+
+Charles Nagle's brown eyes shone with anger; he looked loweringly at his
+companions, and they, a beautiful young woman and an old man dressed in
+the sober garb of a Catholic ecclesiastic of that day, glanced at one
+another apprehensively.
+
+All England was then sharply divided into two camps, the one composed of
+those who welcomed with enthusiasm the wonderful new invention which
+obliterated space, the other of those who dreaded and abhorred the
+coming of the railroads.
+
+Charles Nagle got up and walked to the end of the terrace. He stared
+down into the wooded combe, or ravine, below, and noted with sullen
+anger the signs of stir and activity in the narrow strip of wood which
+till a few weeks before had been so still, so entirely remote from
+even the quiet human activities of 1835.
+
+At last he turned round, pirouetting on his heel with a quick movement,
+and his good looks impressed anew each of the two who sat there with
+him. Eighty years ago beauty of line and colour were allowed to tell in
+masculine apparel, and this young Dorset squire delighted in fine
+clothes. Though November was far advanced it was a mild day, and Charles
+Nagle wore a bright blue coat, cut, as was then the fashion, to show off
+the points of his elegant figure--of his slender waist and his broad
+shoulders; as for the elaborately frilled waistcoat, it terminated in an
+India muslin stock, wound many times round his neck. He looked a foppish
+Londoner rather than what he was--an honest country gentleman who had
+not journeyed to the capital for some six years, and then only to see a
+great physician.
+
+"'Twas a most unneighbourly act on the part of James--he knows it well
+enough, for we hardly see him now!" He addressed his words more
+particularly to his wife, and he spoke more gently than before.
+
+The old priest--his name was Dorriforth--looked uneasily from his host
+to his hostess. He felt that both these young people, whom he had known
+from childhood, and whom he loved well, had altered during the few weeks
+which had gone by since he had last seen them. Rather--he mentally
+corrected himself--it was the wife, Catherine, who was changed. Charles
+Nagle was much the same; poor Charles would never be other, for he
+belonged to the mysterious company of those who, physically sound, are
+mentally infirm, and shunned by their more fortunate fellows.
+
+But Charles Nagle's wife, the sweet young woman who for so long had been
+content, nay glad, to share this pitiful exile, seemed now to have
+escaped, if not in body then in mind, from the place where her sad,
+monotonous duty lay.
+
+She did not at once answer her husband; but she looked at him fixedly,
+her hand smoothing nervously the skirt of her pretty gown.
+
+Mrs. Nagle's dress also showed a care and research unusual in that of
+the country lady of those days. This was partly no doubt owing to her
+French blood--her grandparents had been _emigres_--and to the fact that
+Charles liked to see her in light colours. The gown she was now wearing
+on this mild November day was a French flowered silk, the spoil of a
+smuggler who pursued his profitable calling on the coast hard by. The
+short, high bodice and puffed sleeves were draped with a scarf of
+Buckinghamshire lace which left, as was the fashion of those days, the
+wearer's lovely shoulders bare.
+
+"James Mottram," she said at last, and with a heightened colour,
+"believes in progress, Charles. It is the one thing concerning which you
+and your friend will never agree."
+
+"Friend?" he repeated moodily. "Friend! James Mottram has shown himself
+no friend of ours. And then I had rights in this matter--am I not his
+heir-at-law? I could prevent my cousin from touching a stone, or felling
+a tree, at the Eype. But 'tis his indifference to my feelings that
+angers me so. Why, I trusted the fellow as if he had been my brother!"
+
+"And James Mottram," said the old priest authoritatively, "has always
+felt the same to you, Charles. Never forget that! In all but name you
+are brothers. Were you not brought up together? Had I not the schooling
+of you both as lads?" He spoke with a good deal of feeling; he had
+noticed--and the fact disturbed him--that Charles Nagle spoke in the
+past tense when referring to his affection for the absent man.
+
+"But surely, sir, you cannot approve that this iron monster should
+invade our quiet neighbourhood?" exclaimed Charles impatiently.
+
+Mrs. Nagle looked at the priest entreatingly. Did she by any chance
+suppose that he would be able to modify her husband's violent feeling?
+
+"If I am to say the truth, Charles," said Mr. Dorriforth mildly, "and
+you would not have me conceal my sentiments, then I believe the time
+will come when even you will be reconciled to this marvellous invention.
+Those who surely know declare that, thanks to these railroads, our
+beloved country will soon be all cultivated as is a garden. Nay, perhaps
+others of our Faith, strangers, will settle here----"
+
+"Strangers?" repeated Charles Nagle sombrely, "I wish no strangers here.
+Even now there are too many strangers about." He looked round as if he
+expected those strangers of whom the priest had spoken to appear
+suddenly from behind the yew hedges which stretched away, enclosing
+Catherine Nagle's charming garden, to the left of the plateau on which
+stood the old manor-house.
+
+"Nay, nay," he repeated, returning to his grievance, "never had I
+expected to find James Mottram a traitor to his order. As for the folk
+about here, they're bewitched! They believe that this puffing devil will
+make them all rich! I could tell them different; but, as you know, there
+are reasons why I should not."
+
+The priest bent his head gravely. The Catholic gentry of those days were
+not on comfortable terms with their neighbours. In spite of the fact
+that legally they were now "emancipated," any malicious person could
+still make life intolerable to them. The railway mania was at its
+beginnings, and it would have been especially dangerous for Charles
+Nagle to take, in an active sense, the unpopular side.
+
+In other parts of England, far from this Dorset countryside, railroads
+had brought with them a revival of trade. It was hoped that the same
+result would follow here, and a long strip of James Mottram's estate had
+been selected as being peculiarly suitable for the laying down of the
+iron track which was to connect the nearest town with the sea.
+
+Unfortunately the land in question consisted of a wood which formed the
+boundary-line where Charles Nagle's property marched with that of his
+kinsman and co-religionist, James Mottram; and Nagle had taken the
+matter very ill indeed. He was now still suffering, in a physical
+sense, from the effects of the violent fit of passion which the matter
+had induced, and which even his wife, Catherine, had not been able to
+allay....
+
+As he started walking up and down with caged, impatient steps, she
+watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head
+with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the
+opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle,
+James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds
+which swept up from the sea.
+
+Suddenly he again strode over to the edge of the terrace: "I think I'll
+go down and have a talk to those railroad fellows," he muttered
+uncertainly.
+
+Charles knew well that this was among the forbidden things--the things
+he must not do; yet occasionally Catherine, who was, as the poor fellow
+dimly realized, his mentor and guardian, as well as his outwardly
+submissive wife, would allow him to do that which was forbidden.
+
+But to-day such was not her humour. "Oh, no, Charles," she said
+decidedly, "you cannot go down to the wood! You must stay here and talk
+to Mr. Dorriforth."
+
+"They were making hellish noises all last night; I had no rest at all,"
+Nagle went on inconsequently. "They were running their puffing devil up
+and down, 'The Bridport Wonder'--that's what they call it, reverend
+sir," he turned to the priest.
+
+Catherine again looked up at her husband, and their old friend saw that
+she bit her lip as if checking herself in impatient speech. Was she
+losing the sweetness of her temper, the evenness of disposition the
+priest had ever admired in her, and even reverenced?
+
+Mrs. Nagle knew that the steam-engine had been run over the line for the
+first time the night before, for James Mottram and she had arranged that
+the trial should take place then rather than in the daytime. She also
+knew that Charles had slept through the long dark hours, those hours
+during which she had lain wide awake by his side listening to the
+strange new sounds made by the Bridport Wonder. Doubtless one of the
+servants had spoken of the matter in his hearing.
+
+She frowned, then felt ashamed. "Charles," she said gently, "would it
+not be well for me to go down to the wood and discover when these
+railroad men are going away? They say in the village that their work is
+now done."
+
+"Yes," he cried eagerly. "A good idea, love! And if they're going off
+at once, you might order that a barrel of good ale be sent down to them.
+I'm informed that that's what James has had done this very day. Now I've
+no wish that James should appear more generous than I!"
+
+Catherine Nagle smiled, the indulgent kindly smile which a woman bestows
+on a loved child who suddenly betrays a touch of that vanity which is,
+in a child, so pardonable.
+
+She went into the house, and in a few moments returned with a pink scarf
+wound about her soft dark hair--hair dressed high, turned back from her
+forehead in the old pre-Revolution French mode, and not, as was then the
+fashion, arranged in stiff curls.
+
+The two men watched her walking swiftly along the terrace till she sank
+out of their sight, for a row of stone steps led down to an orchard
+planted with now leafless pear and apple trees, and surrounded with a
+quickset hedge. A wooden gate, with a strong lock to it, was set in this
+closely clipped hedge. It opened on a steep path which, after traversing
+two fields, terminated in the beech-wood where now ran the iron track of
+the new railroad.
+
+Catherine Nagle unlocked the orchard gate, and went through on to the
+field path. And then she slackened her steps.
+
+For hours, nay, for days, she had been longing for solitude, and now,
+for a brief space, solitude was hers. But, instead of bringing her
+peace, this respite from the companionship of Charles and of Mr.
+Dorriforth brought increased tumult and revolt.
+
+She had ardently desired the visit of the old priest, but his presence
+had bestowed, instead of solace, fret and discomfort. When he fixed on
+her his mild, penetrating eyes, she felt as if he were dragging into the
+light certain secret things which had been so far closely hidden within
+her heart, and concerning which she had successfully dulled her once
+sensitive conscience.
+
+The waking hours of the last two days had each been veined with torment.
+Her soul sickened as she thought of the morrow, St. Catherine's Day,
+that is, her feast-day. The _emigres_, Mrs. Nagle's own people, had in
+exile jealousy kept up their own customs, and to Charles Nagle's wife
+the twenty-fifth day of November had always been a day of days, what her
+birthday is to a happy Englishwoman. Even Charles always remembered the
+date, and in concert with his faithful man-servant, Collins, sent to
+London each year for a pretty jewel. The housefolk, all of whom had
+learnt to love their mistress, and who helped her loyally in her
+difficult, sometimes perilous, task, also made of the feast a holiday.
+
+But now, on this St. Catherine's Eve, Mrs. Nagle told herself that she
+was at the end of her strength. And yet only a month ago--so she now
+reminded herself piteously--all had been well with her; she had been
+strangely, pathetically happy a month since; content with all the
+conditions of her singular and unnatural life....
+
+Suddenly she stopped walking. As if in answer to a word spoken by an
+invisible companion she turned aside, and, stooping, picked a weed
+growing by the path. She held it up for a moment to her cheek, and then
+spoke aloud. "Were it not for James Mottram," she said slowly, and very
+clearly, "I, too, should become mad."
+
+Then she looked round in sudden fear. Catherine Nagle had never before
+uttered, or permitted another to utter aloud in her presence, that awful
+word. But she knew that their neighbours were not so scrupulous. One
+cruel enemy, and, what was especially untoward, a close relation, Mrs.
+Felwake, own sister to Charles Nagle's dead father, often uttered it.
+This lady desired her son to reign at Edgecombe; it was she who in the
+last few years had spread abroad the notion that Charles Nagle, in the
+public interest, should be asylumed.
+
+In his own house, and among his own tenants, the slander was angrily
+denied. When Charles was stranger, more suspicious, moodier than usual,
+those about him would tell one another that "the squire was ill to-day,"
+or that "the master was ailing." That he had a mysterious illness was
+admitted. Had not a famous London doctor persuaded Mr. Nagle that it
+would be dangerous for him to ride, even to walk outside the boundary of
+his small estate,--in brief, to run any risks which might affect his
+heart? He had now got out of the way of wishing to go far afield;
+contentedly he would pace up and down for hours on the long terrace
+which overhung the wood--talking, talking, talking, with Catherine on
+his arm.
+
+But he was unselfish--sometimes. "Take a walk, dear heart, with James,"
+he would say, and then Catherine Nagle and James Mottram would go out
+and make their way to some lonely farmhouse or cottage where Mottram had
+estate business. Yet during these expeditions they never forgot Charles,
+so Catherine now reminded herself sorely,--nay, it was then that they
+talked of him the most, discussing him kindly, tenderly, as they
+went....
+
+Catherine walked quickly on, her eyes on the ground. With a feeling of
+oppressed pain she recalled the last time she and Mottram had been alone
+together. Bound for a distant spot on the coast, they had gone on and on
+for miles, almost up to the cliffs below which lay the sea. Ah, how
+happy, how innocent she had felt that day!
+
+Then they had come to a stile--Mottram had helped her up, helped her
+down, and for a moment her hand had lain and fluttered in his hand....
+
+During the long walk back, each had been very silent; and Catherine--she
+could not answer for her companion--when she had seen Charles waiting
+for her patiently, had felt a pained, shamed beat of the heart. As for
+James Mottram, he had gone home at once, scarce waiting for good-nights.
+
+That evening--Catherine remembered it now with a certain comfort--she
+had been very kind to Charles; she was ever kind, but she had then been
+kinder than usual, and he had responded by becoming suddenly clearer in
+mind than she had known him to be for a long time. For some days he had
+been the old Charles--tender, whimsical, gallant, the Charles with whom,
+at a time when every girl is in love with love, she had alack! fallen in
+love. Then once more the cloud had come down, shadowing a dreary waste
+of days--dark days of oppression and of silence, alternating with sudden
+bursts of unreasonable and unreasoning rage.
+
+James Mottram had come, and come frequently, during that time of misery.
+But his manner had changed. He had become restrained, as if watchful of
+himself; he was no longer the free, the happy, the lively companion he
+had used to be. Catherine scarcely saw him out of Charles's presence,
+and when they were by chance alone they talked of Charles, only of
+Charles and of his unhappy condition, and of what could be done to
+better it.
+
+And now James Mottram had given up coming to Edgecombe in the old
+familiar way; or rather--and this galled Catherine shrewdly--he came
+only sufficiently often not to rouse remark among their servants and
+humble neighbours.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine Nagle was on the edge of the wood, and looking about her she
+saw with surprise that the railway men she had come down to see had
+finished work for the day. There were signs of their immediate
+occupation, a fire was still smouldering, and the door of one of the
+shanties they occupied was open. But complete stillness reigned in this
+kingdom of high trees. To the right and left, as far as she could see,
+stretched the twin lines of rude iron rails laid down along what had
+been a cart-track, as well as a short cut between Edgecombe Manor and
+Eype Castle. A dun drift, to-day's harvest of dead leaves, had settled
+on the rails; even now it was difficult to follow their course.
+
+As she stood there, about to turn and retrace her steps, Catherine
+suddenly saw James Mottram advancing quickly towards her, and the
+mingled revolt and sadness which had so wholly possessed her gave way to
+a sudden, overwhelming feeling of security and joy.
+
+She moved from behind the little hut near which she had been standing,
+and a moment later they stood face to face.
+
+James Mottram was as unlike Charles Nagle as two men of the same age, of
+the same breed, and of the same breeding could well be. He was shorter,
+and of sturdier build, than his cousin; and he was plain, whereas
+Charles Nagle was strikingly handsome. Also his face was tanned by
+constant exposure to sun, salt-wind, and rain; his hair was cut short,
+his face shaven.
+
+The very clothes James Mottram wore were in almost ludicrous contrast to
+those which Charles Nagle affected, for Mottram's were always of
+serviceable homespun. But for the fact that they and he were
+scrupulously clean, the man now walking by Catherine Nagle's side might
+have been a prosperous farmer or bailiff instead of the owner of such
+large property in those parts as made him, in spite of his unpopular
+faith, lord of the little world about him.
+
+On his plain face and strong, sturdy figure Catherine's beautiful eyes
+dwelt with unconscious relief. She was so weary of Charles's absorption
+in his apparel, and of his interest in the hundred and one fal-lals
+which then delighted the cosmopolitan men of fashion.
+
+A simple, almost childish gladness filled her heart. Conscience, but
+just now so insistent and disturbing a familiar, vanished for a space,
+nay more, assumed the garb of a meddling busybody who seeks to discover
+harm where no harm is.
+
+Was not James Mottram Charles's friend, almost, as the old priest had
+said, Charles's brother? Had she not herself deliberately chosen Charles
+in place of James when both young men had been in ardent pursuit of
+her--James's pursuit almost wordless, Charles's conducted with all the
+eloquence of the poet he had then set out to be?
+
+Mottram, seeing her in the wood, uttered a word of surprise. She
+explained her presence there. Their hands scarce touched in greeting,
+and then they started walking side by side up the field path.
+
+Mottram carried a stout ash stick. Had the priest been there he would
+perchance have noticed that the man's hand twitched and moved restlessly
+as he swung his stick about; but Catherine only became aware that her
+companion was preoccupied and uneasy after they had gone some way.
+
+When, however, the fact of his unease seemed forced upon her notice, she
+felt suddenly angered. There was a quality in Mrs. Nagle that made her
+ever ready to rise to meet and conquer circumstance. She told herself,
+with heightened colour, that James Mottram should and must return to his
+old ways--to his old familiar footing with her. Anything else would be,
+nay was, intolerable.
+
+"James,"--she turned to him frankly--"why have you not come over to see
+us lately as often as you did? Charles misses you sadly, and so do I.
+Prepare to find him in a bad mood to-day. But just now he distressed
+Mr. Dorriforth by his unreasonableness touching the railroad." She
+smiled and went on lightly, "He said that you were a false friend to
+him--a traitor!"
+
+And then Catherine Nagle stopped and caught her breath. God! Why had she
+said that? But Mottram had evidently not caught the sinister word, and
+Catherine in haste drove back conscience into the lair whence conscience
+had leapt so suddenly to her side.
+
+"Maybe I ought, in this matter of the railroad," he said musingly, "to
+have humoured Charles. I am now sorry I did not do so. After all,
+Charles may be right--and all we others wrong. The railroad may not
+bring us lasting good!"
+
+Catherine looked at him surprised. James Mottram had always been so sure
+of himself in this matter; but now there was dejection, weariness in his
+voice; and he was walking quickly, more quickly up the steep incline
+than Mrs. Nagle found agreeable. But she also hastened her steps,
+telling herself, with wondering pain, that he was evidently in no mood
+for her company.
+
+"Mr. Dorriforth has already been here two days," she observed
+irrelevantly.
+
+"Aye, I know that. It was to see him I came to-day; and I will ask you
+to spare him to me for two or three hours. Indeed, I propose that he
+should walk back with me to the Eype. I wish him to witness my new will.
+And then I may as well go to confession, for it is well to be shriven
+before a journey, though for my part I feel ever safer on sea than
+land!"
+
+Mottram looked straight before him as he spoke.
+
+"A journey?" Catherine repeated the words in a low, questioning tone.
+There had come across her heart a feeling of such anguish that it was as
+though her body instead of her soul were being wrenched asunder. In her
+extremity she called on pride--and pride, ever woman's most loyal
+friend, flew to her aid.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, still staring straight in front of him, "I leave
+to-morrow for Plymouth. I have had letters from my agent in Jamaica
+which make it desirable that I should return there without delay." He
+dug his stick into the soft earth as he spoke.
+
+James Mottram was absorbed in himself, in his own desire to carry
+himself well in his fierce determination to avoid betraying what he
+believed to be his secret. But Catherine Nagle knew nothing of this.
+She almost thought him indifferent.
+
+They had come to a steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly
+quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he
+could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she
+desired to say were strangled, at birth, in her throat.
+
+"Charles will not mind; he will not miss me as he would have missed me
+before this unhappy business of the railroad came between us," Mottram
+said lamely.
+
+She still made no answer; instead she shook her head with an impatient
+gesture. Her silence made him sorry. After all, he had been a good
+friend to Catherine Nagle--so much he could tell himself without shame.
+He stepped aside on to the grass, and striding forward turned round and
+faced her.
+
+The tears were rolling down her cheeks; but she threw back her head and
+met his gaze with a cold, almost a defiant look. "You startled me
+greatly," she said breathlessly, "and took me so by surprise, James! I
+am grieved to think how Charles--nay, how we shall both--miss you. It is
+of Charles I think, James; it is for Charles I weep----"
+
+As she uttered the lying words, she still looked proudly into his face
+as if daring him to doubt her. "But I shall never forget--I shall ever
+think with gratitude of your great goodness to my poor Charles. Two
+years out of your life--that's what it's been, James. Too much--too much
+by far!" She had regained control over her quivering heart, and it was
+with a wan smile that she added, "But we shall miss you, dear, kind
+friend."
+
+Her smile stung him. "Catherine," he said sternly, "I go because I
+must--because I dare not stay. You are a woman and a saint, I a man and
+a sinner. I've been a fool and worse than a fool. You say that Charles
+to-day called me false friend, traitor! Catherine--Charles spoke more
+truly than he knew."
+
+His burning eyes held her fascinated. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
+She was thirstily absorbing the words as they fell now slowly, now
+quickly, from his lips.
+
+But what was this he was saying? "Catherine, do you wish me to go on?"
+Oh, cruel! Cruel to put this further weight on her conscience! But she
+made a scarcely perceptible movement of assent--and again he spoke.
+
+"Years ago I thought I loved you. I went away, as you know well, because
+of that love. You had chosen Charles--Charles in many ways the better
+fellow of the two. I went away thinking myself sick with love of you,
+but it was false--only my pride had been hurt. I did not love you as I
+loved myself. And when I got clear away, in a new place, among new
+people"--he hesitated and reddened darkly--"I forgot you! I vow that
+when I came back I was cured--cured if ever a man was! It was of
+Charles, not of you, Catherine, that I thought on my way home. To me
+Charles and you had become one. I swear it!" He repeated: "To me you and
+Charles were one."
+
+He waited a long moment, and then, more slowly, he went on, as if
+pleading with himself--with her: "You know what I found here in place of
+what I had left? I found Charles a----"
+
+Catherine Nagle shrank back. She put up her right hand to ward off the
+word, and Mottram, seizing her hand, held it in his with a convulsive
+clasp. "'Twas not the old feeling that came back to me--that I again
+swear, Catherine. 'Twas something different--something infinitely
+stronger--something that at first I believed to be all noble----"
+
+He stopped speaking, and Catherine Nagle uttered one word--a curious
+word. "When?" she asked, and more urgently again she whispered, "When?"
+
+"Long before I knew!" he said hoarsely. "At first I called the passion
+that possessed me by the false name of 'friendship.' But that poor
+hypocrisy soon left me! A month ago, Catherine, I found myself
+wishing--I'll say this for myself, it was for the first time--that
+Charles was dead. And then I knew for sure what I had already long
+suspected--that the time had come for me to go----"
+
+He dropped her hand, and stood before her, abased in his own eyes, but
+one who, if a criminal, had had the strength to be his own judge and
+pass heavy sentence on himself.
+
+"And now, Catherine--now that you understand why I go, you will bid me
+God-speed. Nay, more"--he looked at her, and smiled wryly--"if you are
+kind, as I know you to be kind, you will pray for me, for I go from you
+a melancholy, as well as a foolish man."
+
+She smiled a strange little wavering smile, and Mottram was deeply moved
+by the gentleness with which Catherine Nagle had listened to his story.
+He had been prepared for an averted glance, for words of cold
+rebuke--such words as his own long-dead mother would surely have
+uttered to a man who had come to her with such a tale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked on for a while, and Catherine again broke the silence by a
+question which disturbed her companion. "Then your agent's letter was
+not really urgent, James?"
+
+"The letters of an honest agent always call for the owner," he muttered
+evasively.
+
+They reached the orchard gate. Catherine held the key in her hand, but
+she did not place it in the lock--instead she paused awhile. "Then there
+is no special urgency?" she repeated. "And James--forgive me for asking
+it--are you, indeed, leaving England because of this--this matter of
+which you have just told me?"
+
+He bent his head in answer.
+
+Then she said deliberately: "Your conscience, James, is too scrupulous.
+I do not think that there is any reason why you should not stay. When
+Charles and I were in Italy," she went on in a toneless, monotonous
+voice, "I met some of those young noblemen who in times of pestilence go
+disguised to nurse the sick and bury the dead. It is that work of
+charity, dear friend, which you have been performing in our unhappy
+house. You have been nursing the sick--nay, more, you have been
+tending"--she waited, then in a low voice she added--"the dead--the dead
+that are yet alive."
+
+Mottram's soul leapt into his eyes. "Then you bid me stay?" he asked.
+
+"For the present," she answered, "I beg you to stay. But only so if it
+is indeed true that your presence is not really required in Jamaica."
+
+"I swear, Catherine, that all goes sufficiently well there." Again he
+fixed his honest, ardent eyes on her face.
+
+And now James Mottram was filled with a great exultation of spirit. He
+felt that Catherine's soul, incapable of even the thought of evil,
+shamed and made unreal the temptation which had seemed till just now one
+which could only be resisted by flight. Catherine was right; he had been
+over scrupulous.
+
+There was proof of it in the blessed fact that even now, already, the
+poison which had seemed to possess him, that terrible longing for
+another man's wife, had left him, vanishing in that same wife's pure
+presence. It was when he was alone--alone in his great house on the
+hill, that the devil entered into him, whispering that it was an awful
+thing such a woman as was Catherine, sensitive, intelligent, and in her
+beauty so appealing, should be tied to such a being as was Charles
+Nagle--poor Charles, whom every one, excepting his wife and one loyal
+kinsman, called mad. And yet now it was for this very Charles that
+Catherine asked him to stay, for the sake of that unhappy, distraught
+man to whom he, James Mottram, recognized the duty of a brother.
+
+"We will both forget what you have just told me," she said gently, and
+he bowed his head in reverence.
+
+They were now on the last step of the stone stairway leading to the
+terrace.
+
+Mrs. Nagle turned to her companion; he saw that her eyes were very
+bright, and that the rose-red colour in her cheeks had deepened as if
+she had been standing before a great fire.
+
+As they came within sight of Charles Nagle and of the old priest,
+Catherine put out her hand. She touched Mottram on the arm--it was a
+fleeting touch, but it brought them both, with beating hearts, to a
+stand. "James," she said, and then she stopped for a moment--a moment
+that seemed to contain aeons of mingled rapture and pain--"one word about
+Mr. Dorriforth." The commonplace words dropped them back to earth. "Did
+you wish him to stay with you till to-morrow? That will scarcely be
+possible, for to-morrow is St. Catherine's Day."
+
+"Why, no," he said quickly. "I will not take him home with me to-night.
+All my plans are now changed. My will can wait"--he smiled at her--"and
+so can my confession."
+
+"No, no!" she cried almost violently. "Your confession must not wait,
+James----"
+
+"Aye, but it must," he said, and again he smiled. "I am in no mood for
+confession, Catherine." He added in a lower tone, "you've purged me of
+my sin, my dear--I feel already shriven."
+
+Shame of a very poignant quality suddenly seared Catherine Nagle's soul.
+"Go on, you," she said breathlessly, though to his ears she seemed to
+speak in her usual controlled and quiet tones, "I have some orders to
+give in the house. Join Charles and Mr. Dorriforth. I will come out
+presently."
+
+James Mottram obeyed her. He walked quickly forward. "Good news,
+Charles," he cried. "These railway men whose presence so offends you go
+for good to-morrow! Reverend sir, accept my hearty greeting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Catherine Nagle turned to the right and went into the house. She
+hastened through the rooms in which, year in and year out, she spent
+her life, with Charles as her perpetual, her insistent companion. She
+now longed for a time of recollection and secret communion, and so she
+instinctively made for the one place where no one, not even Charles,
+would come and disturb her.
+
+Walking across the square hall, she ran up the broad staircase leading
+to the gallery, out of which opened the doors of her bedroom and of her
+husband's dressing-room. But she went swiftly past these two closed
+doors, and made her way along a short passage which terminated abruptly
+with a faded red baize door giving access to the chapel.
+
+Long, low-ceilinged and windowless, the chapel of Edgecombe Manor had
+remained unaltered since the time when there were heavy penalties
+attached both to the celebration of the sacred rites and to the hearing
+of Mass. The chapel depended for what fresh air it had on a narrow door
+opening straight on to ladder-like stairs leading down directly and out
+on to the terrace below. It was by this way that the small and scattered
+congregation gained access to the chapel when the presence of a priest
+permitted of Mass being celebrated there.
+
+Catherine went up close to the altar rails, and sat down on the
+arm-chair placed there for her sole use. She felt that now, when about
+to wrestle with her soul, she could not kneel and pray. Since she had
+been last in the chapel, acting sacristan that same morning, life had
+taken a great stride forward, dragging her along in its triumphant wake,
+a cruel and yet a magnificent conqueror.
+
+Hiding her face in her hands, she lived again each agonized and
+exquisite moment she had lived through as there had fallen on her ears
+the words of James Mottram's shamed confession. Once more her heart was
+moved to an exultant sense of happiness that he should have said these
+things to her--of happiness and shrinking shame....
+
+But soon other thoughts, other and sterner memories were thrust upon
+her. She told herself the bitter truth. Not only had she led James
+Mottram into temptation, but she had put all her woman's wit to the task
+of keeping him there. It was her woman's wit--but Catherine Nagle called
+it by a harsher name--which had enabled her to make that perilous rock
+on which she and James Mottram now stood heart to heart together,
+appear, to him at least, a spot of sanctity and safety. It was she, not
+the man who had gazed at her with so ardent a belief in her purity and
+honour, who was playing traitor--and traitor to one at once confiding
+and defenceless....
+
+Then, strangely, this evocation of Charles brought her burdened
+conscience relief. Catherine found sudden comfort in remembering her
+care, her tenderness for Charles. She reminded herself fiercely that
+never had she allowed anything to interfere with her wifely duty. Never?
+Alas! she remembered that there had come a day, at a time when James
+Mottram's sudden defection had filled her heart with pain, when she had
+been unkind to Charles. She recalled his look of bewildered surprise,
+and how he, poor fellow, had tried to sulk--only a few hours later to
+come to her, as might have done a repentant child, with the words, "Have
+I offended you, dear love?" And she who now avoided his caresses had
+kissed him of her own accord with tears, and cried, "No, no, Charles,
+you never offend me--you are always good to me!"
+
+There had been a moment to-day, just before she had taunted James
+Mottram with being over-scrupulous, when she had told herself that she
+could be loyal to both of these men she loved and who loved her, giving
+to each a different part of her heart.
+
+But that bargain with conscience had never been struck; while
+considering it she had found herself longing for some convulsion of the
+earth which should throw her and Mottram in each other's arms.
+
+James Mottram traitor? That was what she was about to make him be.
+Catherine forced herself to face the remorse, the horror, the loathing
+of himself which would ensue.
+
+It was for Mottram's sake, far more than in response to the command laid
+on her by her own soul, that Catherine Nagle finally determined on the
+act of renunciation which she knew was being immediately required of
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mrs. Nagle came out on the terrace the three men rose
+ceremoniously. She glanced at Charles, even now her first thought and
+her first care. His handsome face was overcast with the look of gloomy
+preoccupation which she had learnt to fear, though she knew that in
+truth it signified but little. At James Mottram she did not look, for
+she wished to husband her strength for what she was about to do.
+
+Making a sign to the others to sit down, she herself remained standing
+behind Charles's chair. It was from there that she at last spoke,
+instinctively addressing her words to the old priest.
+
+"I wonder," she said, "if James has told you of his approaching
+departure? He has heard from his agent in Jamaica that his presence is
+urgently required there."
+
+Charles Nagle looked up eagerly. "This is news indeed!" he exclaimed.
+"Lucky fellow! Why, you'll escape all the trouble that you've put on us
+with regard to that puffing devil!" He spoke more cordially than he had
+done for a long time to his cousin.
+
+Mr. Dorriforth glanced for a moment up at Catherine's face. Then quickly
+he averted his eyes.
+
+James Mottram rose to his feet. His limbs seemed to have aged. He gave
+Catherine a long, probing look.
+
+"Forgive me," he said deliberately. "You mistook my meaning. The matter
+is not as urgent, Catherine, as you thought." He turned to Charles, "I
+will not desert my friends--at any rate not for the present. I'll face
+the puffing devil with those to whom I have helped to acquaint him!"
+
+But Mrs. Nagle and the priest both knew that the brave words were a vain
+boast. Charles alone was deceived; and he showed no pleasure in the
+thought that the man who had been to him so kind and so patient a
+comrade and so trusty a friend was after all not leaving England
+immediately.
+
+"I must be going back to the Eype now." Mottram spoke heavily; again he
+looked at Mrs. Nagle with a strangely probing, pleading look. "But I'll
+come over to-morrow morning--to Mass. I've not forgotten that to-morrow
+is St. Catherine's Day--that this is St. Catherine's Eve."
+
+Charles seemed to wake out of a deep abstraction. "Yes, yes," he said
+heartily. "To-morrow is the great day! And then, after we've had
+breakfast I shall be able to consult you, James, about a very important
+matter, that new well they're plaguing me to sink in the village."
+
+For the moment the cloud had again lifted; Nagle looked at his cousin
+with all his old confidence and affection, and in response James
+Mottram's face worked with sudden emotion.
+
+"I'll be quite at your service, Charles," he said, "quite at your
+service!"
+
+Catherine stood by. "I will let you out by the orchard gate," she said.
+"No need for you to go round by the road."
+
+They walked, silently, side by side, along the terrace and down the
+stone steps. When in the leafless orchard, and close to where they were
+to part, he spoke:
+
+"You bid me go--at once?" Mottram asked the question in a low, even
+tone; but he did not look at Catherine, instead his eyes seemed to be
+following the movements of the stick he was digging into the ground at
+their feet.
+
+"I think, James, that would be best." Even to herself the words Mrs.
+Nagle uttered sounded very cold.
+
+"Best for me?" he asked. Then he looked up, and with sudden passion,
+"Catherine!" he cried. "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the
+wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong
+Charles--I swear it solemnly. Catherine!--do not bid me leave you.
+Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to
+become beseeching and imperious.
+
+Catherine Nagle suddenly threw out her hands with a piteous gesture.
+"Ah! James," she said, "I cannot trust my own----" And as she thus made
+surrender of her two most cherished possessions, her pride and her
+womanly reticence, Mottram's face--the plain-featured face so
+exquisitely dear to her--became transfigured. He said no word, he made
+no step forward, and yet Catherine felt as if the whole of his being was
+calling her, drawing her to him....
+
+Suddenly there rang through the still air a discordant cry: "Catherine!
+Catherine!"
+
+Mrs. Nagle sighed, a long convulsive sigh. It was as though a deep pit
+had opened between herself and her companion. "That was Charles," she
+whispered, "poor Charles calling me. I must not keep him waiting."
+
+"God forgive me," Mottram said huskily, "and bless you, Catherine, for
+all your goodness to me." He took her hand in farewell, and she felt the
+firm, kind grasp to be that of the kinsman and friend, not that of the
+lover.
+
+Then came over her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She
+realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to
+her--of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human
+being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely.
+Charles had been their common charge, the link as well as the barrier
+between them.
+
+"You'll come to-morrow morning?" she said, and she tried to withdraw her
+hand from his. His impersonal touch hurt her.
+
+"I'll come to-morrow, and rather early, Catherine. Then I'll be able to
+confess before Mass." He was speaking in his usual voice, but he still
+held her hand, and she felt his grip on it tightening, bringing welcome
+hurt.
+
+"And you'll leave----?"
+
+"For Plymouth to-morrow afternoon," he said briefly. He dropped her
+hand, which now felt numbed and maimed, and passed through the gate
+without looking back.
+
+She stood a moment watching him as he strode down the field path. It had
+suddenly become, from day, night,--high time for Charles to be indoors.
+
+Forgetting to lock the gate, she turned and retraced her steps through
+the orchard, and so made her way up to where her husband and the old
+priest were standing awaiting her.
+
+As she approached them, she became aware that something going on in the
+valley below was absorbing their close attention. She felt glad that
+this was so.
+
+"There it is!" cried Charles Nagle angrily. "I told you that they'd
+begin their damned practice again to-night!"
+
+Slowly through the stretch of open country which lay spread to their
+right, the Bridport Wonder went puffing its way. Lanterns had been hung
+in front of the engine, and as it crawled sinuously along it looked like
+some huge monster with myriad eyes. As it entered the wood below, the
+dark barrel-like body of the engine seemed to give a bound, a lurch
+forward, and the men that manned it laughed out suddenly and loudly. The
+sound of their uncouth mirth floated upwards through the twilight.
+
+"James's ale has made them merry!" exclaimed Charles, wagging his head.
+"And he, going through the wood, will just have met the puffing devil. I
+wish him the joy of the meeting!"
+
+
+II
+
+It was five hours later. Mrs. Nagle had bidden her reverend guest good
+night, and she was now moving about her large, barely furnished
+bedchamber, waiting for her husband to come upstairs.
+
+The hours which had followed James Mottram's departure had seemed
+intolerably long. Catherine felt as if she had gone through some
+terrible physical exertion which had left her worn out--stupefied. And
+yet she could not rest. Even now her day was not over; Charles often
+grew restless and talkative at night. He and Mr. Dorriforth were no
+doubt still sitting talking together downstairs.
+
+Mrs. Nagle could hear her husband's valet moving about in the next room,
+and the servant's proximity disturbed her.
+
+She waited awhile and then went and opened the door of the
+dressing-room. "You need not sit up, Collins," she said.
+
+The man looked vaguely disturbed. "I fear that Mr. Nagle, madam, has
+gone out of doors," he said.
+
+Catherine felt dismayed. The winter before Charles had once stayed out
+nearly all night.
+
+"Go you to bed, Collins," she said. "I will wait up till Mr. Nagle comes
+in, and I will make it right with him."
+
+He looked at her doubtingly. Was it possible that Mrs. Nagle was unaware
+of how much worse than usual his master had been the last few days?
+
+"I fear Mr. Nagle is not well to-day," he ventured. "He seems much
+disturbed to-night."
+
+"Your master is disturbed because Mr. Mottram is again leaving England
+for the Indies." Catherine forced herself to say the words. She was
+dully surprised to see how quietly news so momentous to her was received
+by her faithful servant.
+
+"That may be it," said the man consideringly, "but I can't help thinking
+that the master is still much concerned about the railroad. I fear that
+he has gone down to the wood to-night."
+
+Catherine was startled. "Oh, surely he would not do that, Collins?" She
+added in a lower tone, "I myself locked the orchard gate."
+
+"If that is so," he answered, obviously relieved, "then with your leave,
+madam, I'll be off to bed."
+
+Mrs. Nagle went back into her room, and sat down by the fire, and then,
+sooner than she had expected to do so, she heard a familiar sound. It
+came from the chapel, for Charles was fond of using that strange and
+secret entry into his house.
+
+She got up and quietly opened her bedroom door.
+
+From the hall below was cast up the dim light of the oil-lamp which
+always burnt there at night, and suddenly Catherine saw her husband
+emerge from the chapel passage, and begin walking slowly round the
+opposite side of the gallery. She watched him with languid curiosity.
+
+Charles Nagle was treading softly, his head bent as if in thought.
+Suddenly he stayed his steps by a half-moon table on which stood a large
+Chinese bowl filled with pot-pourri; and into this he plunged his hands,
+seeming to lave them in the dry rose-leaves. Catherine felt no surprise,
+she was so used to his strange ways; and more than once he had hidden
+things--magpie fashion--in that great bowl. She turned and closed her
+door noiselessly; Charles much disliked being spied on.
+
+At last she heard him go into his dressing-room. Then came the sounds of
+cupboard doors being flung open, and the hurried pouring out of
+water.... But long before he could have had time to undress, she heard
+the familiar knock.
+
+She said feebly, "Come in," and the door opened.
+
+It was as she had feared; her husband had no thought, no intention, of
+going yet to bed. Not only was he fully dressed, but the white evening
+waistcoat he had been wearing had been changed by him within the last
+few moments for a waistcoat she had not seen before, though she had
+heard of its arrival from London. It was of cashmere, the latest freak
+of fashion. She also saw with surprise that his nankeen trousers were
+stained, as if he had been kneeling on damp ground. He looked very hot,
+his wavy hair lay damply on his brow, and he appeared excited,
+oppressively alive.
+
+"Catherine!" he exclaimed, hurrying up to the place where she was
+standing near the fire. "You will bear witness that I was always and
+most positively averse to the railroad being brought here?" He did not
+wait for her to answer him. "Did I not always say that trouble would
+come of it--trouble to us all? Yet sometimes it's an ill thing to be
+proved right."
+
+"Indeed it is, Charles," she answered gently. "But let us talk of this
+to-morrow. It's time for bed, my dear, and I am very weary."
+
+He was now standing by her, staring down into the fire.
+
+Suddenly he turned and seized her left arm. He brought her unresisting
+across the room, then dragged aside the heavy yellow curtains which had
+been drawn before the central window.
+
+"Look over there, Catherine," he said meaningly. "Can you see the Eype?
+The moon gives but little light to-night, but the stars are bright. I
+can see a glimmer at yon window. They must be still waiting for James to
+come home."
+
+"I see the glimmer you mean," she said dully. "No doubt they leave a
+lamp burning all night, as we do. James must have got home hours ago,
+Charles." She saw that the cuff of her husband's coat was also covered
+with dark, damp stains, and again she wondered uneasily what he had been
+doing out of doors.
+
+"Catherine?" Charles Nagle turned her round, ungently, and forced her to
+look up into his face. "Have you ever thought what 'twould be like to
+live at the Eype?"
+
+The question startled her. She roused herself to refute what she felt to
+be an unworthy accusation. "No, Charles," she said, looking at him
+steadily. "God is my witness that at no time did I think of living at
+the Eype! Such a wish never came to me----"
+
+"Nor to me!" he cried, "nor to me, Catherine! All the long years that
+James Mottram was in Jamaica the thought never once came to me that he
+might die, and I survive him. After all we were much of an age, he had
+but two years the advantage of me. I always thought that the boy--my
+aunt's son, curse him!--would get it all. Then, had I thought of it--and
+I swear I never did think of it--I should have told myself that any day
+James might bring a wife to the Eype----"
+
+He was staring through the leaded panes with an intent, eager gaze. "It
+is a fine house, Catherine, and commodious. Larger, airier than
+ours--though perhaps colder," he added thoughtfully. "Cold I always
+found it in winter when I used to stay there as a boy--colder than this
+house. You prefer Edgecombe, Catherine? If you were given a choice, is
+it here that you would live?" He looked at her, as if impatient for an
+answer.
+
+"Every stone of Edgecombe, our home, is dear to me," she said solemnly.
+"I have never admired the Eype. It is too large, too cold for my taste.
+It stands too much exposed to the wind."
+
+"It does! it does!" There was a note of regret in his voice. He let the
+curtain fall and looked about him rather wildly.
+
+"And now, Charles," she said, "shall we not say our prayers and retire
+to rest."
+
+"If I had only thought of it," he said, "I might have said my prayers in
+the chapel. But there was much to do. I thought of calling you,
+Catherine, for you make a better sacristan than I. Then I remembered
+Boney--poor little Boney crushed by the miller's dray--and how you cried
+all night, and that though I promised you a far finer, cleverer dog than
+that poor old friend had ever been. Collins said, 'Why, sir, you should
+have hid the old dog's death from the mistress till the morning!' A
+worthy fellow, Collins. He meant no disrespect to me. At that time,
+d'you remember, Collins had only been in my service a few months?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was an hour later. From where she lay in bed, Catherine Nagle with
+dry, aching eyes stared into the fire, watching the wood embers turn
+from red to grey. By her side, his hand in hers, Charles slept the
+dreamless, heavy slumber of a child.
+
+Scarcely breathing, in her anxiety lest he should wake, she loosened her
+hand, and with a quick movement slipped out of bed. The fire was burning
+low, but Catherine saw everything in the room very clearly, and she
+threw over her night-dress a long cloak, and wound about her head the
+scarf which she had worn during her walk to the wood.
+
+It was not the first time Mrs. Nagle had risen thus in the still night
+and sought refuge from herself and from her thoughts in the chapel; and
+her husband had never missed her from his side.
+
+As she crept round the dimly lit gallery she passed by the great bowl of
+pot-pourri by which Charles Nagle had lingered, and there came to her
+the thought that it might perchance be well for her to discover, before
+the servants should have a chance of doing so, what he had doubtless
+hidden there.
+
+Catherine plunged both her hands into the scented rose-leaves, and she
+gave a sudden cry of pain--for her fingers had closed on the sharp edge
+of a steel blade. Then she drew out a narrow damascened knife, one
+which her husband, taken by its elegant shape, had purchased long
+before in Italy.
+
+Mrs. Nagle's brow furrowed in vexation--Collins should have put the
+dangerous toy out of his master's reach. Slipping the knife into the
+deep pocket of her cloak, she hurried on into the unlit passage leading
+to the chapel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Save for the hanging lamp, which since Mr. Dorriforth had said Mass
+there that morning signified the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the
+chapel should have been in darkness. But as Catherine passed through the
+door she saw, with sudden, uneasy amazement, the farther end of the
+chapel in a haze of brightness.
+
+Below the altar, striking upwards from the floor of the sanctuary,
+gleamed a corona of light. Charles--she could not for a moment doubt
+that it was Charles's doing--had moved the six high, heavy silver
+candlesticks which always stood on either side of the altar, and had
+placed them on the ground.
+
+There, in a circle, the wax candles blazed, standing sentinel-wise about
+a dark, round object which was propped up on a pile of altar-linen
+carefully arranged to support it.
+
+Fear clutched at Catherine's heart--such fear as even in the early days
+of Charles's madness had never clutched it. She was filled with a
+horrible dread, and a wild, incredulous dismay.
+
+What was the Thing, at once so familiar and so terribly strange, that
+Charles had brought out of the November night and placed with so much
+care below the altar?
+
+But the thin flames of the candles, now shooting up, now guttering low,
+blown on by some invisible current of strong air, gave no steady light.
+
+Staying still close to the door, she sank down on her knees, and
+desiring to shut out, obliterate, the awful sight confronting her, she
+pressed both her hands to her eyes. But that availed her nothing.
+
+Suddenly there rose up before Catherine Nagle a dreadful scene of that
+great Revolution drama of which she had been so often told as a child.
+She saw, with terrible distinctness, the severed heads of men and women
+borne high on iron pikes, and one of these blood-streaked, livid faces
+was that of James Mottram--the wide-open, sightless eyes, his eyes....
+
+There also came back to her as she knelt there, shivering with cold and
+anguish, the story of a French girl of noble birth who, having bought
+her lover's head from the executioner, had walked with it in her arms
+to the village near Paris where stood his deserted chateau.
+
+Slowly she rose from her knees, and with her hands thrown out before
+her, she groped her way to the wall and there crept along, as if a
+precipice lay on her other side.
+
+At last she came to the narrow oak door which gave on to the staircase
+leading into the open air. The door was ajar; it was from there that
+blew the current of air which caused those thin, fantastic flames to
+flare and gutter in the awful stillness.
+
+She drew the door to, and went on her way, so round to the altar. In the
+now steadier light Catherine saw that the large missal lay open at the
+Office for the Dead.
+
+She laid her hands with a blind instinct upon the altar, and felt a
+healing touch upon their palms. Henceforth--and Catherine Nagle was
+fated to live many long years--she remained persuaded that it was then
+there had come to her a shaft of divine light piercing the dark recesses
+of her soul. For it was at that moment that there came to her the
+conviction, and one which never faltered, that Charles Nagle had done no
+injury to James Mottram. And there also came to her then the swift
+understanding of what others would believe, were there to be found in
+the private chapel of Edgecombe Manor that which now lay on the ground
+behind her, close to her feet.
+
+So understanding, Catherine suddenly saw the way open before her, and
+the dread thing which she must do if Charles were to be saved from a
+terrible suspicion--one which would undoubtedly lead to his being taken
+away from her and from all that his poor, atrophied heart held dear, to
+be asylumed.
+
+With steps that did not falter, Catherine Nagle went behind the altar
+into the little sacristy, there to seek in the darkness an altar-cloth.
+
+Holding the cloth up before her face she went back into the lighted
+chapel, and kneeling down, she uncovered her face and threw the cloth
+over what lay before her.
+
+And then Catherine's teeth began to chatter, and a mortal chill overtook
+her. She was being faced by a new and to her a most dread enemy, for
+till to-night she and that base physical fear which is the coward's foe
+had never met. Pressing her hands together, she whispered the short,
+simple prayer for the Faithful Departed that she had said so often and,
+she now felt, so unmeaningly. Even as she uttered the familiar words,
+base Fear slunk away, leaving in his place her soul's old companion,
+Courage, and his attendant, Peace.
+
+She rose to her feet, and opening wide her eyes forced herself to think
+out what must be done by her in order that no trace of Charles's
+handiwork should remain in the chapel.
+
+Snuffing out the wicks, Catherine lifted the candlesticks from the
+ground and put them back in their accustomed place upon the altar. Then,
+stooping, she forced herself to wrap up closely in the altar-cloth that
+which must be her burden till she found James Mottram's headless body
+where Charles had left it, and placing that same precious burden within
+the ample folds of her cloak, she held it with her left hand and arm
+closely pressed to her bosom....
+
+With her right hand she gathered up the pile of stained altar-linen from
+the ground, and going once more into the sacristy she thrust it into the
+oak chest in which were kept the Lenten furnishings of the altar. Having
+done that, and walking slowly lest she should trip and fall, she made
+her way to the narrow door Charles had left open to the air, and going
+down the steep stairway was soon out of doors in the dark and windy
+night.
+
+Charles had been right, the moon gave but little light; enough, however,
+so she told herself, for the accomplishment of her task.
+
+She sped swiftly along the terrace, keeping close under the house, and
+then more slowly walked down the stone steps where last time she trod
+them Mottram had been her companion, his living lips as silent as were
+his dead lips now.
+
+The orchard gate was wide open, and as she passed through there came to
+Catherine Nagle the knowledge why Charles on his way back from the wood
+had not even latched it; he also, when passing through it, had been
+bearing a burden....
+
+She walked down the field path; and when she came to the steep place
+where Mottram had told her that he was going away, the tears for the
+first time began running down Catherine's face. She felt again the
+sharp, poignant pain which his then cold and measured words had dealt
+her, and the blow this time fell on a bruised heart. With a convulsive
+gesture she pressed more closely that which she was holding to her
+desolate breast.
+
+At night the woodland is strangely, curiously alive. Catherine shuddered
+as she heard the stuffless sounds, the tiny rustlings and burrowings of
+those wild, shy creatures whose solitude had lately been so rudely
+invaded, and who now of man's night made their day. Their myriad
+presence made her human loneliness more intense than it had been in the
+open fields, and as she started walking by the side of the iron rails,
+her eyes fixed on the dark drift of dead leaves which dimly marked the
+path, she felt solitary indeed, and beset with vague and fearsome
+terrors.
+
+At last she found herself nearing the end of the wood. Soon would come
+the place where what remained of the cart-track struck sharply to the
+left, up the hill towards the Eype.
+
+It was there, close to the open, that Catherine Nagle's quest ended; and
+that she was able to accomplish the task she had set herself, of making
+that which Charles had rendered incomplete, complete as men, considering
+the flesh, count completeness.
+
+Within but a few yards of safety, James Mottram had met with death; a
+swift, merciful death, due to the negligence of an engine-driver not
+only new to his work but made blindly merry by Mottram's gift of ale.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charles Nagle woke late on the morning of St. Catherine's Day, and the
+pale November sun fell on the fully dressed figures of his wife and Mr.
+Dorriforth standing by his bedside.
+
+But Charles, absorbed as always in himself, saw nothing untoward in
+their presence.
+
+"I had a dream!" he exclaimed. "A most horrible and gory dream this
+night! I thought I was in the wood; James Mottram lay before me, done
+to death by that puffing devil we saw slithering by so fast. His head
+nearly severed--_a la guillotine_, you understand, my love?--from his
+poor body----" There was a curious, secretive smile on Charles Nagle's
+pale, handsome face.
+
+Catherine Nagle gave a cry, a stifled shriek of horror.
+
+The priest caught her by the arm and led her to the couch which stood
+across the end of the bed.
+
+"Charles," he said sternly, "this is no light matter. Your
+dream--there's not a doubt of it--was sent you in merciful preparation
+for the awful truth. Your kinsman, your almost brother, Charles, was
+found this morning in the wood, dead as you saw him in your dream."
+
+The face of the man sitting up in bed stiffened--was it with fear or
+grief? "They found James Mottram dead?" he repeated with an uneasy
+glance in the direction of the couch where crouched his wife. "And his
+head, most reverend sir--what of his head?"
+
+"James Mottram's body was terribly mangled. But his head," answered the
+priest solemnly, "was severed from his body, as you saw it in your
+dream, Charles. A strangely clean cut, it seems----"
+
+"Ay," said Charles Nagle. "That was in my dream too; if I said nearly
+severed, I said wrong."
+
+Catherine was now again standing by the priest's side.
+
+"Charles," she said gravely, "you must now get up; Mr. Dorriforth is
+only waiting for you, to say Mass for James's soul."
+
+She made the sign of the cross, and then, with her right hand shading
+her sunken eyes, she went on, "My dear, I entreat you to tell no
+one--not even faithful Collins--of this awful dream. We want no such
+tale spread about the place----"
+
+She looked at the old priest entreatingly, and he at once responded.
+"Catherine is right, Charles. We of the Faith should be more careful
+with regard to such matters than are the ignorant and superstitious."
+
+But he was surprised to hear the woman by his side say insistently,
+"Charles, if only to please me, vow that you will keep most secret this
+dreadful dream. I fear that if it should come to your Aunt Felwake's
+ears----"
+
+"That I swear it shall not," said Charles sullenly.
+
+And he kept his word.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN FROM PURGATORY
+
+    "... not dead, this friend--not dead,
+    But, in the path we mortals tread,
+    Got some few, little steps ahead
+      And nearer to the end,
+    So that you, too, once past the bend,
+    Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
+      You fancy dead."
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Barlow, the prettiest and the happiest and the best dressed of the
+young wives of Summerfield, was walking toward the Catholic Church. She
+was going to consult the old priest as to her duty to an unsatisfactory
+servant; for Agnes Barlow was a conscientious as well as a pretty and a
+happy woman.
+
+Foolish people are fond of quoting a foolish gibe: "Be good, and you may
+be happy; but you will not have a good time." The wise, however, soon
+become aware that if, in the course of life's journey, you achieve
+goodness and happiness, you will almost certainly have a good time too.
+
+So, at least, Agnes Barlow had found in her own short life. Her
+excellent parents had built one of the first new houses in what had then
+been the pretty, old-fashioned village of Summerfield, some fifteen
+miles from London. There she had been born; there she had spent
+delightful years at the big convent school over the hill; there she had
+grown up into a singularly pretty girl; and there, finally--it had
+seemed quite final to Agnes--she had met the clever, fascinating young
+lawyer, Frank Barlow.
+
+Frank had soon become the lover all her girl friends had envied her, and
+then the husband who was still--so he was fond of saying and of proving
+in a dozen dear little daily ways--as much in love with her as on the
+day they were married. They lived in a charming house called The Haven,
+and they were the proud parents of a fine little boy, named Francis
+after his father, who never had any of the tiresome ailments which
+afflict other people's children.
+
+But strange, dreadful things do happen--not often, of course, but just
+now and again--even in this delightful world! So thought Agnes Barlow on
+this pleasant May afternoon; for, as she walked to church, this pretty,
+happy, good woman found her thoughts dwelling uncomfortably on another
+woman, her sometime intimate friend and contemporary, who was neither
+good nor happy.
+
+This was Teresa Maldo, the lovely half-Spanish girl who had been her
+favourite schoolmate at the convent over the hill.
+
+Poor, foolish, unhappy, wicked Teresa! Only ten days ago Teresa had done
+a thing so extraordinary, so awful, so unprecedented, that Agnes Barlow
+had thought of little else ever since. Teresa Maldo had eloped, gone
+right away from her home and her husband, and with a married man!
+
+Teresa and Agnes were the same age; they had had the same upbringing;
+they were both--in a very different way, however--beautiful, and they
+had each been married, six years before, on the same day of the month.
+
+But how different had been their subsequent fates!
+
+Teresa had at once discovered that her husband drank. But she loved him,
+and for a while it seemed as if marriage would reform Maldo.
+Unfortunately, this better state of things did not last: he again began
+to drink: and the matrons of Summerfield soon had reason to shake their
+heads over the way Teresa Maldo went on.
+
+Men, you see, were so sorry for this lovely young woman, blessed (or
+cursed) with what old-fashioned folk call "the come-hither eye," that
+they made it their business to console her for such a worthless husband
+as was Maldo. No wonder Teresa and Agnes drifted apart; no wonder Frank
+Barlow soon forbade his spotless Agnes to accept Mrs. Maldo's
+invitations. And Agnes knew that her dear Frank was right; she had never
+much enjoyed her visits to Teresa's house.
+
+But an odd thing had happened about a fortnight ago. And it was to this
+odd happening that Agnes's mind persistently recurred each time she
+found herself alone.
+
+About three days before Teresa Maldo had done the mad and wicked thing
+of which all Summerfield was still talking, she had paid a long call on
+Agnes Barlow.
+
+The unwelcome guest had stayed a very long time; she had talked, as she
+generally did talk now, wildly and rather strangely; and Agnes, looking
+back, was glad to remember that no one else had come in while her old
+schoolfellow was there.
+
+When, at last, Teresa Maldo had made up her mind to go (luckily, some
+minutes before Frank was due home from town), Agnes accompanied her to
+the gate of The Haven, and there the other had turned round and made
+such odd remarks.
+
+"I came to tell you something!" she had exclaimed. "But, now that I see
+you looking so happy, so pretty, and--forgive me for saying so,
+Agnes--so horribly good, I feel that I can't tell you! But, Agnes,
+whatever happens, you must pity, and--and, if you can, understand me."
+
+It was now painfully clear to Agnes Barlow that Teresa had come that day
+intending to tell her once devoted friend of the wicked thing she meant
+to do; and more than once pretty and good Mrs. Barlow had asked herself
+uneasily whether she could have done anything to stop Teresa on her
+downward course.
+
+But no; Agnes felt her conscience clear. How would it have been possible
+for her even to discuss with Teresa so shameful a possibility as that of
+a woman leaving her husband with another man?
+
+Agnes thought of the two sinners with a touch of fascinated curiosity.
+They were said to be in Paris, and Teresa was probably having a very
+good time--a wildly amusing, exciting time.
+
+She even told herself, did this pretty, happy, fortunate young married
+woman, that it was strange, and not very fair, that vice and pleasure
+should always go together! It was just a little irritating to know that
+Teresa would never again be troubled by the kind of worries that played
+quite an important part in Agnes's own blameless life. Never again, for
+instance, would Teresa's cook give her notice, as Agnes's cook had given
+her notice that morning. It was about that matter she wished to see
+Father Ferguson, for it was through the priest she had heard of the
+impertinent Irish girl who cooked so well, but who had such an
+independent manner, and who would _not_ wear a cap!
+
+Yes, it certainly seemed unfair that Teresa would now be rid of all
+domestic worries--nay, more, that the woman who had sinned would live in
+luxurious hotels, motoring and shopping all day, going to the theatre or
+to a music-hall each night.
+
+At last, however, Agnes dismissed Teresa Maldo from her mind. She knew
+that it is not healthy to dwell overmuch on such people and their
+doings.
+
+The few acquaintances Mrs. Barlow met on her way smiled and nodded, but,
+as she was walking rather quickly, no one tried to stop her. She had
+chosen the back way to the church because it was the prettiest way, and
+also because it would take her by a house where a friend of hers was
+living in lodgings.
+
+And suddenly the very friend in question--his name was Ferrier--came out
+of his lodgings. He had a tall, slight, active figure; he was dressed in
+a blue serge suit, and, though it was still early spring, he wore a
+straw hat.
+
+Agnes smiled a little inward smile. She was, as we already know, a very
+good as well as a happy woman. But a woman as pretty as was Agnes Barlow
+meets with frequent pleasant occasions of withstanding temptation, of
+which those about her, especially her dear parents and her kind husband,
+are often curiously unknowing. And the tall, well-set-up masculine
+figure now hurrying toward her with such eager steps played a
+considerable part in Agnes's life, if only as constantly providing her
+with occasions of acquiring merit.
+
+Agnes knew very well--even the least imaginative woman is always acutely
+conscious of such a fact--that, had she not been a prudent and a
+ladylike as well as (of course) a very good woman, this clever,
+agreeable, interesting young man would have made love to her. As it was,
+he (of course) did nothing of the kind. He did not even try to flirt
+with her, as our innocent Agnes understood that much-tried verb; and she
+regarded their friendship as a pleasant interlude in her placid,
+well-regulated existence, and as a most excellent influence on his more
+agitated life.
+
+Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat. He smiled down into Agnes's blue eyes. What
+very charming, nay, what beautiful eyes they were! Deeply, exquisitely
+blue, but unshadowed, as innocent of guile, as are a child's eyes.
+
+"Somehow, I had a kind of feeling that you would be coming by just now,"
+he said in a rather hesitating voice; "so I left my work and came out on
+chance."
+
+Now, Agnes was very much interested in Mr. Ferrier's work. Mr. Ferrier
+was not only a writer--the only writer she had ever known; he was also a
+poet. She had been pleasantly thrilled the day he had given her a slim
+little book, on each page of which was a poem. This gift had been made
+when they had known each other only two months, and he had inscribed it:
+"From G. G. F. to A. M. B."
+
+Mr. Ferrier had a charming studio flat in Chelsea, that odd, remote
+place where London artists live, far from the pleasant London of the
+shops and theatres which was all Agnes knew of the great City near which
+she dwelt. But he always spent the summer in the country, and his summer
+lasted from the 1st of May till the 1st of October. He had already
+spent two holidays at Summerfield, and had been a great deal at The
+Haven.
+
+When with Mr. Ferrier, and they were much together during the long
+week-days when Summerfield is an Adamless Eden, Agnes Barlow made a
+point of often speaking of dear Frank and of Frank's love for her,--not,
+of course, in a way that any one could have regarded as silly, but in a
+natural, happy, simple way.
+
+How easy, how very easy, it is to keep this kind of
+friendship--friendship between a man and a woman--within bounds! And how
+terribly sad it was to think that Teresa Maldo had not known how to do
+that easy thing! But then, Teresa's lover had been a married man
+separated from his wife, and that doubtless made all the difference.
+Agnes Barlow could assure herself in all sincerity that, had Mr. Ferrier
+been the husband of another woman, she would never have allowed him to
+become her friend to the extent that he was now.
+
+Mr. Ferrier--Agnes never allowed herself to think of him as Gerald
+(although he had once asked her to call him by his Christian name)--held
+an evening paper in his hand.
+
+"I was really on my way to The Haven," he observed, "for there are a few
+verses of mine in this paper which I am anxious you should read. Shall
+I go on and leave it at your house, or will you take it now? And then,
+if I may, I will call for it some time to-morrow. Should I be likely to
+find you in about four o'clock?"
+
+"Yes, I'll be in about four, and I think I'll take the paper now."
+
+And then--for she was walking very slowly, and Ferrier, with his hands
+behind his back, kept pace with her--Agnes could not resist the pleasure
+of looking down at the open sheet, for the newspaper was so turned about
+that she could see the little set of verses quite plainly.
+
+The poem was called "My Lady of the Snow," and it told in very pretty,
+complicated language of a beautiful, pure woman whom the writer loved in
+a desperate but quite respectful way.
+
+She grew rather red. "I must hurry on, for I am going to church," she
+said a little stiffly. "Good evening, Mr. Ferrier. Yes, I will keep the
+paper till to-morrow, if I may. I should like to show it to Frank. He
+hasn't been to the office to-day, for he isn't very well, and he will
+like to see an evening paper."
+
+Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat with a rather sad look, and turned back
+toward the house where he lodged. And as Agnes walked on she felt
+disturbed and a little uncomfortable. Her clever friend had evidently
+been grieved by her apparent lack of appreciation of his poem.
+
+When she reached the church her parents had helped to build, she went
+in, knelt down, and said a prayer. Then she got up and walked through
+into the sacristy. Father Ferguson was almost certain to be there just
+now.
+
+Agnes Barlow had known the old priest all her life. He had baptized her;
+he had been chaplain at the convent during the years she had been at
+school there; and now he had come back to be parish priest at
+Summerfield.
+
+When with Father Ferguson, Agnes somehow never felt quite so good as she
+did when she was by herself or with a strange priest; and yet Father
+Ferguson was always very kind to her.
+
+As she came into the sacristy he looked round with a smile. "Well?" he
+said. "Well, Agnes, my child, what can I do for you?"
+
+Agnes put the newspaper she was holding down on a chair. And then, to
+her surprise, Father Ferguson took up the paper and glanced over the
+front page. He was an intelligent man, and sometimes he found
+Summerfield a rather shut-in, stifling sort of place.
+
+But the priest's instinctive wish to know something of what was passing
+in the great world outside the suburb where it was his duty to dwell did
+him an ill turn, for something he read in the paper caused him to utter
+a low, quick exclamation of intense pain and horror.
+
+"What's the matter?" cried Agnes Barlow, frightened out of her usual
+self-complacency. "Whatever has happened, Father Ferguson?"
+
+He pointed with shaking finger to a small paragraph. It was headed
+"Suicide of a Lady at Dover," and Agnes read the few lines with
+bewildered and shocked amazement.
+
+Teresa Maldo, whom she had visioned, only a few minutes ago, as leading
+a merry, gloriously careless life with her lover, was dead. She had
+thrown herself out of a bedroom window in a hotel at Dover, and she had
+been killed instantly, dashed into a shapeless mass on the stones below.
+
+Agnes stared down at the curt, cold little paragraph with excited
+horror. She was six-and-twenty, but she had never seen death, and, as
+far as she knew, the girls with whom she had been at school were all
+living. Teresa--poor unhappy, sinful Teresa--had been the first to die,
+and by her own hand.
+
+The old priest's eyes slowly brimmed over with tears. "Poor, unhappy
+child!" he said, with a break in his voice. "Poor, unfortunate Teresa!
+I did not think, I should never have believed, that she would seek--and
+find--this terrible way out."
+
+Agnes was a little shocked at his broken words. True, Teresa had been
+very unhappy, and it was right to pity her; but she had also been very
+wicked; and now she had put, as it were, the seal on her wickedness by
+killing herself.
+
+"Three or four days before she went away she came and saw me," the
+priest went on, in a low, pained voice. "I did everything in my power to
+stop her, but I could do nothing--she had given her word!"
+
+"Given her word?" repeated Agnes wonderingly.
+
+"Yes," said Father Ferguson; "she had given that wretched, that wickedly
+selfish man her promise. She believed that if she broke her word he
+would kill himself. I begged her to go and see some woman--some kind,
+pitiful, understanding woman--but I suppose she feared lest such a one
+would dissuade her to more purpose than I was able to do."
+
+Agnes looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"She was very dear to my heart," the priest went on. "She was always a
+generous, unselfish child, and she was very, very fond of you, Agnes."
+
+Agnes's throat tightened. What Father Ferguson said was only too true.
+Teresa had always been a very generous and unselfish girl, and very,
+very fond of her. She wondered remorsefully if she had omitted to do or
+say anything she could have done or said on the day that poor Teresa had
+come and spoken such strange, wild words----?
+
+"It seems so awful," she said in a low voice, "so very, very awful to
+think that we may not even pray for her soul, Father Ferguson."
+
+"Not pray for her soul?" the priest repeated. "Why should we not pray
+for the poor child's soul? I shall certainly pray for Teresa's soul
+every day till I die."
+
+"But--but how can you do that, when she killed herself?"
+
+He looked at her surprised. "And do you really so far doubt God's mercy?
+Surely we may hope--nay, trust--that Teresa had time to make an act of
+contrition?" And then he muttered something--it sounded like a line or
+two of poetry--which Agnes did not quite catch; but she felt, as she
+often did feel when with Father Ferguson, at once rebuked and
+rebellious.
+
+Of course there _might_ have been time for Teresa to make an act of
+contrition. But every one knows that to take one's life is a deadly
+sin. Agnes felt quite sure that if it ever occurred to herself to do
+such a thing she would go straight to hell. Still, she was used to obey
+this old priest, and that even when she did not agree with him. So she
+followed him into the church, and side by side they knelt down and each
+said a separate prayer for the soul of Teresa Maldo.
+
+As Agnes Barlow walked slowly and soberly home, this time by the high
+road, she tried to remember the words, the lines of poetry, that Father
+Ferguson had muttered. They at once haunted and eluded her memory.
+Surely they could not be
+
+    Between the window and the ground,
+    She mercy sought and mercy found.
+
+No, Agnes was sure that he had not said "window," and yet window seemed
+the only word that would fit the case. And he had not said, "_she_ mercy
+found"; he had said, "_he_ mercy sought and mercy found"--of that Agnes
+felt sure, and that, too, was odd. But then, Father Ferguson was very
+odd sometimes, and he was fond of quoting in his sermons queer little
+bits of verse of which no one had ever heard.
+
+Suddenly she bethought herself, with more annoyance than the matter was
+worth, that in her agitation she had left Mr. Ferrier's newspaper in
+the sacristy. She did not like the thought that Father Ferguson would
+probably read those pretty, curious verses, "My Lady of the Snow."
+
+Also, Agnes had actually forgotten to speak to the old priest of her
+impertinent cook!
+
+
+II
+
+We find Agnes Barlow again walking in Summerfield; but this time she is
+hurrying along the straight, unlovely cinder-strewn path which forms a
+short cut from the back of The Haven to Summerfield station; and the
+still, heavy calm of a late November afternoon broods over the rough
+ground on either side of her.
+
+It is nearly six months since Teresa Maldo's elopement and subsequent
+suicide, and now no one ever speaks of poor Teresa, no one seems to
+remember that she ever lived, excepting, perhaps, Father Ferguson....
+
+As for Agnes herself, life had crowded far too many happenings into the
+last few weeks for her to give more than a passing thought to Teresa;
+indeed, the image of her dead friend rose before her only when she was
+saying her prayers. And as Agnes, strange to say, had grown rather
+careless as to her prayers, the memory of Teresa Maldo was now very
+faint indeed.
+
+An awful, and to her an incredible, thing had happened to Agnes Barlow.
+The roof of her snug and happy House of Life had fallen in, and she lay,
+blinded and maimed, beneath the fragments which had been hurled down on
+her in one terrible moment.
+
+Yes, it had all happened in a moment--so she now reminded herself, with
+the dull ache which never left her.
+
+It was just after she had come back from Westgate with little Francis.
+The child had been ailing for the first time in his life, and she had
+taken him to the seaside for six weeks.
+
+There, in a day, it had turned from summer to winter, raining as it only
+rains at the seaside; and suddenly Agnes had made up her mind to go back
+to her own nice, comfortable home a whole week before Frank expected her
+back.
+
+Agnes sometimes acted like that--on a quick impulse; she did so to her
+own undoing on that dull, rainy day.
+
+When she reached Summerfield, it was to find her telegram to her husband
+lying unopened on the hall table of The Haven. Frank, it seemed, had
+slept in town the night before. Not that that mattered, so she told
+herself gleefully, full of the pleasant joy of being again in her own
+home; the surprise would be the greater and the more welcome when Frank
+did come back.
+
+Having nothing better to do that first afternoon, Agnes had gone
+up to her husband's dressing-room in order to look over his summer
+clothes before sending them to the cleaner. In her careful,
+playing-at-housewifely fashion, she had turned out the pockets
+of his cricketing coat. There, a little to her surprise, she had
+found three letters, and idle curiosity as to Frank's invitations
+during her long stay away--Frank was deservedly popular with the
+ladies of Summerfield and, indeed, with all women--caused her to
+take the three letters out of their envelopes.
+
+In a moment--how terrible that it should take but a moment to shatter
+the fabric of a human being's innocent House of Life!--Agnes had seen
+what had happened to her--to him. For each of these letters, written in
+the same sloping woman's hand, was a love letter signed "Janey"; and in
+each the writer, in a plaintive, delicate, but insistent and reproachful
+way, asked Frank for money.
+
+Even now, though nearly seven weeks had gone by since then, Agnes could
+recall with painful vividness the sick, cold feeling that had come over
+her--a feeling of fear rather than anger, of fear and desperate
+humiliation.
+
+Locking the door of the dressing-room, she had searched eagerly--a
+dishonourable thing to do, as she knew well. And soon she had found
+other letters--letters and bills; bills of meals at restaurants, showing
+that her husband and a companion had constantly dined and supped at the
+Savoy, the Carlton, and Prince's. To those restaurants where he had
+taken her, Agnes, two or three times a year, laughing and grumbling at
+the expense, he had taken this--this _person_ again and again in the
+short time his wife had been away.
+
+As to the further letters, all they proved was that Frank had first met
+"Janey Cartwright" over some law business of hers, connected--even Agnes
+saw the irony of it--in some shameful way with another man; for, tied
+together, were a few notes signed with the writer's full name, of which
+the first began:
+
+    Dear Mr. Barlow:
+        Forgive me for writing to your private address
+        [etc., etc.].
+
+The ten days that followed her discovery had seared Agnes's soul. Frank
+had been so dreadfully affectionate. He had pretended--she felt sure it
+was all pretence--to be so glad to see her again, though sometimes she
+caught him looking at her with cowed, miserable eyes.
+
+More than once he had asked her solicitously if she felt ill, and she
+had said yes, she did feel ill, and the time at the seaside had not done
+her any good.
+
+And then, on the last of those terrible ten days, Gerald Ferrier had
+come down to Summerfield, and both she and Frank had pressed him to stay
+on to dinner. He had done so, though aware that something was wrong, and
+he had been extraordinarily kind, sympathetic, unquestioning. But as he
+was leaving he had said a word to his host: "I feel worried about Mrs.
+Barlow"--Agnes had heard him through the window. "She doesn't look the
+thing, somehow! How would it be if I asked her to go with me to a
+private view? It might cheer her up, and perhaps she would lunch with me
+afterwards?" Frank had eagerly assented.
+
+Since then Agnes had gone up to London, if not every day, very nearly
+every day, and Mr. Ferrier had done his best, without much success, to
+"cheer her up."
+
+Though they soon became more intimate than they had ever been, Agnes
+never told Ferrier what it was that had turned her from a happy,
+unquestioning child into a miserable woman; but, of course, he guessed.
+
+And gradually Frank also had come to know that she knew, and, man-like,
+he spent less and less time in his now uncomfortable home. He would go
+away in the morning an hour earlier than usual, and then, under pretext
+of business keeping him late at the office, he would come back after
+having dined, doubtless with "Janey," in town.
+
+Soon Agnes began to draw a terrible comparison between these two
+men--between the husband who had all she had of heart, and the friend
+whom she now acknowledged to herself--for hypocrisy had fallen away from
+her--had lived only for her, and for the hours they were able to spend
+together, during two long years, and yet who had never told her of his
+love, or tried to disturb her trust in Frank.
+
+Yes, Gerald Ferrier was all that was noble--Frank Barlow all that was
+ignoble. So she told herself with trembling lip a dozen times a day,
+taking fierce comfort in the knowledge that Ferrier was noble. But she
+was destined even to lose that comfort; for one day, a week before the
+day when we find her walking to Summerfield station, Ferrier's nobility,
+or what poor Agnes took to be such, suddenly broke down.
+
+They had been walking together in Battersea Park, and, after one of
+those long silences which bespeak true intimacy between a man and a
+woman, he had asked her if she would come back to his rooms--for tea.
+
+She had shaken her head smilingly. And then he had turned on her with a
+torrent of impetuous, burning words--words of ardent love, of anguished
+longing, of eager pleading. And Agnes had been frightened, fascinated,
+allured.
+
+And that had not been all.
+
+More quietly he had gone on to speak as if the code of morality in which
+his friend had been bred, and which had hitherto so entirely satisfied
+her, was, after all, nothing but a narrow counsel of perfection, suited
+to those who were sheltered and happy, but wretchedly inadequate to meet
+the needs of the greater number of human beings who are, as Agnes now
+was, humiliated and miserable. His words had found an echo in her sore
+heart, but she had not let him see how much they moved her. On the
+contrary, she had rebuked him, and for the first time they had
+quarrelled.
+
+"If you ever speak to me like that again," she had said coldly, "I will
+not come again."
+
+And once more he had turned on her violently. "I think you had better
+not come again! I am but a man after all!"
+
+They parted enemies; but the same night Ferrier wrote Agnes a very
+piteous letter asking pardon on his knees for having spoken as he had
+done. And his letter moved her to the heart. Her own deep misery--never
+for one moment did she forget Frank, and Frank's treachery--made her
+understand the torment that Ferrier was going through.
+
+For the first time she realized, what so few of her kind ever realize,
+that it is a mean thing to take everything and give nothing in exchange.
+And gradually, as her long, solitary hours wore themselves away, Agnes
+came to believe that if she did what she now knew Ferrier desired her to
+do,--if, casting the past behind her, she started a new life with
+him--she would not only be doing a generous thing by the man who had
+loved her silently and faithfully for so long, but she would also be
+punishing Frank--hurting him in his honour, as he had hurt her in hers.
+
+And then the stars that fight in their courses for those lovers who are
+also poets fought for Ferrier.
+
+The day after they had quarrelled and he had written her his piteous
+letter of remorse, Gerald Ferrier fell ill. But he was not too ill to
+write. And after he had been ill four days, and when Agnes was feeling
+very, very miserable, he wrote and told her of a wonderful vision which
+had been vouchsafed to him.
+
+In this vision Ferrier had seen Agnes knocking at the narrow front door
+of the lonely flat where he lived solitary; and through the door had
+slipped in his angelic visitant, by her mere presence bringing him
+peace, health, and the happiness he was schooling himself to believe
+must never come to him through her.
+
+The post which brought her the letter in which Ferrier told his vision
+brought also to Agnes Barlow a little registered parcel containing a
+pearl-and-diamond pendant from Frank.
+
+For a few moments the two lay on her knee. Then she took up the jewel
+and looked at it curiously. Was it with such a thing as this that her
+husband thought to purchase her forgiveness?
+
+If Ferrier's letter had never been written, if Frank's gift had never
+been despatched, it may be doubted whether Agnes would have done what we
+now find her doing--hastening, that is, on her way to make Ferrier's
+dream come true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last she reached the little suburban station of Summerfield.
+
+One of her father's many kindnesses to her each year was the gift of a
+season ticket to town; but to-day some queer instinct made her buy a
+ticket at the booking-office instead.
+
+The booking-clerk peered out at her, surprised; then made up his mind
+that pretty Mrs. Barlow--she wore to-day a curiously thick veil--had a
+friend with her. But his long, ruminating stare made her shrink and
+flush. Was it possible that what she was about to do was written on her
+face?
+
+She was glad indeed when the train steamed into the station. She got
+into an empty carriage, for the rush that goes on each evening
+Londonward from the suburbs had not yet begun.
+
+And then, to her surprise, she found that it was the thought of her
+husband, not of the man to whom she was going to give herself, that
+filled her sad, embittered heart.
+
+Old memories--memories connected with Frank, his love for her, her love
+for him--became insistent. She lived again, while tears forced
+themselves into her closed eyes, through the culminating moment of her
+marriage day, the start for the honeymoon,--a start made amid a crowd of
+laughing, cheering friends, from the little station she had just left.
+
+She remembered the delicious tremor which had come over her when she
+had found herself at last alone, really alone, with her three-hour-old
+bridegroom.
+
+How infinitely kind and tender Frank had been to her!
+
+And then Agnes reminded herself, with tightening breath, that men like
+Frank Barlow are always kind--too kind--to women.
+
+Other journeys she and Frank had taken together came and mocked her, and
+especially the journey which had followed a month after little Francis's
+birth.
+
+Frank had driven with her, the nurse, and the baby, to the station--but
+only to see them off. He had had a very important case in the Courts
+just then, and it was out of the question that he should go with his
+wife to Littlehampton for the change of air, the few weeks by the sea,
+that had been ordered by her good, careful doctor.
+
+And then at the last moment Frank had suddenly jumped into the railway
+carriage without a ticket, and had gone along with her part of the way!
+She remembered the surprise of the monthly nurse, the woman's prim
+remark, when he had at last got out at Horsham, that Mr. Barlow was
+certainly the kindest husband she, the nurse, had ever seen.
+
+But these memories, now so desecrated, did not make her give up her
+purpose. Far from it, for in a queer way they made her think more
+tenderly of Gerald Ferrier, whose life had been so lonely, and who had
+known nothing of the simpler human sanctities and joys, and who had
+never--so he had told her with a kind of bitter scorn of himself--been
+loved by any woman whom he himself could love.
+
+In her ears there sounded Ferrier's quick, hoarsely uttered words:
+"D'you think I should ever have said a word to you of all this--if you
+had gone on being happy? D'you think I'd ask you to come to me if I
+thought you had any chance of being happy with him--now?"
+
+And she knew in her soul that he had spoken truly. Ferrier would never
+have tried to disturb her happiness with Frank; he had never so tried
+during those two years when they had seen so much of each other, and
+when Agnes had known, deep down in her heart, that he loved her, though
+it had suited her conscience to pretend that his love was only
+"friendship."
+
+
+III
+
+The train glided into the fog-laden London station, and very slowly
+Agnes Barlow stepped down out of the railway carriage. She felt
+oppressed by the fact that she was alone. During the last few weeks
+Ferrier had always been standing on the platform waiting to greet her,
+eager to hurry her into a cab--to a picture gallery, to a concert, or of
+late, oftenest of all, to one of those green oases which the great town
+still leaves her lovers.
+
+But now Ferrier was not here. Ferrier was ill, solitary, in the lonely
+rooms which he called "home."
+
+Agnes Barlow hurried out of the station.
+
+Hammer, hammer, hammer went what she supposed was her heart. It was a
+curious, to Agnes a new sensation, bred of the fear that she would meet
+some acquaintance to whom she would have to explain her presence in
+town. She could not help being glad that the fog was of that dense,
+stifling quality which makes every one intent on his own business rather
+than on that of his neighbours.
+
+Then something happened which scared Agnes. She was walking, now very
+slowly, out of the station, when a tall man came up to her. He took off
+his hat and peered insolently into her face.
+
+"I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you before," he said.
+
+She stared at him with a great, unreasonable fear gripping her heart. No
+doubt this was some business acquaintance of Frank's. "I--I don't think
+so," she faltered.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said. "Don't you remember, two years ago at the Pirola in
+Regent Street? I don't _think_ I can be wrong."
+
+And then Agnes understood. "You are making a mistake," she said
+breathlessly, and quickened her steps.
+
+The man looked after her with a jeering smile, but he made no further
+attempt to molest her.
+
+She was trembling--shaken with fear, disgust, and terror. It was odd,
+but such a thing had never happened to pretty Agnes Barlow before. She
+was not often alone in London; she had never been there alone on such a
+foggy evening, an evening which invited such approaches as those she had
+just repulsed.
+
+She touched a respectable-looking woman on the arm. "Can you tell me the
+way to Flood Street, Chelsea?" she asked, her voice faltering.
+
+"Why, yes, Miss. It's a good step from here, but you can't mistake it.
+You've only got to go straight along, and then ask again after you've
+been walking about twenty minutes. You can't mistake it." And she
+hurried on, while Agnes tried to keep in step behind her, for the slight
+adventure outside the station became retrospectively terrifying. She
+thrilled with angry fear lest that--that brute should still be stalking
+her; but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the pavement was
+nearly bare of walkers.
+
+At last the broad thoroughfare narrowed to a point where four streets
+converged. Agnes glanced fearfully this way and that. Which of those
+shadowy black-coated figures hurrying past, intent on their business,
+would direct her rightly? Within the last half-hour Agnes had grown
+horribly afraid of men.
+
+And then, with more relief than the fact warranted, across the narrow
+roadway she saw emerge, between two parting waves of fog, the shrouded
+figure of a woman leaning against a dead wall.
+
+Agnes crossed the street, but as she stepped up on to the kerb, suddenly
+there broke from her, twice repeated, a low, involuntary cry of dread.
+
+"Teresa!" she cried. And then, again, "Teresa!" For in the shrouded
+figure before her she had recognized, with a thrill of incredulous
+terror, the form and lineaments of Teresa Maldo.
+
+But there came no answering cry; and Agnes gave a long, gasping,
+involuntary sigh of relief as she realized that what had seemed to be
+her dead friend's dark, glowing face was the face of a little child--a
+black-haired beggar child, with large startled eyes wide open on a
+living world.
+
+The tall woman whose statuesque figure had so strangely recalled
+Teresa's supple, powerful form was holding up the child, propping it on
+the wall behind her.
+
+Still shaking with the chill terror induced by the vision she now
+believed she had not seen, Agnes went up closer to the melancholy group.
+
+Even now she longed to hear the woman speak. "Can you tell me the way to
+Flood Street?" she asked.
+
+The woman looked at her fixedly. "No, that I can't," she said
+listlessly. "I'm a stranger here." And then, with a passionate energy
+which startled Agnes, "For God's sake, give me something, lady, to help
+me to get home! I've walked all the way from Essex; it's taken me, oh!
+so long with the child, though we've had a lift here and a lift there,
+and I haven't a penny left. I came to find my husband; but he's lost
+himself--on purpose!"
+
+A week ago, Agnes Barlow would have shaken her head and passed on. She
+had always held the theory, carefully inculcated by her careful parents,
+that it is wrong to give money to beggars in the street.
+
+But perhaps the queer illusion that she had just experienced made her
+remember Father Ferguson. In a flash she recalled a sermon of the old
+priest's which had shocked and disturbed his prosperous congregation,
+for in it the preacher had advanced the astounding theory that it is
+better to give to nine impostors than to refuse the one just man; nay,
+more, he had reminded his hearers of the old legend that Christ
+sometimes comes, in the guise of a beggar, to the wealthy.
+
+She took five shillings out of her purse, and put them, not in the
+woman's hand, but in that of the little child.
+
+"Thank you," said the woman dully. "May God bless you!" That was all,
+but Agnes went on, vaguely comforted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now at last, helped on her way by more than one good-natured
+wayfarer, she reached the quiet, but shabby Chelsea street where
+Ferrier lived. The fog had drifted towards the river, and in the
+lamplight Agnes Barlow was not long in finding a large open door, above
+which was inscribed: "The Thomas More Studios."
+
+Agnes walked timorously through into the square, empty, gas-lit hall,
+and looked round her with distaste. The place struck her as very ugly
+and forlorn, utterly lacking in what she had always taken to be the
+amenities of flat life--an obsequious porter, a lift, electric light.
+
+How strange of Ferrier to have told her that he lived in a building that
+was beautiful!
+
+Springing in bold and simple curves, rose a wrought-iron staircase,
+filling up the centre of the narrow, towerlike building. Agnes knew that
+Ferrier lived high up, somewhere near the top.
+
+She waited a moment at the foot of the staircase. She was gathering up
+her strength, throwing behind her everything that had meant life,
+happiness, and--what signified so very much to such a woman as
+herself--personal repute.
+
+But, even so, Agnes did not falter in her purpose. She was still
+possessed, driven onward, by a passion of jealous misery.
+
+But, though her spirit was willing, ay, and more than willing, for
+revenge, her flesh was weak; and as she began slowly walking up the
+staircase she started nervously at the grotesque shapes cast by her own
+shadow, and at the muffled sounds of her own footfalls.
+
+Half-way up the high building the gas-jets burned low, and Agnes felt
+aggrieved. What a mean, stupid economy on the part of the owners of this
+strange, unnatural dwelling-place.
+
+How dreadful it would be if she were to meet any one she knew--any one
+belonging to what she was already unconsciously teaching herself to call
+her old, happy life! As if in cruel answer to her fear, a door opened,
+and an old man, clad in a big shabby fur coat and broad-brimmed hat,
+came out.
+
+Agnes's heart gave a bound in her bosom. Yes; this was what she had
+somehow thought would happen. In the half-light she took the old man to
+be an eccentric acquaintance of her father's.
+
+"Mr. Willis?" she whispered hoarsely.
+
+He looked at her, surprised, resentful.
+
+"My name's not Willis," he said gruffly, as he passed her on his way
+down, and her heart became stilled. How could she have been so foolish
+as to take that disagreeable old man for kindly-natured Mr. Willis?
+
+She was now very near the top. Only a storey and a half more, and she
+would be there. Her steps were flagging, but a strange kind of peace had
+fallen on her. In a few moments she would be safe, for ever, in
+Ferrier's arms. How strange and unreal the notion seemed!
+
+And then--and then, as if fashioned by some potent incantation from the
+vaporous fog outside, a tall, grey figure rose out of nothingness, and
+stood, barring the way, on the steel floor of the landing above her.
+
+Agnes clutched the iron railing, too oppressed rather than too
+frightened to speak. Out in the fog-laden street she had involuntarily
+called out the other's name. "Teresa?" she had cried, "Teresa!" But this
+time no word broke from her lips, for she feared that if she spoke the
+other would answer.
+
+Teresa Maldo's love, the sisterly love of which Agnes had been so little
+worthy, had broken down the gateless barrier which stretches its dense
+length between the living and the dead. What she, the living woman, had
+not known how to do for Teresa, the dead woman had come back to do for
+her--for now Agnes seemed suddenly able to measure the depth of the gulf
+into which she had been about to throw herself....
+
+She stared with fearful, fascinated eyes at the immobile figure swathed
+in grey, cere-like garments, and her gaze travelled stealthfully up to
+the white, passionless face, drained of all expression save that of
+watchful concern and understanding tenderness....
+
+With a swift movement Agnes turned round. Clinging to the iron rail, she
+stumbled down the stairway to the deserted hall, and with swift
+terror-hastened steps rushed out into the street.
+
+Through the fog she plunged, not even sparing a moment to look back and
+up to the dimly lighted window behind which poor Ferrier stood,--as a
+softer, a truer-natured woman might have done. Violently she put all
+thought of her lover from her, and as she hurried along with tightening
+breath, the instinct of self-preservation alone possessing her, she
+became more and more absorbed in measuring the fathomless depth of the
+pit in which she had so nearly fallen.
+
+Her one wish now was to get home--to get home--to get home--before Frank
+got back.
+
+But the fulfilment of that wish was denied her--for as Agnes Barlow
+walked, crying softly as she went, in the misty darkness along the road
+which led from Summerfield station to the gate of The Haven, there fell
+on her ear the rhythmical tramp of well-shod feet.
+
+She shrank near to the hedge, in no mood to greet or to accept greeting
+from a neighbour. But the walker was now close to her. He struck a
+match.
+
+"Agnes?" It was Frank Barlow's voice--shamed, eager, questioning. "Is
+that you? I thought--I hoped you would come home by this train."
+
+And as she gave no immediate answer, as he missed--God alone knew with
+what relief--the prim, cold accents to which his wife had accustomed him
+of late, he hurried forward and took her masterfully in his arms. "Oh!
+my darling," he whispered huskily, "I know I've been a beast--but I've
+never left off loving you--and I can't stand your coldness, Agnes; it's
+driving me to the devil! Forgive me, my pure angel----"
+
+And Frank Barlow's pure angel did forgive him, and with a spontaneity
+and generous forgetfulness which he will ever remember. Nay, more;
+Agnes--and this touched her husband deeply--even gave up her pleasant
+acquaintance with that writing fellow, Ferrier, because Ferrier, through
+no fault of his, was associated, in both their minds, with the terrible
+time each would have given so much to obliterate from the record of
+their otherwise cloudless married life.
+
+
+
+
+WHY THEY MARRIED
+
+    "God doeth all things well, though by what strange, solemn, and
+     murderous contrivances."
+
+
+I
+
+John Coxeter was sitting with his back to the engine in a first-class
+carriage in the Paris-Boulogne night train. Not only Englishman, but
+Englishman of a peculiarly definite class, that of the London civil
+servant, was written all over his spare, still active figure.
+
+It was late September, and the rush homewards had begun; so Coxeter,
+being a man of precise and careful habit, had reserved a corner seat.
+Then, just before the train had started, a certain Mrs. Archdale, a
+young widowed lady with whom he was acquainted, had come up to him on
+the Paris platform, and to her he had given up his seat.
+
+Coxeter had willingly made the little sacrifice of his personal comfort,
+but he had felt annoyed when Mrs. Archdale in her turn had yielded the
+corner place with foolish altruism to a French lad exchanging vociferous
+farewells with his parents. When the train started the boy did not give
+the seat back to the courteous Englishwoman to whom it belonged, and
+Coxeter, more vexed by the matter than it was worth, would have liked to
+punch the boy's head.
+
+And yet, as he now looked straight before him, sitting upright in the
+carriage which was rocking and jolting as only a French railway carriage
+can rock and jolt, he realized that he himself had gained by the lad's
+lack of honesty. By having thus given away something which did not
+belong to her, Mrs. Archdale was now seated, if uncomfortably hemmed in
+and encompassed on each side, just opposite to Coxeter himself.
+
+Coxeter was well aware that to stare at a woman is the height of bad
+breeding, but unconsciously he drew a great distinction between what is
+good taste to do when one is being observed, and that which one does
+when no one can catch one doing it. Without making the slightest effort,
+in fact by looking straight before him, Nan Archdale fell into his
+direct line of vision, and he allowed his eyes to rest on her with an
+unwilling sense that there was nothing in the world he had rather they
+rested on. Her appearance pleased his fastidious, rather old-fashioned
+taste. Mrs. Archdale was wearing a long grey cloak. On her head was
+poised a dark hat trimmed with Mercury wings; it rested lightly on the
+pale golden hair which formed so agreeable a contrast to her deep blue
+eyes.
+
+Coxeter did not believe in luck; the word which means so much to many
+men had no place in his vocabulary, or even in his imagination. But,
+still, the sudden appearance of Mrs. Archdale in the great Paris station
+had been an agreeable surprise, one of those incidents which, just
+because of their unexpectedness, make a man feel not only pleased with
+himself, but at one with the world.
+
+Before Mrs. Archdale had come up to the carriage door at which he was
+standing, several things had contributed to put Coxeter in an
+ill-humour.
+
+It had seemed to his critical British phlegm that he was surrounded,
+immersed against his will, in floods of emotion. Among his fellow
+travellers the French element predominated. Heavens! how they
+talked--jabbered would be the better word--laughed and cried! How they
+hugged and embraced one another! Coxeter thanked God he was an
+Englishman.
+
+His feeling of bored disgust was intensified by the conduct of a
+long-nosed, sallow man, who had put his luggage into the same carriage
+as that where Coxeter's seat had been reserved.
+
+Strange how the peculiar characteristics common to the Jewish race
+survive, whatever be the accident of nationality. This man also was
+saying good-bye, his wife being a dark, thin, eager-looking woman of a
+very common French type. Coxeter looked at them critically, he wondered
+idly if the woman was Jewish too. On the whole he thought not. She was
+half crying, half laughing, her hands now clasping her husband's arm,
+now travelling, with a gesture of tenderness, up to his fleshy face,
+while he seemed to tolerate rather than respond to her endearments and
+extravagant terms of affection. "_Adieu, mon petit homme adore!_" she
+finally exclaimed, just as the tickets were being examined, and to
+Coxeter's surprise the adored one answered in a very English voice,
+albeit the utterance was slightly thick, "There, there! That'ull do, my
+dear girl. It's only for a fortnight after all."
+
+Coxeter felt a pang of sincere pity for the poor fellow; a cad, no
+doubt--but an English cad, cursed with an emotional French wife!
+
+Then his attention had been most happily diverted by the unexpected
+appearance of Mrs. Archdale. She had come up behind him very quietly,
+and he had heard her speak before actually seeing her. "Mr. Coxeter, are
+you going back to England, or have you only come to see someone off?"
+
+Not even then had Coxeter--to use a phrase which he himself would not
+have used, for he avoided the use of slang--"given himself away." Over
+his lantern-shaped face, across his thin, determined mouth, there had
+still lingered a trace of the supercilious smile with which he had been
+looking round him. And, as he had helped Mrs. Archdale into the
+compartment, as he indicated to her the comfortable seat he had reserved
+for himself, not even she--noted though she was for her powers of
+sympathy and understanding--had divined the delicious tremor, the
+curious state of mingled joy and discomfort into which her sudden
+presence had thrown the man whom she had greeted a little doubtfully, by
+no means sure that he would welcome her companionship on a long journey.
+
+And, indeed, in spite of the effect she produced upon him, in spite of
+the fact that she was the only human being who had ever had, or was ever
+likely to have, the power of making him feel humble, not quite satisfied
+with himself--Coxeter disapproved of Mrs. Archdale. At the present
+moment he disapproved of her rather more than usual, for if she meant
+to give up that corner seat, why had she not so arranged as to sit by
+him? Instead, she was now talking to the French boy who occupied what
+should have been her seat.
+
+But Nan Archdale, as all her friends called her, was always like that.
+Coxeter never saw her, never met her at the houses to which he went
+simply in order that he might meet her, without wondering why she wasted
+so much of the time she might have spent in talking to him, and above
+all in listening to him, in talking and listening to other people.
+
+Four years ago, not long after their first acquaintance, he had made her
+an offer of marriage, impelled by something which had appeared at the
+time quite outside himself and his usual wise, ponderate view of life.
+He had been relieved, as well as keenly hurt, when she had refused him.
+
+Everything that concerned himself appeared to John Coxeter of such
+moment and importance that at the time it had seemed incredible that Nan
+Archdale would be able to keep to herself the peculiar honour which had
+befallen her,--one, by the way, which Coxeter had never seriously
+thought of conferring on any other woman. But as time went on he became
+aware that she had actually kept the secret which was not hers to
+betray, and, emboldened by the knowledge that she alone knew of his
+humiliating bondship, he had again, after a certain interval, written
+and asked her if she would marry him. Again she had refused, in a kind,
+impersonal little note, and this last time she had gone so far as to
+declare that in this matter she really knew far better than he did
+himself what was good for him, and once more something deep in his heart
+had said "Amen."
+
+When he thought about it, and he went on thinking about it more than was
+quite agreeable for his own comfort or peace of mind, Coxeter would tell
+himself, with what he believed to be a vicarious pang of regret, that
+Mrs. Archdale had made a sad mistake as regarded her own interest. He
+felt sure she was not fit to live alone; he knew she ought to be
+surrounded by the kind of care and protection which only a husband can
+properly bestow on a woman. He, Coxeter, would have known how to detach
+her from the unsuitable people by whom she was always surrounded.
+
+Nan Archdale, and Coxeter was much concerned that it was so, had an
+instinctive attraction for those poor souls who lead forlorn hopes, and
+of whom--they being unsuccessful in their fine endeavours--the world
+never hears. She also had a strange patience and tenderness for those
+ne'er-do-wells of whom even the kindest grow weary after a time. Nan had
+a mass of queer friends, old proteges for whom she worked unceasingly in
+a curious, detached fashion, which was quite her own, and utterly apart
+from any of the myriad philanthropic societies with which the world she
+lived in, and to which she belonged by birth, interests its prosperous
+and intelligent leisure.
+
+It was characteristic that Nan's liking for John Coxeter often took the
+form of asking him to help these queer, unsatisfactory people. Why, even
+in this last week, while he had been in Paris, he had come into close
+relation with one of Mrs. Archdale's "odd-come-shorts." This time the
+man was an inventor, and of all unpractical and useless things he had
+patented an appliance for saving life at sea!
+
+Nan Archdale had given the man a note to Coxeter, and it was
+characteristic of the latter that, while resenting what Mrs. Archdale
+had done, he had been at some pains when in Paris to see the man in
+question. The invention--as Coxeter had of course known would be the
+case--was a ridiculous affair, but for Nan's sake he had agreed to
+submit it to the Admiralty expert whose business it is to consider and
+pronounce on such futile things. The queer little model which its maker
+believed would in time supersede the life-belts now carried on every
+British ship, had but one merit, it was small and portable: at the
+present moment it lay curled up, looking like a cross between a
+serpent's cast skin and a child's spent balloon, in Coxeter's
+portmanteau. Even while he had accepted the parcel with a coolly civil
+word of thanks, he had mentally composed the letter with which he would
+ultimately dash the poor inventor's hopes.
+
+To-night, however, sitting opposite to her, he felt glad that he had
+been to see the man, and he looked forward to telling her about it.
+Scarcely consciously to himself, it always made Coxeter glad to feel
+that he had given Nan pleasure, even pleasure of which he disapproved.
+
+And yet how widely apart were these two people's sympathies and
+interests! Putting Nan aside, John Coxeter was only concerned with two
+things in life--his work at the Treasury and himself--and people only
+interested him in relation to these two major problems of existence. Nan
+Archdale was a citizen of the world--a freewoman of that dear kingdom of
+romance which still contains so many fragrant byways and sunny oases for
+those who have the will to find them. But for her freedom of this
+kingdom she would have been a very sad woman, oppressed by the griefs
+and sorrows of that other world to which she also belonged, for Nan's
+human circle was ever widening, and in her strange heart there seemed
+always room for those whom others rejected and despised.
+
+She had the power no human being had ever had--that of making John
+Coxeter jealous. This was the harder to bear inasmuch as he was well
+aware that jealousy is a very ridiculous human failing, and one with
+which he had no sympathy or understanding when it affected--as it
+sometimes did--his acquaintances and colleagues. Fortunately for
+himself, he was not retrospectively jealous--jealous that is of the dead
+man of whom certain people belonging to his and to Nan's circle
+sometimes spoke of as "poor Jim Archdale." Coxeter knew vaguely that
+Archdale had been a bad lot, though never actually unkind to his wife;
+nay, more, during the short time their married life had lasted,
+Archdale, it seemed, had to a certain extent reformed.
+
+Although he was unconscious of it, John Coxeter was a very material
+human being, and this no doubt was why this woman had so compelling an
+attraction for him; for Nan Archdale appeared to be all spirit, and that
+in spite of her eager, sympathetic concern in the lives which circled
+about hers.
+
+And yet? Yet there was certainly a strong, unspoken link between them,
+this man and woman who had so little in common the one with the other.
+They met often, if only because they both lived in Marylebone, that most
+conventional quarter of old Georgian London, she in Wimpole Street, he
+in a flat in Wigmore Street. She always was glad to see him, and seemed
+a little sorry when he left her. Coxeter was one of the rare human
+beings to whom Nan ever spoke of herself and of her own concerns. But,
+in spite of that curious kindliness, she did not do what so many people
+who knew John Coxeter instinctively did--ask his advice, and, what was,
+of course, more seldom done--take it. In fact he had sometimes angrily
+told himself that Nan attached no weight to his opinion, and as time had
+gone on he had almost given up offering her unsought advice.
+
+John Coxeter attached great importance to health. He realized that a
+perfect physical condition is a great possession, and he took
+considerable pains to keep himself what he called "fit." Now Mrs.
+Archdale was recklessly imprudent concerning her health, the health,
+that is, which was of so great a value to him, her friend. She took her
+meals at such odd times; she did not seem to mind, hardly to know, what
+she ate and drank!
+
+Of the many strange things Coxeter had known her to do, by far the
+strangest, and one which he could scarcely think of without an inward
+tremor, had happened only a few months ago.
+
+Nan had been with an ailing friend, and the ailing friend's only son, in
+the Highlands, and this friend, a foolish woman,--when recalling the
+matter Coxeter never omitted to call this lady a foolish woman--on
+sending her boy back to school, had given him what she had thought to be
+a dose of medicine out of the wrong bottle, a bottle marked "Poison."
+Nothing could be done, for the boy had started on his long railway
+journey south before the mistake had been discovered, and even Coxeter,
+when hearing the story told, had realized that had he been there he
+would have been sorry, really sorry, for the foolish mother.
+
+But Nan's sympathy--and on this point Coxeter always dwelt with a
+special sense of injury--had taken a practical shape. She had poured out
+a similar dose from the bottle marked "Poison" and had calmly drunk it,
+observing as she did so, "I don't believe it _is_ poison in the real
+sense of the word, but at any rate we shall soon be able to find out
+exactly what is happening to Dick."
+
+Nothing, or at least nothing but a bad headache, had followed, and so
+far had Nan been justified of her folly. But to Coxeter it was terrible
+to think of what might have happened, and he had not shared in any
+degree the mingled amusement and admiration which the story, as told
+afterwards by the culpable mother, had drawn forth. In fact, so deeply
+had he felt about it that he had not trusted himself to speak of the
+matter to Mrs. Archdale.
+
+But Mrs. Archdale was not only reckless of her health; she was also
+reckless--perhaps uncaring would be the truer word--of something which
+John Coxeter supposed every nice woman to value even more than her
+health or appearance, that is the curiously intangible, and yet so
+easily frayed, human vesture termed reputation.
+
+To John Coxeter the women of his own class, if worthy, that is, of
+consideration and respect, went clad in a delicate robe of ermine, and
+the thought that this ermine should have even a shade cast on its
+fairness was most repugnant to him. Now Nan Archdale was not as careful
+in this matter of keeping her ermine unspoiled and delicately white as
+she ought to have been, and this was the stranger inasmuch as even
+Coxeter realized that there was about his friend a Una-like quality
+which made her unafraid, because unsuspecting, of evil.
+
+Another of the cardinal points of Coxeter's carefully thought-out
+philosophy of life was that in this world no woman can touch pitch
+without being defiled. And yet on one occasion, at least, the woman who
+now sat opposite to him had proved the falsity of this view. Nan
+Archdale, apparently indifferent to the opinion of those who wished her
+well, had allowed herself to be closely associated with one of those
+unfortunate members of her own sex who, at certain intervals in the
+history of the civilized world, become heroines of a drama of which each
+act takes place in the Law Courts. Of these dramas every whispered word,
+every piece of "business"--to pursue the analogy to its logical end--is
+overheard and visualized not by thousands but by millions,--in fact by
+all those of an age to read a newspaper.
+
+Had the woman in the case been Mrs. Archdale's sister, Coxeter with a
+groan would have admitted that she owed her a duty, though a duty which
+he would fain have had her shirk or rather delegate to another. But this
+woman was no sister, not even a friend, simply an old acquaintance
+known to Nan, 'tis true, over many years. Nan had done what she had
+done, had taken her in and sheltered her, going to the Court with her
+every day, simply because there seemed absolutely no one else willing to
+do it.
+
+When he had first heard of what Mrs. Archdale was undertaking to do,
+Coxeter had been so dismayed that he had felt called upon to expostulate
+with her.
+
+Very few words had passed between them. "Is it possible," he had asked,
+"that you think her innocent? That you believe her own story?"
+
+To this Mrs. Archdale had answered with some distress, "I don't know, I
+haven't thought about it---- As she says she is--I hope she is. If she's
+not, I'd rather not know it."
+
+It had been a confused utterance, and somehow she had made him feel
+sorry that he had said anything. Afterwards, to his surprise and
+unwilling relief, he discovered that Mrs. Archdale had not suffered in
+reputation as he had expected her to do. But it made him feel, more than
+ever, that she needed a strong, wise man to take care of her, and to
+keep her out of the mischief into which her unfortunate
+good-nature--that was the way Coxeter phrased it to himself--was so apt
+to lead her.
+
+It was just after this incident that he had again asked her to marry
+him, and that she had again refused him. But it was since then that he
+had become really her friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At last Mrs. Archdale turned away, or else the French boy had come to an
+end of his eloquence. Perhaps she would now lean a little forward and
+speak to him--the friend whom she had not seen for some weeks and whom
+she had seemed so sincerely glad to see half an hour ago? But no; she
+remained silent, her face full of thought.
+
+Coxeter leant back; as a rule he never read in a train, for he was aware
+that it is injurious to the eyesight to do so. But to-night he suddenly
+told himself that after all he might just as well look at the English
+paper he had bought at the station. He might at least see what sort of
+crossing they were going to have to-night. Not that he minded for
+himself. He was a good sailor and always stayed on deck whatever the
+weather, but he hoped it would be smooth for Mrs. Archdale's sake. It
+was so unpleasant for a lady to have a rough passage.
+
+Again, before opening the paper, he glanced across at her. She did not
+look strong; that air of delicacy, combined as it was with perfect
+health--for Mrs. Archdale was never ill--was one of the things that made
+her attractive to John Coxeter. When he was with a woman, he liked to
+feel that he was taking care of her, and that she was more or less
+dependent on his good offices. Somehow or other he always felt this
+concerning Nan Archdale, and that even when she was doing something of
+which he disapproved and which he would fain have prevented her doing.
+
+Coxeter turned round so that the light should fall on the page at which
+he had opened his newspaper, which, it need hardly be said, was the
+_Morning Post_. Presently there came to him the murmuring of two voices,
+Mrs. Archdale's clear, low utterances, and another's, guttural and full.
+
+Ah! then he had been right; the fellow sitting there, on Nan's other
+side, was a Jew: probably something financial, connected with the Stock
+Exchange. Coxeter of the Treasury looked at the man he took to be a
+financier with considerable contempt. Coxeter prided himself on his
+knowledge of human beings,--or rather of men, for even his
+self-satisfaction did not go so far as to make him suppose that he
+entirely understood women; there had been a time when he had thought
+so, but that was a long while ago.
+
+He began reading his newspaper. There was a most interesting article on
+education. After having glanced at this, he studied more carefully
+various little items of social news which reminded him that he had been
+away from London for some weeks. Then, as he read on, the conversation
+between Nan Archdale and the man next to her became more audible to him.
+All the other people in the carriage were French, and so first one, and
+then the other, window had been closed.
+
+His ears had grown accustomed to the muffled, thundering sounds caused
+by the train, and gradually he became aware that Nan Archdale was
+receiving some singular confidences from the man with whom she was now
+speaking. The fellow was actually unrolling before her the whole of his
+not very interesting life, and by degrees Coxeter began rather to
+overhear than to listen consciously to what was being said.
+
+The Jew, though English by birth, now lived in France. As a young man he
+had failed in business in London, and then he had made a fresh start
+abroad, apparently impelled thereto by his great affection for his
+mother. The Jewish race, so Coxeter reminded himself, are admirable in
+every relation of private life, and it was apparently in order that his
+mother might not have to alter her style of living that the person on
+whom Mrs. Archdale was now fixing her attention had finally accepted a
+post in a Paris house of business--no, not financial, something
+connected with the sweetmeat trade.
+
+Coxeter gathered that the speaker had at last saved enough money to make
+a start for himself, and that now he was very prosperous. He spoke of
+what he had done with legitimate pride, and when describing the struggle
+he had gone through, the fellow used a very odd expression, "It wasn't
+all jam!" he said. Now he was in a big way of business, going over to
+London every three months, partly in connection with his work, partly to
+see his old mother.
+
+Behind his newspaper Coxeter told himself that it was amazing any human
+being should tell so much of his private concerns to a stranger. Even
+more amazing was it that a refined, rather peculiar, woman like Nan
+Archdale should care to listen to such a commonplace story. But
+listening she was, saying a word here and there, asking, too, very
+quaint, practical questions concerning the sweetmeat trade. Why, even
+Coxeter became interested in spite of himself, for the Jew was an
+intelligent man, and as he talked on Coxeter learned with surprise that
+there is a romantic and exciting side even to making sweets.
+
+"What a pity it is," he heard Nan say at last in her low, even voice,
+"that you can't now come back to England and settle down there. Surely
+it would make your mother much happier, and you don't seem to like Paris
+so very much?"
+
+"That is true," said the man, "but--well, unluckily there's an obstacle
+to my doing that----"
+
+Coxeter looked up from his paper. The stranger's face had become
+troubled, preoccupied, and his eyes were fixed, or so Coxeter fancied
+them to be, on Nan Archdale's left hand, the slender bare hand on which
+the only ring was her wedding ring.
+
+Coxeter once more returned to his paper, but for some minutes he made no
+attempt to follow the dancing lines of print.
+
+"I trust you won't be offended if I ask whether you are, or are not, a
+married lady?" The sweetmeat man's voice had a curious note of shamed
+interrogation threading itself through the words.
+
+Coxeter felt surprised and rather shocked. This was what came of
+allowing oneself to become familiar with an underbred stranger! But Nan
+had apparently not so taken the impertinent question, for, "I am a
+widow," Coxeter heard her answer gently, in a voice that had no touch of
+offence in it.
+
+And then, after a few moments, staring with frowning eyes at the
+spread-out sheet of newspaper before him, Coxeter, with increasing
+distaste and revolt, became aware that Mrs. Archdale was now receiving
+very untoward confidences--confidences which Coxeter had always imagined
+were never made save under the unspoken seal of secrecy by one man to
+another. This objectionable stranger was telling Nan Archdale the story
+of the woman who had seen him off at the station, and whose absurd
+phrase, "_Adieu, mon petit homme adore_," had rung so unpleasantly in
+his, Coxeter's, ears.
+
+The eavesdropper was well aware that such stories are among the everyday
+occurrences of life, but his knowledge was largely theoretical; John
+Coxeter was not the sort of man to whom other men are willing to confide
+their shames, sorrows, or even successes in a field of which the
+aftermath is generally bitter.
+
+In as far as such a tale can be told with decent ambiguity it was so
+told by this man of whose refinement Coxeter had formed so poor an
+opinion, but still the fact that he was telling it remained--and it was
+a fact which to such a man as Coxeter constituted an outrage on the
+decencies of life.
+
+Mrs. Archdale, by her foolish good-nature, had placed herself in such a
+position as to be consulted in a case of conscience concerning a Jewish
+tradesman and his light o' love, and now the man was debating with her
+as with himself, as to whether he should marry this woman, as to whether
+he should force on his respectable English mother a French
+daughter-in-law of unmentionable antecedents! Coxeter gathered that the
+liaison had lasted ten years--that it had begun, in fact, very soon
+after the man had first come to Paris.
+
+In addition to his feeling of wrath that Nan Archdale should become
+cognisant of so sordid a tale, there was associated a feeling of shame
+that he, Coxeter, had overheard what it had not been meant that he
+should hear.
+
+Perforce the story went on to its melancholy and inconclusive end, and
+then, suddenly, Coxeter became possessed with a desire to see Nan
+Archdale's face. He glanced across at her. To his surprise her face was
+expressionless; but her left hand was no longer lying on her knee, it
+was supporting her chin, and she was looking straight before her.
+
+"I suppose," she said at last, "that you have made a proper provision
+for your--your friend? I mean in case of your death. I hope you have so
+arranged matters that if anything should happen to you, this poor woman
+who loves you would not have to go back to the kind of life from which
+you took her." Even Coxeter divined that Nan had not found it easy to
+say this thing.
+
+"Why, no, I haven't done anything of that sort. I never thought of doing
+it; she's always been the delicate party. I am as strong as a horse!"
+
+"Still--still, life's very uncertain." Mrs. Archdale was now looking
+straight into the face of the stranger on whom she was thrusting
+unsought advice.
+
+"She has no claim on me, none at all----" the man spoke defensively. "I
+don't think she'd expect anything of that sort. She's had a very good
+time with me. After all, I haven't treated her badly."
+
+"I'm sure you haven't," Nan spoke very gently. "I am sure you have been
+always kind to her. But, if I may use the simile you used just now,
+life, even to the happiest, the most sheltered, of women, isn't all
+jam!"
+
+The man looked at her with a doubting, shame-faced glance. "I expect
+you're right," he said abruptly. "I ought to have thought of it. I'll
+make my will when I'm in England this time--I ought to have done so
+before."
+
+Suddenly Coxeter leant forward. He felt the time had come when he really
+must put an end to this most unseemly conversation.
+
+"Mrs. Archdale?" he spoke loudly, insistently. She looked up, startled
+at the sharpness of the tone, and the man next her, whose eyes had been
+fixed on her face with so moved and doubting a look, sat back. "I want
+to tell you that I've seen your inventor, and that I've promised to put
+his invention before the right quarter at the Admiralty."
+
+In a moment Nan was all eagerness. "It really is a very wonderful
+thing," she said; "I'm so grateful, Mr. Coxeter. Did you go and see it
+tried? _I_ did, last time I was in Paris; the man took me to a
+swimming-bath on the Seine--such an odd place--and there he tested it
+before me. I was really very much impressed. I do hope you will say a
+word for it. I am sure they would value your opinion."
+
+Coxeter looked at her rather grimly. "No, I didn't see it tested." To
+think that she should have wasted even an hour of her time in such a
+foolish manner, and in such a queer place, too! "I didn't see the use of
+doing so, though of course the man was very anxious I should. I'm
+afraid the thing's no good. How could it be?" He smiled superciliously,
+and he saw her redden.
+
+"How unfair that is!" she exclaimed. "How can you possibly tell whether
+it's no good if you haven't seen it tried? Now I _have_ seen the thing
+tried."
+
+There was such a tone of protest in her voice that Coxeter felt called
+upon to defend himself. "I daresay the thing's all right in theory," he
+said quickly, "and I believe what he says about the ordinary life-belts;
+it's quite true, I mean, that they drown more people than they save: but
+that's only because people don't know how to put them on. This thing's a
+toy--not practical at all." He spoke more irritably than he generally
+allowed himself to speak, for he could see that the Jew was listening to
+all that they were saying.
+
+All at once, Mrs. Archdale actually included the sweetmeat stranger in
+their conversation, and Coxeter at last found himself at her request
+most unwillingly taking the absurd model out of his bag. "Of course
+you've got to imagine this in a rough sea," he said sulkily, playing the
+devil's advocate, "and not in a fresh water river bath."
+
+"Well, _I_ wouldn't mind trying it in a rough sea, Mr. Coxeter." Nan
+smiled as she spoke.
+
+Coxeter wondered if she was really serious. Sometimes he suspected that
+Mrs. Archdale was making fun of him--but that surely was impossible.
+
+
+II
+
+When at last they reached Boulogne and went on board the packet,
+Coxeter's ill-humour vanished. It was cold, raw, and foggy, and most of
+their fellow-passengers at once hurried below, but Mrs. Archdale decided
+to stay on the upper deck. This pleased her companion; now at last he
+would have her to himself.
+
+In his precise and formal way he went to a good deal of trouble to make
+Nan comfortable; and she, so accustomed to take thought for others,
+stood aside and watched him find a sheltered corner, secure with some
+difficulty a deck chair, and then defend it with grim determination
+against two or three people who tried to lay hands upon it.
+
+At last he beckoned to her to sit down. "Where's your rug?" he asked.
+She answered meekly, "I haven't brought one."
+
+He put his own rug,--large, light, warm, the best money could buy--round
+her knees; and in the pleasure it gave him to wait on her thus he did
+not utter aloud the reproof which had been on his lips. But she saw him
+shake his head over a more unaccountable omission--on the journey she
+had somehow lost her gloves. He took his own off, and with a touch of
+masterfulness made her put them on, himself fastening the big bone
+buttons over each of her small, childish wrists; but his manner while he
+did all these things--he would have scorned himself had it been
+otherwise--was impersonal, businesslike.
+
+There are men whose every gesture in connection with a woman becomes an
+instinctive caress. Such men, as every woman learns in time, are not
+good "stayers," but they make the time go by very quickly--sometimes.
+
+With Coxeter every minute lasted sixty seconds. But Nan Archdale found
+herself looking at him with unwonted kindliness. At last she said, a
+little tremulously, and with a wondering tone in her voice, "You're very
+kind to me, Mr. Coxeter." Those who spend their lives in speeding others
+on their way are generally allowed to trudge along alone; so at least
+this woman had found it to be. Coxeter made no answer to her
+words--perhaps he did not hear them.
+
+Even in the few minutes which had elapsed since they came on board, the
+fog had deepened. The shadowy figures moving about the deck only took
+substance when they stepped into the circle of brightness cast by a
+swinging globe of light which hung just above Nan Archdale's head.
+Coxeter moved forward and took up his place in front of the deck-chair,
+protecting its occupant from the jostling of the crowd, for the
+sheltered place he had found stood but a little way back from the
+passage between the land gangway and the iron staircase leading to the
+lower deck.
+
+There were more passengers that night than usual. They passed, a
+seemingly endless procession, moving slowly out of the darkness into the
+circle of light and then again into the white, engulfing mist.
+
+At last the deck became clear of moving figures; the cold, raw fog had
+driven almost everyone below. But Coxeter felt curiously content, rather
+absurdly happy. This was to him a great adventure....
+
+He took out his watch. If the boat started to time they would be off in
+another five minutes. He told himself that this was turning out a very
+pleasant journey; as a rule when crossing the Channel one meets tiresome
+people one knows, and they insist on talking to one. And then, just as
+he was thinking this, there suddenly surged forward out of the foggy
+mist two people, a newly married couple named Rendel, with whom both he
+and Mrs. Archdale were acquainted, at whose wedding indeed they had both
+been present some six or seven weeks ago. So absorbed in earnest talk
+with one another were the bride and bridegroom that they did not seem to
+see where they were going; but when close to Mrs. Archdale they stopped
+short, and turned towards one another, still talking so eagerly as to be
+quite oblivious of possible eavesdroppers.
+
+John Coxeter, standing back in the shadow, felt a sudden gust of envious
+pain. They were evidently on their way home from their honeymoon, these
+happy young people, blessed with good looks, money, health, and love;
+their marriage had been the outcome of quite a pretty romance.
+
+But stay,--what was this they were saying? Both he and Nan unwillingly
+heard the quick interchange of words, the wife's shrill, angry
+utterances, the husband's good-humoured expostulations. "I won't stay on
+the boat, Bob. I don't see why we should risk our lives in order that
+you may be back in town to-morrow. I know it's not safe--my great-uncle,
+the Admiral, always said that the worst storm at sea was not as bad as
+quite a small fog!" Then the gruff answer: "My dear child, don't be a
+fool! The boat wouldn't start if there was the slightest danger. You
+heard what that man told us. The fog was much worse this morning, and
+the boat was only an hour late!" "Well, you can do as you like, but _I_
+won't cross to-night. Where's the use of taking any risk? Mother's
+uncle, the Admiral----" and Coxeter heard with shocked approval the
+man's "Damn your great-uncle, the Admiral!"
+
+There they stood, not more than three yards off, the pretty, angry
+little spitfire looking up at her indignant, helpless husband. Coxeter,
+if disgusted, was amused; there was also the comfort of knowing that
+they would certainly pretend not to see him, even if by chance they
+recognized him, intent as they were on their absurd difference.
+
+"I shall go back and spend the night at the station hotel. No, you
+needn't trouble to find Stockton for me--there's no time." Coxeter and
+Nan heard the laughing gibe, "Then you don't mind your poor maid being
+drowned as well as your poor husband," but the bride went on as if he
+hadn't spoken--"I've quite enough money with me; you needn't give me
+anything--_good-bye_."
+
+She disappeared into the fog in the direction of the gangway, and
+Coxeter moved hastily to one side. He wished to save Bob Rendel the
+annoyance of recognizing him; but then, with amazing suddenness,
+something happened which made Coxeter realize that after all women were
+even more inexplicable, unreasonable beings than even he had always
+known them to be.
+
+There came the quick patter of feet over the damp deck, and Mrs. Rendel
+was back again, close to where her husband was standing.
+
+"I've made up my mind to stay on the boat," she said quietly. "I think
+you are very unwise, as well as very obstinate, to cross in this fog;
+but if you won't give way, then I'd rather be with you, and share the
+danger."
+
+Bob Rendel laughed, not very kindly, and together they went across to
+the stair leading below.
+
+Coxeter opened his mouth to speak, then he closed it again. What a
+scene! What a commentary on married life! And these two people were
+supposed to be "in love" with one another.
+
+The little episode had shocked him, jarred his contentment. "If you
+don't mind, I'll go and smoke a pipe," he said stiffly.
+
+Mrs. Archdale looked up. "Oh yes, please do," and yet she felt suddenly
+bereft of something warm, enveloping, kindly. The words formed
+themselves on her lips, "Don't go too far away," but she did not speak
+them aloud. But, as if in answer to her unspoken request, Coxeter called
+out, "I'm just here, close by, if you want anything," and the
+commonplace words gave her a curious feeling of security,--a feeling,
+though she herself was unaware of it, which her own care and tenderness
+for others often afforded to those round whom she threw the sheltering
+mantle of her kindness.
+
+Perhaps because he was so near, John Coxeter remained in her thoughts.
+Almost alone of those human beings with whom life brought her in
+contact, he made no demand on her sympathy, and very little on her time.
+In fact, his first offer of marriage had taken her so much by surprise
+as to strike her as slightly absurd; she had also felt it, at the time,
+to be an offence, for she had given him no right to encroach on the
+inner shrine of her being.
+
+Trying to account for what he had done, she had supposed that John
+Coxeter, being a man who evidently ordered his life according to some
+kind of system, had believed himself ripe for the honourable estate of
+marriage, and had chosen her as being "suitable."
+
+When writing her cold letter of refusal, she had expected to hear within
+a few weeks of his engagement to some "nice" girl. But time had gone by
+and nothing of the sort had happened. Coxeter's second offer, conveyed,
+as had been the first, in a formal letter, had found her in a very
+different mood, for it had followed very closely on that done by her of
+which he, John Coxeter, had so greatly disapproved. She had been touched
+this second time and not at all offended, and gradually they had become
+friends. It was after his second offer that Nan began making use of him,
+not so much for herself as on behalf of other people.
+
+Nan Archdale led her life without reference to what those about her
+considered appropriate or desirable; and years had gone by since the
+boldest busybody among them would have ventured a word of rebuke. Her
+social background was composed of happy, prosperous people. They had but
+little to do with her, however, save when by some amazing mischance
+things went wrong with them; when all went well they were apt to forget
+Nan Archdale. But John Coxeter, though essentially one of them by birth
+and instinct, and though it had been through them that she had first met
+him, never forgot her.
+
+Yet though they had become, in a sense, intimate, he made on her none of
+those demands which endear a man to a woman. Living up on a pleasant
+tableland of self-approval, he never touched the heights or depths which
+go to form the relief map of most human beings' lives. He always did his
+duty and generally enjoyed doing it, and he had no patience, only
+contempt, for those who shirked theirs.
+
+The passion of love, that greatest of the Protean riddles set by nature
+to civilized man and woman, played no part, or so Nan Archdale believed,
+in John Coxeter's life. At the time she had received the letter in which
+he had first asked her to marry him, there had come to her, seen through
+the softening mists of time, a sharp, poignant remembrance of Jim
+Archdale's offer, "If you won't have me, Nan, I'll do something
+desperate! You'll be sorry then!" So poor Jim Archdale had conquered
+her; and looking back, when she recalled their brief married life, she
+forgot the selfishness and remembered only the love, the love which had
+made Jim so dependent on her presence and her sympathy.
+
+But if John Coxeter were incapable of love, she now knew him to be a
+good friend, and it was the friend--so she believed, and was grateful to
+him for it,--who had asked her to accept what he had quixotically
+supposed would be the shelter of his name when she had done that thing
+of which he had disapproved.
+
+To-night Nan could not help wondering if he would ever again ask her to
+marry him. She thought not--she hoped not. She told herself quite
+seriously that he was one of those men who are far happier unwedded. His
+standard, not so much of feminine virtue as of feminine behaviour, was
+too high. Take what had happened just now; she had listened indulgently,
+tenderly, to the quarrel of the newly married couple, but she had seen
+the effect it had produced on John Coxeter. To him it had been a
+tragedy, and an ugly, ignoble tragedy to boot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The deck was now clear of passengers. Out in the open sea the fog had
+become so thick as to be impenetrable, and the boat seemed to be groping
+its way, heralded by the mournful screaming of the siren. Mrs. Archdale
+felt drowsy; she leant back and closed her eyes. Coxeter was close by,
+puffing steadily at his pipe. She felt a pleasant sensation of security.
+
+She was roused, rather startled, by a man bending over her, while a
+voice said gruffly, "I think, ma'am, that you'd better get into shelter.
+The deck saloon is close by. Allow me to lead you to it."
+
+Nan rose obediently. With the petty officer on one side and Coxeter on
+the other, she made a slow progress across the deck, and so to the
+large, brilliantly lighted saloon. There the fog had been successfully
+shut out, and some fifteen to twenty people sat on the velvet benches;
+among them was the sweetmeat merchant to whom Nan had talked in the
+train.
+
+Coxeter found a comfortable place for Nan rather apart from the others,
+and sitting down he began to talk to her. The fog-horn, which was
+trumpeting more loudly, more insistently than ever, did not, he thought,
+interfere with their conversation as much as it might have done.
+
+"We shan't be there till morning," Coxeter heard a man say, "till
+morning doth appear, at this rate!"
+
+"I suppose we're all right. There's no _real_ danger in a fog--not in
+the Channel; there never has been an accident on the Channel
+passage--not an accident of any serious kind."
+
+"Yes, there was--to one of the Dieppe boats--a very bad accident!"
+
+And then several of those present joined in the discussion. The man who
+had recalled the Dieppe boat accident could be heard, self-assertive,
+pragmatical, his voice raised above the voices around him. "I've been
+all over the world in my time, and when I'm caught in a fog at sea I
+always get up, dress, and go up on deck, however sleepy I may be."
+
+Coxeter, sitting apart by Nan's side, listened with some amusement. His
+rather thin sense of humour was roused by the fact that the people
+around him were talking in so absurd a manner. This delay was not
+pleasant; it might even mean that he would be a few hours late at the
+Treasury, a thing he had never once been after a holiday, for Coxeter
+prided himself on his punctuality in the little as well as the great
+things of life. But, of course, all traffic in the Channel would be
+delayed by this fog, and his absence would be accounted for by the fact.
+
+Sitting there, close to Mrs. Archdale, with no one sufficiently near to
+attract her attention, or, what was more likely, to appeal to her for
+sympathy, he felt he could well afford to wait till the fog cleared off.
+As for the loud, insistent screaming of the siren, that sound which
+apparently got on the nerves of most of those present in the deck
+saloon, of course it was a disagreeable noise, but then they all knew it
+was a necessary precaution, so why make a fuss about it?
+
+Coxeter turned and looked at his companion, and as he looked at her he
+felt a little possessive thrill of pride. Mrs. Archdale alone among the
+people there seemed content and at ease, indeed she was now smiling,
+smiling very brightly and sweetly, and, following the direction of her
+eyes, he saw that they rested on a child lying asleep in its mother's
+arms....
+
+Perhaps after all it was a good thing that Nan was so detached from
+material things. Before that burst of foolish talk provoked by the fog,
+he had been speaking to her about a matter very interesting to
+himself--something connected with his work, something, by the way, of
+which he would not have thought of speaking to any other woman; but then
+Mrs. Archdale, as Coxeter had good reason to know, was exceptionally
+discreet.... She had evidently been very much interested in all he had
+told her, and he had enjoyed the conversation.
+
+Coxeter became dimly conscious of what it would mean to him to have Nan
+to come back to when work, and the couple of hours he usually spent at
+his club, were over. Perhaps if Nan were waiting for him, he would not
+wish to stay as long as two hours at his club. But then of course he
+would want Nan all to himself. Jealous? Certainly not. He was far too
+sensible a man to feel jealous, but he would expect his wife to put him
+first--a very long way in front of anybody else. It might be
+old-fashioned, but he was that sort of man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Coxeter's thoughts leapt back into the present with disagreeable
+abruptness. Their Jewish fellow-traveller, the man who had thrust on
+Mrs. Archdale such unseemly confidences, had got up. He was now heading
+straight for the place where Mrs. Archdale was sitting.
+
+Coxeter quickly decided that the fellow must not be allowed to bore Mrs.
+Archdale. She was in his, Coxeter's, care to-night, and he alone had a
+right to her interest and attention. So he got up and walked down the
+saloon. To his surprise the other, on seeing him come near, stopped
+dead. "I want to speak to you," he said in a low voice,
+"Mr.--er--Coxeter."
+
+Coxeter looked at him, surprised, then reminded himself that his full
+name, "John Coxeter," was painted on his portmanteau. Also that Mrs.
+Archdale had called him "Mr. Coxeter" at least once, when discussing
+that life-saving toy. Still, sharp, observant fellows, Jews! One should
+always be on one's guard with them. "Yes?" he said interrogatively.
+
+"Well, Mr. Coxeter, I want to ask you to do me a little favour. The
+truth is I've just made my will--only a few lines--and I want you to be
+my second witness. I've no objection, none in the world, to your seeing
+what I want you to witness."
+
+He spoke very deliberately, as if he had prepared the form of words in
+which he made his strange request, and as he spoke he held out a sheet
+of paper apparently torn out of a notebook. "I asked that gentleman over
+there"--he jerked his thumb over his shoulder--"to be my first witness,
+and he kindly consented. I'd be much obliged if you'd sign your name
+just here. I'll also ask you to take charge of it--only a small
+envelope, as you see. It's addressed to my mother. I've made her
+executor and residuary legatee."
+
+Coxeter felt a strong impulse to refuse. He never mixed himself up with
+other people's affairs; he always refused to do so on principle.
+
+The man standing opposite to him divined what was passing through his
+mind, and broke in, "Only just while we're on this boat. You can tear it
+up and chuck the pieces away once we're on land again--" he spoke
+nervously, and with contemptuous amazement Coxeter told himself that the
+fellow was _afraid_. "Surely you don't think there's any danger?" he
+asked. "D'you mean you've made this will because you think something may
+happen to the boat?"
+
+The other nodded, "Accidents do happen"; he smiled rather foolishly as
+he said the words, pronouncing the last one, as Coxeter noted with
+disapproval, "habben." He was holding out a fountain pen; he had an
+ingratiating manner, and Coxeter, to his own surprise, suddenly gave
+way.
+
+"All right," he said, and taking the paper in his hand he glanced over
+it. He had no desire to pry into any man's private affairs, but he
+wasn't going to sign anything without first reading it.
+
+This odd little will consisted of only two sentences, written in a
+clear, clerkly hand. The first bequeathed an annuity of L240 (six
+thousand francs) to Leonie Lenoir, of Rue Lafayette, Paris; the second
+appointed the testator's mother, Mrs. Solomon Munich, of Scott Terrace,
+Maida Vale, residuary legatee and executor. The will was signed "Victor
+Munich."
+
+"Very well, I'll sign it," said Coxeter, at last, "and I'll take charge
+of it till we're on land. But look here--I won't keep it a moment
+longer!" Then, perhaps a little ashamed of his ungraciousness, "I say,
+Mr. Munich, if I were you I'd go below and take a stiffish glass of
+brandy and water. I once had a fright, I was nearly run over by a
+brewer's dray at Charing Cross, and I did that--took some brandy I
+mean--" he jerked the words out, conscious that the other's sallow face
+had reddened.
+
+Then he signed his name at the bottom of the sheet of paper, and busied
+himself with putting the envelope carefully into his pocketbook.
+"There," he said, with the slight supercilious smile which was his most
+marked physical peculiarity, but of which he was quite unconscious,
+"your will is quite safe now! If we meet at Folkestone I'll hand it you
+back; if we miss one another in the--er--fog I'll destroy it, as
+arranged."
+
+He turned and began walking back to where Nan Archdale was sitting. What
+a very odd thing! How extraordinary, how unexpected!
+
+Then a light broke in on him. Why, of course, it was Nan who had brought
+this about! She had touched up the Jew fellow's conscience, frightened
+him about that woman--the woman who had so absurdly termed him her
+"_petit homme adore_." That's what came of mixing up in other people's
+business; but Coxeter's eyes nevertheless rested on the sitting figure
+of his friend with a certain curious indulgence. Odd, sentimental,
+sensitive creatures--women! But brave--not lacking in moral courage
+anyway.
+
+As he came close up to her, Mrs. Archdale moved a little, making room
+for him to sit down by her. It was a graceful, welcoming gesture, and
+John Coxeter's pulse began to quicken.... He told himself that this also
+was an extraordinary thing--this journey with the woman he had wished to
+make his wife. He felt her to be so tantalizingly near, and yet in a
+sense so very far away.
+
+His eyes fell on her right hand, still encased in his large brown glove.
+As he had buttoned that glove, he had touched her soft wrist, and a wild
+impulse had come to him to bend yet a little closer and press his lips
+to the white triangle of yielding flesh. Of course he had resisted the
+temptation, reminding himself sternly that it was a caddish thing even
+to have thought of taking advantage of Nan's confiding friendliness. Yet
+now he wondered whether he had been a fool not to do it. Other men did
+those things.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There came a dragging, grating sound, the boat shuddering as if in
+response. Coxeter had the odd sensation that he was being gently but
+irresistibly pushed round, and yet he sat quite still, with nothing in
+the saloon changed in relation to himself.
+
+Someone near him exclaimed in a matter-of-fact voice, "We've struck;
+we're on a rock." Everyone stood up, and he saw an awful look of doubt,
+of unease, cross the faces of the men and women about him.
+
+The fog-horn ceased trumpeting, and there rose confused sounds, loud
+hoarse shouts and thin shrill cries, accompanying the dull thunder
+caused by the tramping of feet. Then the lights went out, all but the
+yellow flame of a small oil lamp which none of them had known was there.
+
+The glass-panelled door opened widely, and a burly figure holding a
+torch, which flared up in the still, moist air, was outlined against the
+steamy waves of fog.
+
+"Come out of here!" he cried; and then, as some people tried to push
+past him, "Steady, keep cool! There'll be room in the boats for every
+soul on board," and Coxeter, looking at the pale, glistening face, told
+himself that the man was lying, and that he knew he lied.
+
+They stumbled out, one by one, and joined the great company which was
+now swarming over the upper deck, each man and woman forlorn and lonely
+as human beings must ever be when individually face to face with death.
+
+Coxeter's right hand gripped firmly Mrs. Archdale's arm. She was
+pressing closely to his side, shrinking back from the rough crowd
+surging about them, and he was filled with a fierce protective
+tenderness which left no room in his mind for any thought of self. His
+one thought was how to preserve his companion from contact with some of
+those about them; wild-eyed, already distraught creatures, swayed with a
+terror which set them apart from the mass of quiet, apparently dazed
+people who stood patiently waiting to do what they were told.
+
+Close to Nan and Coxeter two men were talking Spanish; they were
+gesticulating, and seemed to be disagreeing angrily as to what course to
+pursue. Presently one of them suddenly produced a long knife which
+glittered in the torchlight; with it he made a gesture as if to show the
+other that he meant to cut his way through the crowd towards the spot,
+now railed off with rope barriers, where the boats were being got ready
+for the water.
+
+With a quick movement Coxeter unbuttoned his cloak and drew Nan within
+its folds; putting his arms round her he held her, loosely and yet how
+firmly clasped to his breast. "I can't help it," he muttered
+apologetically. "Forgive me!" As only answer she seemed to draw yet
+closer to him, and then she lay, still and silent, within his sheltering
+arms,--and at that moment he remembered to be glad he had not kissed her
+wrist.
+
+They two stood there, encompassed by a living wall, and yet how
+strangely alone. The fog had become less dense, or else the resin
+torches which flared up all about them cleared the air.
+
+From the captain's bridge there whistled every quarter minute a high
+rocket, and soon from behind the wall of fog came in answer distant
+signals full of a mingled mockery and hope to the people waiting there.
+
+But for John Coxeter the drama of his own soul took precedence of that
+going on round him. Had he been alone he would have shared to the full
+the awful, exasperating feeling of being trapped, of there being nothing
+to be done, which possessed all the thinking minds about him. But he was
+not alone----
+
+Nan, lying on his breast, seemed to pour virtue into him--to make him
+extraordinarily alive. Never had he felt death, extinction so near, and
+yet there seemed to be something outside himself, a spirit informing,
+uplifting, and conquering the flesh.
+
+Perceptions, sympathies, which had lain dormant during the whole of his
+thirty-nine years of life, now sprang into being. His imagination
+awoke. He saw that it was this woman, now standing, with such complete
+trust in the niceness of his honour, heart to heart with him, who had
+made the best of that at once solitary and companioned journey which we
+call life. He had thought her to be a fool; he now saw that, if a fool,
+she had been a divine fool, ever engaged while on her pilgrimage with
+the only things that now mattered. How great was the sum of her
+achievement compared with his. She had been a beacon diffusing light and
+warmth; he a shadow among shadows. If to-night he were engulfed in the
+unknown, for so death was visioned by John Coxeter, who would miss him,
+who would feel the poorer for his sudden obliteration?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Coxeter came back into the present; he looked round him, and for the
+first time he felt the disabling clutch of physical fear. The life-belts
+were being given out, and there came to him a horrid vision of the
+people round him as they might be an hour hence, drowned, heads down,
+legs up, done to death by those monstrous yellow bracelets which they
+were now putting on with such clumsy, feverish eagerness.
+
+He was touched on the arm, and a husky voice, with which he was by now
+familiar, said urgently, "Mr. Coxeter--see, I've brought your bag out
+of the saloon." The man whose name he knew to be Victor Munich was
+standing at his elbow. "Look here, don't take offence, Mr. Coxeter, I
+think better of the----" he hesitated--"the life-saver that you've got
+in this bag of yours than you do. I'm willing to give you a fancy price
+for it--what would you say to a thousand pounds? I daresay I shan't have
+occasion to use it, but of course I take that risk."
+
+Coxeter, with a quick, unobtrusive movement, released Mrs. Archdale. He
+turned and stared, not pleasantly, at the man who was making him so odd
+an offer. Damn the fellow's impudence! "The life-saver is not for sale,"
+he said shortly.
+
+Nan had heard but little of the quick colloquy. She did not connect it
+with the fact that the strong protecting arms which had been about her
+were now withdrawn,--and the tears came into her eyes. She felt both in
+a physical and in a spiritual sense suddenly alone. John Coxeter, the
+one human being who ever attempted to place himself on a more intimate,
+personal plane with her, happened, by a strange irony of fate, to be her
+companion in this awful adventure. But even he had now turned away from
+her....
+
+Nay, that was not quite true. He was again looking down at her, and she
+felt his hand groping for hers. As he found and clasped it, he made a
+movement as if he wished again to draw her towards him. Gently she
+resisted, and at once she felt that he responded to her feeling of
+recoil, and Nan, with a confused sense of shame and anger, was now hurt
+by his submission. Most men in his place would have made short work of
+her resistance,--would have taken her, masterfully, into the shelter of
+his arms.
+
+There came a little stir among the people on the deck. Coxeter heard a
+voice call out in would-be-cheery tones, "Now then, ladies! Please step
+out--ladies and children only. Look sharp!" A sailor close by whispered
+gruffly to his mate, "I'll stick to her anyhow. No crowded boats for me!
+I expect she'll be a good hour settling--perhaps a bit longer."
+
+As the first boat-load swung into the water, some of the people about
+them gave a little cheer. Coxeter thought, but he will never be quite
+sure, that in that cheer Nan joined. There was a delay of a minute; then
+again the captain's voice rang out, this time in a sharper, more
+peremptory tone, "Now, ladies, look sharp! Come along, please."
+
+Coxeter unclasped Nan's hand--he did not know how tightly he had been
+holding it. He loved her. God, how he loved her! And now he must send
+her away--away into the shrouding fog--away, just as he had found her.
+If what he had overheard were true, might he not be sending Nan to a
+worse fate than that of staying to take the risk with him?
+
+But the very man who had spoken so doubtfully of the boats just now came
+forward. "You'd best hurry your lady forward, sir. There's no time to
+lose." There was an anxious, warning note in the rough voice.
+
+"You must go now," said Coxeter heavily. "I shall be all right, Mrs.
+Archdale," for she was making no movement forward. "There'll be plenty
+of room for the men in the next boat. I'd walk across the deck with you,
+but I'm afraid they won't allow that." He spoke in his usual
+matter-of-fact, rather dry tone, and Nan looked up at him doubtingly.
+Did he really wish her to leave him?
+
+Flickering streaks of light fell on his face. It was convulsed with
+feeling,--with what had become an agony of renunciation. She withdrew
+her eyes, feeling a shamed, exultant pang of joy. "I'll wait till
+there's room for you, too, Mr. Coxeter." She breathed rather than
+actually uttered the words aloud.
+
+Another woman standing close by was saying the same thing to her
+companion, but in far more eager, more vociferous tones. "Is it likely
+that I should go away now and leave you, Bob? Of course not--don't be
+ridiculous!" But the Rendels pushed forward, and finally both found
+places in this, the last boat but one.
+
+Victor Munich was still standing close to John Coxeter, and Mrs.
+Archdale, glancing at his sallow, terror-stricken face, felt a thrill of
+generous pity for the man. "Mr. Coxeter," she whispered, "do give him
+that life-saver! Did he not ask you for it just now? We don't want it."
+
+Coxeter bent down and unstrapped his portmanteau. He handed to Nan the
+odd, toy-like thing by which he had set so little store, but which now
+he let go with a touch of reluctance. He saw her move close to the man
+whose name she did not know. "Here is the life-saver," she said kindly;
+"I heard you say you would like it."
+
+"But you?"--he stammered--"how about you?"
+
+"I don't want it. I shall be all right. I shouldn't put it on in any
+case."
+
+He took it then, avidly; and they saw him go forward with a quick,
+stealthy movement to the place where the last boat was being got ready
+for the water.
+
+"There's plenty of room for you and the lady now, sir!" Coxeter hurried
+Nan across the deck, but suddenly they were pushed roughly back. The
+rope barriers had been cut, and a hand-to-hand struggle was taking place
+round the boat,--an ugly scrimmage to which as little reference as
+possible was made at the wreck inquiry afterwards. To those who looked
+on it was a horrible, an unnerving sight; and this time Coxeter with
+sudden strength took Nan back into his arms. He felt her trembling,
+shuddering against him,--what she had just seen had loosed fear from its
+leash.
+
+"I'm frightened," she moaned. "Oh, Mr. Coxeter, I'm so horribly
+frightened of those men! Are they all gone?"
+
+"Yes," he said grimly, "most of them managed to get into the boat. Don't
+be frightened. I think we're safer here than we should be with those
+ruffians."
+
+Another man would have found easy terms of endearment and comfort for
+almost any woman so thrust on his protection and care, but the very
+depth of Coxeter's feeling seemed to make him dumb,--that and his
+anguished fear lest by his fault, by his own want of quickness, she had
+perhaps missed her chance of being saved.
+
+But what he was lacking another man supplied. This was the captain, and
+Nan, listening to the cheering, commonplace words, felt her nerve, her
+courage, come back.
+
+"Stayed with your husband?" he said, coming up to them. "Quite right,
+mum! Don't you be frightened. Look at me and my men, we're not
+frightened--not a bit of it! My boat will last right enough for us to be
+picked off ten times over. I tell you quite fairly and squarely, if I'd
+my wife aboard I'd 'a kept her with me. I'd rather be on this boat of
+mine than I would be out there, on the open water, in this fog." But as
+he walked back to the place where stood the rocket apparatus, Coxeter
+heard him mutter, "The brutes! Not all seconds or thirds either. I wish
+I had 'em here, I'd give 'em what for!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, when reading the narratives supplied by some of the passengers
+who perforce had remained on the doomed boat, Coxeter was surprised to
+learn how many thrilling experiences he had apparently missed during the
+long four hours which elapsed before their rescue. And yet the time of
+waiting and suspense probably appeared as long to him as it did to any
+of the fifty odd souls who stayed, all close together, on the upper
+deck waiting with what seemed a stolid resignation for what might next
+befall them.
+
+From the captain, Coxeter, leaving Mrs. Archdale for a moment, had
+extracted the truth. They had drifted down the French coast. They were
+on a dangerous reef of rock, and the rising of the wind, the lifting of
+the fog, for which they all looked so eagerly, might be the signal for
+the breaking up of the boat. On the other hand, the boat might hold for
+days. It was all a chance.
+
+Coxeter kept what he had learnt to himself, but he was filled with a
+dull, aching sensation of suspense. His remorse that he had not hurried
+Mrs. Archdale into one of the first boats became almost intolerable. Why
+had he not placed her in the care even of the Jew, Victor Munich, who
+was actually seated in the last boat before the scramble round it had
+begun?
+
+More fortunate than he, Mrs. Archdale found occupation in tending the
+few forlorn women who had been thrust back. He watched her moving among
+them with an admiration no longer unwilling; she looked bright, happy,
+almost gay, and the people to whom she talked, to whom she listened,
+caught something of her spirit. Coxeter would have liked to follow her
+example, but though he saw that some of the men round him were eager to
+talk and to discuss the situation, his tongue refused to form words of
+commonplace cheer.
+
+When with the coming of the dawn the fog lifted, Nan came up to Coxeter
+as he stood apart, while the other passengers were crowding round a fire
+which had been lit on the open deck. Together in silence they watched
+the rolling away of the enshrouding mist; together they caught sight of
+the fleet of French fishing boats from which was to come succour.
+
+As he turned and clasped her hand, he heard her say, more to herself
+than to him, "I did not think we should be saved."
+
+
+III
+
+John Coxeter was standing in the library of Mrs. Archdale's home in
+Wimpole Street. Two nights had elapsed since their arrival in London,
+and now he was to see her for the first time since they had parted on
+the Charing Cross platform, in the presence of the crowd of people
+comprised of unknown sympathisers, acquaintances, and friends who had
+come to meet them.
+
+He looked round him with a curious sense of unfamiliarity. The colouring
+of the room was grey and white, with touches of deep-toned mahogany. It
+was Nan's favourite sitting-room, though it still looked what it had
+been ever since Nan could remember it--a man's room. In his day her
+father had been a collector of books, medals, and engravings connected
+with the severer type of eighteenth-century art and letters.
+
+In a sense this room always pleased Coxeter's fancy, partly because it
+implied a great many things that money and even modern culture cannot
+buy. But now, this morning--for it was still early, and he was on his
+way to his office for the first time since what an aunt of his had
+called his mysterious preservation from death--he seemed to see
+everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been
+to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential.
+
+He had sometimes secretly wondered why Mrs. Archdale, possessed as she
+was of considerable means, had not altered the old house, had not made
+it pretty as her friends' houses and rooms were pretty; but to-day he no
+longer wondered at this. His knowledge of the fleetingness of life, and
+of the unimportance of all he had once thought so important, was too
+vividly present....
+
+She came into the room, and he saw that she was dressed in a more
+feminine kind of garment than that in which he generally saw her. It
+was white, and though girdled with a black ribbon, it made her look very
+young, almost girlish.
+
+For a moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale
+also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware,
+as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had
+brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she was more
+absorbed in her own sensations than in those of the person with her.
+
+Seeing John Coxeter standing there waiting for her, looking so like his
+old self, so absolutely unchanged, confused her and made her feel
+desperately shy.
+
+She held out her hand, but Coxeter scarcely touched it. After having
+held her so long in his arms, he did not care to take her hand in formal
+greeting. She mistook his gesture, thought that he was annoyed at having
+received no word from her since they had parted. The long day in between
+had been to Nan Archdale full of nervous horror, for relations, friends,
+acquaintances had come in troops to see her, and would not be denied.
+
+Already she had received two or three angry notes from people who
+thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had
+refused to see them when they had rushed to hear her account of an
+adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the
+mistake of confusing Coxeter with these selfish people.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice, "that when you called
+yesterday I was supposed to be asleep. I have been most anxious to see
+you"--she waited a moment and then added his name--"Mr. Coxeter. I knew
+that you would have the latest news, and that you would tell it me."
+
+"There is news," he said, "of all the boats; good news--with the
+exception of the last boat----" His voice sounded strangely to himself.
+
+"Oh, but that must be all right too, Mr. Coxeter! The captain said the
+boats might drift about for a long time."
+
+Coxeter shook his head. "I'm afraid not," he said. "In fact"--he waited
+a moment, and she came close up to him.
+
+"Tell me," she commanded in a low voice, "tell me what you know. They
+say I ought to put it all out of my mind, but I can think of nothing
+else. Whenever I close my eyes I see the awful struggle that went on
+round that last boat!" She gave a quick, convulsive sob.
+
+Coxeter was dismayed. How wildly she spoke, how unlike herself she
+seemed to-day--how unlike what she had been during the whole of their
+terrible ordeal.
+
+Already that ordeal had become, to him, something to be treasured. There
+is no lack of physical courage in the breed of Englishmen to which John
+Coxeter belonged. Pain, entirely unassociated with shame, holds out
+comparatively little terror to such as he. There was something rueful in
+the look he gave her.
+
+"The last boat was run down in the fog," he said briefly. "Some of the
+bodies have been washed up on the French coast."
+
+She looked at him apprehensively. "Any of the people we had spoken to?
+Any of those who were with us in the railway carriage?"
+
+"Yes, I'm sorry to say that one of the bodies washed up is that of the
+person who sat next to you."
+
+"That poor French boy?"
+
+Coxeter shook his head. "No, no--he's all right; at least I believe he's
+all right. It--the body I mean--was that of your other neighbour;" he
+added, unnecessarily, "the man who made sweets."
+
+And then for the first time Coxeter saw Nan Archdale really moved out of
+herself. What he had just said had had the power to touch her, to cause
+her greater anguish than anything which had happened during the long
+hours of terror they had gone through. She turned and, moving as if
+blindly, pressed her hand to her face as if to shut out some terrible
+and pitiful sight.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed in a low voice, "I shall never forgive myself over
+that! Do you know I had a kind of instinct that I ought to ask that man
+the name, the address"--her voice quivered and broke--"of his friend--of
+that poor young woman who saw him off at the Paris station."
+
+Till this moment Coxeter had not known that Nan had been aware of what
+had, to himself, been so odious, so ridiculous, and so grotesque, a
+scene. But now he felt differently about this, as about everything else
+that touched on the quick of life. For the first time he understood,
+even sympathized with, Nan's concern for that majority of human beings
+who are born to suffering and who are bare to the storm....
+
+"Look here," he said awkwardly, "don't be unhappy. It's all right. That
+man spoke to me on the boat--he did what you wished, he made a will
+providing for that woman; I took charge of it for him. As a matter of
+fact I went and saw his old mother yesterday. She behaved splendidly."
+
+"Then the life-saver was no good after all?"
+
+"No good," he said, and he avoided looking at her. "At least so it would
+seem, but who can tell?"
+
+Nan's eyes filled with tears; something beckoning, appealing seemed to
+pass from her to him....
+
+The door suddenly opened.
+
+"Mrs. Eaton, ma'am. She says she only heard what happened, to-day, and
+she's sure you will see her."
+
+Before Mrs. Archdale could answer, a woman had pushed her way past the
+maid into the room. "Nan? Poor darling! What an awful thing! I _am_ glad
+I came so early; now you will be able to tell me all about it!"
+
+The visitor, looking round her, saw John Coxeter, and seemed surprised.
+Fortunately she did not know him, and, feeling as if, had he stayed, he
+must have struck the woman, he escaped from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As Coxeter went through the hall, filled with a perplexity and pain very
+alien from his positive nature, a good-looking, clean-shaven man, who
+gave him a quick measured glance, passed by. With him there had been no
+parleying at the door as in Coxeter's own case.
+
+"Who's that?" he asked, with a scowl, of the servant.
+
+"The doctor, sir," and he felt absurdly relieved. "We sent for him
+yesterday, for Mrs. Archdale seemed very bad last night." The servant
+dropped her voice, "It's the doctor, sir, as says Mrs. Archdale oughtn't
+to see visitors. You see it was in all the papers about the shipwreck,
+sir, and of course Mrs. Archdale's friends all come and see her to hear
+about it. They've never stopped. The doctor, he says that she ought to
+have stayed in bed and been quite quiet. But what would be the good of
+that, seeing she don't seem able to sleep? I suppose you've not suffered
+that way yourself, sir?"
+
+The young woman was staring furtively at Coxeter, but, noting his cold
+manner and imperturbable face, she felt that he was indeed a
+disappointing hero of romance--not at all the sort of gentleman with
+whom one would care to be shipwrecked, if it came to a matter of choice.
+
+"No," he said solemnly, "I can't say that I have."
+
+He looked thoughtfully out into what had never been to him a "long
+unlovely street," and which just now was the only place in the world
+where he desired to stay. Coxeter, always so sure of himself, and of
+what was the best and wisest thing to do in every circumstance of life,
+felt for the first time unable to cope with a situation presented to his
+notice.
+
+As he was hesitating, a carriage drove up, and a footman came forward
+with a card, while the occupant of the carriage called out, making
+anxious inquiries as to Mrs. Archdale's condition, and promising to call
+again the same afternoon.
+
+Coxeter suddenly told himself that it behoved him to see the doctor, and
+ascertain from him whether Mrs. Archdale was really ill.
+
+He crossed the street, and began pacing up and down, and unconsciously
+he quickened his steps as he went over every moment of his brief
+interview with Nan. All that was himself--and there was a good deal more
+of John Coxeter than even he was at all aware of--had gone out to her in
+a rapture of memory and longing, but she, or so it seemed to him, had
+purposely made herself remote.
+
+At last, after what seemed a very long time, the doctor came out of Mrs.
+Archdale's house and began walking quickly down the street.
+
+Coxeter crossed over and touched him on the arm. "If I may," he said, "I
+should like a word with you. I want to ask you--I mean I trust that Mrs.
+Archdale is recovering from the effect of the terrible experience she
+went through the other night." He spoke awkwardly, stiffly. "I saw her
+for a few minutes just before you came, and I was sorry to find her very
+unlike herself."
+
+The doctor went on walking; he looked coldly at Coxeter.
+
+"It's a great pity that Mrs. Archdale's friends can't leave her alone!
+As to being unlike herself, you and I would probably be very unlike
+ourselves if we had gone through what this poor lady had just gone
+through!"
+
+"You see, I was with her on the boat. We were not travelling together,"
+Coxeter corrected himself hastily, "I happened to meet her merely on the
+journey. My name is Coxeter."
+
+The other man's manner entirely altered. He slackened in his quick walk.
+"I beg your pardon," he said; "of course I had no notion who you were.
+She says you saved her life! That but for you she would have been in
+that boat--the boat that was lost."
+
+Coxeter tried to say something in denial of this surprising statement,
+but the doctor hurried on, "I may tell you that I'm very worried about
+Mrs. Archdale--in fact seriously concerned at her condition. If you have
+any influence with her, I beg you to persuade her to refuse herself to
+the endless busybodies who want to hear her account of what happened.
+She won't have a trained nurse, but there ought to be someone on
+guard--a human watchdog warranted to snarl and bite!"
+
+"Do you think she ought to go away from London?" asked Coxeter in a low
+voice.
+
+"No, I don't think that--at least not for the present," the medical man
+frowned thoughtfully. "What she wants is to be taken out of herself. If
+I could prescribe what I believe would be the best thing for her, I
+should advise that she go away to some other part of London with someone
+who will never speak to her of what happened, and yet who will always
+listen to her when she wants to talk about it--some sensible,
+commonplace person who could distract her mind without tiring her, and
+who would make her do things she has never done before. If she was an
+ordinary smart lady, I should prescribe philanthropy"--he made a slight
+grimace--"make her go and see some of my poorer patients--come into
+contact with a little _real_ trouble. But that would be no change to
+Mrs. Archdale. No; what she wants is someone who will force her to be
+selfish--who will take her up the Monument one day, and to a music-hall
+the next, motor her out to Richmond Park, make her take a good long
+walk, and then sit by the sofa and hold her hand if she feels like
+crying----" He stopped, a little ashamed of his energy.
+
+"Thank you," said Coxeter very seriously, "I'm much obliged to you for
+telling me this. I can see the sense of what you say."
+
+"You know, in spite of her quiet manner, Mrs. Archdale's a nervous,
+sensitive woman"--the doctor was looking narrowly at Coxeter as he
+spoke.
+
+"She was perfectly calm and--and very brave at the time----"
+
+"That means nothing! Pluck's not a matter of nerve--it ought to be, but
+it isn't! But I admit you're a remarkable example of the presence of the
+one coupled with the absence of the other. You don't seem a penny the
+worse, and yet it must have been a very terrible experience."
+
+"You see, it came at the end of my holiday," said Coxeter gravely, "and,
+as a matter of fact"--he hesitated--"I feel quite well, in fact,
+remarkably well. Do you see any objection to my calling again, I mean
+to-day, on Mrs. Archdale? I might put what you have just said before
+her."
+
+"Yes, do! Do that by all means! Seeing how well you have come through
+it"--the doctor could not help smiling a slightly satirical
+smile--"ought to be a lesson to Mrs. Archdale. It ought to show her that
+after all she is perhaps making a great deal of fuss about nothing."
+
+"Hardly that," said Coxeter with a frown.
+
+They had now come to the corner of Queen Anne Street. He put out his
+hand hesitatingly. The doctor took it, and, oddly enough, held it for a
+moment while he spoke.
+
+"Think over what I've said, Mr. Coxeter. It's a matter of hours. Mrs.
+Archdale ought to be taken in hand at once." Then he went off, crossing
+the street. "Pity the man's such a dry stick," he said to himself;
+"now's his chance, if he only knew it!"
+
+John Coxeter walked straight on. He had written the day before to say
+that he would be at his office as usual this morning, but now the fact
+quite slipped his mind.
+
+Wild thoughts were surging through his brain; they were running away
+with him and to such unexpected places!
+
+The Monument? He had never thought of going up the Monument; he would
+formerly have thought it a sad waste of time, but now the Monument
+became to John Coxeter a place of pilgrimage, a spot of secret healing.
+A man had once told him that the best way to see the City was at night,
+but that if you were taking a lady you should choose a Sunday morning,
+and go there on the top of a 'bus. He had thought the man who said this
+very eccentric, but now he remembered the advice and thought it well
+worth following.
+
+By the time Coxeter turned into Cavendish Square he had travelled far
+further than the Monument. He was in Richmond Park; Nan's hand was
+thrust through his arm, as it had been while they had watched the first
+boat fill slowly with the women and children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To lovers who remember, the streets of a great town, far more than
+country roads and lanes, hold over the long years precious, poignant
+memories, for a background of stones and mortar has about it a character
+of permanence which holds captive and echoes the scenes and words
+enacted and uttered there.
+
+Coxeter has not often occasion to go the little round he went that
+morning, but when some accidental circumstance causes him to do so, he
+finds himself again in the heart of that kingdom of romance from which
+he was so long an alien, and of which he has now become a naturalized
+subject. As most of us know, many ways lead to the kingdom of romance;
+Coxeter found his way there by a water-way.
+
+And so it is that when he reaches the turning into Queen Anne Street
+there seems to rise round him the atmosphere of what Londoners call the
+City--the City as it is at night, uncannily deserted save for the
+ghosts and lovers who haunt its solitary thoroughfares after the bustle
+of the day is stilled. It was then that he and Nan first learnt to
+wander there. From there he travels on into golden sunlight; he is again
+in Richmond Park as it was during the whole of that beautiful October.
+
+Walking up the west side of Cavendish Square, Coxeter again becomes
+absorbed in his great adventure,--a far greater adventure than that with
+which his friends and acquaintances still associate his name. With some
+surprise, even perhaps with some discomfiture, he sees himself--for he
+has not wholly cast out the old Adam--he sees himself as he was that
+memorable morning, carried, that is, wholly out of his usual wise,
+ponderate self. Perhaps he even wonders a little how he could ever have
+found courage to do what he did--he who has always thought so much, in a
+hidden way, of the world's opinion and of what people will say.
+
+He could still tell you which lamp-post he was striding past when he
+realized, with a thrill of relief, that in any case Nan Archdale would
+not treat him as would almost certainly do one of those women whom he
+had honoured with his cold approval something less than a week ago. Any
+one of those women would have regarded what he was now going to ask Nan
+to do as an outrage on the conventions of life. But Nan Archdale would
+be guided only by what she herself thought right and seemly....
+
+And then, as he turns again into Wimpole Street, as he comes near to
+what was once his wife's house, his long steady stride becomes slower.
+Unwillingly he is living again those doubtful moments when he knocked at
+her door, when he gave the surprised maid the confused explanation that
+he had a message from the doctor for Mrs. Archdale. He hears the young
+woman say, "Mrs. Archdale is just going out, sir. The doctor thought she
+ought to take a walk;" and his muttered answer, "I won't keep her a
+moment...."
+
+Again he feels the exultant, breathless thrill which seized him when she
+slipped, neither of them exactly knew how, into his arms, and when the
+sentences he had prepared, the arguments he meant to use, in his hurried
+rush up the long street, were all forgotten. He hears himself imploring
+her to come away with him now, at once. Is she not dressed to go out?
+Instinct teaches him for the first time to make to her the one appeal to
+which she ever responds. He had meant to tell her what the doctor had
+said--to let that explain his great temerity--but instead he tells her
+only that he wants her, that he cannot go on living apart from her. Is
+there any good reason why they should not start now, this moment, for
+Doctors' Commons, in order to see how soon they can be married?
+
+So it is that when John Coxeter stands in Wimpole Street, so typical a
+Londoner belonging to the leisured and conventional class that none of
+the people passing by even glance his way, he lives again through the
+immortal moment when she said, "Very well."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To this day, so transforming is the miracle of love, Nan Coxeter
+believes that during their curious honeymoon it was she who was taking
+care of John, not he of her.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in love and in terror
+by Marie Belloc Lowndes
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 02:32:27 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 02:32:27 -0700
commit	17a021b012bc2d08bc4e6f1e6037f8fdfb5bde97 (patch)
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