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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
+
+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.net
+
+
+Title: Saint's Progress
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #2683]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT'S PROGRESS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+SAINTS PROGRESS
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+I
+
+Such a day made glad the heart.  All the flags of July were waving; the
+sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining,
+and the bees busy on the snapdragons.  The lime-trees were coming into
+flower.  Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the
+delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their
+golden hearts.  There was a gentle breeze, and a swish and stir and hum
+rose and fell above the head of Edward Pierson, coming back from his
+lonely ramble over Tintern Abbey.  He had arrived at Kestrel, his brother
+Robert's home on the bank of the Wye only that morning, having stayed at
+Bath on the way down; and now he had got his face burnt in that
+parti-coloured way peculiar to the faces of those who have been too long
+in London.  As he came along the narrow, rather overgrown avenue, the
+sound of a waltz thrummed out on a piano fell on his ears, and he smiled,
+for music was the greatest passion he had.  His dark grizzled hair was
+pushed back off his hot brow, which he fanned with his straw hat.  Though
+not broad, that brow was the broadest part of a narrow oval face whose
+length was increased by a short, dark, pointed beard--a visage such as
+Vandyk might have painted, grave and gentle, but for its bright grey
+eyes, cinder-lashed and crow's-footed, and its strange look of not seeing
+what was before it.  He walked quickly, though he was tired and hot;
+tall, upright, and thin, in a grey parsonical suit, on whose black
+kerseymere vest a little gold cross dangled.
+
+Above his brother's house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway
+line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood
+where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool
+whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches.  A man of fifty,
+with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully
+from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his
+afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy.  He had let his senses
+sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had
+watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers, and
+sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked the
+speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what.  A hawk had been
+wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
+the blue.  He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
+of London off his soul.
+
+For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for his
+curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday since
+the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother's
+home.  He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue.
+Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon.
+Dear old Bob!  And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose
+burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
+kindest fellow that ever breathed!  Yes, he had found a perfect home for
+Thirza and himself.  And Edward Pierson sighed.  He too had once had a
+perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years
+ago, still bled a little in his heart.  Their two daughters, Gratian and
+Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
+Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
+Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now, he
+had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.  Ah!  What a pretty
+girl she had been!
+
+Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
+music-room.  A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
+slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in
+the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
+circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
+have come in recently, for he did not recognise them.  At the piano sat
+his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face.  But it was at his
+young daughter that Edward Pierson looked.  Her eyes were half-closed,
+her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
+her slim round neck.  Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
+whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with
+blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
+red-cheeked face.  Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
+moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
+May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
+have been a year younger than Nollie was now!  This would be the young
+man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks.  Were
+they never going to stop?
+
+He passed into view of those within, and said:
+
+"Aren't you very hot, Nollie?"
+
+She blew him a kiss; the young man looked startled and self-conscious,
+and Eve called out:
+
+"It's a bet, Uncle.  They've got to dance me down."
+
+Pierson said mildly:
+
+"A bet?  My dears!"
+
+Noel murmured over her shoulder:
+
+"It's all right, Daddy!"  And the young man gasped:
+
+"She's bet us one of her puppies against one of mine, sir!"
+
+Pierson sat down, a little hypnotized by the sleepy strumming, the slow
+giddy movement of the dancers, and those half-closed swimming eyes of his
+young daughter, looking at him over her shoulder as she went by.  He sat
+with a smile on his lips.  Nollie was growing up!  Now that Gratian was
+married, she had become a great responsibility. If only his dear wife had
+lived!  The smile faded from his lips; he looked suddenly very tired.
+The struggle, physical and spiritual, he had been through, these fifteen
+years, sometimes weighed him almost to the ground: Most men would have
+married again, but he had always felt it would be sacrilege.  Real unions
+were for ever, even though the Church permitted remarriage.
+
+He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and
+perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing indefinitely
+with one young man could that possibly be good for her?  But they looked
+very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did not
+understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes
+possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those
+outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was
+such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother's
+place.  That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious
+of failure.
+
+He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress. And,
+suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word a
+little, she said:
+
+"I'm going to stop!" and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to fan
+herself.
+
+Eve struck a triumphant chord.  "Hurrah I've won!"
+
+The young man muttered:
+
+"I say, Noel, we weren't half done!"
+
+"I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren't you, dear?  This is Cyril
+Morland."
+
+Pierson shook the young man's hand.
+
+"Daddy, your nose is burnt!"
+
+"My dear; I know."
+
+"I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it on
+all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it."
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"Well, Eve says so.  If you're going to bathe, Cyril, look out for that
+current!"
+
+The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered:
+
+"Rather!"  and went out.
+
+Noel's eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.
+
+"If you're going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you'd better hurry
+up."
+
+"All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?"
+
+"Lovely; like a great piece of music."
+
+"Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by
+moonlight; it's gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I'm coming."  But she did
+not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her father's
+and murmured:
+
+"What d'you think of Cyril?"
+
+"My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man."
+
+"All right, Daddy; don't strain yourself.  It's jolly down here, isn't
+it?"  She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking
+like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.
+
+Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought: 'What a lovely
+thing she is!' And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the
+piano, and began to play Mendelssohn's Prelude and Fugue in E minor.  He
+had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion.  It was his
+way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite
+failed him.
+
+At Cambridge, he had intended to take up music as a profession, but
+family tradition had destined him for Holy Orders, and an emotional
+Church revival of that day had caught him in its stream.  He had always
+had private means, and those early years before he married had passed
+happily in an East-End parish.  To have not only opportunity but power to
+help in the lives of the poor had been fascinating; simple himself, the
+simple folk of his parish had taken hold of his heart.  When, however, he
+married Agnes Heriot, he was given a parish of his own on the borders of
+East and West, where he had been ever since, even after her death had
+nearly killed him.  It was better to go on where work and all reminded
+him of one whom he had resolved never to forget in other ties.  But he
+knew that his work had not the zest it used to have in her day, or even
+before her day.  It may well be doubted whether he, who had been in Holy
+Orders twenty-six years, quite knew now what he believed.  Everything had
+become circumscribed, and fixed, by thousands of his own utterances; to
+have taken fresh stock of his faith, to have gone deep into its roots,
+would have been like taking up the foundations of a still-standing house.
+Some men naturally root themselves in the inexpressible--for which one
+formula is much the same as another; though Edward Pierson, gently
+dogmatic, undoubtedly preferred his High-Church statement of the
+inexpressible to that of, say, the Zoroastrians.  The subtleties of
+change, the modifications by science, left little sense of inconsistency
+or treason on his soul.  Sensitive, charitable, and only combative deep
+down, he instinctively avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt
+others or they hurt him.  And, since explanation was the last thing which
+o could be expected of one who did not base himself on Reason, he had
+found but scant occasion ever to examine anything.  Just as in the old
+Abbey he had soared off into the infinite with the hawk, the beetles, and
+the grasses, so now, at the piano, by these sounds of his own making, he
+was caught away again into emotionalism, without realising that he was in
+one of his, most religious moods.
+
+"Aren't you coming to tea, Edward?"
+
+The woman standing behind him, in a lilac-coloured gown, had one of those
+faces which remain innocent to the end of the chapter, in spite of the
+complete knowledge of life which appertains to mothers.  In days of
+suffering and anxiety, like these of the great war, Thirza Pierson was a
+valuable person.  Without ever expressing an opinion on cosmic matters,
+she reconfirmed certain cosmic truths, such as that though the whole
+world was at war, there was such a thing as peace; that though all the
+sons of mothers were being killed, there remained such a thing as
+motherhood; that while everybody was living for the future, the present
+still existed.  Her tranquil, tender, matter-of-fact busyness, and the
+dew in her eyes, had been proof against twenty-three years of life on a
+tea-plantation in the hot part of Ceylon; against Bob Pierson; against
+the anxiety of having two sons at the front, and the confidences of
+nearly every one she came across.  Nothing disturbed her.  She was like a
+painting of "Goodness" by an Old Master, restored by Kate Greenaway.  She
+never went to meet life, but when it came, made the best of it.  This was
+her secret, and Pierson always felt rested in her presence.
+
+He rose, and moved by her side, over the lawn, towards the big tree at
+the bottom of the garden.
+
+"How d'you think Noel is looking, Edward?"
+
+"Very pretty.  That young man, Thirza?"
+
+"Yes; I'm afraid he's over head and ears in love with her."
+
+At the dismayed sound he uttered, she slipped her soft round arm within
+his.  "He's going to the front soon, poor boy!"
+
+"Have they talked to you?"
+
+"He has.  Nollie hasn't yet."
+
+"Nollie is a queer child, Thirza."
+
+"Nollie is a darling, but rather a desperate character, Edward."
+
+Pierson sighed.
+
+In a swing under the tree, where the tea-things were set out, the "rather
+desperate character" was swaying.  "What a picture she is!" he said, and
+sighed again.
+
+The voice of his brother came to them,--high and steamy, as though
+corrupted by the climate of Ceylon:
+
+"You incorrigible dreamy chap, Ted!  We've eaten all the raspberries.
+Eve, give him some jam; he must be dead!  Phew! the heat!  Come on, my
+dear, and pour out his tea.  Hallo, Cyril!  Had a good bathe?  By George,
+wish my head was wet!  Squattez-vous down over there, by Nollie; she'll
+swing, and keep the flies off you."
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Uncle Bob--"
+
+"What!  Your father doesn't--"
+
+"Just for the flies.  You don't mind, Daddy?"
+
+"Not if it's necessary, my dear."
+
+Noel smiled, showing her upper teeth, and her eyes seemed to swim under
+their long lashes.
+
+"It isn't necessary, but it's nice."
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Bob Pierson.  "Here you are, Nollie!"
+
+But Noel shook her head.  At that moment she struck her father as
+startlingly grown-up-so composed, swaying above that young man at her
+feet, whose sunny face was all adoration.  'No longer a child!' he
+thought.  'Dear Nollie!'
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+1
+
+Awakened by that daily cruelty, the advent of hot water, Edward Pierson
+lay in his chintz-curtained room, fancying himself back in London.  A
+wild bee hunting honey from the bowl of flowers on the window-sill, and
+the scent of sweetbrier, shattered that illusion. He drew the curtain,
+and, kneeling on the window-seat thrust his head out into the morning.
+The air was intoxicatingly sweet.  Haze clung over the river and the
+woods beyond; the lawn sparkled with dew, and two wagtails strutted in
+the dewy sunshine.  'Thank God for loveliness!' he thought.  'Those poor
+boys at the front!'  And kneeling with his elbows on the sill, he began
+to say his prayers. The same feeling which made him beautify his church,
+use vestments, good music, and incense, filled him now.  God was in the
+loveliness of His world, as well as in His churches.  One could worship
+Him in a grove of beech trees, in a beautiful garden, on a high hill, by
+the banks of a bright river.  God was in the rustle of the leaves, and
+the hum of a bee, in the dew on the grass, and the scent of flowers; God
+was in everything!  And he added to his usual prayer this whisper: "I
+give Thee thanks for my senses, O Lord.  In all of us, keep them bright,
+and grateful for beauty."  Then he remained motionless, prey to a sort of
+happy yearning very near, to melancholy.  Great beauty ever had that
+effect on him.  One could capture so little of it--could never enjoy it
+enough!  Who was it had said not long ago: "Love of beauty is really only
+the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies."  Ah! yes,
+George--Gratian's husband.  George Laird!  And a little frown came
+between his brows, as though at some thorn in the flesh.  Poor George!
+But then, all doctors were materialists at heart--splendid fellows,
+though; a fine fellow, George, working himself to death out there in
+France.  One must not take them too seriously.  He plucked a bit of
+sweetbrier and put it to his nose, which still retained the shine of that
+bleaching ointment Noel had insisted on his using.  The sweet smell of
+those little rough leaves stirred up an acute aching.  He dropped them,
+and drew back.  No longings, no melancholy; one ought to be out, this
+beautiful morning!
+
+It was Sunday; but he had not to take three Services and preach at least
+one sermon; this day of rest was really to be his own, for once.  It was
+almost disconcerting; he had so long felt like the cab horse who could
+not be taken out of the shafts lest he should fall down.  He dressed with
+extraordinary deliberation, and had not quite finished when there came a
+knock on his door, and Noel's voice said: "Can I come in, Daddy?"
+
+In her flax-blue frock, with a Gloire de Dijon rose pinned where it met
+on her faintly browned neck, she seemed to her father a perfect vision of
+freshness.
+
+"Here's a letter from Gratian; George has been sent home ill, and he's
+gone to our house.  She's got leave from her hospital to come home and
+nurse him."
+
+Pierson read the letter.  "Poor George!"
+
+"When are you going to let me be a nurse, Daddy?"
+
+"We must wait till you're eighteen, Nollie."
+
+"I could easily say I was.  It's only a month; and I look much more."
+
+Pierson smiled.
+
+"Don't I?"
+
+"You might be anything from fifteen to twenty-five, my dear, according as
+you behave."
+
+"I want to go out as near the front as possible."
+
+Her head was poised so that the sunlight framed her face, which was
+rather broad--the brow rather too broad--under the waving light-brown
+hair, the nose short and indeterminate; cheeks still round from youth,
+almost waxen-pale, and faintly hollowed under the eyes.  It was her lips,
+dainty yet loving, and above all her grey eyes, big and dreamily alive,
+which made her a swan.  He could not imagine her in nurse's garb.
+
+"This is new, isn't it, Nollie?"
+
+"Cyril Morland's sisters are both out; and he'll be going soon. Everybody
+goes."
+
+"Gratian hasn't got out yet: It takes a long time to get trained."
+
+"I know; all the more reason to begin."
+
+She got up, looked at him, looked at her hands, seemed about to speak,
+but did not.  A little colour had come into her cheeks.  Then, obviously
+making conversation, she asked:
+
+"Are you going to church?  It's worth anything to hear Uncle Bob read the
+Lessons, especially when he loses his place.  No; you're not to put on
+your long coat till just before church time.  I won't have it!"
+
+Obediently Pierson resigned his long coat.
+
+"Now, you see, you can have my rose.  Your nose is better!"  She kissed
+his nose, and transferred her rose to the buttonhole of his short coat.
+"That's all.  Come along!"  And with her arm through his, they went down.
+But he knew she had come to say something which she had not said.
+
+
+
+2
+
+Bob Pierson, in virtue of greater wealth than the rest of the
+congregation, always read the Lessons, in his high steamy voice, his
+breathing never adjusted to the length of any period.  The congregation,
+accustomed, heard nothing peculiar; he was the necessary gentry with the
+necessary finger in the pie.  It was his own family whom he perturbed.
+In the second row, Noel, staring solemnly at the profile of her father in
+the front row, was thinking: 'Poor Daddy!  His eyes look as if they were
+coming out.  Oh, Daddy!  Smile! or it'll hurt you!'  Young Morland beside
+her, rigid in his tunic, was thinking: 'She isn't thinking of me!'  And
+just then her little finger crooked into his.  Edward Pierson was
+thinking: 'Oh!  My dear old Bob!  Oh!'  And, beside him, Thirza thought:
+'Poor dear Ted I how nice for him to be having a complete rest!  I must
+make him eat he's so thin!'  And Eve was thinking: 'Oh, Father!  Mercy!'
+But Bob Pierson was thinking: 'Cheer oh!  Only another three verses!'
+Noel's little finger unhooked itself, but her eyes stole round to young
+Morland's eyes, and there was a light in them which lingered through the
+singing and the prayers.  At last, in the reverential rustle of the
+settling congregation, a surpliced figure mounted the pulpit.
+
+"I come not to bring Peace, but a sword."
+
+Pierson looked up.  He felt deep restfulness.  There was a pleasant light
+in this church; the hum of a country bluebottle made all the difference
+to the quality of silence.  No critical thought stirred within him, nor
+any excitement.  He was thinking: 'Now I shall hear something for my
+good; a fine text; when did I preach from it last?' Turned a little away
+from the others, he saw nothing but the preacher's homely face up there
+above the carved oak; it was so long since he had been preached to, so
+long since he had had a rest!  The words came forth, dropped on his
+forehead, penetrated, met something which absorbed them, and disappeared.
+'A good plain sermon!' he thought.  'I suppose I'm stale; I don't seem--'
+"Let us not, dear brethren," droned the preacher's earnest voice, "think
+that our dear Lord, in saying that He brought a sword, referred to a
+physical sword.  It was the sword of the spirit to which He was
+undoubtedly referring, that bright sword of the spirit which in all ages
+has cleaved its way through the fetters imposed on men themselves by
+their own desires, imposed by men on other men in gratification of their
+ambitions, as we have had so striking an example in the invasion by our
+cruel enemies of a little neighbouring country which had done them no
+harm.  Dear brethren, we may all bring swords." Pierson's chin jerked; he
+raised his hand quickly and passed it over his face.  'All bring swords,'
+he thought, 'swords--I wasn't asleep--surely!'  "But let us be sure that
+our swords are bright; bright with hope, and bright with faith, that we
+may see them flashing among the carnal desires of this mortal life,
+carving a path for us towards that heavenly kingdom where alone is peace,
+perfect peace.  Let us pray."
+
+Pierson did not shut his eyes; he opened them as he fell on his knees.
+In the seat behind, Noel and young Morland had also fallen on their knees
+their faces covered each with a single hand; but her left hand and his
+right hung at their sides.  They prayed a little longer than any others
+and, on rising, sang the hymn a little louder.
+
+
+3
+
+No paper came on Sundays--not even the local paper, which had so long and
+so nobly done its bit with headlines to win the war.  No news whatever
+came, of men blown up, to enliven the hush of the hot July afternoon, or
+the sense of drugging--which followed Aunt Thirza's Sunday lunch.  Some
+slept, some thought they were awake; but Noel and young Morland walked
+upward through the woods towards a high common of heath and furze,
+crowned by what was known as Kestrel rocks. Between these two young
+people no actual word of love had yet been spoken.  Their lovering had
+advanced by glance and touch alone.
+
+Young Morland was a school and college friend of the two Pierson boys now
+at the front.  He had no home of his own, for his parents were dead; and
+this was not his first visit to Kestrel.  Arriving three weeks ago, for
+his final leave before he should go out, he had found a girl sitting in a
+little wagonette outside the station, and had known his fate at once.
+But who knows when Noel fell in love?  She was--one supposes--just ready
+for that sensation.  For the last two years she had been at one of those
+high-class finishing establishments where, in spite of the healthy
+curriculum, perhaps because of it, there is ever an undercurrent of
+interest in the opposing sex; and not even the gravest efforts to
+eliminate instinct are quite successful.  The disappearance of every
+young male thing into the maw of the military machine put a premium on
+instinct.  The thoughts of Noel and her school companions were turned,
+perforce, to that which, in pre-war freedom of opportunity they could
+afford to regard as of secondary interest.  Love and Marriage and
+Motherhood, fixed as the lot of women by the countless ages, were
+threatened for these young creatures.  They not unnaturally pursued what
+they felt to be receding.
+
+When young Morland showed, by following her about with his eyes, what was
+happening to him, Noel was pleased.  From being pleased, she became a
+little excited; from being excited she became dreamy.  Then, about a week
+before her father's arrival, she secretly began to follow the young man
+about with her eyes; became capricious too, and a little cruel.  If there
+had been another young man to favour--but there was not; and she favoured
+Uncle Bob's red setter.  Cyril Morland grew desperate.  During those
+three days the demon her father dreaded certainly possessed her.  And
+then, one evening, while they walked back together from the hay-fields,
+she gave him a sidelong glance; and he gasped out: "Oh!  Noel, what have
+I done?"  She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze.  What a
+change!  What blissful alteration ever since!
+
+Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
+put things to the touch.  Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
+kiss him if he kisses me!'  Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
+running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat.
+Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
+greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
+beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
+runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
+ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
+ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life.  The whole
+wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
+come to dwell therein.  At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
+they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
+the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her.  Why
+should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
+beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
+another awaken nothing?  He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
+Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
+expected him to kiss her foot.  She heard him hurrying after her, and
+stopped, leaning against a birch trunk.  He rushed to her, and, without a
+word spoken, his lips were on her lips.  The moment in life, which no
+words can render, had come for them.  They had found their enchanted
+spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round each
+other, while the happy Being of the wood watched.  A marvellous
+speeder-up of Love is War.  What might have taken six months, was thus
+accomplished in three weeks.
+
+A short hour passed, then Noel said:
+
+"I must tell Daddy, Cyril.  I meant to tell him something this morning,
+only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."
+
+Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!"  It was the staple of his conversation
+while they sat there.
+
+Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
+
+"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."
+
+"How long does it take?"
+
+"No time, if we hurry up.  I've got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps
+the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him."
+
+"Poor Daddy!  Kiss me again; a long one."
+
+When the long one was over, she said:
+
+"Then I can come and be near you till you go out?  Oh, Cyril!"
+
+"Oh, Noel!"
+
+"Perhaps you won't go so soon.  Don't go if you can help it!"
+
+"Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan't be able."
+
+"No, of course not; I know."
+
+Young Morland clutched his hair.  "Everyone's in the same boat, but it
+can't last for ever; and now we're engaged we can be together all the
+time till I've got the licence or whatever it is.  And then--!"
+
+"Daddy won't like our not being married in a church; but I don't care!"
+
+Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks,
+young Morland thought:
+
+'My God!  I'm in heaven!'
+
+Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
+
+"We must go, Cyril.  Kiss me once more!"
+
+It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down.
+4
+
+Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the
+Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long
+absence had vexed him.  What ought he to do?  In the presence of Love's
+young dream, he felt strange and helpless.  That night, when he opened
+the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her
+dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
+
+"Don't light up, Daddy; I've got something to say."
+
+She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
+
+"I'm engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week."
+
+It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the
+sound he made she hurried on:
+
+"You see, we must be; he may be going out any day."
+
+In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in
+her words.  But he said:
+
+"My dear, you're only a child.  Marriage is the most serious thing in
+life; you've only known him three weeks."
+
+"I know all that, Daddy" her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; "but we
+can't afford to wait.  He might never come back, you see, and then I
+should have missed him."
+
+"But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much worse
+for you."
+
+She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it
+against her heart.  But still her voice was calm:
+
+"No; much better, Daddy; you think I don't know my own feelings, but I
+do,"'
+
+The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
+
+"Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is
+wanted.  Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same
+things."
+
+"Yes, I know; but we do."
+
+"You can't tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks."
+
+"But these aren't ordinary times, are they?  People have to do things in
+a hurry.  Oh, Daddy!  Be an angel!  Mother would have understood, and let
+me, I know!"
+
+Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss,
+from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
+
+"Look, Nollie!"  he said.  "After all these years since she left us, I'm
+as lonely as ever, because we were really one.  If you marry this young
+man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little
+time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all,
+nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him
+before you've had any real married life together, you'll have a much
+greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay
+engaged till after the war.  Besides, my child, you're much too young."
+
+She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm.  "But I must!"
+
+He bit his lips, and said sharply: "You can't, Nollie!"
+
+She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone.  With the closing of
+the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place.  Poor child!
+What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to
+be full-fledged at once?  The thought that she would be lying miserable,
+crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and
+tapped on her door.  Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a
+streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down;
+and stealing up laid his hand on her head.  She did not move; and,
+stroking her hair, he said gently:
+
+"Nollie dear, I didn't mean to be harsh.  If I were your mother, I should
+know how to make you see, but I'm only an old bumble-daddy."
+
+She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He
+could see her eyes shining.  But she did not speak; she seemed to know
+that in silence was her strength.
+
+He said with a sort of despair:
+
+"You must let me talk it over with your aunt.  She has a lot of good
+sense."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
+
+"Good night, my dear; don't cry.  Promise me!"
+
+She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his
+forehead, and went away a little comforted.
+
+But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to
+the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little
+time left, that she might have been with him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought
+himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
+
+After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly
+than the needlessness of his words: "Don't cry, Nollie!" for he had
+realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying.  No; there
+was in her some emotion very different from the tearful.  He kept seeing
+her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic,
+almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips.  A good
+girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a guarantee.
+He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed her by,
+as if unspoken.  And, since he could not go and make music at that time
+of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which
+was not vouchsafed him.
+
+The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for
+the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other,
+watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy.
+Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers
+every morning.  He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from
+pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
+
+"I'm very troubled, Thirza.  Nollie came to me last night.  Imagine!
+They want to get married--those two!"
+
+Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a
+little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder.  She took up a sprig of
+mignonette, and said placidly:
+
+"Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Think of it, Thirza--that child!  Why, it's only a year or two since she
+used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair."
+
+Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
+
+"Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age.  And
+real married life wouldn't begin for them till after--if it ever began."
+
+Pierson experienced a sort of shock.  His sister-in-law's words seemed
+criminally light-hearted.
+
+"But--but--" he stammered; "the union, Thirza!  Who can tell what will
+happen before they come together again!"
+
+She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
+
+"I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days, of
+what Noel might do.  I told you there's a streak of desperation in her."
+
+"Noel will obey me."
+
+"I wonder!  There are so many of these war marriages now."
+
+Pierson turned away.
+
+"I think they're dreadful.  What do they mean--Just a momentary
+gratification of passion.  They might just as well not be."
+
+"They mean pensions, as a rule," said Thirza calmly.
+
+"Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn't affect this case.  I can't
+bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which may
+come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage.
+Who is this boy--what is he?  I know nothing of him.  How can I give her
+to him--it's impossible!  If they had been engaged some time and I knew
+something of him--yes, perhaps; even at her age.  But this hasty
+passionateness--it isn't right, it isn't decent.  I don't understand, I
+really don't--how a child like that can want it.  The fact is, she
+doesn't know what she's asking, poor little Nollie.  She can't know the
+nature of marriage, and she can't realise its sacredness.  If only her
+mother were here!  Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can't!"
+
+Thirza looked after the retreating figure.  In spite of his cloth,
+perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had
+come to show her his sore finger.  And, having finished the arrangement
+of her flowers, she went out to find her niece.  She had not far to go;
+for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait.  They
+went out together to the avenue.
+
+The girl began at once:
+
+"It isn't any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a
+license."
+
+"Oh!  So you've made up your minds?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Do you think that's fair by me, Nollie?  Should I have asked him here if
+I'd thought this was going to happen?"
+
+Noel only smiled.
+
+"Have you the least idea what marriage means?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Of course.  Gratian is married.  Besides, at school--"
+
+"Your father is dead against it.  This is a sad thing for him.  He's a
+perfect saint, and you oughtn't to hurt him.  Can't you wait, at least
+till Cyril's next leave?"
+
+"He might never have one, you see."
+
+The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never have
+another leave; could not but be responsive to those words.  She looked at
+her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life menaced by
+death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her.  Noel's teeth
+were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.
+
+"Daddy oughtn't to mind.  Old people haven't to fight, and get killed;
+they oughtn't to mind us taking what we can.  They've had their good
+time."
+
+It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
+
+"Yes; perhaps he hasn't quite realised that."
+
+"I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have with
+him while there's the chance.  I don't think it's much to ask, when
+perhaps I'll never have any more of him again."
+
+Thirza slipped her hand through the girl's arm.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is over,
+and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you'd made a
+mistake?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I haven't."
+
+"We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by people
+who no more dream they're making them than you do now; and then it's a
+very horrible business.  It would be especially horrible for you; your
+father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever."
+
+"Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes, you
+know.  Besides, I'm not making a mistake, Auntie!  I love Cyril ever so."
+
+Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
+
+"You mustn't make a mistake.  We love you too much, Nollie.  I wish we
+had Gratian here."
+
+"Gratian would back me up," said Noel; "she knows what the war is. And
+you ought to, Auntie.  If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I'm sure
+you'd never oppose them.  And they're no older than Cyril.  You must
+understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong to
+each other properly before--before it all begins for him, and--and there
+may be no more.  Daddy doesn't realise.  I know he's awfully good,
+but--he's forgotten."
+
+"My dear, I think he remembers only too well.  He was desperately
+attached to your mother."
+
+Noel clenched her hands.
+
+"Was he?  Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me.  We wouldn't be
+unreasonable if it wasn't--wasn't necessary.  Talk, to Cyril, Auntie;
+then you'll understand.  There he is; only, don't keep him long, because
+I want him.  Oh!  Auntie; I want him so badly!"
+
+She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of
+having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms
+folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
+
+"Well, Cyril, so you've betrayed me!"
+
+Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in this
+sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he arrived,
+three weeks ago, in their little wagonette.  He took her arm, just as
+Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench, where he
+had evidently been told to wait.
+
+"You see, Mrs.  Pierson," he said, "it's not as if Noel were an ordinary
+girl in an ordinary time, is it?  Noel is the sort of girl one would
+knock one's brains out for; and to send me out there knowing that I could
+have been married to her and wasn't, will take all the heart out of me.
+Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked over, and I think
+it's cruel that we can't take what we can while we can.  Besides, I've
+got money; and that would be hers anyway.  So, do be a darling, won't
+you?"  He put his arm round her waist, just as if he had been her son,
+and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly, felt warmed within
+her.
+
+"You see, I don't know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and
+jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn't mind, I know.  We don't
+mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to have the
+run of them while we're alive.  I'll give him my dying oath or anything,
+that I could never change towards Noel, and she'll do the same.  Oh!
+Mrs.  Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick!
+We've got so few days!"
+
+"But, my dear boy," said Thirza feebly, "do you think it's fair to such a
+child as Noel?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  You don't understand; she's simply had to grow up.  She is
+grown-up--all in this week; she's quite as old as I am, really--and I'm
+twenty-two.  And you know it's going to be--it's got to be--a young
+world, from now on; people will begin doing things much earlier.  What's
+the use of pretending it's like what it was, and being cautious, and all
+that?  If I'm going to be killed, I think we've got a right to be married
+first; and if I'm not, then what does it matter?"
+
+"You've known each other twenty-one days, Cyril."
+
+"No; twenty-one years!  Every day's a year when   Oh!  Mrs.  Pierson,
+this isn't like you, is it?  You never go to meet trouble, do you?"
+
+At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still
+clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said softly, "we must see what can be done."
+
+Cyril Morland kissed her cheek.  "I will bless you for ever," he said.
+"I haven't got any people, you know, except my two sisters."
+
+And something like tears started up on Thirza's eyelashes.  They seemed
+to her like the babes in the wood--those two!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the dining-room of her father's house in that old London Square
+between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was
+writing a telegram: "Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern,
+Monmouthshire.  George terribly ill.  Please come if you can. Gratian."
+Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a
+moment.  She had been travelling all night, after a full day's work, and
+had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death.  She
+was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger build;
+with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad brow.
+The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual
+enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the
+year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks with her
+husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet.  After resting
+five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face, threw back
+her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay.  He was not
+conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
+
+'If he dies,' she thought, 'I shall hate God for His cruelty.  I have had
+six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.' She fixed her eyes
+on his face, short and broad, with bumps of "observation" on the brows.
+He had been sunburnt.  The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on deathly
+yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad forehead.  The
+lips were just open and showed strong white teeth.  He had a little
+clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut jaw.  His pyjama
+jacket had fallen open.  Gratian drew it close.  It was curiously still,
+for a London day, though the window was wide open.  Anything to break
+this heavy stupor, which was not only George's, but her own, and the very
+world's!  The cruelty of it--when she might be going to lose him for
+ever, in a few hours or days!  She thought of their last parting.  It had
+not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they
+were inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with
+suavity.  George had said there was no future life for the individual;
+she had maintained there was.  They had grown hot and impatient.  Even in
+the cab on the way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion,
+and the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
+
+Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point
+of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem--find out for
+certain--she had come to feel that if he died, she would never see him
+after.  It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her belief at
+this, of all moments.
+
+She laid her hand on his.  It was warm, felt strong, although so
+motionless and helpless.  George was so vigorous, so alive, and
+strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him
+false.  She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his
+deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness
+or pretence.  She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very
+slowly, gently rubbing it.  He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both
+seen so much of death these last two years!  Yet it seemed suddenly as if
+she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty
+and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show.  Death would
+appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to be
+drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
+
+A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the
+room.  She caught her breath in a little sob....
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk
+after his talk with Thirza.  Coming from Gratian so self-reliant--it
+meant the worst.  He prepared at once to catch the next train.  Noel was
+out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
+"DEAREST CHILD,
+
+"I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill.  If it goes
+badly you should be with your sister.  I will wire to-morrow morning
+early.  I leave you in your aunt's hands, my dear.  Be reasonable and
+patient.  God bless you.
+
+"Your devoted
+"DADDY."
+
+He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward,
+watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight. Those
+old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this.  They must have
+had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was great
+and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her, and
+built everlasting fanes to the glory of God!  What a change to this age
+of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible
+war!  He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and hate.
+'When will it end?' he thought.  And the train with its rhythmic jolting
+seemed grinding out the answer: "Never--never!"
+
+At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed
+face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip
+bleeding, as if she had bitten it through.  The soldier, too, looked
+strained and desperate.  They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite.
+Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind
+his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and
+cap and was leaning out of the window.  The woman, on the seat's edge,
+sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then,
+getting up, she pulled the man's sleeve.
+
+"Sit dahn; don't 'ang out o' there."
+
+The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
+
+"The wife an' me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably.  "Gits on
+me nerves; I'm not used to it.  She was in a raid, and 'er nerves are all
+gone funny; ain't they, old girl?  Makes me feel me 'ead. I've been
+wounded there, you know; can't stand much now.  I might do somethin' if
+she was to go on like this for long."
+
+Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The
+soldier held out a packet of cigarettes.  "Take one," he said. Pierson
+took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak, murmured: "We
+all have these troubles with those we're fond of; the fonder we are of
+people, the more we feel them, don't we?  I had one with my daughter last
+night."
+
+"Ah!"  said the soldier; "that's right.  The wife and me'll make it up.
+'Ere, come orf it, old girl."
+
+From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of
+reconciliation--reproaches because someone had been offered a drink,
+kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse.  When they got out at
+Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him
+her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: 'The war!  How it affects
+everyone!'  His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest
+of the journey was passed in making himself small.  When at last he
+reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
+
+"Just the same.  The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How
+sweet of you to come!  You must be tired, in this heat.  It was dreadful
+to spoil your holiday."
+
+"My dear!  As if   May I go up and see him?"
+
+George Laird was still lying in that stupor.  And Pierson stood gazing
+down at him compassionately.  Like most parsons, he had a wide
+acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with
+death.  Death!  The commonest thing in the world, now--commoner than
+life!  This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years,
+saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to
+save himself.  Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising
+young couple they were!  And putting his arm round her, he led her away
+to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
+
+"If he dies, Dad--" she whispered.
+
+"He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our soldiers
+do."
+
+"I know; but that's no comfort.  I've been watching here all day; I've
+been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards--more brutal.  The
+world will go on the same."
+
+"We must hope not.  Shall we pray, Gracie?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.
+
+"If I could believe that the world--if I could believe anything!  I've
+lost the power, Dad; I don't even believe in a future life.  If George
+dies, we shall never meet again."
+
+Pierson stared at her without a word.
+
+Gratian went on: "The last time we talked, I was angry with George
+because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel
+that he was right."
+
+Pierson said tremulously:
+
+"No, no, my dear; it's only that you're overwrought.  God in His mercy
+will give you back belief."
+
+"There is no God, Dad"
+
+"My darling child, what are you saying?"
+
+"No God who can help us; I feel it.  If there were any God who could take
+part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared what we
+did--He wouldn't let the world go on as it does."
+
+"But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable.  We dare not say He should
+not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working."
+
+"Then He's no good to us.  It's the same as if He didn't exist.  Why
+should I pray for George's life to One whose ends are just His own?  I
+know George oughtn't to die.  If there's a God who can help, it will be a
+wicked shame if George dies; if there's a God who can help, it's a wicked
+shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys.  I would
+rather think there's no God than a helpless or a wicked God--"
+
+Her father had suddenly thrown up his hands to his ears.  She moved
+closer, and put her arm round him.
+
+"Dad dear, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean to hurt you."
+
+Pierson pressed her face down to his shoulder; and said in a dull voice:
+
+"What do you think would have happened to me, Gracie, if I had lost
+belief when your mother died?  I have never lost belief.  Pray God I
+never shall!"
+
+Gratian murmured:
+
+"George would not wish me to pretend I believe--he would want me to be
+honest.  If I'm not honest, I shan't deserve that he should live. I don't
+believe, and I can't pray."
+
+"My darling, you're overtired."
+
+"No, Dad."  She raised her head from his shoulder and, clasping her hands
+round her knees, looked straight before her.  "We can only help
+ourselves; and I can only bear it if I rebel."
+
+Pierson sat with trembling lips, feeling that nothing he could say would
+touch her just then.  The sick man's face was hardly visible now in the
+twilight, and Gratian went over to his bed.  She stood looking down at
+him a long time.
+
+"Go and rest, Dad; the doctor's coming again at eleven.  I'll call you if
+I want anything.  I shall lie down a little, beside him."
+
+Pierson kissed her, and went out.  To lie there beside him would be the
+greatest comfort she could get.  He went to the bare narrow little room
+he had occupied ever since his wife died; and, taking off his boots,
+walked up and down, with a feeling of almost crushing loneliness.  Both
+his daughters in such trouble, and he of no use to them!  It was as if
+Life were pushing him utterly aside!  He felt confused, helpless,
+bewildered.  Surely if Gratian loved George, she had not left God's side,
+whatever she might say.  Then, conscious of the profound heresy of this
+thought, he stood still at the open window.
+
+Earthly love--heavenly love; was there any analogy between them?
+
+From the Square Gardens the indifferent whisper of the leaves answered;
+and a newsvendor at the far end, bawling his nightly tale of murder.
+3
+
+George Laird passed the crisis of his illness that night, and in the
+morning was pronounced out of danger.  He had a splendid constitution,
+and--Scotsman on his father's side--a fighting character.  He came back
+to life very weak, but avid of recovery; and his first words were: "I've
+been hanging over the edge, Gracie!"
+
+A very high cliff, and his body half over, balancing; one inch, the
+merest fraction of an inch more, and over he would have gone.  Deuced rum
+sensation!  But not so horrible as it would have been in real life.  With
+the slip of that last inch he felt he would have passed at once into
+oblivion, without the long horror of a fall.  So this was what it was for
+all the poor fellows he had seen slip in the past two years!  Mercifully,
+at the end, one was not alive enough to be conscious of what one was
+leaving, not alive enough even to care.  If he had been able to take in
+the presence of his young wife, able to realise that he was looking at
+her face, touching her for the last time--it would have been hell; if he
+had been up to realising sunlight, moonlight, the sound of the world's
+life outside, the softness of the bed he lay on--it would have meant the
+most poignant anguish of defraudment.  Life was a rare good thing, and to
+be squashed out of it with your powers at full, a wretched mistake in
+Nature's arrangements, a wretched villainy on the part of Man--for his
+own death, like all those other millions of premature deaths, would have
+been due to the idiocy and brutality of men!  He could smile now, with
+Gratian looking down at him, but the experience had heaped fuel on a fire
+which had always smouldered in his doctor's soul against that half
+emancipated breed of apes, the human race. Well, now he would get a few
+days off from his death-carnival!  And he lay, feasting his returning
+senses on his wife.  She made a pretty nurse, and his practised eye
+judged her a good one--firm and quiet.
+
+George Laird was thirty.  At the opening of the war he was in an East-End
+practice, and had volunteered at once for service with the Army.  For the
+first nine months he had been right up in the thick of it.  A poisoned
+arm; rather than the authorities, had sent him home. During that leave he
+married Gratian.  He had known the Piersons some time; and, made
+conscious of the instability of life, had resolved to marry her at the
+first chance he got.  For his father-in-law he had respect and liking,
+ever mixed with what was not quite contempt and not quite pity.  The
+blend of authority with humility, cleric with dreamer, monk with artist,
+mystic with man of action, in Pierson, excited in him an interested, but
+often irritated, wonder.  He saw things so differently himself, and had
+little of the humorous curiosity which enjoys what is strange simply
+because it is strange. They could never talk together without soon
+reaching a point when he wanted to say: "If we're not to trust our reason
+and our senses for what they're worth, sir--will you kindly tell me what
+we are to trust?  How can we exert them to the utmost in some matters,
+and in others suddenly turn our backs on them?"  Once, in one of their
+discussions, which often bordered on acrimony, he had expounded himself
+at length.
+
+"I grant," he had said, "that there's a great ultimate Mystery, that we
+shall never know anything for certain about the origin of life and the
+principle of the Universe; but why should we suddenly shut up our
+enquiring apparatus and deny all the evidence of our reason--say, about
+the story of Christ, or the question of a future life, or our moral code?
+If you want me to enter a temple of little mysteries, leaving my reason
+and senses behind--as a Mohammedan leaves his shoes--it won't do to say
+to me simply: 'There it is!  Enter!' You must show me the door; and you
+can't!  And I'll tell you why, sir. Because in your brain there's a
+little twist which is not in mine, or the lack of a little twist which is
+in mine.  Nothing more than that divides us into the two main species of
+mankind, one of whom worships, and one of whom doesn't.  Oh, yes!  I
+know; you won't admit that, because it makes your religions natural
+instead of what you call supernatural.  But I assure you there's nothing
+more to it. Your eyes look up or they look down--they never look straight
+before them.  Well, mine do just the opposite."
+
+That day Pierson had been feeling very tired, and though to meet this
+attack was vital, he had been unable to meet it.  His brain had
+stammered.  He had turned a little away, leaning his cheek on his hand,
+as if to cover that momentary break in his defences.  Some days later he
+had said:
+
+"I am able now to answer your questions, George.  I think I can make you
+understand."
+
+Laird had answered: "All right, sir; go ahead."
+
+"You begin by assuming that the human reason is the final test of all
+things.  What right have you to assume that?  Suppose you were an ant.
+You would take your ant's reason as the final test, wouldn't you?  Would
+that be the truth?"  And a smile had fixed itself on his lips above his
+little grave beard.
+
+George Laird also had smiled.
+
+"That seems a good point, sir," he said, "until you recognise that I
+don't take, the human reason as final test in any absolute sense.  I only
+say it's the highest test we can apply; and that, behind that test all is
+quite dark and unknowable."
+
+"Revelation, then, means nothing to you?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"I don't think we can usefully go on, George."
+
+"I don't think we can, sir.  In talking with you, I always feel like
+fighting a man with one hand tied behind his back."
+
+"And I, perhaps, feel that I am arguing with one who was blind from
+birth."
+
+For all that, they had often argued since; but never without those
+peculiar smiles coming on their faces.  Still, they respected each other,
+and Pierson had not opposed his daughter's marriage to this heretic, whom
+he knew to be an honest and trustworthy man.  It had taken place before
+Laird's arm was well, and the two had snatched a month's honeymoon before
+he went back to France, and she to her hospital in Manchester.  Since
+then, just one February fortnight by the sea had been all their time
+together....
+
+In the afternoon he had asked for beef tea, and, having drunk a cup,
+said:
+
+"I've got something to tell your father."
+
+But warned by the pallor of his smiling lips, Gratian answered:
+
+"Tell me first, George."
+
+"Our last talk, Gracie; well--there's nothing--on the other side.  I
+looked over; it's as black as your hat."
+
+Gratian shivered.
+
+"I know.  While you were lying here last night, I told father."
+
+He squeezed her hand, and said: "I also want to tell him."
+
+"Dad will say the motive for life is gone."
+
+"I say it leaps out all the more, Gracie.  What a mess we make of it--we
+angel-apes!  When shall we be men, I wonder?  You and I, Gracie, will
+fight for a decent life for everybody.  No hands-upping about that!  Bend
+down!  It's good to touch you again; everything's good. I'm going to have
+a sleep...."
+
+After the relief of the doctor's report in the early morning Pierson had
+gone through a hard struggle.  What should he wire to Noel?  He longed to
+get her back home, away from temptation to the burning indiscretion of
+this marriage.  But ought he to suppress reference to George's progress?
+Would that be honest?  At last he sent this telegram: "George out of
+danger but very weak.  Come up." By the afternoon post, however, he
+received a letter from Thirza:
+
+"I have had two long talks with Noel and Cyril.  It is impossible to
+budge them.  And I really think, dear Edward, that it will be a mistake
+to oppose it rigidly.  He may not go out as soon as we think. How would
+it be to consent to their having banns published?--that would mean
+another three weeks anyway, and in absence from each other they might be
+influenced to put it off.  I'm afraid this is the only chance, for if you
+simply forbid it, I feel they will run off and get married somewhere at a
+registrar's."
+
+Pierson took this letter out with him into the Square Garden, for painful
+cogitation.  No man can hold a position of spiritual authority for long
+years without developing the habit of judgment. He judged Noel's conduct
+to be headlong and undisciplined, and the vein of stubbornness in his
+character fortified the father and the priest within him.  Thirza
+disappointed him; she did not seem to see the irretrievable gravity of
+this hasty marriage.  She seemed to look on it as something much lighter
+than it was, to consider that it might be left to Chance, and that if
+Chance turned out unfavourable, there would still be a way out.  To him
+there would be no way out. He looked up at the sky, as if for
+inspiration.  It was such a beautiful day, and so bitter to hurt his
+child, even for her good!  What would her mother have advised?  Surely
+Agnes had felt at least as deeply as himself the utter solemnity of
+marriage!  And, sitting there in the sunlight, he painfully hardened his
+heart.  He must do what he thought right, no matter what the
+consequences.  So he went in and wrote that he could not agree, and
+wished Noel to come back home at once.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+But on the same afternoon, just about that hour, Noel was sitting on the
+river-bank with her arms folded tight across her chest, and by her side
+Cyril Morland, with despair in his face, was twisting a telegram "Rejoin
+tonight.  Regiment leaves to-morrow."
+
+What consolation that a million such telegrams had been read and sorrowed
+over these last two years!  What comfort that the sun was daily blotted
+dim for hundreds of bright eyes; the joy of life poured out and sopped up
+by the sands of desolation!
+
+"How long have we got, Cyril?"
+
+"I've engaged a car from the Inn, so I needn't leave till midnight. I've
+packed already, to have more time."
+
+"Let's have it to ourselves, then.  Let's go off somewhere.  I've got
+some chocolate."
+
+Morland answered miserably:
+
+"I can send the car up here for my things, and have it pick me up at the
+Inn, if you'll say goodbye to them for me, afterwards.  We'll walk down
+the line, then we shan't meet anyone."
+
+And in the bright sunlight they walked hand in hand on each side of a
+shining rail.  About six they reached the Abbey.
+
+"Let's get a boat," said Noel.  "We can come back here when it's
+moonlight.  I know a way of getting in, after the gate's shut."
+
+They hired a boat, rowed over to the far bank, and sat on the stern seat,
+side by side under the trees where the water was stained deep green by
+the high woods.  If they talked, it was but a word of love now and then,
+or to draw each other's attention to a fish, a bird, a dragon-fly.  What
+use making plans--for lovers the chief theme?  Longing paralysed their
+brains.  They could do nothing but press close to each other, their hands
+enlaced, their lips meeting now and then.  On Noel's face was a strange
+fixed stillness, as if she were waiting--expecting!  They ate their
+chocolates.  The sun set, dew began to fall; the river changed, and grew
+whiter; the sky paled to the colour of an amethyst; shadows lengthened,
+dissolved slowly.  It was past nine already; a water-rat came out, a
+white owl flew over the river, towards the Abbey.  The moon had come up,
+but shed no light as yet.  They saw no beauty in all this--too young, too
+passionate, too unhappy.
+
+Noel said: "When she's over those trees, Cyril, let's go.  It'll be half
+dark."
+
+They waited, watching the moon, which crept with infinite slowness up and
+up, brightening ever so little every minute.
+
+"Now!"  said Noel.  And Morland rowed across.
+
+They left the boat, and she led the way past an empty cottage, to a shed
+with a roof sloping up to the Abbey's low outer wall.
+
+"We can get over here," she whispered.
+
+They clambered up, and over, to a piece of grassy courtyard, and passed
+on to an inner court, under the black shadow of the high walls.
+
+"What's the time?"  said Noel.
+
+"Half-past ten."
+
+"Already!  Let's sit here in the dark, and watch for the moon."
+
+They sat down close together.  Noel's face still had on it that strange
+look of waiting; and Morland sat obedient, with his hand on her heart,
+and his own heart beating almost to suffocation.  They sat, still as
+mice, and the moon crept up.  It laid a first vague greyness on the high
+wall, which spread slowly down, and brightened till the lichen and the
+grasses up there were visible; then crept on, silvering the dark above
+their heads.  Noel pulled his sleeve, and whispered: "See!"  There came
+the white owl, soft as a snowflake, drifting across in that unearthly
+light, as if flying to the moon. And just then the top of the moon itself
+looked over the wall, a shaving of silvery gold.  It grew, became a
+bright spread fan, then balanced there, full and round, the colour of
+pale honey.
+
+"Ours!" Noel whispered.
+
+
+2
+
+From the side of the road Noel listened till the sound of the car was
+lost in the folds of the valley.  She did not cry, but passed her hands
+over her face, and began to walk home, keeping to the shadow of the
+trees.  How many years had been added to her age in those six hours since
+the telegram came!  Several times in that mile and a half she stepped
+into a patch of brighter moonlight, to take out and kiss a little
+photograph, then slip it back next her heart, heedless that so warm a
+place must destroy any effigy.  She felt not the faintest compunction for
+the recklessness of her love--it was her only comfort against the
+crushing loneliness of the night.  It kept her up, made her walk on with
+a sort of pride, as if she had got the best of Fate. He was hers for ever
+now, in spite of anything that could be done. She did not even think what
+she would say when she got in.  She came to the avenue, and passed up it
+still in a sort of dream.  Her uncle was standing before the porch; she
+could hear his mutterings.  She moved out of the shadow of the trees,
+went straight up to him, and, looking in his perturbed face, said calmly:
+
+"Cyril asked me to say good-bye to you all, Uncle.  Good night!"
+
+"But, I say, Nollie look here you!"
+
+She had passed on.  She went up to her room.  There, by the door, her
+aunt was standing, and would have kissed her.  She drew back:
+
+"No, Auntie.  Not to-night!"  And, slipping by, she locked her door.
+
+Bob and Thirza Pierson, meeting in their own room, looked at each other
+askance.  Relief at their niece's safe return was confused by other
+emotions.  Bob Pierson expressed his first:
+
+"Phew!  I was beginning to think we should w have to drag the river. What
+girls are coming to!"
+
+"It's the war, Bob."
+
+"I didn't like her face, old girl.  I don't know what it was, but I
+didn't like her face."
+
+Neither did Thirza, but she would not admit it, and encourage Bob to take
+it to heart.  He took things so hardly, and with such a noise!
+
+She only said: "Poor young things!  I suppose it will be a relief to
+Edward!"
+
+"I love Nollie!" said Bob Pierson suddenly.  "She's an affectionate
+creature.  D-nit, I'm sorry about this.  It's not so bad for young
+Morland; he's got the excitement--though I shouldn't like to be leaving
+Nollie, if I were young again.  Thank God, neither of our boys is
+engaged.  By George! when I think of them out there, and myself here, I
+feel as if the top of my head would come off.  And those politician chaps
+spouting away in every country--how they can have the cheek!"
+
+Thirza looked at him anxiously.
+
+"And no dinner!" he said suddenly.  "What d'you think they've been doing
+with themselves?"
+
+"Holding each other's hands, poor dears!  D'you know what time it is,
+Bob?  Nearly one o'clock."
+
+"Well, all I can say is, I've had a wretched evening.  Get to bed, old
+girl.  You'll be fit for nothing."
+
+He was soon asleep, but Thirza lay awake, not exactly worrying, for that
+was not her nature, but seeing Noel's face, pale, languid, passionate,
+possessed by memory.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Noel reached her father's house next day late in the afternoon. There was
+a letter in the hall for her.  She tore it open, and read:
+"MY DARLING LOVE,
+
+"I got back all right, and am posting this at once to tell you we shall
+pass through London, and go from Charing Cross, I expect about nine
+o'clock to-night.  I shall look out for you, there, in case you are up in
+time.  Every minute I think of you, and of last night.  Oh!  Noel!
+
+"Your devoted lover, "C."
+
+She looked at the wrist-watch which, like every other little patriot, she
+possessed.  Past seven!  If she waited, Gratian or her father would seize
+on her.
+
+"Take my things up, Dinah.  I've got a headache from travelling; I'm
+going to walk it off.  Perhaps I shan't be in till past nine or so. Give
+my love to them all."
+
+"Oh, Miss Noel, you can't,--"
+
+But Noel was gone.  She walked towards Charing Cross; and, to kill time,
+went into a restaurant and had that simple repast, coffee and a bun,
+which those in love would always take if Society did not forcibly feed
+them on other things.  Food was ridiculous to her.  She sat there in the
+midst of a perfect hive of creatures eating hideously.  The place was
+shaped like a modern prison, having tiers of gallery round an open space,
+and in the air was the smell of viands and the clatter of plates and the
+music of a band.  Men in khaki everywhere, and Noel glanced from form to
+form to see if by chance one might be that which represented, for her,
+Life and the British Army.  At half-past eight she went out and made her
+way: through the crowd, still mechanically searching "khaki" for what she
+wanted; and it was perhaps fortunate that there was about her face and
+walk something which touched people.  At the station she went up to an
+old porter, and, putting a shilling into his astonished hand, asked him
+to find out for her whence Morland's regiment would start. He came back
+presently, and said:
+
+"Come with me, miss."
+
+Noel went.  He was rather lame, had grey whiskers, and a ghostly thin
+resemblance to her uncle Bob, which perhaps had been the reason why she
+had chosen him.  64
+
+"Brother goin' out, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's a crool war.  I shan't be sorry when it's over.  Goin' out and
+comin' in, we see some sad sights 'ere.  Wonderful spirit they've got,
+too.  I never look at the clock now but what I think: 'There you go,
+slow-coach!  I'd like to set you on to the day the boys come back!'  When
+I puts a bag in: 'Another for 'ell' I thinks.  And so it is, miss, from
+all I can 'ear.  I've got a son out there meself. It's 'ere they'll come
+along.  You stand quiet and keep a lookout, and you'll get a few minutes
+with him when he's done with 'is men.  I wouldn't move, if I were you;
+he'll come to you, all right--can't miss you, there.'  And, looking at
+her face, he thought: 'Astonishin' what a lot o' brothers go.  Wot oh!
+Poor little missy!  A little lady, too.  Wonderful collected she is.
+It's 'ard!'"  And trying to find something consoling to say, he mumbled
+out: "You couldn't be in a better place for seen'im off.  Good night,
+miss; anything else I can do for you?"
+
+"No, thank you; you're very kind."
+
+He looked back once or twice at her blue-clad figure standing very still.
+He had left her against a little oasis of piled-up empty milk-cans, far
+down the platform where a few civilians in similar case were scattered.
+The trainway was empty as yet.  In the grey immensity of the station and
+the turmoil of its noise, she felt neither lonely nor conscious of others
+waiting; too absorbed in the one thought of seeing him and touching him
+again.  The empty train began backing in, stopped, and telescoped with a
+series of little clattering bangs, backed on again, and subsided to rest.
+Noel turned her eyes towards the station arch ways.  Already she felt
+tremulous, as though the regiment were sending before it the vibration of
+its march.
+
+She had not as yet seen a troop-train start, and vague images of brave
+array, of a flag fluttering, and the stir of drums, beset her. Suddenly
+she saw a brown swirling mass down there at the very edge, out of which a
+thin brown trickle emerged towards her; no sound of music, no waved flag.
+She had a longing to rush down to the barrier, but remembering the words
+of the porter, stayed where she was, with her hands tightly squeezed
+together.  The trickle became a stream, a flood, the head of which began
+to reach her.  With a turbulence of voices, sunburnt men, burdened up to
+the nose, passed, with rifles jutting at all angles; she strained her
+eyes, staring into that stream as one might into a walking wood, to
+isolate a single tree. Her head reeled with the strain of it, and the
+effort to catch his voice among the hubbub of all those cheery, common,
+happy-go-lucky sounds.  Some who saw her clucked their tongues, some went
+by silent, others seemed to scan her as though she might be what they
+were looking for.  And ever the stream and the hubbub melted into the
+train, and yet came pouring on.  And still she waited motionless, with an
+awful fear.  How could he ever find her, or she him?  Then she saw that
+others of those waiting had found their men.  And the longing to rush up
+and down the platform almost overcame her; but still she waited.  And
+suddenly she saw him with two other officer boys, close to the carriages,
+coming slowly down towards her.  She stood with her eyes fixed on his
+face; they passed, and she nearly cried out.  Then he turned, broke away
+from the other two, and came straight to her.  He had seen her before she
+had seen him.  He was very flushed, had a little fixed frown between his
+blue eyes and a set jaw.  They stood looking at each other, their hands
+hard gripped; all the emotion of last night welling up within them, so
+that to speak would have been to break down.  The milk-cans formed a kind
+of shelter, and they stood so close together that none could see their
+faces.  Noel was the first to master her power of speech; her words came
+out, dainty as ever, through trembling lips:
+
+"Write to me as much as ever you can, Cyril.  I'm going to be a nurse at
+once.  And the first leave you get, I shall come to you--don't forget."
+
+"Forget!  Move a little back, darling; they can't see us here.  Kiss me!"
+She moved back, thrust her face forward so that he need not stoop, and
+put her lips up to his.  Then, feeling that she might swoon and fall over
+among the cans, she withdrew her mouth, leaving her forehead against his
+lips.  He murmured:
+
+"Was it all right when you got in last night?"
+
+"Yes; I said good-bye for you."
+
+"Oh!  Noel--I've been afraid--I oughtn't--I oughtn't--"
+
+"Yes, yes; nothing can take you from me now."
+
+"You have got pluck.  More than!"
+
+Along whistle sounded.  Morland grasped her hands convulsively:
+
+"Good-bye, my little wife!  Don't fret.  Goodbye!  I must go.  God bless
+you, Noel!"
+
+"I love you."
+
+They looked at each other, just another moment, then she took her hands
+from his and stood back in the shadow of the milk-cans, rigid, following
+him with her eyes till he was lost in the train.
+
+Every carriage window was full of those brown figures and red-brown
+faces, hands were waving vaguely, voices calling vaguely, here and there
+one cheered; someone leaning far out started to sing: "If auld
+acquaintance--"  But Noel stood quite still in the shadow of the
+milk-cans, her lips drawn in, her hands hard clenched in front of her;
+and young Morland at his window gazed back at her.
+
+
+2
+
+How she came to be sitting in Trafalgar Square she did not know. Tears
+had formed a mist between her and all that seething, summer-evening
+crowd.  Her eyes mechanically followed the wandering search-lights, those
+new milky ways, quartering the heavens and leading nowhere.  All was
+wonderfully beautiful, the sky a deep dark blue, the moonlight whitening
+the spire of St. Martin's, and everywhere endowing the great blacked-out
+buildings with dream-life.  Even the lions had come to life, and stared
+out over this moonlit desert of little human figures too small to be
+worth the stretching out of a paw.  She sat there, aching dreadfully, as
+if the longing of every bereaved heart in all the town had settled in
+her.  She felt it tonight a thousand times worse; for last night she had
+been drugged on the new sensation of love triumphantly fulfilled.  Now
+she felt as if life had placed her in the corner of a huge silent room,
+blown out the flame of joy, and locked the door.  A little dry sob came
+from her.  The hay-fields and Cyril, with shirt unbuttoned at the neck,
+pitching hay and gazing at her while she dabbled her fork in the thin
+leavings.  The bright river, and their boat grounded on the shallows, and
+the swallows flitting over them.  And that long dance, with the feel of
+his hand between her shoulder-blades!  Memories so sweet and sharp that
+she almost cried out.  She saw again their dark grassy courtyard in the
+Abbey, and the white owl flying over them.  The white owl!  Flying there
+again to-night, with no lovers on the grass below!  She could only
+picture Cyril now as a brown atom in that swirling brown flood of men,
+flowing to a huge brown sea.  Those cruel minutes on the platform, when
+she had searched and searched the walking wood for her, one tree, seemed
+to have burned themselves into her eyes.  Cyril was lost, she could not
+single him out, all blurred among those thousand other shapes.  And
+suddenly she thought: 'And I--I'm lost to him; he's never seen me at
+home, never seen me in London; he won't be able to imagine me.  It's all
+in the past, only the past--for both of us.  Is there anybody so
+unhappy?'  And the town's voices-wheels, and passing feet, whistles,
+talk, laughter--seemed to answer callously: 'Not one.'  She looked at her
+wrist-watch; like his, it had luminous hands: 'Half-past ten' was
+greenishly imprinted there.  She got up in dismay.  They would think she
+was lost, or run over, or something silly!  She could not find an empty
+taxi, and began to walk, uncertain of her way at night.  At last she
+stopped a policeman, and said:
+
+"Which is the way towards Bloomsbury, please?  I can't find a taxi." The
+man looked at her, and took time to think it over; then he said:
+
+"They're linin' up for the theatres," and looked at her again. Something
+seemed to move in his mechanism:
+
+"I'm goin' that way, miss.  If you like, you can step along with me."
+Noel stepped along.
+
+"The streets aren't what they ought to be," the policeman said. "What
+with the darkness, and the war turning the girls heads--you'd be
+surprised the number of them that comes out.  It's the soldiers, of
+course."
+
+Noel felt her cheeks burning.
+
+"I daresay you wouldn't have noticed it," the policeman went on: "but
+this war's a funny thing.  The streets are gayer and more crowded at
+night than I've ever seen them; it's a fair picnic all the time. What
+we're goin' to settle down to when peace comes, I don't know.  I suppose
+you find it quiet enough up your way, miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Noel; "quite quiet."
+
+"No soldiers up in Bloomsbury.  You got anyone in the Army, miss?"
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Ah!  It's anxious times for ladies.  What with the Zeps, and their
+brothers and all in France, it's 'arassin'.  I've lost a brother meself,
+and I've got a boy out there in the Garden of Eden; his mother carries on
+dreadful about him.  What we shall think of it when it's all over, I
+can't tell.  These Huns are a wicked tough lot!"
+
+Noel looked at him; a tall man, regular and orderly, with one of those
+perfectly decent faces so often seen in the London police.
+
+"I'm sorry you've lost someone," she said.  "I haven't lost anyone very
+near, yet."
+
+"Well, let's 'ope you won't, miss.  These times make you feel for others,
+an' that's something.  I've noticed a great change in folks you'd never
+think would feel for anyone.  And yet I've seen some wicked things too;
+we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives of aliens, and
+'armless little German bakers, an' Austrians, and what-not: they get a
+crool time.  It's their misfortune, not their fault, that's what I think;
+and the way they get served--well, it makes you ashamed o' bein' English
+sometimes--it does straight: And the women are the worst.  I said to my
+wife only last night, I said: 'They call themselves Christians,' I said,
+'but for all the charity that's in 'em they might as well be Huns.' She
+couldn't see it-not she!'  Well, why do they drop bombs?' she says.
+'What!'  I said, 'those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don't be
+silly,' I said. 'They're as innocent as we.'  It's the innocent that gets
+punished for the guilty.  'But they're all spies,' she says.  'Oh!' I
+said, 'old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!'  But there it is;
+you can't get a woman to see reason.  It's readin' the papers.  I often
+think they must be written by women--beggin' your pardon, miss--but
+reely, the 'ysterics and the 'atred--they're a fair knockout.  D'you find
+much hatred in your household, miss?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No; my father's a clergyman, you see."
+
+"Ah!"  said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her could be
+seen an added respect.
+
+"Of course," he went on, "you're bound to have a sense of justice against
+these Huns; some of their ways of goin' on have been above the limit.
+But what I always think is--of course I don't say these things--no use to
+make yourself unpopular--but to meself I often think: Take 'em man for
+man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we are, I daresay.  It's the
+vicious way they're brought up, of actin' in the mass, that's made 'em
+such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of crowds in my profession, and I've
+a very low opinion of them.  Crowds are the most blunderin' blighted
+things that ever was.  They're like an angry woman with a bandage over
+her eyes, an' you can't have anything more dangerous than that.  These
+Germans, it seems, are always in a crowd.  They get a state o' mind read
+out to them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an' they never
+stop to think for themselves."
+
+"I suppose they'd be shot if they did," said Noel.
+
+"Well, there is that," said the policeman reflectively.  "They've brought
+discipline to an 'igh pitch, no doubt.  An' if you ask me,"--he lowered
+his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap, "we'll be runnin'
+'em a good second 'ere, before long.  The things we 'ave to protect now
+are gettin' beyond a joke.  There's the City against lights, there's the
+streets against darkness, there's the aliens, there's the aliens' shops,
+there's the Belgians, there's the British wives, there's the soldiers
+against the women, there's the women against the soldiers, there's the
+Peace Party, there's 'orses against croolty, there's a Cabinet Minister
+every now an' then; and now we've got these Conchies.  And, mind you,
+they haven't raised our pay; no war wages in the police.  So far as I can
+see, there's only one good result of the war--the burglaries are off.
+But there again, you wait a bit and see if we don't have a prize crop of
+'m, or my name's not 'Arris."
+
+"You must have an awfully exciting life!"  said Noel.
+
+The policeman looked down at her sideways, without lowering his face, as
+only a policeman can, and said indulgently:
+
+"We're used to it, you see; there's no excitement in what you're used to.
+They find that in the trenches, I'm told.  Take our seamen--there's lots
+of 'em been blown up over and over again, and there they go and sign on
+again next day.  That's where the Germans make their mistake!  England in
+war-time!  I think a lot, you know, on my go; you can't 'elp it--the mind
+will work--an' the more I think, the more I see the fightin' spirit in
+the people.  We don't make a fuss about it like Bill Kaser.  But you
+watch a little shopman, one o' those fellows who's had his house bombed;
+you watch the way he looks at the mess--sort of disgusted.  You watch his
+face, and you see he's got his teeth into it.  You watch one of our
+Tommies on 'is crutches, with the sweat pourin' off his forehead an' 'is
+eyes all strainy, stumpin' along--that gives you an idea!  I pity these
+Peace fellows, reely I pity them; they don't know what they're up
+against.  I expect there's times when you wish you was a man, don't you,
+miss?  I'm sure there's times when I feel I'd like to go in the trenches.
+That's the worst o' my job; you can't be a human bein'--not in the full
+sense of the word.  You mustn't let your passions rise, you mustn't
+drink, you mustn't talk; it's a narrow walk o' life.  Well, here you are,
+miss; your Square's the next turnin' to the right.  Good night and thank
+you for your conversation."
+
+Noel held out her hand.  "Good night!"  she said.
+
+The policeman took her hand with a queer, flattered embarrassment.
+
+"Good night, miss," he said again.  "I see you've got a trouble; and I'm
+sure I hope it'll turn out for the best."
+
+Noel gave his huge hand a squeeze; her eyes had filled with tears, and
+she turned quickly up towards the Square, where a dark figure was coming
+towards her, in whom she recognised her father.  His face was worn and
+harassed; he walked irresolutely, like a man who has lost something.
+
+"Nollie!" he said.  "Thank God!"  In his voice was an infinite relief.
+"My child, where have you been?"
+
+"It's all right, Daddy.  Cyril has just gone to the front.  I've been
+seeing him off from Charing Cross."
+
+Pierson slipped his arm round her.  They entered the house without
+speaking....
+3
+
+By the rail of his transport, as far--about two feet--as he could get
+from anyone, Cyril Morland stood watching Calais, a dream city, brighten
+out of the heat and grow solid.  He could hear the guns already, the
+voice of his new life-talking in the distance.  It came with its strange
+excitement into a being held by soft and marvellous memories, by one long
+vision of Noel and the moonlit grass, under the dark Abbey wall.  This
+moment of passage from wonder to wonder was quite too much for a boy
+unused to introspection, and he stood staring stupidly at Calais, while
+the thunder of his new life came rolling in on that passionate moonlit
+dream.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+After the emotions of those last three days Pierson woke with the feeling
+a ship must have when it makes landfall.  Such reliefs are natural, and
+as a rule delusive; for events are as much the parents of the future as
+they were the children of the past.  To be at home with both his girls,
+and resting--for his holiday would not be over for ten days--was like old
+times.  Now George was going on so well Gratian would be herself again;
+now Cyril Morland was gone Noel would lose that sudden youthful love
+fever.  Perhaps in two or three days if George continued to progress, one
+might go off with Noel somewhere for one's last week.  In the meantime
+the old house, wherein was gathered so much remembrance of happiness and
+pain, was just as restful as anywhere else, and the companionship of his
+girls would be as sweet as on any of their past rambling holidays in
+Wales or Ireland.  And that first morning of perfect idleness--for no one
+knew he was back in London--pottering, and playing the piano in the
+homely drawing-room where nothing to speak of was changed since his
+wife's day, was very pleasant.  He had not yet seen the girls, for Noel
+did not come down to breakfast, and Gratian was with George.
+
+Discovery that there was still a barrier between him and them came but
+slowly in the next two days.  He would not acknowledge it, yet it was
+there, in their voices, in their movements--rather an absence of
+something old than the presence of something new.  It was as if each had
+said to him: "We love you, but you are not in our secrets--and you must
+not be, for you would try to destroy them."  They showed no fear of him,
+but seemed to be pushing him unconsciously away, lest he should restrain
+or alter what was very dear to them.  They were both fond of him, but
+their natures had set foot on definitely diverging paths.  The closer the
+affection, the more watchful they were against interference by that
+affection.  Noel had a look on her face, half dazed, half proud, which
+touched, yet vexed him.  What had he done to forfeit her
+confidence--surely she must see how natural and right his opposition had
+been!  He made one great effort to show the real sympathy he felt for
+her.  But she only said: "I can't talk of Cyril, Daddy; I simply can't!"
+And he, who easily shrank into his shell, could not but acquiesce in her
+reserve.
+
+With Gratian it was different.  He knew that an encounter was before him;
+a struggle between him and her husband--for characteristically he set the
+change in her, the defection of her faith, down to George, not to
+spontaneous thought and feeling in herself.  He dreaded and yet looked
+forward to this encounter.  It came on the third day, when Laird was up,
+lying on that very sofa where Pierson had sat listening to Gratian's
+confession of disbelief.  Except for putting in his head to say good
+morning, he had not yet seen his son-in-law: The young doctor could not
+look fragile, the build of his face, with that law and those heavy
+cheekbones was too much against it, but there was about him enough of the
+look of having come through a hard fight to give Pierson's heart a
+squeeze.
+
+"Well, George," he said, "you gave us a dreadful fright!  I thank God's
+mercy."  With that half-mechanical phrase he had flung an unconscious
+challenge.  Laird looked up whimsically.
+
+"So you really think God merciful, sir?"
+
+"Don't let us argue, George; you're not strong enough."
+
+"Oh!  I'm pining for something to bite on."
+
+Pierson looked at Gratian, and said softly:
+
+"God's mercy is infinite, and you know it is."
+
+Laird also looked at Gratian, before he answered:
+
+"God's mercy is surely the amount of mercy man has succeeded in arriving
+at.  How much that is, this war tells you, sir."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "I don't follow you," he said painfully.  "How can you
+say such things, when you yourself are only just   No; I refuse to argue,
+George; I refuse."
+
+Laird stretched out his hand to his wife, who came to him, and stood
+clasping it with her own. "Well, I'm going to argue," he said; "I'm
+simply bursting with it.  I challenge you, sir, to show me where there's
+any sign of altruistic pity, except in man.  Mother love doesn't
+count--mother and child are too much one."
+
+The curious smile had come already, on both their faces.
+
+"My dear George, is not man the highest work of God, and mercy the
+highest quality in man?"
+
+"Not a bit.  If geological time be taken as twenty-four hours, man's
+existence on earth so far equals just two seconds of it; after a few more
+seconds, when man has been frozen off the earth, geological time will
+stretch for as long again, before the earth bumps into something, and
+becomes nebula once more.  God's hands haven't been particularly full,
+sir, have they--two seconds out of twenty-four hours--if man is His pet
+concern?  And as to mercy being the highest quality in, man, that's only
+a modern fashion of talking.  Man's highest quality is the sense of
+proportion, for that's what keeps him alive; and mercy, logically
+pursued, would kill him off.  It's a sort of a luxury or by-product."
+
+"George!  You can have no music in your soul!  Science is such a little
+thing, if you could only see."
+
+"Show me a bigger, sir."
+
+"Faith."
+
+"In what?"
+
+"In what has been revealed to us."
+
+"Ah!  There it is again!  By whom--how?
+
+"By God Himself--through our Lord."
+
+A faint flush rose in Laird's yellow face, and his eyes brightened.
+
+"Christ," he said; "if He existed, which some people, as you know, doubt,
+was a very beautiful character; there have been others.  But to ask us to
+believe in His supernaturalness or divinity at this time of day is to ask
+us to walk through the world blindfold.  And that's what you do, don't
+you?"
+
+Again Pierson looked at his daughter's face.  She was standing quite
+still, with her eyes fixed on her husband.  Somehow he was aware that all
+these words of the sick man's were for her benefit.  Anger, and a sort of
+despair rose within him, and he said painfully:
+
+"I cannot explain.  There are things that I can't make clear, because you
+are wilfully blind to all that I believe in.  For what do you imagine we
+are fighting this great war, if it is not to reestablish the belief in
+love as the guiding principle of life?"
+
+Laird shook his head.  "We are fighting to redress a balance, which was
+in danger of being lost."
+
+"The balance of power?"
+
+"Heavens!--no!  The balance of philosophy."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "That sounds very clever, George; but again, I don't
+follow you."
+
+"The balance between the sayings: 'Might is Right,' and 'Right is Might.'
+They're both half-truth, but the first was beating the other out of the
+field.  All the rest of it is cant, you know.  And by the way, sir, your
+Church is solid for punishment of the evildoer. Where's mercy there?
+Either its God is not merciful, or else it doesn't believe in its God."
+
+"Just punishment does not preclude mercy, George."
+
+"It does in Nature."
+
+"Ah!  Nature, George--always Nature.  God transcends Nature."
+
+"Then why does He give it a free rein?  A man too fond of drink, or
+women--how much mercy does he get from Nature?  His overindulgence brings
+its exact equivalent of penalty; let him pray to God as much as he
+likes--unless he alters his ways he gets no mercy.  If he does alter his
+ways, he gets no mercy either; he just gets Nature's due reward.  We
+English who have neglected brain and education--how much mercy are we
+getting in this war?  Mercy's a man-made ornament, disease, or
+luxury--call it what you will.  Except that, I've nothing to say against
+it.  On the contrary, I am all for it."
+
+Once more Pierson looked at his daughter.  Something in her face hurt
+him--the silent intensity with which she was hanging on her husband's
+words, the eager search of her eyes.  And he turned to the door, saying:
+
+"This is bad for you, George."
+
+He saw Gratian put her hand on her husband's forehead, and
+thought--jealously: 'How can I save my poor girl from this infidelity?
+Are my twenty years of care to go for nothing, against this modern
+spirit?'
+
+Down in his study, the words went through his mind: "Holy, holy, holy,
+Merciful and Mighty!"  And going to the little piano in the corner, he
+opened it, and began playing the hymn.  He played it softly on the shabby
+keys of this thirty-year old friend, which had been with him since
+College days; and sang it softly in his worn voice.
+
+A sound made him look up.  Gratian had come in.  She put her hand on his
+shoulder, and said:
+
+"I know it hurts you, Dad.  But we've got to find out for ourselves,
+haven't we?  All the time you and George were talking, I felt that you
+didn't see that it's I who've changed.  It's not what he thinks, but what
+I've come to think of my own accord.  I wish you'd understand that I've
+got a mind of my own, Dad."
+
+Pierson looked up with amazement.
+
+"Of course you have a mind."
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now you
+think it's George's.  But it's my own.  When you were my age weren't you
+trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from your father?"
+
+Pierson did not answer.  He could not remember.  It was like stirring a
+stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
+rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality.  Searched?  No doubt he had
+searched, but the process had brought him nothing.  Knowledge was all
+smoke!  Emotional faith alone was truth--reality!
+
+"Ah, Gracie!"  he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
+bottom?  The well is too deep for us.  You will come back to God, my
+child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."
+
+"I don't want to rest.  Some people search all their lives, and die
+searching.  Why shouldn't I.
+
+"You will be most unhappy, my child."
+
+"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy.  I don't
+believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its eyes."
+
+Pierson got up.  "You think I shut my eyes?"
+
+Gratian nodded.
+
+"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."
+
+"Are you happy; Dad?"
+
+"As happy as my nature will let me be.  I miss your mother.  If I lose
+you and Noel--"
+
+"Oh, but we won't let you!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1
+
+Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
+successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.
+
+It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
+late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a sort
+of smile.  He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early
+lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical
+conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty,
+hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight
+fighting front to his brown face.  His was the type which becomes, in a
+generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could
+possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an Englishman.  Though he
+was nearly forty, there was still something of the boy in his face,
+something frank and curly-headed, gallant and full of steam, and his
+small steady grey eyes looked out on life with a sort of combative
+humour.  He was still in uniform, though they had given him up as a bad
+job after keeping him nine months trying to mend a wounded leg which
+would never be sound again; and he was now in the War Office in
+connection with horses, about which he knew.  He did not like it, having
+lived too long with all sorts and conditions of men who were neither
+English nor official, a combination which he found trying.  His life
+indeed, just now, bored him to distraction, and he would ten times rather
+have been back in France.  This was why he found the word "Peace" so
+exceptionally tantalising.
+
+Reaching his rooms, he threw off his tunic, to whose stiff regularity he
+still had a rooted aversion; and, pulling out a pipe, filled it and sat
+down at his window.
+
+Moonshine could not cool the hot town, and it seemed sleeping badly--the
+seven million sleepers in their million homes.  Sound lingered on, never
+quite ceased; the stale odours clung in the narrow street below, though a
+little wind was creeping about to sweeten the air. 'Curse the war!' he
+thought.  'What wouldn't I give to be sleeping out, instead of in this
+damned city!'  They who slept in the open, neglecting morality, would
+certainly have the best of it tonight, for no more dew was falling than
+fell into Jimmy Fort's heart to cool the fret of that ceaseless thought:
+'The war!  The cursed war!' In the unending rows of little grey houses,
+in huge caravanserais, and the mansions of the great, in villas, and high
+slum tenements; in the government offices, and factories, and railway
+stations where they worked all night; in the long hospitals where they
+lay in rows; in the camp prisons of the interned; in bar racks,
+work-houses, palaces--no head, sleeping or waking, would be free of that
+thought: 'The, cursed war!'  A spire caught his eye, rising ghostly over
+the roofs. Ah! churches alone, void of the human soul, would be
+unconscious!  But for the rest, even sleep would not free them!  Here a
+mother would be whispering the name of her boy; there a merchant would
+snore and dream he was drowning, weighted with gold; and a wife would be
+turning to stretch out her arms to-no one; and a wounded soldier wake out
+of a dream trench with sweat on his brow; and a newsvendor in his garret
+mutter hoarsely.  By thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling
+their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark
+future; and housewives struggling with sums; and soldiers sleeping like
+logs--for to morrow they died; and children dreaming of them; and
+prostitutes lying in stale wonder at the busyness of their lives; and
+journalists sleeping the sleep of the just.  And over them all, in the
+moonlight that thought 'The cursed war!' flapped its black wings, like an
+old crow!  "If Christ were real," he mused, "He'd reach that moon down,
+and go chalking 'Peace' with it on every door of every house, all over
+Europe.  But Christ's not real, and Hindenburg and Harmsworth are!"  As
+real they were as two great bulls he had once seen in South Africa,
+fighting.  He seemed to hear again the stamp and snort and crash of those
+thick skulls, to see the beasts recoiling and driving at each other, and
+the little red eyes of them.  And pulling a letter out of his pocket, he
+read it again by the light of the moon:
+
+"15, Camelot Mansions, "St.  John's Wood.
+
+"DEAR MR.  FORT, "I came across your Club address to-night, looking at
+some old letters.  Did you know that I was in London?  I left Steenbok
+when my husband died, five years ago.  I've had a simply terrific time
+since. While the German South West campaign was on I was nursing out
+there, but came back about a year ago to lend a hand here.  It would be
+awfully nice to meet you again, if by any chance you are in England. I'm
+working in a V. A. D.  hospital in these parts, but my evenings are
+usually free.  Do you remember that moonlit night at grape harvest?  The
+nights here aren't scented quite like that.  Listerine!  Oh!  This war!
+"With all good remembrances, "LEILA LYNCH."
+
+A terrific time!  If he did not mistake, Leila Lynch had always had a
+terrific time.  And he smiled, seeing again the stoep of an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia, and a woman sitting there under the white
+flowers of a sweet-scented creeper--a pretty woman, with eyes which could
+put a spell on you, a woman he would have got entangled with if he had
+not cut and run for it!  Ten years ago, and here she was again,
+refreshing him out of the past.  He sniffed the fragrance of the little
+letter.  How everybody always managed to work into a letter what they
+were doing in the war!  If he answered her he would be sure to say:
+"Since I got lamed, I've been at the War Office, working on remounts, and
+a dull job it is!"  Leila Lynch!  Women didn't get younger, and he
+suspected her of being older than himself. But he remembered agreeably
+her white shoulders and that turn of her neck when she looked at you with
+those big grey eyes of hers.  Only a five-day acquaintanceship, but they
+had crowded much into it as one did in a strange land.  The episode had
+been a green and dangerous spot, like one of those bright mossy bits of
+bog when you were snipe-shooting, to set foot on which was to let you
+down up to the neck, at least.  Well, there was none of that danger now,
+for her husband was dead-poor chap!  It would be nice, in these dismal
+days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the
+country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in
+her society.  'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers
+and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to
+get killed for the sake of the future.  Drunk on verbiage!  What heads
+and mouths we shall all have when we wake up some fine morning with Peace
+shining in at the window!  Ah!  If only we could; and enjoy ourselves
+again!'  And he gazed at the moon.  She was dipping already, reeling away
+into the dawn.  Water carts and street sweepers had come out into the
+glimmer; sparrows twittered in the eaves.  The city was raising a strange
+unknown face to the grey light, shuttered and deserted as Babylon.  Jimmy
+Fort tapped out his pipe, sighed, and got into bed.
+
+
+2
+
+Coming off duty at that very moment, Leila Lynch decided to have her
+hour's walk before she went home.  She was in charge of two wards, and as
+a rule took the day watches; but some slight upset had given her this
+extra spell.  She was, therefore, at her worst, or perhaps at her best,
+after eighteen hours in hospital.  Her cheeks were pale, and about her
+eyes were little lines, normally in hiding.  There was in this face a
+puzzling blend of the soft and hard, for the eyes, the rather full lips,
+and pale cheeks, were naturally soft; but they were hardened by the
+self-containment which grows on women who have to face life for
+themselves, and, conscious of beauty, intend to keep it, in spite of age.
+Her figure was contradictory, also; its soft modelling a little too
+rigidified by stays.  In this desert of the dawn she let her long blue
+overcoat flap loose, and swung her hat on a finger, so that her
+light-brown, touched-up hair took the morning breeze with fluffy freedom.
+Though she could not see herself, she appreciated her appearance, swaying
+along like that, past lonely trees and houses.  A pity there was no one
+to see her in that round of Regent's Park, which took her the best part
+of an hour, walking in meditation, enjoying the colour coming back into
+the world, as if especially for her.
+
+There was character in Leila Lynch, and she had lived an interesting life
+from a certain point of view.  In her girlhood she had fluttered the
+hearts of many besides Cousin Edward Pierson, and at eighteen had made a
+passionate love match with a good-looking young Indian civilian, named
+Fane.  They had loved each other to a standstill in twelve months.  Then
+had begun five years of petulance, boredom, and growing cynicism, with
+increasing spells of Simla, and voyages home for her health which was
+really harmed by the heat.  All had culminated, of course, in another
+passion for a rifleman called Lynch.  Divorce had followed, remarriage,
+and then the Boer War, in which he had been badly wounded.  She had gone
+out and nursed him back to half his robust health, and, at twenty-eight,
+taken up life with him on an up-country farm in Cape Colony.  This middle
+period had lasted ten years, between the lonely farm and an old Dutch
+house at High Constantia.  Lynch was not a bad fellow, but, like most
+soldiers of the old Army, had been quite carefully divested of an
+aesthetic sense.  And it was Leila's misfortune to have moments when
+aesthetic sense seemed necessary.  She had struggled to overcome this
+weakness, and that other weakness of hers--a liking for men's admiration;
+but there had certainly been intervals when she had not properly
+succeeded.  Her acquaintance with Jimmy Fort had occurred during one of
+these intervals, and when he went back to England so abruptly, she had
+been feeling very tenderly towards him.  She still remembered him with a
+certain pleasure.  Before Lynch died, these "intervals" had been
+interrupted by a spell of returning warmth for the invalided man to whom
+she had joined her life under the romantic conditions of divorce.  He had
+failed, of course, as a farmer, and his death left her with nothing but
+her own settled income of a hundred and fifty pounds a year.  Faced by
+the prospect of having almost to make her living, at thirty-eight, she
+felt but momentary dismay--for she had real pluck.  Like many who have
+played with amateur theatricals, she fancied herself as an actress; but,
+after much effort, found that only her voice and the perfect preservation
+of her legs were appreciated by the discerning managers and public of
+South Africa; and for three chequered years she made face against fortune
+with the help of them, under an assumed name.  What she did--keeping a
+certain bloom of refinement, was far better than the achievements of many
+more respectable ladies in her shoes.  At least she never bemoaned her
+"reduced circumstances," and if her life was irregular and had at least
+three episodes, it was very human.  She bravely took the rough with the
+smooth, never lost the power of enjoying herself, and grew in sympathy
+with the hardships of others. But she became deadly tired.  When the war
+broke out, remembering that she was a good nurse, she took her real name
+again and a change of occupation.  For one who liked to please men, and
+to be pleased by them, there was a certain attraction about that life in
+war-time; and after two years of it she could still appreciate the way
+her Tommies turned their heads to look at her when she passed their beds.
+But in a hard school she had learned perfect self-control; and though the
+sour and puritanical perceived her attraction, they knew her to be
+forty-three.  Besides, the soldiers liked her; and there was little
+trouble in her wards.  The war moved her in simple ways; for she was
+patriotic in the direct fashion of her class.  Her father had been a
+sailor, her husbands an official and a soldier; the issue for her was
+uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.  The Country before everything!
+And though she had tended during those two years so many young wrecked
+bodies, she had taken it as all in the a day's work, lavishing her
+sympathy on the individual, without much general sense of pity and waste.
+Yes, she had worked really hard, had "done her bit"; but of late she had
+felt rising within her the old vague craving for "life," for pleasure,
+for something more than the mere negative admiration bestowed on her by
+her "Tommies."  Those old letters--to look them through them had been a
+sure sign of this vague craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling
+that life was slipping away from her while she was still comely.  She had
+been long out of England, and so hard-worked since she came back that
+there were not many threads she could pick up suddenly.  Two letters out
+of that little budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had
+awakened within her certain sentimental longings.
+"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,
+
+"Exiturus (sic) to saluto!  The tender carries you this message of
+good-bye.  Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa.  And of all my
+memories, the last will live the longest.  Grape harvest at Constantia,
+and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your
+husband come to England, do let me know, that I may try and repay a
+little the happiest five days I've spent out here.
+
+"Your very faithful servant,
+"TIMMY FORT."
+
+She remembered a very brown face, a tall slim figure, and something
+gallant about the whole of him.  What was he like after ten years?
+Grizzled, married, with a large family?  An odious thing--Time!  And
+Cousin Edward's little yellow letter.
+
+Good heavens!  Twenty-six years ago--before he was a parson, or married
+or anything!  Such a good partner, really musical; a queer, dear fellow,
+devoted, absentminded, easily shocked, yet with flame burning in him
+somewhere.
+'DEAR LEILA,
+
+"After our last dance I went straight off'--I couldn't go in.  I went
+down to the river, and walked along the bank; it was beautiful, all grey
+and hazy, and the trees whispered, and the cows looked holy; and I walked
+along and thought of you.  And a farmer took me for a lunatic, in my
+dress clothes.  Dear Leila, you were so pretty last night, and I did love
+our dances.  I hope you are not tired, and that I shall see you soon
+again:
+
+"Your affectionate cousin,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+And then he had gone and become a parson, and married, and been a widower
+fifteen years.  She remembered the death of his wife, just before she
+left for South Africa, at that period of disgrace when she had so shocked
+her family by her divorce.  Poor Edward--quite the nicest of her cousins!
+The only one she would care to see again.  He would be very old and
+terribly good and proper, by now.
+
+Her wheel of Regent's Park was coming full circle, and the sun was up
+behind the houses, but still no sound of traffic stirred.  She stopped
+before a flower-bed where was some heliotrope, and took a long, luxurious
+sniff: She could not resist plucking a sprig, too, and holding it to her
+nose.  A sudden want of love had run through every nerve and fibre of
+her; she shivered, standing there with her eyes half closed, above the
+pale violet blossom.  Then, noting by her wrist-watch that it was four
+o'clock, she hurried on, to get to her bed, for she would have to be on
+duty again at noon.  Oh! the war!  She was tired!  If only it were over,
+and one could live!...
+
+Somewhere by Twickenham the moon had floated down; somewhere up from
+Kentish Town the sun came soaring; wheels rolled again, and the seven
+million sleepers in their million houses woke from morning sleep to that
+same thought....
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Edward Pierson, dreaming over an egg at breakfast, opened a letter in a
+handwriting which he did not recognise.
+
+"V. A. D. Hospital,
+
+"Mulberry Road, St. John's Wood N. W.
+"DEAR COUSIN EDWARD,
+
+"Do you remember me, or have I gone too far into the shades of night?  I
+was Leila Pierson once upon a time, and I often think of you and wonder
+what you are like now, and what your girls are like.  I have been here
+nearly a year, working for our wounded, and for a year before that was
+nursing in South Africa.  My husband died five years ago out there.
+Though we haven't met for I dare not think how long, I should awfully
+like to see you again.  Would you care to come some day and look over my
+hospital?  I have two wards under me; our men are rather dears.
+
+"Your forgotten but still affectionate cousin
+"LEILA LYNCH."
+
+"P. S.  I came across a little letter you once wrote me; it brought back
+old days."
+
+No!  He had not forgotten.  There was a reminder in the house.  And he
+looked up at Noel sitting opposite.  How like the eyes were!  And he
+thought: 'I wonder what Leila has become.  One mustn't be uncharitable.
+That man is dead; she has been nursing two years.  She must be greatly
+changed; I should certainly like to see her.  I will go!'  Again he
+looked at Noel.  Only yesterday she had renewed her request to be allowed
+to begin her training as a nurse.
+
+"I'm going to see a hospital to-day, Nollie," he said; "if you like, I'll
+make enquiries.  I'm afraid it'll mean you have to begin by washing up."
+
+"I know; anything, so long as I do begin."
+
+"Very well; I'll see about it."  And he went back to his egg.
+
+Noel's voice roused him.  "Do you feel the war much, Daddy?  Does it hurt
+you here?"  She had put her hand on her heart.  "Perhaps it doesn't,
+because you live half in the next world, don't you?"
+
+The words: "God forbid," sprang to Pierson's lips; he did not speak them,
+but put his egg-spoon down, hurt and bewildered.  What did the child
+mean?  Not feel the war!  He smiled.
+
+"I hope I'm able to help people sometimes, Nollie," and was conscious
+that he had answered his own thoughts, not her words.  He finished his
+breakfast quickly, and very soon went out.  He crossed the Square, and
+passed East, down two crowded streets to his church.  In the traffic of
+those streets, all slipshod and confused, his black-clothed figure and
+grave face, with its Vandyk beard, had a curious remote appearance, like
+a moving remnant of a past civilisation.  He went in by the side door.
+Only five days he had been away, but they had been so full of emotion
+that the empty familiar building seemed almost strange to him.  He had
+come there unconsciously, groping for anchorage and guidance in this
+sudden change of relationship between him and his daughters.  He stood by
+the pale brazen eagle, staring into the chancel.  The choir were wanting
+new hymn-books--he must not forget to order them!  His eyes sought the
+stained-glass window he had put in to the memory of his wife.  The sun,
+too high to slant, was burnishing its base, till it glowed of a deep
+sherry colour.  "In the next world!"  What strange words of Noel's!  His
+eyes caught the glimmer of the organ-pipes; and, mounting to the loft, he
+began to play soft chords wandering into each other.  He finished, and
+stood gazing down.  This space within high walls, under high vaulted
+roof, where light was toned to a perpetual twilight, broken here and
+there by a little glow of colour from glass and flowers, metal, and dark
+wood, was his home, his charge, his refuge.  Nothing moved down there,
+and yet--was not emptiness mysteriously living, the closed-in air
+imprinted in strange sort, as though the drone of music and voices in
+prayer and praise clung there still?  Had not sanctity a presence?
+Outside, a barrel-organ drove its tune along; a wagon staggered on the
+paved street, and the driver shouted to his horses; some distant guns
+boomed out in practice, and the rolling of wheels on wheels formed a net
+of sound.  But those invading noises were transmuted to a mere murmuring
+in here; only the silence and the twilight were real to Pierson, standing
+there, a little black figure in a great empty space.
+
+When he left the church, it was still rather early to go to Leila's
+hospital; and, having ordered the new hymn-books, he called in at the
+house of a parishioner whose son had been killed in France.  He found her
+in her kitchen; an oldish woman who lived by charing.  She wiped a seat
+for the Vicar.
+
+"I was just makin' meself a cup o' tea, sir."
+
+"Ah!  What a comfort tea is, Mrs. Soles!"  And he sat down, so that she
+should feel "at home."
+
+"Yes; it gives me 'eart-burn; I take eight or ten cups a day, now.  I
+take 'em strong, too.  I don't seem able to get on without it.  I 'ope
+the young ladies are well, sir?"
+
+"Very well, thank you.  Miss Noel is going to begin nursing, too."
+
+"Deary-me!  She's very young; but all the young gells are doin' something
+these days.  I've got a niece in munitions-makin' a pretty penny she is.
+I've been meanin' to tell you--I don't come to church now; since my son
+was killed, I don't seem to 'ave the 'eart to go anywhere--'aven't been
+to a picture-palace these three months.  Any excitement starts me
+cryin'."
+
+"I know; but you'd find rest in church."
+
+Mrs. Soles shook her head, and the small twisted bob of her discoloured
+hair wobbled vaguely.
+
+"I can't take any recreation," she said.  "I'd rather sit 'ere, or be at
+work.  My son was a real son to me.  This tea's the only thing that does
+me any good.  I can make you a fresh cup in a minute."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Soles, but I must be getting on.  We must all look
+forward to meeting our beloved again, in God's mercy.  And one of these
+days soon I shall be seeing you in church, shan't I."
+
+Mrs. Soles shifted her weight from one slippered foot to the other.
+
+"Well! let's 'ope so," she said.  "But I dunno when I shall 'ave the
+spirit.  Good day, sir, and thank you kindly for calling, I'm sure."
+
+Pierson walked away with a very faint smile.  Poor queer old soul!--she
+was no older than himself, but he thought of her as ancient--cut off from
+her son, like so many--so many; and how good and patient!  The melody of
+an anthem began running in his head.  His fingers moved on the air beside
+him, and he stood still, waiting for an omnibus to take him to St. John's
+Wood.  A thousand people went by while he was waiting, but he did not
+notice them, thinking of that anthem, of his daughters, and the mercy of
+God; and on the top of his 'bus, when it came along, he looked lonely and
+apart, though the man beside him was so fat that there was hardly any
+seat left to sit on. Getting down at Lord's Cricket-ground, he asked his
+way of a lady in a nurse's dress.
+
+"If you'll come with me," she said, "I'm just going there."
+
+"Oh!  Do you happen to know a Mrs. Lynch who nurses"
+
+"I am Mrs. Lynch.  Why, you're Edward Pierson!"
+
+He looked into her face, which he had not yet observed.
+
+"Leila!"  he said.
+
+"Yes, Leila!  How awfully nice of you to come, Edward!"
+
+They continued to stand, searching each for the other's youth, till she
+murmured:
+
+"In spite of your beard, I should have known you anywhere!"  But she
+thought: 'Poor Edward!  He is old, and monk-like!'
+
+And Pierson, in answer, murmured:
+
+"You're very little changed, Leila!  We haven't, seen each other since my
+youngest girl was born.  She's just a little like you."  But he thought:
+'My Nollie!  So much more dewy; poor Leila!'
+
+They walked on, talking of his daughters, till they reached the hospital.
+
+"If you'll wait here a minute, I'll take you over my wards."
+
+She had left him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and touching
+his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a little
+warmth crept about his heart.  How works of mercy suited women!  She
+looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a white
+apron over the bluish frock.
+
+At the change in his face, a little warmth crept about Leila, too, just
+where the bib of her apron stopped; and her eyes slid round at him while
+they went towards what had once been a billiard-room.
+
+"My men are dears," she said; "they love to be talked to."
+
+Under a skylight six beds jutted out from a green distempered wall,
+opposite to six beds jutting out from another green distempered wall, and
+from each bed a face was turned towards them young faces, with but little
+expression in them.  A nurse, at the far end, looked round, and went on
+with her work.  The sight of the ward was no more new to Pierson than to
+anyone else in these days.  It was so familiar, indeed, that it had
+practically no significance.  He stood by the first bed, and Leila stood
+alongside.  The man smiled up when she spoke, and did not smile when he
+spoke, and that again was familiar to him.  They passed from bed to bed,
+with exactly the same result, till she was called away, and he sat down
+by a young soldier with a long, very narrow head and face, and a heavily
+bandaged shoulder. Touching the bandage reverently, Pierson said:
+
+"Well, my dear fellow-still bad?"
+
+"Ah!" replied the soldier.  "Shrapnel wound: It's cut the flesh
+properly."
+
+"But not the spirit, I can see!"
+
+The young soldier gave him a quaint look, as much as to say: "Not 'arf
+bad!"  and a gramophone close to the last bed began to play: "God bless
+Daddy at the war!"
+
+"Are you fond of music?"
+
+"I like it well enough.  Passes the time."
+
+"I'm afraid the time hangs heavy in hospital."
+
+"Yes; it hangs a bit 'eavy; it's just 'orspital life.  I've been wounded
+before, you see.  It's better than bein' out there.  I expect I'll lose
+the proper use o' this arm.  I don't worry; I'll get my discharge."
+
+"You've got some good nurses here."
+
+"Yes; I like Mrs. Lynch; she's the lady I like."
+
+"My cousin."
+
+"I see you come in together.  I see everything 'ere.  I think a lot, too.
+Passes the time."
+
+"Do they let you smoke?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  They let us smoke."
+
+"Have one of mine?"
+
+The young soldier smiled for the first time.  "Thank you; I've got
+plenty."
+
+The nurse came by, and smiled at Pierson.
+
+"He's one of our blase ones; been in before, haven't you, Simson?"
+
+Pierson looked at the young man, whose long, narrow face; where one
+sandy-lashed eyelid drooped just a little, seemed armoured with a sort of
+limited omniscience.  The gramophone had whirred and grunted into "Sidi
+Brahim."  The nurse passed on.
+
+"'Seedy Abram,'" said the young soldier.  "The Frenchies sing it; they
+takes it up one after the other, ye know."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Pierson; "it's pretty."  And his fingers drummed on the
+counterpane, for the tune was new to him.  Something seemed to move in
+the young man's face, as if a blind had been drawn up a little.
+
+"I don't mind France," he said abruptly; "I don't mind the shells and
+that; but I can't stick the mud.  There's a lot o' wounded die in the
+mud; can't get up--smothered."  His unwounded arm made a restless
+movement.  "I was nearly smothered myself.  Just managed to keep me nose
+up."
+
+Pierson shuddered.  "Thank God you did!"
+
+"Yes; I didn't like that.  I told Mrs. Lynch about that one day when I
+had the fever.  She's a nice lady; she's seen a lot of us boys: That
+mud's not right, you know."  And again his unwounded arm made that
+restless movement; while the gramophone struck up: "The boys in brown."
+The movement of the arm affected Pierson horribly; he rose and, touching
+the bandaged shoulder, said:
+
+"Good-bye; I hope you'll soon be quite recovered."
+
+The young soldier's lips twisted in the semblance of a smile; his drooped
+eyelid seemed to try and raise itself.
+
+"Good day, sir," he said; "and thank you."
+
+Pierson went back to the hall.  The sunlight fell in a pool just inside
+the open door, and an uncontrollable impulse made him move into it, so
+that it warmed him up to the waist.  The mud!  How ugly life was!  Life
+and Death!  Both ugly!  Poor boys!  Poor boys!
+
+A voice behind him said:
+
+"Oh!  There you are, Edward!  Would you like to see the other ward, or
+shall I show you our kitchen?"
+
+Pierson took her hand impulsively.  "You're doing a noble work, Leila.  I
+wanted to ask you: Could you arrange for Noel to come and get trained
+here?  She wants to begin at once.  The fact is, a boy she is attracted
+to has just gone out to the Front."
+
+"Ah!"  murmured Leila, and her eyes looked very soft.  "Poor child!  We
+shall be wanting an extra hand next week.  I'll see if she could come
+now.  I'll speak to our Matron, and let you know to-night."  She squeezed
+his hand hard.
+
+"Dear Edward, I'm so glad to see you again.  You're the first of our
+family I've seen for sixteen years.  I wonder if you'd bring Noel to have
+supper at my flat to-night--Just nothing to eat, you know!  It's a tiny
+place.  There's a Captain Fort coming; a nice man."
+
+Pierson accepted, and as he walked away he thought: 'Dear Leila!  I
+believe it was Providence.  She wants sympathy.  She wants to feel the
+past is the past.  How good women are!'
+
+And the sun, blazing suddenly out of a cloud, shone on his black figure
+and the little gold cross, in the middle of Portland Place.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Men, even if they are not artistic, who have been in strange places and
+known many nooks of the world, get the scenic habit, become open to
+pictorial sensation.  It was as a picture or series of pictures that
+Jimmy Fort ever afterwards remembered his first supper at Leila's.  He
+happened to have been all day in the open, motoring about to horse farms
+under a hot sun; and Leila's hock cup possessed a bland and subtle
+strength.  The scenic sense derived therefrom had a certain poignancy,
+the more so because the tall child whom he met there did not drink it,
+and her father seemed but to wet his lips, so that Leila and he had all
+the rest.  Rather a wonderful little scene it made in his mind, very
+warm, glowing, yet with a strange dark sharpness to it, which came
+perhaps from the black walls.
+
+The flat had belonged to an artist who was at the war.  It was but a
+pocket dwelling on the third floor.  The two windows of the little square
+sitting-room looked out on some trees and a church.  But Leila, who hated
+dining by daylight, had soon drawn curtains of a deep blue over them.
+The picture which Fort remembered was this: A little four-square table of
+dark wood, with a Chinese mat of vivid blue in the centre, whereon stood
+a silver lustre bowl of clove carnations; some greenish glasses with hock
+cup in them; on his left, Leila in a low lilac frock, her neck and
+shoulders very white, her face a little powdered, her eyes large, her
+lips smiling; opposite him a black-clothed padre with a little gold
+cross, over whose thin darkish face, with its grave pointed beard, passed
+little gentle smiles, but whose deep sunk grey eyes were burnt and
+bright; on his right, a girl in a high grey frock, almost white, just
+hollowed at the neck, with full sleeves to the elbow, so that her slim
+arms escaped; her short fair hair a little tumbled; her big grey eyes
+grave; her full lips shaping with a strange daintiness round every
+word--and they not many; brilliant red shades over golden lights dotting
+the black walls; a blue divan; a little black piano flush with the wall;
+a dark polished floor; four Japanese prints; a white ceiling.  He was
+conscious that his own khaki spoiled something as curious and rare as
+some old Chinese tea-chest.  He even remembered what they ate; lobster;
+cold pigeon pie; asparagus; St. Ivel cheese; raspberries and cream.  He
+did not remember half so well what they talked of, except that he himself
+told them stories of the Boer War, in which he had served in the
+Yeomanry, and while he was telling them, the girl, like a child listening
+to a fairy-tale, never moved her eyes from his face.  He remembered that
+after supper they all smoked cigarettes, even the tall child, after the
+padre had said to her mildly, "My dear!" and she had answered: "I simply
+must, Daddy, just one."  He remembered Leila brewing Turkish coffee--very
+good, and how beautiful her white arms looked, hovering about the cups.
+He remembered her making the padre sit down at the piano, and play to
+them.  And she and the girl on the divan together, side by side, a
+strange contrast; with just as strange a likeness to each other.  He
+always remembered how fine and rare that music sounded in the little
+room, flooding him with a dreamy beatitude.  Then--he remembered--Leila
+sang, the padre standing-by; and the tall child on the divan bending
+forward over her knees, with her chin on her hands.  He remembered rather
+vividly how Leila turned her neck and looked up, now at the padre, now at
+himself; and, all through, the delightful sense of colour and warmth, a
+sort of glamour over all the evening; and the lingering pressure of
+Leila's hand when he said good-bye and they went away, for they all went
+together.  He remembered talking a great deal to the padre in the cab,
+about the public school they had both been at, and thinking: 'It's a good
+padre--this!'  He remembered how their taxi took them to an old Square
+which he did not know, where the garden trees looked densely black in the
+starshine.  He remembered that a man outside the house had engaged the
+padre in earnest talk, while the tall child and himself stood in the open
+doorway, where the hall beyond was dark.  Very exactly he remembered the
+little conversation which then took place between them, while they waited
+for her father.
+
+"Is it very horrid in the trenches, Captain Fort?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Pierson; it is very horrid, as a rule."
+
+"Is it dangerous all the time?"
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Do officers run more risks than the men?"
+
+"Not unless there's an attack."
+
+"Are there attacks very often?"
+
+It had seemed to him so strangely primitive a little catechism, that he
+had smiled.  And, though it was so dark, she had seen that smile, for her
+face went proud and close all of a sudden.  He had cursed himself, and
+said gently:
+
+"Have you a brother out there?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But someone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Someone!  He had heard that answer with a little shock.  This child--this
+fairy princess of a child already to have someone!  He wondered if she
+went about asking everyone these questions, with that someone in her
+thoughts.  Poor child!  And quickly he said:
+
+"After all, look at me!  I was out there a year, and here I am with only
+half a game leg; times were a lot worse, then, too.  I often wish I were
+back there.  Anything's better than London and the War Office."  But just
+then he saw the padre coming, and took her hand. "Good night, Miss
+Pierson.  Don't worry.  That does no good, and there isn't half the risk
+you think."
+
+Her hand stirred, squeezed his gratefully, as a child's would squeeze.
+
+"Good night," she murmured; "thank you awfully."
+
+And, in the dark cab again, he remembered thinking: 'Fancy that child!  A
+jolly lucky boy, out there!  Too bad!  Poor little fairy princess!'
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I
+
+1
+
+To wash up is not an exciting operation.  To wash up in August became for
+Noel a process which taxed her strength and enthusiasm.  She combined it
+with other forms of instruction in the art of nursing, had very little
+leisure, and in the evenings at home would often fall asleep curled up in
+a large chintz-covered chair.
+
+George and Gratian had long gone back to their respective hospitals, and
+she and her father had the house to themselves.  She received many
+letters from Cyril which she carried about with her and read on her way
+to and from the hospital; and every other day she wrote to him.  He was
+not yet in the firing line; his letters were descriptive of his men, his
+food, or the natives, or reminiscent of Kestrel; hers descriptive of
+washing up, or reminiscent of Kestrel.  But in both there was always some
+little word of the longing within them.
+
+It was towards the end of August when she had the letter which said that
+he had been moved up.  From now on he would be in hourly danger!  That
+evening after dinner she did not go to sleep in the chair, but sat under
+the open window, clenching her hands, and reading "Pride and Prejudice"
+without understanding a word.  While she was so engaged her father came
+up and said:
+
+"Captain Fort, Nollie.  Will you give him some coffee?  I'm afraid I must
+go out."
+
+When he had gone, Noel looked at her visitor drinking his coffee.  He had
+been out there, too, and he was alive; with only a little limp. The
+visitor smiled and said:
+
+"What were you thinking about when we came in?"
+
+"Only the war."
+
+"Any news of him?"
+
+Noel frowned, she hated to show her feelings.
+
+"Yes! he's gone to the Front.  Won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks.  Will you?"
+
+"I want one awfully.  I think sitting still and waiting is more dreadful
+than anything in the world."
+
+"Except, knowing that others are waiting.  When I was out there I used to
+worry horribly over my mother.  She was ill at the time.  The cruelest
+thing in war is the anxiety of people about each other--nothing touches
+that."
+
+The words exactly summed up Noel's hourly thought.  He said nice things,
+this man with the long legs and the thin brown bumpy face!
+
+"I wish I were a man," she said, "I think women have much the worst time
+in the war.  Is your mother old?"  But of course she was old why he was
+old himself!
+
+"She died last Christmas."
+
+"Oh!  I'm so sorry!"
+
+"You lost your mother when you were a babe, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes.  That's her portrait."  At the end of the room, hanging on a strip
+of black velvet was a pastel, very faint in colouring, as though faded,
+of a young woman, with an eager, sweet face, dark eyes, and bent a little
+forward, as if questioning her painter.  Fort went up to it.
+
+"It's not a bit like you.  But she must have been a very sweet woman."
+
+"It's a sort of presence in the room.  I wish I were like her!"
+
+Fort turned.  "No," he said; "no.  Better as you are.  It would only have
+spoiled a complete thing."
+
+"She was good."
+
+"And aren't you?"
+
+"Oh! no.  I get a devil."
+
+"You!  Why, you're out of a fairy-tale!"
+
+"It comes from Daddy--only he doesn't know, because he's a perfect saint;
+but I know he's had a devil somewhere, or he couldn't be the saint he
+is."
+
+"H'm!" said Fort.  "That's very deep: and I believe it's true--the saints
+did have devils."
+
+"Poor Daddy's devil has been dead ages.  It's been starved out of him, I
+think."
+
+"Does your devil ever get away with you?"
+
+Noel felt her cheeks growing red under his stare, and she turned to the
+window:
+
+"Yes.  It's a real devil."
+
+Vividly there had come before her the dark Abbey, and the moon balancing
+over the top of the crumbling wall, and the white owl flying across.
+And, speaking to the air, she said:
+
+"It makes you do things that you want to do."
+
+She wondered if he would laugh--it sounded so silly.  But he did not.
+
+"And damn the consequences?  I know.  It's rather a jolly thing to have."
+
+Noel shook her head.  "Here's Daddy coming back!"
+
+Fort held out his hand.
+
+"I won't stay.  Good night; and don't worry too much, will you?"
+
+He kept her hand rather a long time, and gave it a hard squeeze.
+
+Don't worry!  What advice!  Ah! if she could see Cyril just for a minute!
+
+
+2
+
+In September, 1916, Saturday still came before Sunday, in spite of the
+war.  For Edward Pierson this Saturday had been a strenuous day, and even
+now, at nearly midnight, he was still conning his just-completed sermon.
+
+A patriot of patriots, he had often a passionate longing to resign his
+parish, and go like his curate for a chaplain at the Front.  It seemed to
+him that people must think his life idle and sheltered and useless.  Even
+in times of peace he had been sensitive enough to feel the cold draughty
+blasts which the Church encounters in a material age.  He knew that nine
+people out of ten looked on him as something of a parasite, with no real
+work in the world.  And since he was nothing if not conscientious, he
+always worked himself to the bone.
+
+To-day he had risen at half-past six, and after his bath and exercises,
+had sat down to his sermon--for, even now, he wrote a new sermon once a
+month, though he had the fruits of twenty-six years to choose from.
+True, these new sermons were rather compiled than written, because,
+bereft of his curate, he had not time enough for fresh thought on old
+subjects.  At eight he had breakfasted with Noel, before she went off to
+her hospital, whence she would return at eight in the evening.  Nine to
+ten was his hour for seeing parishioners who had troubles, or wanted help
+or advice, and he had received three to-day who all wanted help, which he
+had given.  From ten to eleven he had gone back to his sermon, and had
+spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters,
+writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service
+instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came.  He had hurried
+back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour
+of forgetfulness.  At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been
+detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of
+topics.  At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the
+paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting two Parish Clubs, and
+those whose war-pension matters he had in hand, and filling up forms
+which would be kept in official places till such time as the system
+should be changed and a fresh set of forms issued. From seven to eight he
+was at home again, in case his flock wanted to see him; to-day four sheep
+had come, and gone away, he was afraid, but little the wiser.  From
+half-past eight to half-past nine he had spent in choir practice, because
+the organist was on his holiday. Slowly in the cool of the evening he had
+walked home, and fallen asleep in his chair on getting in.  At eleven he
+had woken with a start, and, hardening his heart, had gone back to his
+sermon.  And now, at nearly midnight, it was still less than twenty
+minutes long. He lighted one of his rare cigarettes, and let thought
+wander.  How beautiful those pale pink roses were in that old silver
+bowl-like a little strange poem, or a piece of Debussy music, or a
+Mathieu Maris picture-reminding him oddly of the word Leila.  Was he
+wrong in letting Noel see so much of Leila?  But then she was so
+improved--dear Leila!...  The pink roses were just going to fall!  And
+yet how beautiful!...  It was quiet to-night; he felt very drowsy....
+Did Nollie still think of that young man, or had it passed?  She had
+never confided in him since!  After the war, it would be nice to take her
+to Italy, to all the little towns.  They would see the Assisi of St.
+Francis.  The Little Flowers of St. Francis.  The Little Flowers!...  His
+hand dropped, the cigarette went out.  He slept with his face in shadow.
+Slowly into the silence of his sleep little sinister sounds intruded.
+Short concussions, dragging him back out of that deep slumber.  He
+started up.  Noel was standing at the door, in a long coat.  She said in
+her calm voice:
+
+"Zeps, Daddy!"
+
+"Yes, my dear.  Where are the maids?"
+
+An Irish voice answered from the hall: "Here, sir; trustin' in God; but
+'tis better on the ground floor."
+
+He saw a huddle of three figures, queerly costumed, against the stairs.
+
+"Yes, Yes, Bridgie; you're safe down here."  Then he noticed that Noel
+was gone.  He followed her out into the Square, alive with faces faintly
+luminous in the darkness, and found her against the garden railings.
+
+"You must come back in, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!  Cyril has this every day."
+
+He stood beside her; not loth, for excitement had begun to stir his
+blood.  They stayed there for some minutes, straining their eyes for
+sight of anything save the little zagged splashes of bursting shrapnel,
+while voices buzzed, and muttered: "Look!  There!  There!  There it is!"
+
+But the seers had eyes of greater faith than Pierson's, for he saw
+nothing: He took her arm at last, and led her in.  In the hall she broke
+from him.
+
+"Let's go up on the roof, Daddy!" and ran upstairs.
+
+Again he followed, mounting by a ladder, through a trapdoor on to the
+roof.
+
+"It's splendid up here!" she cried.
+
+He could see her eyes blazing, and thought: 'How my child does love
+excitement--it's almost terrible!'
+
+Over the wide, dark, star-strewn sky travelling searchlights, were
+lighting up the few little clouds; the domes and spires rose from among
+the spread-out roofs, all fine and ghostly.  The guns had ceased firing,
+as though puzzled.  One distant bang rumbled out.
+
+"A bomb!  Oh!  If we could only get one of the Zeps!"
+
+A furious outburst of firing followed, lasting perhaps a minute, then
+ceased as if by magic.  They saw two searchlights converge and meet right
+overhead.
+
+"It's above us!" murmured Noel.
+
+Pierson put his arm round her waist.  'She feels no fear!' he thought.
+The search-lights switched apart; and suddenly, from far away, came a
+confusion of weird sounds.
+
+"What is it?  They're cheering.  Oh!  Daddy, look!" There in the heavens,
+towards the east, hung a dull red thing, lengthening as they gazed.
+
+"They've got it.  It's on fire!  Hurrah!"
+
+Through the dark firmament that fiery orange shape began canting
+downward; and the cheering swelled in a savage frenzy of sound.  And
+Pierson's arm tightened on her waist.
+
+"Thank God!" he muttered.
+
+The bright oblong seemed to break and spread, tilted down below the level
+of the roofs; and suddenly the heavens flared, as if some huge jug of
+crimson light had been flung out on them.  Something turned over in
+Pierson's heart; he flung up his hand to his eyes.
+
+"The poor men in it!"  he said.  "How terrible!"
+
+Noel's voice answered, hard and pitiless:
+
+"They needn't have come.  They're murderers!"
+
+Yes, they were murderers--but how terrible!  And he stood quivering, with
+his hands pressed to his face, till the cheering had died out into
+silence.
+
+"Let's pray, Nollie!"  he whispered.  "O God, Who in Thy great mercy hath
+delivered us from peril, take into Thy keeping the souls of these our
+enemies, consumed by Thy wrath before our eyes; give us the power to pity
+them--men like ourselves."
+
+But even while he prayed he could see Noel's face flame-white in the
+darkness; and, as that glow in the sky faded out, he felt once more the
+thrill of triumph.
+
+They went down to tell the maids, and for some time after sat up
+together, talking over what they had seen, eating biscuits and drinking
+milk, which they warmed on an etna.  It was nearly two o'clock before
+they went to bed.  Pierson fell asleep at once, and never turned till
+awakened at half-past six by his alarum.  He had Holy Communion to
+administer at eight, and he hurried to get early to his church and see
+that nothing untoward had happened to it.  There it stood in the
+sunlight; tall, grey, quiet, unharmed, with bell gently ringing.
+
+
+3
+
+And at that hour Cyril Morland, under the parapet of his trench,
+tightening his belt, was looking at his wrist-watch for the hundredth
+time, calculating exactly where he meant to put foot and hand for the
+going over: 'I absolutely mustn't let those chaps get in front of me,' he
+thought.  So many yards before the first line of trenches, so many yards
+to the second line, and there stop.  So his rehearsals had gone; it was
+the performance now!  Another minute before the terrific racket of the
+drum-fire should become the curtain-fire, which would advance before
+them.  He ran his eye down the trench.  The man next him was licking his
+two first fingers, as if he might be going to bowl at cricket.  Further
+down, a man was feeling his puttees.  A voice said: "Wot price the
+orchestra nah!"  He saw teeth gleam in faces burnt almost black.  Then he
+looked up; the sky was blue beyond the brownish film of dust raised by
+the striking shells.  Noel!  Noel!  Noel!...  He dug his fingers deep
+into the left side of his tunic till he could feel the outline of her
+photograph between his dispatch-case and his heart.  His heart fluttered
+just as it used when he was stretched out with hand touching the ground,
+before the start of the "hundred yards" at school.  Out of the corner of
+his eye he caught the flash of a man's "briquet" lighting a cigarette.
+All right for those chaps, but not for him; he wanted all his
+breath--this rifle, and kit were handicap enough!  Two days ago he had
+been reading in some paper how men felt just before an attack.  And now
+he knew.  He just felt nervous.  If only the moment would come, and get
+itself over!  For all the thought he gave to the enemy there might have
+been none--nothing but shells and bullets, with lives of their own.  He
+heard the whistle; his foot was on the spot he had marked down; his hand
+where he had seen it; he called out: "Now, boys!"  His head was over the
+top, his body over; he was conscious of someone falling, and two men neck
+and neck beside him.  Not to try and run, not to break out of a walk; to
+go steady, and yet keep ahead!  D--n these holes!  A bullet tore through
+his sleeve, grazing his arm--a red-hot sensation, like the touch of an
+iron.  A British shell from close over his head burst sixty yards ahead;
+he stumbled, fell flat, picked himself up.  Three ahead of him now!  He
+walked faster, and drew alongside.  Two of them fell.  'What luck!' he
+thought; and gripping his rifle harder, pitched headlong into a
+declivity.  Dead bodies lay there!  The first German trench line, and
+nothing alive in it, nothing to clean up, nothing of it left!  He
+stopped, getting his wind; watching the men panting and stumbling in.
+The roar of the guns was louder than ever again, barraging the second
+line.  So far, good!  And here was his captain!
+
+"Ready, boys?  On, then!"
+
+This time he moved more slowly still, over terrible going, all holes and
+hummocks.  Half consciously he took cover all he could.  The air was
+alive with the whistle from machine-gun fire storming across zigzag
+fashion-alive it was with bullets, dust, and smoke.  'How shall I tell
+her?' he thought.  There would be nothing to tell but just a sort of
+jagged brown sensation.  He kept his eyes steadily before him, not
+wanting to seethe men falling, not wanting anything to divert him from
+getting there.  He felt the faint fanning of the passing bullets.  The
+second line must be close now.  Why didn't that barrage lift?  Was this
+new dodge of firing till the last second going to do them in?  Another
+hundred yards and he would be bang into it.  He flung himself flat and
+waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked with
+blood.  He thought: 'A wound!  Now I shall go home.  Thank God!  Oh,
+Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them even
+through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire.  'The beastly things!'
+he thought: A voice beside him gasped out:
+
+"It's lifted, sir."
+
+He called: "Come on, boys!" and went forward, stooping.  A bullet struck
+his rifle.  The shock made him stagger and sent an electric shock
+spinning up his arm.  'Luck again!' he thought.  'Now for it!  I haven't
+seen a German yet!' He leaped forward, spun round, flung up his arms, and
+fell on his back, shot through and through....
+
+The position was consolidated, as they say, and in the darkness
+stretcher-bearers were out over the half-mile.  Like will-o'-the-wisps,
+with their shaded lanterns, they moved, hour after hour, slowly
+quartering the black honeycomb which lay behind the new British line.
+Now and then in the light of some star-shell their figures were
+disclosed, bending and raising the forms of the wounded, or wielding pick
+and shovel.
+
+"Officer."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Search."
+
+From the shaded lantern, lowered to just above the body, a yellowish
+glare fell on face and breast.  The hands of the searcher moved in that
+little pool of light.  The bearer who was taking notes bent down.
+
+"Another boy," he said.  "That all he has?"
+
+The searcher raised himself.
+
+"Just those, and a photo."
+
+"Dispatch-case; pound loose; cigarette-case; wristwatch; photo. Let's see
+it."
+
+The searcher placed the photo in the pool of light.  The tiny face of a
+girl stared up at them, unmoved, from its short hair.
+
+"Noel," said the searcher, reading.
+
+"H'm!  Take care of it.  Stick it in his case.  Come on!"
+
+The pool of light dissolved, and darkness for ever covered Cyril Morland.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+When those four took their seats in the Grand Circle at Queen's Hall the
+programme was already at the second number, which, in spite of all the
+efforts of patriotism, was of German origin--a Brandenburg concerto by
+Bach.  More curious still, it was encored.  Pierson did not applaud, he
+was too far gone in pleasure, and sat with a rapt smile on his face,
+oblivious of his surroundings.  He remained thus removed from mortal joys
+and sorrows till the last applause had died away, and Leila's voice said
+in his ear:
+
+"Isn't it a wonderful audience, Edward?  Look at all that khaki. Who'd
+have thought those young men cared for music--good music--German music,
+too?"
+
+Pierson looked down at the patient mass of standing figures in straw hats
+and military caps, with faces turned all one way, and sighed.
+
+"I wish I could get an audience like that in my church."
+
+A smile crept out at the corner of Leila's lips.  She was thinking: 'Ah!
+Your Church is out of date, my dear, and so are you!  Your Church, with
+its smell of mould and incense, its stained-glass, and narrowed length
+and droning organ.  Poor Edward, so out of the world!'  But she only
+pressed his arm, and whispered:
+
+"Look at Noel!"
+
+The girl was talking to Jimmy Fort.  Her cheeks were gushed, and she
+looked prettier than Pierson had seen her look for a long time now, ever
+since Kestrel, indeed.  He heard Leila sigh.
+
+"Does she get news of her boy?  Do you remember that May Week, Edward?
+We were very young then; even you were young.  That was such a pretty
+little letter you wrote me.  I can see you still-wandering in your dress
+clothes along the river, among the 'holy' cows."
+
+But her eyes slid round again, watching her other neighbour and the girl.
+A violinist had begun to play the Cesar Franck Sonata.  It was Pierson's
+favourite piece of music, bringing him, as it were, a view of heaven, of
+devotional blue air where devout stars were shining in a sunlit noon,
+above ecstatic trees and waters where ecstatic swans were swimming.
+
+"Queer world, Mr. Pierson!  Fancy those boys having to go back to barrack
+life after listening to that!  What's your feeling?  Are we moving back
+to the apes?  Did we touch top note with that Sonata?"
+
+Pierson turned and contemplated his questioner shrewdly.
+
+"No, Captain Fort, I do not think we are moving back to the apes; if we
+ever came from them.  Those boys have the souls of heroes!"
+
+"I know that, sir, perhaps better than you do."
+
+"Ah! yes," said Pierson humbly, "I forgot, of course."  But he still
+looked at his neighbour doubtfully.  This Captain Fort, who was a friend
+of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He had a
+frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to,
+Pierson--little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods, and the
+veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had
+lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets,
+in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener.  Those
+critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who had been
+through the same educational mill as himself, than if they had merely
+come from some rough diamond, some artist, some foreigner, even from a
+doctor like George. And they always made him uncomfortable, like the
+touch of a prickly leaf; they did not amuse him.  Certainly Edward
+Pierson shrank from the rough touches of a knock-about philosophy.  After
+all, it was but natural that he should.
+
+He and Noel left after the first part of the concert, parting from the
+other two at the door.  He slipped his hand through her arm; and,
+following out those thoughts of his in the concert-hall, asked:
+
+"Do you like Captain Fort, Nollie?"
+
+"Yes; he's a nice man."
+
+"He seems a nice man, certainly; he has a nice smile, but strange views,
+I'm afraid."
+
+"He thinks the Germans are not much worse than we are; he says that a
+good many of us are bullies too."
+
+"Yes, that is the sort of thing I mean."
+
+"But are we, Daddy?"
+
+"Surely not."
+
+"A policeman I talked to once said the same.  Captain Fort says that very
+few men can stand having power put into their hands without being
+spoiled.  He told me some dreadful stories.  He says we have no
+imagination, so that we often do things without seeing how brutal they
+are."
+
+"We're not perfect, Nollie; but on the whole I think we're a kind
+people."
+
+Noel was silent a moment, then said suddenly:
+
+"Kind people often think others are kind too, when they really aren't.
+Captain Fort doesn't make that mistake."
+
+"I think he's a little cynical, and a little dangerous."
+
+"Are all people dangerous who don't think like others, Daddy?"
+
+Pierson, incapable of mockery, was not incapable of seeing when he was
+being mocked.  He looked at his daughter with a smile.
+
+"Not quite so bad as that, Nollie; but Mr. Fort is certainly subversive.
+I think perhaps he has seen too many queer sides of life."
+
+"I like him the better for that."
+
+"Well, well," Pierson answered absently.  He had work to do in
+preparation for a Confirmation Class, and sought his study on getting in.
+
+Noel went to the dining-room to drink her hot milk.  The curtains were
+not drawn, and bright moonlight was coming in.  Without lighting up, she
+set the etna going, and stood looking at the moon-full for the second
+time since she and Cyril had waited for it in the Abbey. And pressing her
+hands to her breast, she shivered.  If only she could summon him from the
+moonlight out there; if only she were a witch-could see him, know where
+he was, what doing!  For a fortnight now she had received no letter.
+Every day since he had left she had read the casualty lists, with the
+superstitious feeling that to do so would keep him out of them.  She took
+up the Times.  There was just enough light, and she read the roll of
+honour--till the moon shone in on her, lying on the floor, with the
+dropped journal....
+
+But she was proud, and soon took grief to her room, as on that night
+after he left her, she had taken love.  No sign betrayed to the house her
+disaster; the journal on the floor, and the smell of the burnt milk which
+had boiled over, revealed nothing.  After all, she was but one of a
+thousand hearts which spent that moonlit night in agony. Each night, year
+in, year out, a thousand faces were buried in pillows to smother that
+first awful sense of desolation, and grope for the secret spirit-place
+where bereaved souls go, to receive some feeble touch of healing from
+knowledge of each other's trouble....
+
+In the morning she got up from her sleepless bed, seemed to eat her
+breakfast, and went off to her hospital.  There she washed up plates and
+dishes, with a stony face, dark under the eyes.
+
+The news came to Pierson in a letter from Thirza, received at lunch-time.
+He read it with a dreadful aching.  Poor, poor little Nollie!  What an
+awful trouble for her!  And he, too, went about his work with the
+nightmare thought that he had to break the news to her that evening.
+Never had he felt more lonely, more dreadfully in want of the mother of
+his children.  She would have known how to soothe, how to comfort.  On
+her heart the child could have sobbed away grief. And all that hour, from
+seven to eight, when he was usually in readiness to fulfil the functions
+of God's substitute to his parishioners, he spent in prayer of his own,
+for guidance how to inflict and heal this blow.  When, at last, Noel
+came, he opened. the door to her himself, and, putting back the hair from
+her forehead, said: "Come in here a moment, my darling!"  Noel followed
+him into the study, and sat down.  "I know already, Daddy."  Pierson was
+more dismayed by this stoicism than he would have been by any natural out
+burst.  He stood, timidly stroking her hair, murmuring to her what he had
+said to Gratian, and to so many others in these days: "There is no death;
+look forward to seeing him again; God is merciful"  And he marvelled at
+the calmness of that pale face--so young.
+
+"You are very brave, my child!"  he said.
+
+"There's nothing else to be, is there?"
+
+"Isn't there anything I can do for you, Nollie?"
+
+"No, Daddy."
+
+"When did you see it?"
+
+"Last night."  She had already known for twenty-four hours without
+telling him!
+
+"Have you prayed, my darling?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Try, Nollie!"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah, try!"
+
+"It would be ridiculous, Daddy; you don't know."
+
+Grievously upset and bewildered, Pierson moved away from her, and said:
+
+"You look dreadfully tired.  Would you like a hot bath, and your dinner
+in bed?"
+
+"I'd like some tea; that's all."  And she went out.
+
+When he had seen that the tea had gone up to her, he too went out; and,
+moved by a longing for woman's help, took a cab to Leila's flat.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+On leaving the concert Leila and Jimmy Fort had secured a taxi; a vehicle
+which, at night, in wartime, has certain advantages for those who desire
+to become better acquainted.  Vibration, sufficient noise, darkness, are
+guaranteed; and all that is lacking for the furtherance of emotion is the
+scent of honeysuckle and roses, or even of the white flowering creeper
+which on the stoep at High Constantia had smelled so much sweeter than
+petrol.
+
+When Leila found herself with Fort in that loneliness to which she had
+been looking forward, she was overcome by an access of nervous silence.
+She had been passing through a strange time for weeks past. Every night
+she examined her sensations without quite understanding them as yet.
+When a woman comes to her age, the world-force is liable to take
+possession, saying:
+
+"You were young, you were beautiful, you still have beauty, you are not,
+cannot be, old.  Cling to youth, cling to beauty; take all you can get,
+before your face gets lines and your hair grey; it is impossible that you
+have been loved for the last time."
+
+To see Jimmy Fort at the concert, talking to Noel, had brought this
+emotion to a head.  She was not of a grudging nature, and could genuinely
+admire Noel, but the idea that Jimmy Fort might also admire disturbed her
+greatly.  He must not; it was not fair; he was too old--besides, the girl
+had her boy; and she had taken care that he should know it.  So, leaning
+towards him, while a bare-shouldered young lady sang, she had whispered:
+
+"Penny?"
+
+And he had whispered back:
+
+"Tell you afterwards."
+
+That had comforted her.  She would make him take her home.  It was time
+she showed her heart.
+
+And now, in the cab, resolved to make her feelings known, in sudden
+shyness she found it very difficult.  Love, to which for quite three
+years she had been a stranger, was come to life within her.  The
+knowledge was at once so sweet, and so disturbing, that she sat with face
+averted, unable to turn the precious minutes to account.  They arrived at
+the flat without having done more than agree that the streets were dark,
+and the moon bright.  She got out with a sense of bewilderment, and said
+rather desperately:
+
+"You must come up and have a cigarette.  It's quite early, still."
+
+He went up.
+
+"Wait just a minute," said Leila.
+
+Sitting there with his drink and his cigarette, he stared at some
+sunflowers in a bowl--Famille Rose--and waited just ten; smiling a
+little, recalling the nose of the fairy princess, and the dainty way her
+lips shaped the words she spoke.  If she had not had that lucky young
+devil of a soldier boy, one would have wanted to buckle her shoes, lay
+one's coat in the mud for her, or whatever they did in fairytales.  One
+would have wanted--ah! what would one not have wanted!  Hang that soldier
+boy!  Leila said he was twenty-two.  By George! how old it made a man
+feel who was rising forty, and tender on the off-fore!  No fairy
+princesses for him!  Then a whiff of perfume came to his nostrils; and,
+looking up, he saw Leila standing before him, in a long garment of dark
+silk, whence her white arms peeped out.
+
+"Another penny?  Do you remember these things, Jimmy?  The Malay women
+used to wear them in Cape Town.  You can't think what a relief it is to
+get out of my slave's dress.  Oh!  I'm so sick of nursing!  Jimmy, I want
+to live again a little!"
+
+The garment had taken fifteen years off her age, and a gardenia, just
+where the silk crossed on her breast, seemed no whiter than her skin. He
+wondered whimsically whether it had dropped to her out of the dark!
+
+"Live?"  he said.  "Why!  Don't you always?"
+
+She raised her hands so that the dark silk fell, back from the whole
+length of those white arms.
+
+"I haven't lived for two years.  Oh, Jimmy!  Help me to live a little!
+Life's so short, now."
+
+Her eyes disturbed him, strained and pathetic; the sight of her arms; the
+scent of the flower disturbed him; he felt his cheeks growing warm, and
+looked down.
+
+She slipped suddenly forward on to her knees at his feet, took his hand,
+pressed it with both of hers, and murmured:
+
+"Love me a little!  What else is there?  Oh!  Jimmy, what else is there?"
+
+And with the scent of the flower, crushed by their hands, stirring his
+senses, Fort thought: 'Ah, what else is there, in these forsaken days?'
+
+To Jimmy Fort, who had a sense of humour, and was in some sort a
+philosopher, the haphazard way life settled things seldom failed to seem
+amusing.  But when he walked away from Leila's he was pensive. She was a
+good sort, a pretty creature, a sportswoman, an enchantress; but--she was
+decidedly mature.  And here he was--involved in helping her to "live";
+involved almost alarmingly, for there had been no mistaking the fact that
+she had really fallen in love with him.
+
+This was flattering and sweet.  Times were sad, and pleasure scarce,
+but--!  The roving instinct which had kept him, from his youth up,
+rolling about the world, shied instinctively at bonds, however pleasant,
+the strength and thickness of which he could not gauge; or, was it that
+perhaps for the first time in his life he had been peeping into fairyland
+of late, and this affair with Leila was by no means fairyland?  He had
+another reason, more unconscious, for uneasiness.  His heart, for all his
+wanderings, was soft, he had always found it difficult to hurt anyone,
+especially anyone who did him the honour to love him.  A sort of
+presentiment weighed on him while he walked the moonlit streets at this
+most empty hour, when even the late taxis had ceased to run.  Would she
+want him to marry her?  Would it be his duty, if she did?  And then he
+found himself thinking of the concert, and that girl's face, listening to
+the tales he was telling her.  'Deuced queer world,' he thought, 'the way
+things go!  I wonder what she would think of us, if she knew--and that
+good padre!  Phew!'
+
+He made such very slow progress, for fear of giving way in his leg, and
+having to spend the night on a door-step, that he had plenty of time for
+rumination; but since it brought him no confidence whatever, he began at
+last to feel: 'Well; it might be a lot worse.  Take the goods the gods
+send you and don't fuss!'  And suddenly he remembered with extreme
+vividness that night on the stoep at High Constantia, and thought with
+dismay: 'I could have plunged in over head and ears then; and now--I
+can't!  That's life all over!  Poor Leila!  Me miserum, too, perhaps--who
+knows!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+When Leila opened her door to Edward Pierson, her eyes were smiling, and
+her lips were soft.  She seemed to smile and be soft all over, and she
+took both his hands.  Everything was a pleasure to her that day, even the
+sight of this sad face.  She was in love and was loved again; had a
+present and a future once more, not only her own full past; and she must
+finish with Edward in half an hour, for Jimmy was coming.  She sat down
+on the divan, took his hand in a sisterly way, and said:
+
+"Tell me, Edward; I can see you're in trouble.  What is it?"
+
+"Noel.  The boy she was fond of has been killed."
+
+She dropped his hand.
+
+"Oh, no!  Poor child!  It's too cruel!"  Tears started up in her grey
+eyes, and she touched them with a tiny handkerchief.  "Poor, poor little
+Noel!  Was she very fond of him?"
+
+"A very sudden, short engagement; but I'm afraid she takes it desperately
+to heart.  I don't know how to comfort her; only a woman could.  I came
+to ask you: Do you think she ought to go on with her work?  What do you
+think, Leila?  I feel lost!"
+
+Leila, gazing at him, thought: 'Lost?  Yes, you look lost, my poor
+Edward!'
+
+"I should let her go on," she said: "it helps; it's the only thing that
+does help.  I'll see if I can get them to let her come into the wards.
+She ought to be in touch with suffering and the men; that kitchen work
+will try her awfully just now: Was he very young?"
+
+"Yes.  They wanted to get married.  I was opposed to it."
+
+Leila's lip curled ever so little.  'You would be!' she thought.
+
+"I couldn't bear to think of Nollie giving herself hastily, like that;
+they had only known each other three weeks.  It was very hard for me,
+Leila.  And then suddenly he was sent to the front."
+
+Resentment welled up in Leila.  The kill-Joys!  As if life didn't kill
+joy fast enough!  Her cousin's face at that moment was almost abhorrent
+to her, its gentle perplexed goodness darkened and warped by that monkish
+look.  She turned away, glanced at the clock over the hearth, and
+thought: 'Yes, and he would stop Jimmy and me!  He would say: "Oh, no!
+dear Leila--you mustn't love--it's sin!"  How I hate that word!'
+
+"I think the most dreadful thing in life," she said abruptly, "is the way
+people suppress their natural instincts; what they suppress in themselves
+they make other people suppress too, if they can; and that's the cause of
+half the misery in this world."
+
+Then at the surprise on his face at this little outburst, whose cause he
+could not know, she added hastily: "I hope Noel will get over it quickly,
+and find someone else."
+
+"Yes.  If they had been married--how much worse it would have been. Thank
+God, they weren't!"
+
+"I don't know.  They would have had an hour of bliss.  Even an hour of
+bliss is worth something in these days."
+
+"To those who only believe in this 'life--perhaps."
+
+'Ten minutes more!' she thought: 'Oh, why doesn't he go?' But at that
+very moment he got up, and instantly her heart went out to him again.
+
+"I'm so sorry, Edward.  If I can help in any way--I'll try my best with
+Noel to-morrow; and do come to me whenever you feel inclined."
+
+She took his hand in hers; afraid that he would sit down again, she yet
+could not help a soft glance into his eyes, and a little rush of pitying
+warmth in the pressure of her hand.
+
+Pierson smiled; the smile which always made her sorry for him.
+
+"Good-bye, Leila; you're very good and kind to me.  Good-bye."
+
+Her bosom swelled with relief and compassion; and--she let him out.
+
+Running upstairs again she thought: 'I've just time.  What shall I put
+on?  Poor Edward, poor Noel!  What colour does Jimmy like?  Oh!  Why
+didn't I keep him those ten years ago--what utter waste!'  And,
+feverishly adorning herself, she came back to the window, and stood there
+in the dark to watch, while some jasmine which grew below sent up its
+scent to her.  'Would I marry him?' she thought, 'if he asked me?  But he
+won't ask me--why should he now?  Besides, I couldn't bear him to feel I
+wanted position or money from him.  I only want love--love--love!'  The
+silent repetition of that word gave her a wonderful sense of solidity and
+comfort.  So long as she only wanted love, surely he would give it.
+
+A tall figure turned down past the church, coming towards her.  It was
+he!  And suddenly she bethought herself.  She went to the little black
+piano, sat down, and began to sing the song she had sung to him ten years
+ago: "If I could be the falling dew and fall on thee all day!"  She did
+not even look round when he came in, but continued to croon out the
+words, conscious of him just behind her shoulder in the dark.  But when
+she had finished, she got up and threw her arms round him, strained him
+to her, and burst into tears on his shoulder; thinking of Noel and that
+dead boy, thinking of the millions of other boys, thinking of her own
+happiness, thinking of those ten years wasted, of how short was life, and
+love; thinking--hardly knowing what she thought!  And Jimmy Fort, very
+moved by this emotion which he only half understood, pressed her tightly
+in his arms, and kissed her wet cheeks and her neck, pale and warm in the
+darkness.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+Noel went on with her work for a month, and then, one morning, fainted
+over a pile of dishes.  The noise attracted attention, and Mrs. Lynch was
+summoned.
+
+The sight of her lying there so deadly white taxed Leila's nerves
+severely.  But the girl revived quickly, and a cab was sent for. Leila
+went with her, and told the driver to stop at Camelot Mansions. Why take
+her home in this state, why not save the jolting, and let her recover
+properly?  They went upstairs arm in arm.  Leila made her lie down on the
+divan, and put a hot-water bottle to her feet.  Noel was still so passive
+and pale that even to speak to her seemed a cruelty.  And, going to her
+little sideboard, Leila stealthily extracted a pint bottle of some
+champagne which Jimmy Fort had sent in, and took it with  two glasses and
+a corkscrew into her bedroom. She drank a little herself, and came out
+bearing a glass to the girl. Noel shook her head, and her eyes seemed to
+say: "Do you really think I'm so easily mended?"  But Leila had been
+through too much in her time to despise earthly remedies, and she held it
+to the girl's lips until she drank.  It was excellent champagne, and,
+since Noel had never yet touched alcohol, had an instantaneous effect.
+Her eyes brightened; little red spots came up in her cheeks.  And
+suddenly she rolled over and buried her face deep in a cushion.  With her
+short hair, she looked so like a child lying there, that Leila knelt
+down, stroking her head, and saying: "There, there; my love!  There,
+there!"
+
+At last the girl raised herself; now that the pallid, masklike despair of
+the last month was broken, she seemed on fire, and her face had a wild
+look.  She withdrew herself from Leila's touch, and, crossing her arms
+tightly across her chest, said:
+
+"I can't bear it; I can't sleep.  I want him back; I hate life--I hate
+the world.  We hadn't done anything--only just loved each other.  God
+likes punishing; just because we loved each other; we had only one day to
+love each other--only one day--only one!"
+
+Leila could see the long white throat above those rigid arms straining
+and swallowing; it gave her a choky feeling to watch it. The voice,
+uncannily dainty for all the wildness of the words and face, went on:
+
+"I won't--I don't want to live.  If there's another life, I shall go to
+him.  And if there isn't--it's just sleep."
+
+Leila put out her hand to ward of these wild wanderings.  Like most women
+who live simply the life of their senses and emotions, she was orthodox;
+or rather never speculated on such things.
+
+"Tell me about yourself and him," she said.
+
+Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin.  "We loved each other; and
+children are born, aren't they, after you've loved?  But mine won't be!"
+From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of
+her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense!  But--what an
+awful thing, if true!  That which had always seemed to her such an
+exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life--why! now, it was a
+tragedy!  Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the
+girl.
+
+"My poor dear!" she said; "you're fancying things!"
+
+The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back
+and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
+
+"If it is--I shan't live.  I don't mean to--it's easy to die. I don't
+mean Daddy to know."
+
+"Oh! my dear, my dear!"  was all Leila could stammer.
+
+"Was it wrong, Leila?"
+
+"Wrong?  I don't know--wrong?  If it really is so--it was--unfortunate.
+But surely, surely--you're mistaken?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "I did it so that we should belong to each other.
+Nothing could have taken him from me."
+
+Leila caught at the girl's words.
+
+"Then, my dear--he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?"
+
+Noel's lips formed a "No" which was inaudible.  "But Daddy!"  she
+whispered.
+
+Edward's face came before Leila so vividly that she could hardly see the
+girl for the tortured shape of it.  Then the hedonist in her revolted
+against that ascetic vision.  Her worldly judgment condemned and deplored
+this calamity, her instinct could not help applauding that hour of life
+and love, snatched out of the jaws of death.  "Need he ever know?" she
+said.
+
+"I could never lie to Daddy.  But it doesn't matter.  Why should one go
+on living, when life is rotten?"
+
+Outside the sun was shining brightly, though it was late October. Leila
+got up from her knees.  She stood at the window thinking hard.
+
+"My dear," she said at last, "you mustn't get morbid.  Look at me!  I've
+had two husbands, and--and--well, a pretty stormy up and down time of it;
+and I daresay I've got lots of trouble before me.  But I'm not going to
+cave in.  Nor must you.  The Piersons have plenty of pluck; you mustn't
+be a traitor to your blood.  That's the last thing.  Your boy would have
+told you to stick it.  These are your 'trenches,' and you're not going to
+be downed, are you?"
+
+After she had spoken there was a long silence, before Noel said:
+
+"Give me a cigarette, Leila."
+
+Leila produced the little flat case she carried.
+
+"That's brave," she said.  "Nothing's incurable at your age.  Only one
+thing's incurable--getting old."
+
+Noel laughed.  "That's curable too, isn't it?"
+
+"Not without surrender."
+
+Again there was a silence, while the blue fume from two cigarettes
+fast-smoked, rose towards the low ceiling.  Then Noel got up from the
+divan, and went over to the piano.  She was still in her hospital dress
+of lilac-coloured linen, and while she stood there touching the keys,
+playing a chord now, and then, Leila's heart felt hollow from compassion;
+she was so happy herself just now, and this child so very wretched!
+
+"Play to me," she said; "no--don't; I'll play to you."  And sitting down,
+she began to play and sing a little French song, whose first line ran:
+"Si on est jolie, jolie comme vous."  It was soft, gay, charming.  If the
+girl cried, so much the better.  But Noel did not cry.  She seemed
+suddenly to have recovered all her self-possession. She spoke calmly,
+answered Leila's questions without emotion, and said she would go home.
+Leila went out with her, and walked some way in the direction of her
+home; distressed, but frankly at a loss.  At the bottom of Portland Place
+Noel stopped and said: "I'm quite all right now, Leila; thank you
+awfully.  I shall just go home and lie down.  And I shall come to-morrow,
+the same as usual.  Goodbye!" Leila could only grasp the girl's hand, and
+say: "My dear, that's splendid.  There's many a slip--besides, it's
+war-time."
+
+With that saying, enigmatic even to herself, she watched the girl moving
+slowly away; and turned back herself towards her hospital, with a
+disturbed and compassionate heart.
+
+
+2
+
+But Noel did not go east; she walked down Regent Street.  She had
+received a certain measure of comfort, been steadied by her experienced
+cousin's vitality, and the new thoughts suggested by those words: "He
+hasn't quite gone from you, has he?"  "Besides, it's war-time."  Leila
+had spoken freely, too, and the physical ignorance in which the girl had
+been groping these last weeks was now removed. Like most proud natures,
+she did not naturally think much about the opinion of other people;
+besides, she knew nothing of the world, its feelings and judgments.  Her
+nightmare was the thought of her father's horror and grief.  She tried to
+lessen that nightmare by remembering his opposition to her marriage, and
+the resentment she had felt.  He had never realised, never understood,
+how she and Cyril loved.  Now, if she were really going to have a child,
+it would be Cyril's--Cyril's son--Cyril over again.  The instinct
+stronger than reason, refinement, tradition, upbringing, which had pushed
+her on in such haste to make sure of union--the irrepressible pulse of
+life faced with annihilation--seemed to revive within her, and make her
+terrible secret almost precious.  She had read about "War babies" in the
+papers, read with a dull curiosity; but now the atmosphere, as it were,
+of those writings was illumined for her.  These babies were wrong, were a
+"problem," and yet, behind all that, she seemed now to know that people
+were glad of them; they made up, they filled the gaps.  Perhaps, when she
+had one, she would be proud, secretly proud, in spite of everyone, in
+spite of her father!  They had tried to kill Cyril--God and everyone; but
+they hadn't been able, he was alive within her!  A glow came into her
+face, walking among the busy shopping crowd, and people turned to look at
+her; she had that appearance of seeing no one, nothing, which is strange
+and attractive to those who have a moment to spare from contemplation of
+their own affairs.  Fully two hours she wandered thus, before going in,
+and only lost that exalted feeling when, in her own little room, she had
+taken up his photograph, and was sitting on her bed gazing at it. She had
+a bad breakdown then.  Locked in there, she lay on her bed, crying,
+dreadfully lonely, till she fell asleep exhausted, with the tear-stained
+photograph clutched in her twitching fingers.  She woke with a start.  It
+was dark, and someone was knocking on her door.
+
+"Miss Noel!"
+
+Childish perversity kept her silent.  Why couldn't they leave her alone?
+They would leave her alone if they knew.  Then she heard another kind of
+knocking, and her father's voice:
+
+"Nollie!  Nollie!"
+
+She scrambled up, and opened.  He looked scared, and her heart smote her.
+
+"It's all right, Daddy; I was asleep."
+
+"My dear, I'm sorry, but dinner's ready."
+
+"I don't want any dinner; I think I'll go to bed."
+
+The frown between his brows deepened.
+
+"You shouldn't lock your door, Nollie: I was quite frightened.  I went
+round to the hospital to bring you home, and they told me about your
+fainting.  I want you to see a doctor."
+
+Noel shook her head vigorously.  "Oh, no!  It's nothing!"
+
+"Nothing?  To faint like that?  Come, my child.  To please me."  He took
+her face in his hands.  Noel shrank away.
+
+"No, Daddy.  I won't see a doctor.  Extravagance in wartime!  I won't.
+It's no good trying to make me.  I'll come down if you like; I shall be
+all right to-morrow."
+
+With this Pierson had to be content; but, often that evening, she saw him
+looking at her anxiously.  And when she went up, he came out of his
+study, followed to her room, and insisted on lighting her fire. Kissing
+her at the door, he said very quietly:
+
+"I wish I could be a mother to you, my child!"
+
+For a moment it flashed through Noel: 'He knows!' then, by the puzzled
+look on his face, she knew that he did not.  If only he did know; what a
+weight it would be off her mind!  But she answered quietly too; "Good
+night, Daddy dear!" kissed him, and shut the door.
+
+She sat down before the little new fire, and spread her hands out to it;
+all was so cold and wintry in her heart.  And the firelight flickered on
+her face, where shadows lay thick under her eyes, for all the roundness
+of her cheeks, and on her slim pale hands, and the supple grace of her
+young body.  And out in the night, clouds raced over the moon, which had
+come full once more.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+Pierson went back to his study, and wrote to Gratian.
+
+"If you can get leave for a few days, my dear, I want you at home.  I am
+troubled about Nollie.  Ever since that disaster happened to her she has
+been getting paler; and to-day she fainted.  She won't see a doctor, but
+perhaps you could get her to see George.  If you come up, he will surely
+be able to run up to us for a day or two.  If not, you must take her down
+to him at the sea.  I have just seen the news of your second cousin
+Charlie Pierson's death; he was killed in one of the last attacks on the
+Somme; he was nephew of my cousin Leila whom, as you know, Noel sees
+every day at her hospital.  Bertram has the D. S. O.  I have been less
+hard-pressed lately; Lauder has been home on leave and has taken some
+Services for me.  And now the colder weather has come, I am feeling much
+fresher.  Try your best to come. I am seriously concerned for our beloved
+child. "Your affectionate father "EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+Gratian answered that she could get week-end leave, and would come on
+Friday.  He met her at the station, and they drove thence straight to the
+hospital, to pick up Noel.  Leila came to them in the waiting-room, and
+Pierson, thinking they would talk more freely about Noel's health if he
+left them alone, went into the recreation room, and stood watching a game
+of bagatelle between two convalescents.  When he returned to the little
+sitting-room they were still standing by the hearth, talking in low
+voices.  Gratian must surely have been stooping over the fire, for her
+face was red, almost swollen, and her eyes looked as if she had scorched
+them.
+
+Leila said lightly:
+
+"Well, Edward, aren't the men delightful?  When are we going to another
+concert together?"
+
+She, too, was flushed and looking almost young.
+
+"Ah!  If we could do the things we want to.
+
+"That's very pretty, Edward; but you should, you know--for a tonic." He
+shook his head and smiled.
+
+"You're a temptress, Leila.  Will you let Nollie know, please, that we
+can take her back with us?  Can you let her off to-morrow?"
+
+"For as long as you like; she wants a rest.  I've been talking to
+Gratian.  We oughtn't to have let her go on after a shock like that--my
+fault, I'm afraid.  I thought that work might be best."
+
+Pierson was conscious of Gratian walking past him out of the room. He
+held out his hand to Leila, and followed.  A small noise occurred behind
+him such as a woman makes when she has put a foot through her own skirt,
+or has other powerful cause for dismay.  Then he saw Noel in the hall,
+and was vaguely aware of being the centre of a triangle of women whose
+eyes were playing catch-glance.  His daughters kissed each other; and he
+became seated between them in the taxi.  The most unobservant of men, he
+parted from them in the hall without having perceived anything except
+that they were rather silent; and, going to his study, he took up a Life
+of Sir Thomas More.  There was a passage therein which he itched to show
+George Laird, who was coming up that evening.
+
+Gratian and Noel had mounted the stairs with lips tight set, and eyes
+averted; both were very pale.  When they reached the door of Gratian's
+room the room which had been their mother's--Noel was for passing on, but
+Gratian caught her by the arm, and said: "Come in." The fire was burning
+brightly in there, and the two sisters stood in front of it, one on each
+side, their hands clutching the mantel-shelf, staring at the flames.  At
+last Noel put one hand in front of her eyes, and said:
+
+"I asked her to tell you."
+
+Gratian made the movement of one who is gripped by two strong emotions,
+and longs to surrender to one or to the other.
+
+"It's too horrible," was all she said.
+
+Noel turned towards the door.
+
+"Stop, Nollie!"
+
+Noel stopped with her hand on the door knob.  "I don't want to be
+forgiven and sympathised with.  I just want to be let alone."
+
+"How can you be let alone?"
+
+The tide of misery surged up in Noel, and she cried out passionately:
+
+"I hate sympathy from people who can't understand.  I don't want
+anyone's.  I can always go away, and lose myself."
+
+The words "can't understand" gave Gratian a shock.
+
+"I can understand," she said.
+
+"You can't; you never saw him.  You never saw--" her lips quivered so
+that she had to stop and bite them, to keep back a rush of tears.
+
+"Besides you would never have done it yourself."
+
+Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It was
+true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for
+all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy.  How
+terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her only sister, in the
+position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot
+themselves!  And her father--their father!  Till that moment she had
+hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.
+The word: "Dad!" was forced from her.
+
+Noel shuddered.
+
+"That boy!" said Gratian suddenly; "I can't forgive him.  If you didn't
+know--he did.  It was--it was--" She stopped at the sight of Noel's face.
+
+"I did know," she said.  "It was I.  He was my husband, as much as yours
+is.  If you say a word against him, I'll never speak to you again: I'm
+glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one. What's the
+difference, except that you've had luck, and I--haven't." Her lips
+quivered again, and she was silent.
+
+Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George--to know what he
+thought and felt.
+
+"Do you mind if I tell George?"  she said.
+
+Noel shook her head.  "No! not now.  Tell anybody."  And suddenly the
+misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian's heart. She
+got up and put her arms round her sister.
+
+"Nollie dear, don't look like that!"
+
+Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to
+her own room.
+
+Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride was
+deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why couldn't
+she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was no longer
+there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was unpardonable.
+Nollie was such--a child!  He had committed sacrilege. If only George
+would come, and she could talk it all out with him!  She, who had married
+for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel's love
+had been deep--so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a
+child.  Gratian was at the mature age of twenty.  But to have forgotten
+herself like that!  And this boy!  If she had known him, that feeling
+might have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all
+human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as
+"caddish."  And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between
+her and her sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that
+judgment underneath.
+
+She stripped off her nurse's garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted
+about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her father again
+before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for
+him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel's health which would have
+to come.  She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very
+truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.
+
+She went down at last, and found them both in the drawing-room already;
+Noel in a frilly evening frock, sitting by the fire with her chin on her
+hand, while her father was reading out the war news from the evening
+paper.  At sight of that cool, dainty, girlish figure brooding over the
+fire, and of her father's worn face, the tragedy of this business thrust
+itself on her with redoubled force.  Poor Dad!  Poor Nollie!  Awful!
+Then Noel turned, and gave a little shake of her head, and her eyes said,
+almost as plainly as lips could have said it: 'Silence!' Gratian nodded,
+and came forward to the fire. And so began one of those calm, domestic
+evenings, which cover sometimes such depths of heartache.
+
+
+2
+
+Noel stayed up until her father went to bed, then went upstairs at once.
+She had evidently determined that they should not talk about her.
+Gratian sat on alone, waiting for her husband!  It was nearly midnight
+when he came, and she did not tell him the family news till next morning.
+He received it with a curious little grunt.  Gratian saw his eyes
+contract, as they might have, perhaps, looking at some bad and
+complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they
+had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about
+many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart.  This
+skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself,
+a test of the quality of the man she had married.  He did not speak for a
+little, and her anxiety grew.  Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a
+hard squeeze.
+
+"Poor little Nollie!  This is a case for Mark Tapleyism.  But cheer up,
+Gracie!  We'll get her through somehow."
+
+"But father!  It's impossible to keep it from him, and impossible to tell
+him!  Oh George!  I never knew what family pride was till now. It's
+incredible.  That wretched boy!"
+
+"'De mortuis.' Come, Gracie!  In the midst of death we are in life!
+Nollie was a plumb little idiot.  But it's the war--the war!  Your father
+must get used to it; it's a rare chance for his Christianity."
+
+"Dad will be as sweet as anything--that's what makes it so horrible!"
+
+George Laird redoubled his squeeze.  "Quite right!  The old-fashioned
+father could let himself go.  But need he know?  We can get her away from
+London, and later on, we must manage somehow.  If he does hear, we must
+make him feel that Nollie was 'doing her bit.'"
+
+Gratian withdrew her hand.  "Don't!" she said in a muffled voice.
+
+George Laird turned and looked at her.  He was greatly upset himself,
+realising perhaps more truly than his young wife the violence of this
+disaster; he was quite capable, too, of feeling how deeply she was
+stirred and hurt; but, a born pragmatist, confronting life always in the
+experimental spirit, he was impatient of the: "How awful!" attitude.  And
+this streak of her father's ascetic traditionalism in Gratian always
+roused in him a wish to break it up.  If she had not been his wife he
+would have admitted at once that he might just as well try and alter the
+bone-formation of her head, as break down such a fundamental trait of
+character, but, being his wife, he naturally considered alteration as
+possible as putting a new staircase in a house, or throwing two rooms
+into one.  And, taking her in his arms, he said: "I know; but it'll all
+come right, if we put a good face on it.  Shall I talk to Nollie?"
+
+Gratian assented, from the desire to be able to say to her father:
+"George is seeing her!"  and so stay the need for a discussion.  But the
+whole thing seemed to her more and more a calamity which nothing could
+lessen or smooth away.
+
+George Laird had plenty of cool courage, invaluable in men who have to
+inflict as well as to alleviate pain, but he did not like his mission "a
+little bit" as he would have said; and he proposed a walk because he
+dreaded a scene.  Noel accepted for the same reason.  She liked George,
+and with the disinterested detachment of a sister-in-law, and the
+shrewdness of extreme youth, knew him perhaps better than did his wife.
+She was sure, at all events, of being neither condemned nor sympathised
+with.
+
+They might have gone, of course, in any direction, but chose to make for
+the City.  Such deep decisions are subconscious.  They sought, no doubt,
+a dry, unemotional region; or perhaps one where George, who was in
+uniform, might rest his arm from the automatic-toy game which the
+military play.  They had reached Cheapside before he was conscious to the
+full of the bizarre nature of this walk with his pretty young
+sister-in-law among all the bustling, black-coated mob of money-makers.
+'I wish the devil we hadn't come out!' he thought; 'it would have been
+easier indoors, after all.'
+
+He cleared his throat, however, and squeezing her arm gently, began:
+"Gratian's told me, Nollie.  The great thing is to keep your spirit up,
+and not worry."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't cure me."
+
+The words, in that delicate spurning voice, absolutely staggered George;
+but he said quickly:
+
+"Out of the question, Nollie; impossible!  What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Daddy."
+
+The words: "D--n Daddy!"  rose to his teeth; he bit them off, and said:
+"Bless him!  We shall have to see to all that.  Do you really want to
+keep it from him?  It must be one way or the other; no use concealing it,
+if it's to come out later."
+
+"No."
+
+He stole a look at her.  She was gazing straight before her.  How
+damnably young she was, how pretty!  A lump came up in his throat.
+
+"I shouldn't do anything yet," he said; "too early.  Later on, if you'd
+like me to tell him.  But that's entirely up to you, my dear; he need
+never know."
+
+"No."
+
+He could not follow her thought.  Then she said:
+
+"Gratian condemns Cyril.  Don't let her.  I won't have him badly thought
+of.  It was my doing.  I wanted to make sure of him."
+
+George answered stoutly:
+
+"Gracie's upset, of course, but she'll soon be all right.  You mustn't
+let it come between you.  The thing you've got to keep steadily before
+you is that life's a huge wide adaptable thing.  Look at all these
+people!  There's hardly one of them who hasn't got now, or hasn't had,
+some personal difficulty or trouble before them as big as yours almost;
+bigger perhaps.  And here they are as lively as fleas.  That's what makes
+the fascination of life--the jolly irony of it all.  It would do you good
+to have a turn in France, and see yourself in proportion to the whole."
+He felt her fingers suddenly slip under his arm, and went on with greater
+confidence:
+
+"Life's going to be the important thing in the future, Nollie; not
+comfort and cloistered virtue and security; but living, and pressure to
+the square inch.  Do you twig?  All the old hard-and-fast traditions and
+drags on life are in the melting-pot.  Death's boiling their bones, and
+they'll make excellent stock for the new soup.  When you prune and dock
+things, the sap flows quicker.  Regrets and repinings and repressions are
+going out of fashion; we shall have no time or use for them in the
+future.  You're going to make life--well, that's something to be thankful
+for, anyway.  You've kept Cyril Morland alive.  And--well, you know,
+we've all been born; some of us properly, and some improperly, and there
+isn't a ha'porth of difference in the value of the article, or the
+trouble of bringing it into the world.  The cheerier you are the better
+your child will be, and that's all you've got to think about.  You
+needn't begin to trouble at all for another couple of months, at least;
+after that, just let us know where you'd like to go, and I'll arrange it
+somehow."
+
+She looked round at him, and under that young, clear, brooding gaze he
+had the sudden uncomfortable feeling of having spoken like a charlatan.
+Had he really touched the heart of the matter?  What good were his
+generalities to this young, fastidiously nurtured girl, brought up to
+tell the truth, by a father so old-fashioned and devoted, whom she loved?
+It was George's nature, too, to despise words; and the conditions of his
+life these last two years had given him a sort of horror of those who act
+by talking.  He felt inclined to say: 'Don't pay the slightest attention
+to me; it's all humbug; what will be will be, and there's an end of it:
+
+Then she said quietly:
+
+"Shall I tell Daddy or not?"
+
+He wanted to say: "No," but somehow couldn't.  After all, the
+straightforward course was probably the best.  For this would have to be
+a lifelong concealment.  It was impossible to conceal a thing for ever;
+sooner or later he would find out.  But the doctor rose up in him, and he
+said:
+
+"Don't go to meet trouble, Nollie; it'll be time enough in two months.
+Then tell him, or let me."
+
+She shook her head.  "No; I will, if it is to be done."
+
+He put his hand on hers, within his arm, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+"What shall I do till then?"  she asked.
+
+"Take a week's complete rest, and then go on where you are."
+
+Noel was silent a minute, then said: "Yes; I will."
+
+They spoke no more on the subject, and George exerted himself to talk
+about hospital experiences, and that phenomenon, the British soldier. But
+just before they reached home he said:
+
+"Look here, Nollie!  If you're not ashamed of yourself, no one will be
+ashamed of you.  If you put ashes on your own head, your fellow-beings
+will, assist you; for of such is their charity."
+
+And, receiving another of those clear, brooding looks, he left her with
+the thought: 'A lonely child!'
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Noel went back to her hospital after a week's rest.  George had done more
+for her than he suspected, for his saying: "Life's a huge wide adaptable
+thing!" had stuck in her mind.  Did it matter what happened to her?  And
+she used to look into the faces of the people she met, and wonder what
+was absorbing them.  What secret griefs and joys were they carrying about
+with them?  The loneliness of her own life now forced her to this
+speculation concerning others, for she was extraordinarily lonely;
+Gratian and George were back at work, her father must be kept at bay;
+with Leila she felt ill at ease, for the confession had hurt her pride;
+and family friends and acquaintances of all sorts she shunned like the
+plague.  The only person she did not succeed in avoiding was Jimmy Fort,
+who came in one evening after dinner, bringing her a large bunch of
+hothouse violets.  But then, he did not seem to matter--too new an
+acquaintance, too detached. Something he said made her aware that he had
+heard of her loss, and that the violets were a token of sympathy.  He
+seemed awfully kind that evening, telling her "tales of Araby," and
+saying nothing which would shock her father.  It was wonderful to be a
+man and roll about the world as he had, and see all life, and queer
+places, and people--Chinamen, and Gauchos, and Boers, and Mexicans.  It
+gave her a kind of thirst.  And she liked to watch his brown, humorous
+face; which seemed made of dried leather.  It gave her the feeling that
+life and experience were all that mattered, doing and seeing things; it
+made her own trouble seem smaller; less important.  She squeezed his hand
+when she said good night: "Thank you for my violets and for coming; it
+was awfully kind of you!  I wish I could have adventures!"  And he
+answered: "You will, my dear fairy princess!" He said it queerly and very
+kindly.
+
+Fairy Princess!  What a funny thing to call her!  If he had only known!
+
+There were not many adventures to be had in those regions where she
+washed up.  Not much "wide and adaptable life" to take her thoughts off
+herself.  But on her journeys to and from the hospital she had more than
+one odd little experience.  One morning she noticed a poorly dressed
+woman with a red and swollen face, flapping along Regent Street like a
+wounded bird, and biting strangely at her hand. Hearing her groan, Noel
+asked her what the matter was.  The woman held out the hand.  "Oh!" she
+moaned, "I was scrubbin' the floor and I got this great needle stuck
+through my 'and, and it's broke off, and I can't get it out.  Oh!  Oh!"
+She bit at the needle-end, not quite visible, but almost within reach of
+teeth, and suddenly went very white.  In dismay, Noel put an arm round
+her, and turned her into a fine chemist's shop.  Several ladies were in
+there, buying perfumes, and they looked with acerbity at this disordered
+dirty female entering among them.  Noel went up to a man behind the
+counter.  "Please give me something quick, for this poor woman, I think
+she's going to faint.  She's run a needle through her hand, and can't get
+it out."  The man gave her "something quick," and Noel pushed past two of
+the dames back to where the woman was sitting. She was still obstinately
+biting at her hand, and suddenly her chin flew up, and there, between her
+teeth, was the needle.  She took it from them with her other hand, stuck
+it proudly in the front of her dress, and out tumbled the words: "Oh!
+there--I've got it!"
+
+When she had swallowed the draught, she looked round her, bewildered, and
+said:
+
+"Thank you kindly, miss!" and shuffled out.  Noel paid for the draught,
+and followed; and, behind her, the shining shop seemed to exhale a
+perfumed breath of relief.
+
+"You can't go back to work," she said to the woman.  "Where do you live?"
+
+"'Ornsey, miss."
+
+"You must take a 'bus and go straight home, and put your hand at once
+into weak Condy's fluid and water.  It's swelling.  Here's five
+shillings."
+
+"Yes, miss; thank you, miss, I'm sure.  It's very kind of you.  It does
+ache cruel."
+
+"If it's not better this afternoon, you must go to a doctor. Promise!"
+
+"Oh, dear, yes.  'Ere's my 'bus.  Thank you kindly, miss."
+
+Noel saw her borne away, still sucking at her dirty swollen hand. She
+walked on in a glow of love for the poor woman, and hate for the ladies
+in the chemist's shop, and forgot her own trouble till she had almost
+reached the hospital.
+
+Another November day, a Saturday, leaving early, she walked to Hyde Park.
+The plane-trees were just at the height of their spotted beauty.
+Few--very few-yellow leaves still hung; and the slender pretty trees
+seemed rejoicing in their freedom from summer foliage. All their delicate
+boughs and twigs were shaking and dancing in the wind; and their
+rain-washed leopard-like bodies had a lithe un-English gaiety.  Noel
+passed down their line, and seated herself on a bench.  Close by, an
+artist was painting.  His easel was only some three yards away from her,
+and she could see the picture; a vista of the Park Lane houses through,
+the gay plane-tree screen.  He was a tall man, about forty, evidently
+foreign, with a thin, long, oval, beardless face, high brow, large grey
+eyes which looked as if he suffered from headaches and lived much within
+himself.  He cast many glances at her, and, pursuant of her new interest
+in "life" she watched him discreetly; a little startled however, when,
+taking off his broad-brimmed squash hat, he said in a broken accent:
+
+"Forgive me the liberty I take, mademoiselle, but would you so very
+kindly allow me to make a sketch of you sitting there?  I work very
+quick.  I beg you will let me.  I am Belgian, and have no manners, you
+see."  And he smiled.
+
+"If you like," said Noel.
+
+"I thank you very much:"
+
+He shifted his easel, and began to draw.  She felt flattered, and a
+little fluttered.  He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look,
+which moved her.
+
+"Have you been long in England?"  she said presently.
+
+"Ever since the first months of the war."
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"I was very homesick at first.  But I live in my pictures; there are
+wonderful things in London."
+
+"Why did you want to sketch me?"
+
+The painter smiled again.  "Mademoiselle, youth is so mysterious. Those
+young trees I have been painting mean so much more than the old big
+trees.  Your eyes are seeing things that have not yet happened. There is
+Fate in them, and a look of defending us others from seeing it.  We have
+not such faces in my country; we are simpler; we do not defend our
+expressions.  The English are very mysterious.  We are like children to
+them.  Yet in some ways you are like children to us. You are not people
+of the world at all.  You English have been good to us, but you do not
+like us."
+
+"And I suppose you do not like us, either?"
+
+He smiled again, and she noticed how white his teeth were.
+
+"Well, not very much.  The English do things from duty, but their hearts
+they keep to themselves.  And their Art--well, that is really amusing!"
+
+"I don't know much about Art," Noel murmured.
+
+"It is the world to me," said the painter, and was silent, drawing with
+increased pace and passion.
+
+"It is so difficult to get subjects," he remarked abruptly.  "I cannot
+afford to pay models, and they are not fond of me painting out of doors.
+If I had always a subject like you!  You--you have a grief, have you
+not?"
+
+At that startling little question, Noel looked up, frowning.
+
+"Everybody has, now."
+
+The painter grasped his chin; his eyes had suddenly become tragical.
+
+"Yes," he said, "everybody.  Tragedy is daily bread.  I have lost my
+family; they are in Belgium.  How they live I do not know."
+
+"I'm sorry; very sorry, too, if we aren't nice to you, here.  We ought to
+be."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "What would you have?  We are different. That
+is unpardonable.  An artist is always lonely, too; he has a skin fewer
+than other people, and he sees things that they do not.  People do not
+like you to be different.  If ever in your life you act differently from
+others, you will find it so, mademoiselle."
+
+Noel felt herself flushing.  Was he reading her secret?  His eyes had
+such a peculiar, secondsighted look.
+
+"Have you nearly finished?"  she asked.
+
+"No, mademoiselle; I could go on for hours; but I do not wish to keep
+you.  It is cold for you, sitting there."
+
+Noel got up.  "May I look?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+She did not quite recognise herself--who does?--but she saw a face which
+affected her oddly, of a girl looking at something which was, and yet was
+not, in front of her.
+
+"My name is Lavendie," the painter said; "my wife and I live here," and
+he gave her a card.
+
+Noel could not help answering: "My name is Noel Pierson; I live with my
+father; here's the address"--she found her case, and fished out a card.
+"My father is a clergyman; would you care to come and see him?  He loves
+music and painting."
+
+"It would be a great pleasure; and perhaps I might be allowed to paint
+you.  Alas!  I have no studio."
+
+Noel drew back.  "I'm afraid that I work in a hospital all day, and--and
+I don't want to be painted, thank you.  But, Daddy would like to meet
+you, I'm sure."
+
+The painter bowed again; she saw that he was hurt.
+
+"Of course I can see that you're a very fine painter," she said quickly;
+"only--only--I don't want to, you see.  Perhaps you'd like to paint
+Daddy; he's got a most interesting face."
+
+The painter smiled.  "He is your father, mademoiselle.  May I ask you one
+question?  Why do you not want to be painted?"
+
+"Because--because I don't, I'm afraid."  She held out her hand.  The
+painter bowed over it.  "Au revoir, mademoiselle."
+
+"Thank you," said Noel; "it was awfully interesting."  And she walked
+away.  The sky had become full of clouds round the westerly sun; and the
+foreign crinkled tracery of the plane-tree branches against that
+French-grey, golden-edged mass, was very lovely.  Beauty, and the
+troubles of others, soothed her.  She felt sorry for the painter, but his
+eyes saw too much!  And his words: "If ever you act differently from
+others," made her feel him uncanny.  Was it true that people always
+disliked and condemned those who acted differently?  If her old
+school-fellows now knew what was before her, how would they treat her?
+In her father's study hung a little reproduction of a tiny picture in the
+Louvre, a "Rape of Europa," by an unknown painter--a humorous delicate
+thing, of an enraptured; fair-haired girl mounted on a prancing white
+bull, crossing a shallow stream, while on the bank all her white
+girl-companions were gathered, turning half-sour, half-envious faces away
+from that too-fearful spectacle, while one of them tried with timid
+desperation to mount astride of a sitting cow, and follow.  The face of
+the girl on the bull had once been compared by someone with her own.  She
+thought of this picture now, and saw her school fellows-a throng of
+shocked and wondering girls.  Suppose one of them had been in her
+position!  'Should I have been turning my face away, like the rest?  I
+wouldn't no, I wouldn't,' she thought; 'I should have understood!'  But
+she knew there was a kind of false emphasis in her thought.
+Instinctively she felt the painter right. One who acted differently from
+others, was lost.
+
+She told her father of the encounter, adding:
+
+"I expect he'll come, Daddy."
+
+Pierson answered dreamily: "Poor fellow, I shall be glad to see him if he
+does."
+
+"And you'll sit to him, won't you?"
+
+"My dear--I?"
+
+"He's lonely, you know, and people aren't nice to him.  Isn't it hateful
+that people should hurt others, because they're foreign or different?"
+
+She saw his eyes open with mild surprise, and went on: "I know you think
+people are charitable, Daddy, but they aren't, of course."
+
+"That's not exactly charitable, Nollie."
+
+"You know they're not.  I think sin often just means doing things
+differently.  It's not real sin when it only hurts yourself; but that
+doesn't prevent people condemning you, does it?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Nollie."
+
+Noel bit her lips, and murmured: "Are you sure we're really Christians,
+Daddy?"
+
+The question was so startling, from his own daughter, that Pierson took
+refuge in an attempt at wit.  "I should like notice of that question,
+Nollie, as they say in Parliament."
+
+"That means you don't."
+
+Pierson flushed.  "We're fallible enough; but, don't get such ideas into
+your head, my child.  There's a lot of rebellious talk and writing in
+these days...."
+
+Noel clasped her hands behind her head.  "I think," she said, looking
+straight before her, and speaking to the air, "that Christianity is what
+you do, not what you think or say.  And I don't believe people can be
+Christians when they act like others--I mean, when they join together to
+judge and hurt people."
+
+Pierson rose and paced the room.  "You have not seen enough of life to
+talk like that," he said.  But Noel went on:
+
+"One of the men in her hospital told Gratian about the treatment of
+conscientious objectors--it was horrible.  Why do they treat them like
+that, just because they disagree?  Captain Fort says it's fear which
+makes people bullies.  But how can it be fear when they're hundreds to
+one?  He says man has domesticated his animals but has never succeeded in
+domesticating himself.  Man must be a wild beast, you know, or the world
+couldn't be so awfully brutal.  I don't see much difference between being
+brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones."
+
+Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile.  There was something
+fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched
+grow up from a tiny thing.  Out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings--sometimes!  But then the young generation was always something
+of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his
+cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of
+others, especially the young.  There were so many things of which he was
+compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss.  And they
+knew it too well.  Until these last few months he had never realised that
+his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of
+Brazil.  And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not
+imagine how to get on terms with them.
+
+And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
+the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
+And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
+time, thinking.  He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
+he knew no one.  He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
+active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow.  Amongst
+the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
+attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
+half one's age.  But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
+one to whom he could have gone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Leila was deep in her new draught of life.  When she fell in love it had
+always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
+itself out before that of her partner.  This had been, of course, a great
+advantage to her.  Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
+themselves out.  When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
+always.  This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
+Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
+He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these
+others seemed to her now almost ridiculous.  Indeed they did not figure
+at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the
+others for whom she had known passing weaknesses.  There was only one man
+in the world for her now, and would be for evermore.  She did not
+idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was thrilled by
+his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him when he was
+not with her.  She worried, too, for she was perfectly aware that he was
+not half as fond of her as she was of him.  Such a new experience puzzled
+her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert.  It was perhaps just this
+uncertainty about his affection which made him seem more precious than
+any of the others.  But there was ever the other reason,
+too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last grand
+passion.  She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten, without
+seeming to, of course, for she had much experience.  She had begun to
+have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not have
+said.  It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from that
+vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she had
+been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to what he
+called "that little fairy princess." Something intangible, instinctive,
+gave her that jealousy.  Until the death of her young cousin's lover she
+had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not hanker after
+another man's property; had he not proved that in old days, with herself,
+by running away from her?  And she had often regretted having told him of
+Cyril Morland's death. One day she determined to repair that error.  It
+was at the Zoo, where they often went on Sunday afternoons.  They were
+standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both
+of old days on the veldt.  Without turning her head she said, as if to
+the little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call
+her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?"
+
+The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab.  It was so utterly
+horrified.
+
+She said stubbornly: "She came and told me all about it.  The boy is
+dead, as you know.  Yes, terrible, isn't it?"  And she looked at him. His
+face was almost comic, so wrinkled up with incredulity.
+
+"That lovely child!  But it's impossible!"
+
+"The impossible is sometimes true, Jimmy."
+
+"I refuse to believe it."
+
+"I tell you it is so," she said angrily.
+
+"What a ghastly shame!"
+
+"It was her own doing; she said so, herself."
+
+"And her father--the padre!  My God!"
+
+Leila was suddenly smitten with a horrible doubt.  She had thought it
+would disgust him, cure him of any little tendency to romanticise that
+child; and now she perceived that it was rousing in him, instead, a
+dangerous compassion.  She could have bitten her tongue out for having
+spoken.  When he got on the high horse of some championship, he was not
+to be trusted, she had found that out; was even finding it out bitterly
+in her own relations with him, constantly aware that half her hold on
+him, at least, lay in his sense of chivalry, aware that he knew her
+lurking dread of being flung on the beach, by age.  Only ten minutes ago
+he had uttered a tirade before the cage of a monkey which seemed unhappy.
+And now she had roused that dangerous side of him in favour of Noel.
+What an idiot she had been!
+
+"Don't look like that, Jimmy.  I'm sorry I told you."
+
+His hand did not answer her pressure in the least, but he muttered:
+
+"Well, I do think that's the limit.  What's to be done for her?"
+
+Leila answered softly: "Nothing, I'm afraid.  Do you love me?"  And she
+pressed his hand hard.
+
+"Of course."
+
+But Leila thought: 'If I were that meercat he'd have taken more notice of
+my paw!'  Her heart began suddenly to ache, and she walked on to the next
+cage with head up, and her mouth hard set.
+
+Jimmy Fort walked away from Camelot Mansions that evening in extreme
+discomfort of mind.  Leila had been so queer that he had taken leave
+immediately after supper.  She had refused to talk about Noel; had even
+seemed angry when he had tried to.  How extraordinary some women were!
+Did they think that a man could hear of a thing like that about such a
+dainty young creature without being upset!  It was the most perfectly
+damnable news!  What on earth would she do--poor little fairy princess!
+Down had come her house of cards with a vengeance!  The whole of her
+life--the whole of her life!  With her bringing-up and her father and
+all--it seemed inconceivable that she could ever survive it.  And Leila
+had been almost callous about the monstrous business.  Women were hard to
+each other!  Bad enough, these things, when it was a simple working girl,
+but this dainty, sheltered, beautiful child!  No, it was altogether too
+strong--too painful!  And following an impulse which he could not resist,
+he made his way to the old Square.  But having reached the house, he
+nearly went away again.  While he stood hesitating with his hand on the
+bell, a girl and a soldier passed, appearing as if by magic out of the
+moonlit November mist, blurred and solid shapes embraced, then vanished
+into it again, leaving the sound of footsteps.  Fort jerked the bell.  He
+was shown into what seemed, to one coming out of that mist, to be a
+brilliant, crowded room, though in truth there were but two lamps and
+five people in it.  They were sitting round the fire, talking, and paused
+when he came in.  When he had shaken hands with Pierson and been
+introduced to "my daughter Gratian" and a man in khaki "my son-in-law
+George Laird," to a tall thin-faced, foreign-looking man in a black stock
+and seemingly no collar, he went up to Noel, who had risen from a chair
+before the fire.  'No!' he thought, 'I've dreamed it, or Leila has lied!'
+She was so perfectly the self-possessed, dainty maiden he remembered.
+Even the feel of her hand was the same-warm and confident; and sinking
+into a chair, he said: "Please go on, and let me chip in."
+
+"We were quarrelling about the Universe, Captain Fort," said the man in
+khaki; "delighted to have your help.  I was just saying that this
+particular world has no particular importance, no more than a
+newspaper-seller would accord to it if it were completely destroyed
+tomorrow--''Orrible catastrophe, total destruction of the world--six
+o'clock edition-pyper!'  I say that it will become again the nebula out
+of which it was formed, and by friction with other nebula re-form into a
+fresh shape and so on ad infinitum--but I can't explain why. My wife
+wonders if it exists at all except in the human mind--but she can't
+explain what the human mind is.  My father-in-law thinks that it is God's
+hobby--but he can't explain who or what God is.  Nollie is silent.  And
+Monsieur Lavendie hasn't yet told us what he thinks. What do you think,
+monsieur?"  The thin-faced, big-eyed man put up his hand to his high,
+veined brow as if he had a headache, reddened, and began to speak in
+French, which Fort followed with difficulty.
+
+"For me the Universe is a limitless artist, monsieur, who from all time
+and to all time is ever expressing himself in differing forms--always
+trying to make a masterpiece, and generally failing.  For me this world,
+and all the worlds, are like ourselves, and the flowers and trees--little
+separate works of art, more or less perfect, whose little lives run their
+course, and are spilled or powdered back into this Creative Artist,
+whence issue ever fresh attempts at art.  I agree with Monsieur Laird, if
+I understand him right; but I agree also with Madame Laird, if I
+understand her.  You see, I think mind and matter are one, or perhaps
+there is no such thing as either mind or matter, only growth and decay
+and growth again, for ever and ever; but always conscious growth--an
+artist expressing himself in millions of ever-changing forms; decay and
+death as we call them, being but rest and sleep, the ebbing of the tide,
+which must ever come between two rising tides, or the night which comes
+between two days.  But the next day is never the same as the day before,
+nor the tide as the last tide; so the little shapes of the world and of
+ourselves, these works of art by the Eternal Artist, are never renewed in
+the same form, are never twice alike, but always fresh-fresh worlds,
+fresh individuals, fresh flowers, fresh everything.  I do not see
+anything depressing in that.  To me it would be depressing to think that
+I would go on living after death, or live again in a new body, myself yet
+not myself.  How stale that would be!  When I finish a picture it is
+inconceivable to me that this picture should ever become another picture,
+or that one can divide the expression from the mind-stuff it has
+expressed.  The Great Artist who is the whole of Everything, is ever in
+fresh effort to achieve new things.  He is as a fountain who throws up
+new drops, no two ever alike, which fall back into the water, flow into
+the pipe, and so are thrown up again in fresh-shaped drops.  But I cannot
+explain why there should be this Eternal Energy, ever expressing itself
+in fresh individual shapes, this Eternal Working Artist, instead of
+nothing at all--just empty dark for always; except indeed that it must be
+one thing or the other, either all or nothing; and it happens to be this
+and not that, the all and not the nothing."
+
+He stopped speaking, and his big eyes, which had fixed themselves on
+Fort's face, seemed to the latter not to be seeing him at all, but to
+rest on something beyond.  The man in khaki, who had risen and was
+standing with his hand on his wife's shoulder, said:
+
+"Bravo, monsieur; Jolly well put from the artist's point of view. The
+idea is pretty, anyway; but is there any need for an idea at all?  Things
+are; and we have just to take them."  Fort had the impression of
+something dark and writhing; the thin black form of his host, who had
+risen and come close to the fire.
+
+"I cannot admit," he was saying, "the identity of the Creator with the
+created.  God exists outside ourselves.  Nor can I admit that there is no
+defnite purpose and fulfilment.  All is shaped to His great ends.  I
+think we are too given to spiritual pride.  The world has lost reverence;
+I regret it, I bitterly regret it."
+
+"I rejoice at it," said the man in khaki.  "Now, Captain Fort, your turn
+to bat!"
+
+Fort, who had been looking at Noel, gave himself a shake, and said: "I
+think what monsieur calls expression, I call fighting.  I suspect the
+Universe of being simply a long fight, a sum of conquests and defeats.
+Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests.  I want to win while
+I'm alive, and because I want to win, I want to live on after death.
+Death is a defeat.  I don't want to admit it.  While I have that
+instinct, I don't think I shall really die; when I lose it, I think I
+shall."  He was conscious of Noel's face turning towards him, but had the
+feeling that she wasn't really listening. "I suspect that what we call
+spirit is just the fighting instinct; that what we call matter is the
+mood of lying down.  Whether, as Mr. Pierson says, God is outside us, or,
+as monsieur thinks, we are all part of God, I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Ah!  There we are!" said the man in khaki.  "We all speak after our
+temperaments, and none of us know.  The religions of the world are just
+the poetic expressions of certain strongly marked temperaments. Monsieur
+was a poet just now, and his is the only temperament which has never yet
+been rammed down the world's throat in the form of religion.  Go out and
+proclaim your views from the housetops, monsieur, and see what happens."
+
+The painter shook his head with a smile which seemed to Fort very bright
+on the surface, and very sad underneath.
+
+"Non, monsieur," he said; "the artist does not wish to impose his
+temperament.  Difference of temperament is the very essence of his joy,
+and his belief in life.  Without difference there would be no life for
+him.  'Tout casse, tout lasse,' but change goes on for ever: We artists
+reverence change, monsieur; we reverence the newness of each morning, of
+each night, of each person, of each expression of energy.  Nothing is
+final for us; we are eager for all and always for more.  We are in love,
+you see, even with-death."
+
+There was a silence; then Fort heard Pierson murmur:
+
+"That is beautiful, monsieur; but oh! how wrong!"  "And what do you
+think, Nollie?" said the man in khaki suddenly.  The girl had been
+sitting very still in her low chair, with her hands crossed in her lap,
+her eyes on the fire, and the lamplight shining down on her fair hair;
+she looked up, startled, and her eyes met Fort's.
+
+"I don't know; I wasn't listening."  Something moved in him, a kind of
+burning pity, a rage of protection.  He said quickly:
+
+"These are times of action.  Philosophy seems to mean nothing nowadays.
+The one thing is to hate tyranny and cruelty, and protect everything
+that's weak and lonely.  It's all that's left to make life worth living,
+when all the packs of all the world are out for blood."
+
+Noel was listening now, and he went on fervently: "Why!  Even we who
+started out to fight this Prussian pack, have caught the pack feeling--so
+that it's hunting all over the country, on every sort of scent. It's a
+most infectious thing."
+
+"I cannot see that we are being infected, Captain Fort."
+
+"I'm afraid we are, Mr.  Pierson.  The great majority of people are
+always inclined to run with the hounds; the pressure's great just now;
+the pack spirit's in the air."
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "No, I cannot see it," he repeated; "it seems to
+me that we are all more brotherly, and more tolerant."
+
+"Ah! monsieur le cure," Fort heard the painter say very gently, "it is
+difficult for a good man to see the evil round him.  There are those whom
+the world's march leaves apart, and reality cannot touch. They walk with
+God, and the bestialities of us animals are fantastic to them.  The
+spirit of the pack, as monsieur says, is in the air.  I see all human
+nature now, running with gaping mouths and red tongues lolling out, their
+breath and their cries spouting thick before them. On whom they will fall
+next--one never knows; the innocent with the guilty.  Perhaps if you were
+to see some one dear to you devoured before your eyes, monsieur le cure,
+you would feel it too; and yet I do not know."
+
+Fort saw Noel turn her face towards her father; her expression at that
+moment was very strange, searching, half frightened.  No!  Leila had not
+lied, and he had not dreamed!  That thing was true!
+
+When presently he took his leave, and was out again in the Square, he
+could see nothing but her face and form before him in the moonlight: its
+soft outline, fair colouring, slender delicacy, and the brooding of the
+big grey eyes.  He had already crossed New Oxford Street and was some way
+down towards the Strand, when a voice behind him murmured: "Ah! c'est
+vous, monsieur!"  and the painter loomed up at his elbow.
+
+"Are you going my way?"  said Fort.  "I go slowly, I'm afraid."
+
+"The slower the better, monsieur.  London is so beautiful in the dark.
+It is the despair of the painter--these moonlit nights.  There are
+moments when one feels that reality does not exist.  All is in
+dreams--like the face of that young lady."
+
+Fort stared sharply round at him.  "Oh!  She strikes you like that, does
+she?"
+
+"Ah!  What a charming figure!  What an atmosphere of the past and future
+round her!  And she will not let me paint her!  Well, perhaps only
+Mathieu Maris."  He raised his broad Bohemian hat, and ran his fingers
+through his hair.
+
+"Yes," said Fort, "she'd make a wonderful picture.  I'm not a judge of
+Art, but I can see that."
+
+The painter smiled, and went on in his rapid French:
+
+"She has youth and age all at once--that is rare.  Her father is an
+interesting man, too; I am trying to paint him; he is very difficult. He
+sits lost in some kind of vacancy of his own; a man whose soul has gone
+before him somewhere, like that of his Church, escaped from this age of
+machines, leaving its body behind--is it not?  He is so kind; a saint, I
+think.  The other clergymen I see passing in the street are not at all
+like him; they look buttoned-up and busy, with faces of men who might be
+schoolmasters or lawyers, or even soldiers--men of this world.  Do you
+know this, monsieur--it is ironical, but it is true, I think a man cannot
+be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world.  I do not see
+any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within, and not
+quite present.  He is half an artist, really a lover of music, that man.
+I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is alive, but
+even then, so far away.  To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a beautiful
+church which knows it is being deserted.  I find him pathetic.  Je suis
+socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that old
+Church, which held its children by simple emotion.  The times have
+changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its
+spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but
+out of tune with the music of the streets.  It is something of that which
+I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it is
+difficult!"  Fort grunted assent.  So far as he could make out the
+painter's words, it seemed to him a large order.
+
+"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
+background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing him
+and leaving him untouched.  There is no illusion, and no dreaming, in
+modern life.  Look at this street.  La, la!"
+
+In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
+streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity. The
+motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
+muttered their ceaseless invitations.  Again the painter made his gesture
+of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
+washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
+the street?  See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
+yet it stands, seeming not to see them.  If I were a phantasist, it would
+be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me--those
+romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
+ends.  Moi, je suis realiste.  And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
+I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
+hanging on the wall--of one of these young town girls who have no
+mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
+defiance, and good humour.  He is looking up at it, but he does not see
+it.  I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he
+shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing.  What do you think of my idea?"
+
+But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
+action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.
+
+"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all my
+sympathy is with modern life.  Take these young girls, and these Tommies.
+For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned vulgar, I must
+say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough with the smooth;
+they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing this particularly
+beastly world.  Aesthetically, I daresay, they're deplorable, but can you
+say that on the whole their philosophy isn't an advance on anything we've
+had up till now?  They worship nothing, it's true; but they keep their
+ends up marvellously."
+
+The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see; better or
+worse, I do not know.  But look at this!"  And he pointed down the
+darkened and moonlit street.  It was all jewelled and enamelled with
+little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and the
+downward orange glow of the high lamps--like an enchanted dream-street
+peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality when
+seen close to.  The painter drew his breath in with a hiss.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "what beauty!  And they don't see it--not one in a
+thousand!  Pity, isn't it?  Beauty is the holy thing!"
+
+Fort, in his turn, shrugged his shoulders.  "Every man to his vision!"
+he said.  "My leg's beginning to bother me; I'm afraid I must take a cab.
+Here's my address; any time you like to come.  I'm often in about seven.
+I can't take you anywhere, I suppose?"
+
+"A thousand thanks, monsieur; but I go north.  I loved your words about
+the pack.  I often wake at night and hear the howling of all the packs of
+the world.  Those who are by nature gentle nowadays feel they are
+strangers in a far land.  Good night, monsieur!"
+
+He took off his queer hat, bowed low, and crossed out into the Strand,
+like one who had come in a dream, and faded out with the waking.  Fort
+hailed a cab, and went home, still seeing Noel's face. There was one, if
+you liked, waiting to be thrown to the wolves, waiting for the world's
+pack to begin howling round her--that lovely child; and the first, the
+loudest of all the pack, perhaps, must be her own father, the lean, dark
+figure with the gentle face, and the burnt bright eyes.  What a ghastly
+business!  His dreams that night were not such as Leila would have
+approved.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When in the cupboard there is a real and very bony skeleton, carefully
+kept from the sight of a single member of the family, the position of
+that member is liable to become lonely.  But Pierson, who had been lonely
+fifteen years, did not feel it so much, perhaps, as most men would have.
+In his dreamy nature there was a curious self-sufficiency, which only
+violent shocks disturbed, and he went on with his routine of duty, which
+had become for him as set as the pavements he trod on his way to and from
+it.  It was not exactly true, as the painter had said, that this routine
+did not bring him into touch with life.  After all he saw people when
+they were born, when they married, when they died.  He helped them when
+they wanted money, and when they were ill; he told their children Bible
+stories on Sunday afternoons; he served those who were in need with soup
+and bread from his soup kitchen.  He never spared himself in any way, and
+his ears were always at the service of their woes.  And yet he did not
+understand them, and they knew that.  It was as though he, or they, were
+colour-blind.  The values were all different.  He was seeing one set of
+objects, they another.
+
+One street of his parish touched a main line of thoroughfare, and formed
+a little part of the new hunting-grounds of women, who, chased forth from
+their usual haunts by the Authorities under pressure of the country's
+danger, now pursued their calling in the dark.  This particular evil had
+always been a sort of nightmare to Pierson.  The starvation which ruled
+his own existence inclined him to a particularly severe view and severity
+was not his strong point.  In consequence there was ever within him a
+sort of very personal and poignant struggle going on beneath that seeming
+attitude of rigid disapproval.  He joined the hunters, as it were,
+because he was afraid-not, of course, of his own instincts, for he was
+fastidious, a gentleman, and a priest, but of being lenient to a sin, to
+something which God abhorred: He was, as it were, bound to take a
+professional view of this particular offence.  When in his walks abroad
+he passed one of these women, he would unconsciously purse his lips, and
+frown. The darkness of the streets seemed to lend them such power, such
+unholy sovereignty over the night.  They were such a danger to the
+soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the lambs
+of his flock.  Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from
+time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers,
+so that they were about to become mothers.  They seemed to him pitiful
+indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting
+temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight.
+The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough.  When the
+babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had
+formed, of three married and two maiden ladies, who visited the mothers,
+and if necessary took the babies into a creche; for those babies had a
+new value to the country, and were not--poor little things!--to be held
+responsible for their mothers' faults.  He himself saw little of the
+young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being
+censorious enough.  But once in a way Life set him face to face with one.
+
+On New Year's Eve he was sitting in his study after tea, at that hour
+which he tried to keep for his parishioners, when a Mrs. Mitchett was
+announced, a small bookseller's wife, whom he knew for an occasional
+Communicant.  She came in, accompanied by a young dark-eyed girl in a
+loose mouse-coloured coat.  At his invitation they sat down in front of
+the long bookcase on the two green leather chairs which had grown worn in
+the service of the parish; and, screwed round in his chair at the bureau,
+with his long musician's fingers pressed together, he looked at them and
+waited.  The woman had taken out her handkerchief, and was wiping her
+eyes; but the girl sat quiet, as the mouse she somewhat resembled in that
+coat.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Mitchett?"  He said gently, at last.
+
+The woman put away her handkerchief, sniffed resolutely, and began:
+
+"It's 'Ilda, sir.  Such a thing Mitchett and me never could 'ave
+expected, comin' on us so sudden.  I thought it best to bring 'er round,
+poor girl.  Of course, it's all the war.  I've warned 'er a dozen times;
+but there it is, comin' next month, and the man in France."  Pierson
+instinctively averted his gaze from the girl, who had not moved her eyes
+from his face, which she scanned with a seeming absence of interest, as
+if she had long given up thinking over her lot, and left it now to
+others.
+
+"That is sad," he said; "very, very sad."
+
+"Yes," murmured Mrs. Mitchett; "that's what I tell 'Ilda."
+
+The girl's glance, lowered for a second, resumed its impersonal scrutiny
+of Pierson's face.
+
+"What is the man's name and regiment?  Perhaps we can get leave for him
+to come home and marry Hilda at once."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett sniffed.  "She won't give it, sir.  Now, 'Ilda, give it to
+Mr.  Pierson."  And her voice had a real note of entreaty.  The girl
+shook her head.  Mrs. Mitchett murmured dolefully: "That's 'ow she is,
+sir; not a word will she say.  And as I tell her, we can only think there
+must 'ave been more than one.  And that does put us to shame so!"
+
+But still the girl made no sign.
+
+"You speak to her, sir; I'm really at my wit's end."
+
+"Why won't you tell us?" said Pierson.  "The man will want to do the
+right thing, 'I'm sure."
+
+The girl shook her head, and spoke for the first time.
+
+"I don't know his name."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett's face twitched.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she said: "Think of that!  She's never said as much to us."
+
+"Not know his name?"  Pierson murmured.  "But how--how could you--" he
+stopped, but his face had darkened.  "Surely you would never have done
+such a thing without affection?  Come, tell me!"
+
+"I don't know it," the girl repeated.
+
+"It's these Parks," said Mrs.  Mitchett, from behind her handkerchief.
+"And to think that this'll be our first grandchild and all!  'Ilda is
+difficult; as quiet, as quiet; but that stubborn--"
+
+Pierson looked at the girl, who seemed, if anything, less interested than
+ever.  This impenetrability and something mulish in her attitude annoyed
+him.  "I can't think," he said, "how you could so have forgotten
+yourself.  It's truly grievous."
+
+Mrs. Mitchett murmured: "Yes, sir; the girls gets it into their heads
+that there's going to be no young men for them."
+
+"That's right," said the girl sullenly.
+
+Pierson's lips grew tighter.  "Well, what can I do for you, Mrs.
+Mitchett?"  he said.  "Does your daughter come to church?"
+
+Mrs.  Mitchett shook her head mournfully.  "Never since she had her
+byke."
+
+Pierson rose from his chair.  The old story!  Control and discipline
+undermined, and these bitter apples the result!
+
+"Well," he said, "if you need our creche, you have only to come to me,"
+and he turned to the girl.  "And you--won't you let this dreadful
+experience move your heart?  My dear girl, we must all master ourselves,
+our passions, and our foolish wilfulness, especially in these times when
+our country needs us strong, and self-disciplined, not thinking of
+ourselves.  I'm sure you're a good girl at heart."
+
+The girl's dark eyes, unmoved from his face, roused in him a spasm of
+nervous irritation.  "Your soul is in great danger, and you're very
+unhappy, I can see.  Turn to God for help, and in His mercy everything
+will be made so different for you--so very different!  Come!"
+
+The girl said with a sort of surprising quietness: "I don't want the
+baby!"
+
+The remark staggered him, almost as if she had uttered a hideous oath.
+
+"'Ilda was in munitions," said her mother in an explanatory voice:
+"earnin' a matter of four pound a week.  Oh! dear, it is a waste an'
+all!"  A queer, rather terrible little smile curled Pierson's lips.
+
+"A judgment!" he said.  "Good evening, Mrs. Mitchett.  Good evening,
+Hilda.  If you want me when the time comes, send for me."
+
+They stood up; he shook hands with them; and was suddenly aware that the
+door was open, and Noel standing there.  He had heard no sound; and how
+long she had been there he could not tell.  There was a singular fixity
+in her face and attitude.  She was staring at the girl, who, as she
+passed, lifted her face, so that the dark eyes and the grey eyes met.
+The door was shut, and Noel stood there alone with him.
+
+"Aren't you early, my child?"  said Pierson.  "You came in very quietly."
+
+"Yes; I heard."
+
+A slight shock went through him at the tone of her voice; her face had
+that possessed look which he always dreaded.  "What did you hear?"  he
+said.
+
+"I heard you say: 'A judgment!'  You'll say the same to me, won't you?
+Only, I do want my baby."
+
+She was standing with her back to the door, over which a dark curtain
+hung; her face looked young and small against its stuff, her eyes very
+large.  With one hand she plucked at her blouse, just over her heart.
+
+Pierson stared at her, and gripped the back of the chair he had been
+sitting in.  A lifetime of repression served him in the half-realised
+horror of that moment.  He stammered out the single word--
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"It's quite true," she said, turned round, and went out.
+
+Pierson had a sort of vertigo; if he had moved, he must have fallen down.
+Nollie!  He slid round and sank into his chair, and by some horrible
+cruel fiction of his nerves, he seemed to feel Noel on his knee, as, when
+a little girl, she had been wont to sit, with her fair hair fluffing
+against his cheek.  He seemed to feel that hair tickling his skin; it
+used to be the greatest comfort he had known since her mother died.  At
+that moment his pride shrivelled like a flower held to a flame; all that
+abundant secret pride of a father who loves and admires, who worships
+still a dead wife in the children she has left him; who, humble by
+nature, yet never knows how proud he is till the bitter thing happens;
+all the long pride of the priest who, by dint of exhortation and
+remonstrance has coated himself in a superiority he hardly suspects--all
+this pride shrivelled in him. Then something writhed and cried within, as
+a tortured beast cries, at loss to know why it is being tortured.  How
+many times has not a man used those words: "My God!  My God!  Why hast
+Thou forsaken me!" He sprang up and tried to pace his way out of this
+cage of confusion: His thoughts and feelings made the strangest medley,
+spiritual and worldly--Social ostracism--her soul in peril--a trial sent
+by God!  The future!  Imagination failed him.  He went to his little
+piano, opened it, closed it again; took his hat, and stole out.  He
+walked fast, without knowing where.  It was very cold--a clear, bitter
+evening.  Silent rapid motion in the frosty air was some relief.  As Noel
+had fled from him, having uttered her news, so did he fly from her.  The
+afflicted walk fast.  He was soon down by the river, and turned West
+along its wall.  The moon was up, bright and nearly full, and the
+steel-like shimmer of its light burnished the ebbing water. A cruel
+night!  He came to the Obelisk, and leaned against it, overcome by a
+spasm of realisation.  He seemed to see his dead wife's face staring at
+him out of the past, like an accusation.  "How have you cared for Nollie,
+that she should have come to this?"  It became the face of the moonlit
+sphinx, staring straight at him, the broad dark face with wide nostrils,
+cruel lips, full eyes blank of pupils, all livened and whitened by the
+moonlight--an embodiment of the marvellous unseeing energy of Life,
+twisting and turning hearts without mercy.  He gazed into those eyes with
+a sort of scared defiance.  The great clawed paws of the beast, the
+strength and remorseless serenity of that crouching creature with human
+head, made living by his imagination and the moonlight, seemed to him
+like a temptation to deny God, like a refutation of human virtue.
+
+Then, the sense of beauty stirred in him; he moved where he could see its
+flanks coated in silver by the moonlight, the ribs and the great muscles,
+and the tail with tip coiled over the haunch, like the head of a serpent.
+It was weirdly living; fine and cruel, that great man-made thing.  It
+expressed something in the soul of man, pitiless and remote from love--or
+rather, the remorselessness which man had seen, lurking within man's
+fate.  Pierson recoiled from it, and resumed his march along the
+Embankment, almost deserted in the bitter cold.  He came to where, in the
+opening of the Underground railway, he could see the little forms of
+people moving, little orange and red lights glowing.  The sight arrested
+him by its warmth and motion.  Was it not all a dream?  That woman and
+her daughter, had they really come?  Had not Noel been but an apparition,
+her words a trick which his nerves had played him?  Then, too vividly
+again, he saw her face against the dark stuff of the curtain, the curve
+of her hand plucking at her blouse, heard the sound of his own horrified:
+"Nollie!"  No illusion, no deception!  The edifice of his life was in the
+dust. And a queer and ghastly company of faces came about him; faces he
+had thought friendly, of good men and women whom he knew, yet at that
+moment did not know, all gathered round Noel, with fingers pointing at
+her.  He staggered back from that vision, could not bear it, could not
+recognise this calamity.  With a sort of comfort, yet an aching sense of
+unreality, his mind flew to all those summer holidays spent in Scotland,
+Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, by mountain and lake, with his two girls; what
+sunsets, and turning leaves, birds, beasts, and insects they had watched
+together!  From their youthful companionship, their eagerness, their
+confidence in him, he had known so much warmth and pleasure.  If all
+those memories were true, surely this could not be true.  He felt
+suddenly that he must hurry back, go straight to Noel, tell her that she
+had been cruel to him, or assure himself that, for the moment, she had
+been insane: His temper rose suddenly, took fire.  He felt anger against
+her, against every one he knew, against life itself.  Thrusting his hands
+deep into the pockets of his thin black overcoat, he plunged into that
+narrow glowing tunnel of the station booking-office, which led back to
+the crowded streets.  But by the time he reached home his anger had
+evaporated; he felt nothing but utter lassitude.  It was nine o'clock,
+and the maids had cleared the dining table.  In despair Noel had gone up
+to her room.  He had no courage left, and sat down supperless at his
+little piano, letting his fingers find soft painful harmonies, so that
+Noel perhaps heard the faint far thrumming of that music through uneasy
+dreams.  And there he stayed, till it became time for him to go forth to
+the Old Year's Midnight Service.
+
+When he returned, Pierson wrapped himself in a rug and lay down on the
+old sofa in his study.  The maid, coming in next morning to "do" the
+grate, found him still asleep.  She stood contemplating him in awe; a
+broad-faced, kindly, fresh-coloured girl.  He lay with his face resting
+on his hand, his dark, just grizzling hair unruffled, as if he had not
+stirred all night; his other hand clutched the rug to his chest, and his
+booted feet protruded beyond it.  To her young eyes he looked rather
+appallingly neglected.  She gazed with interest at the hollows in his
+cheeks, and the furrows in his brow, and the lips, dark-moustached and
+bearded, so tightly compressed, even in. sleep.  Being holy didn't make a
+man happy, it seemed!  What fascinated her were the cindery eyelashes
+resting on the cheeks, the faint movement of face and body as he
+breathed, the gentle hiss of breath escaping through the twitching
+nostrils.  She moved nearer, bending down over him, with the childlike
+notion of counting those lashes.  Her lips parted in readiness to say:
+"Oh!" if he waked. Something in his face, and the little twitches which
+passed over it, made her feel "that sorry" for him.  He was a gentleman,
+had money, preached to her every Sunday, and was not so very old--what
+more could a man want?  And yet--he looked so tired, with those cheeks.
+
+She pitied him; helpless and lonely he seemed to her, asleep there
+instead of going to bed properly.  And sighing, she tiptoed towards the
+door.
+
+"Is that you, Bessie?"
+
+The girl turned: "Yes, sir.  I'm sorry I woke you, sir.  'Appy New Year,
+sir!"
+
+"Ah, yes.  A Happy New Year, Bessie."
+
+She saw his usual smile, saw it die, and a fixed look come on his face;
+it scared her, and she hurried away.  Pierson had remembered. For full
+five minutes he lay there staring at nothing.  Then he rose, folded the
+rug mechanically, and looked at the clock.  Eight!  He went upstairs,
+knocked on Noel's door, and entered.
+
+The blinds were drawn up, but she was still in bed.  He stood looking
+down at her.  "A Happy New Year, my child!"  he said; and he trembled all
+over, shivering visibly.  She looked so young and innocent, so
+round-faced and fresh, after her night's sleep, that the thought sprang
+up in him again: 'It must have been a dream!'  She did not move, but a
+slow flush came up in her cheeks.  No dream--dream!  He said tremulously:
+"I can't realise.  I--I hoped I had heard wrong. Didn't I, Nollie?
+Didn't I?"
+
+She just shook her head.
+
+"Tell me--everything," he said; "for God's sake!"
+
+He saw her lips moving, and caught the murmur: "There 's nothing more.
+Gratian and George know, and Leila.  It can't be undone, Daddy. Perhaps I
+wouldn't have wanted to make sure, if you hadn't tried to stop Cyril and
+me--and I'm glad sometimes, because I shall have something of his--"  She
+looked up at him.  "After all, it's the same, really; only, there's no
+ring.  It's no good talking to me now, as if I hadn't been thinking of
+this for ages.  I'm used to anything you can say; I've said it to myself,
+you see.  There's nothing but to make the best of it."
+
+Her hot hand came out from under the bedclothes, and clutched his very
+tight.  Her flush had deepened, and her eyes seemed to him to glitter.
+
+"Oh, Daddy!  You do look tired!  Haven't you been to bed?  Poor Daddy!"
+
+That hot clutch, and the words: "Poor Daddy!"  brought tears into his
+eyes.  They rolled slowly down to his beard, and he covered his face with
+the other hand.  Her grip tightened convulsively; suddenly she dragged it
+to her lips, kissed it, and let it drop.
+
+"Don't!"  she said, and turned away her face.
+
+Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly:
+
+"Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?"
+
+Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child
+whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth.
+
+"Oh!  I don't know; what does it matter?"
+
+"Kestrel; would you like to go there?  Your aunt--I could write to her."
+Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within her.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I would.  Only, not Uncle Bob."
+
+"Perhaps your uncle would come up here, and keep me company."
+
+She turned her face away, and that tossing movement of the limbs beneath
+the clothes began again.  "I don't care," she said; "anywhere--it doesn't
+matter."
+
+Pierson put his chilly hand on her forehead.  "Gently!"  he said, and
+knelt down by the bed.  "Merciful Father," he murmured, "give us strength
+to bear this dreadful trial.  Keep my beloved child safe, and bring her
+peace; and give me to understand how I have done wrong, how I have failed
+towards Thee, and her.  In all things chasten and strengthen her, my
+child, and me."
+
+His thoughts moved on in the confused, inarticulate suspense of prayer,
+till he heard her say: "You haven't failed; why do you talk of
+failing--it isn't true; and don't pray for me, Daddy."
+
+Pierson raised himself, and moved back from the bed.  Her words
+confounded him, yet he was afraid to answer.  She pushed her head deep
+into the pillow, and lay looking up at the ceiling.
+
+"I shall have a son; Cyril won't quite have died.  And I don't want to be
+forgiven."
+
+He dimly perceived what long dumb processes of thought and feeling had
+gone on in her to produce this hardened state of mind, which to him
+seemed almost blasphemous.  And in the very midst of this turmoil in his
+heart, he could not help thinking how lovely her face looked, lying back
+so that the curve of her throat was bared, with the short tendrils of
+hair coiling about it.  That flung-back head, moving restlessly from side
+to side in the heat of the soft pillow, had such a passion of protesting
+life in it!  And he kept silence.
+
+"I want you to know it was all me.  But I can't pretend.  Of course I'll
+try and not let it hurt you more than I possibly can.  I'm sorry for you,
+poor Daddy; oh!  I'm sorry for you!"  With a movement incredibly lithe
+and swift, she turned and pressed her face down in the pillow, so that
+all he could see was her tumbled hair and the bedclothes trembling above
+her shoulders.  He tried to stroke that hair, but she shook her head
+free, and he stole out.
+
+She did not come to breakfast; and when his own wretched meal was over,
+the mechanism of his professional life caught him again at once.  New
+Year's Day!  He had much to do.  He had, before all, to be of a cheerful
+countenance before his flock, to greet all and any with an air of hope
+and courage.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+1
+
+Thirza Pierson, seeing her brother-in-law's handwriting, naturally said:
+"Here's a letter from Ted."
+
+Bob Pierson, with a mouth full of sausage, as naturally responded:
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+In reading on, she found that to answer that question was one of the most
+difficult tasks ever set her.  Its news moved and disturbed her deeply.
+Under her wing this disaster had happened!  Down here had been wrought
+this most deplorable miracle, fraught with such dislocation of lives!
+Noel's face, absorbed and passionate, outside the door of her room on the
+night when Cyril Morland went away--her instinct had been right!
+
+"He wants you to go up and stay with him, Bob."
+
+"Why not both of us?"
+
+"He wants Nollie to come down to me; she's not well."
+
+"Not well?  What's the matter?"
+
+To tell him seemed disloyalty to her sex; not to tell him, disloyalty to
+her husband.  A simple consideration of fact and not of principle,
+decided her.  He would certainly say in a moment: 'Here!  Pitch it over!'
+and she would have to.  She said tranquilly:
+
+"You remember that night when Cyril Morland went away, and Noel behaved
+so strangely.  Well, my dear; she is going to have a child at the
+beginning of April.  The poor boy is dead, Bob; he died for the Country."
+
+She saw the red tide flow up into his face.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Poor Edward is dreadfully upset.  We must do what we can.  I blame
+myself."  By instinct she used those words.
+
+"Blame yourself?  Stuff!  That young--!"  He stopped.
+
+Thirza said quietly: "No, Bob; of the two, I'm sure it was Noel; she was
+desperate that day.  Don't you remember her face?  Oh! this war!  It's
+turned the whole world upside down.  That's the only comfort; nothing's
+normal"
+
+Bob Pierson possessed beyond most men the secret of happiness, for he was
+always absorbed in the moment, to the point of unself-consciousness.
+Eating an egg, cutting down a tree, sitting on a Tribunal, making up his
+accounts, planting potatoes, looking at the moon, riding his cob, reading
+the Lessons--no part of him stood aside to see how he was doing it, or
+wonder why he was doing it, or not doing it better.  He grew like a
+cork-tree, and acted like a sturdy and well-natured dog.  His griefs,
+angers, and enjoyments were simple as a child's, or as his somewhat noisy
+slumbers.  They were notably well-suited, for Thirza had the same secret
+of happiness, though her, absorption in the moment did not--as became a
+woman--prevent her being conscious of others; indeed, such formed the
+chief subject of her absorptions.  One might say that they neither of
+them had philosophy yet were as philosophic a couple as one could meet on
+this earth of the self-conscious.  Daily life to these two was still of
+simple savour.  To be absorbed in life--the queer endless tissue of
+moments and things felt and done and said and made, the odd inspiriting
+conjunctions of countless people--was natural to them; but they never
+thought whether they were absorbed or not, or had any particular attitude
+to Life or Death--a great blessing at the epoch in which they were
+living.
+
+Bob Pierson, then, paced the room, so absorbed in his dismay and concern,
+that he was almost happy.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "what a ghastly thing!
+
+"Nollie, of all people!  I feel perfectly wretched, Thirza; wretched
+beyond words."  But with each repetition his voice grew cheerier, and
+Thirza felt that he was already over the worst.
+
+"Your coffee's getting cold!"  she said.
+
+"What do you advise?  Shall I go up, heh?"
+
+"I think you'll be a godsend to poor Ted; you'll keep his spirits up. Eve
+won't get any leave till Easter; and I can be quite alone, and see to
+Nollie here.  The servants can have a holiday--, Nurse and I will run the
+house together.  I shall enjoy it."
+
+"You're a good woman, Thirza!"  Taking his wife's hand, he put it to his
+lips.  "There isn't another woman like you in the world."
+
+Thirza's eyes smiled.  "Pass me your cup; I'll give you some fresh
+coffee."
+
+It was decided to put the plan into operation at mid-month, and she bent
+all her wits to instilling into her husband the thought that a baby more
+or less was no great matter in a world which already contained twelve
+hundred million people.  With a man's keener sense of family propriety,
+he could not see that this baby would be the same as any other baby.  "By
+heaven!"  he would say, "I simply can't get used to it; in our family!
+And Ted a parson!  What the devil shall we do with it?"
+
+"If Nollie will let us, why shouldn't we adopt it?  It'll be something to
+take my thoughts off the boys."
+
+"That's an idea!  But Ted's a funny fellow.  He'll have some doctrine of
+atonement, or other in his bonnet."
+
+"Oh, bother!" said Thirza with asperity.
+
+The thought of sojourning in town for a spell was not unpleasant to Bob
+Pierson.  His Tribunal work was over, his early, potatoes in, and he had
+visions of working for the Country, of being a special constable, and
+dining at his Club.  The nearer he was to the front, and the more he
+could talk about the war, the greater the service he felt he would be
+doing.  He would ask for a job where his brains would be of use.  He
+regretted keenly that Thirza wouldn't be with him; a long separation like
+this would be a great trial.  And he would sigh and run his fingers
+through his whiskers.  Still for the Country, and for Nollie, one must
+put up with it!
+
+When Thirza finally saw him into the train, tears stood in the eyes of
+both, for they were honestly attached, and knew well enough that this
+job, once taken in hand, would have to be seen through; a three months'
+separation at least.
+
+"I shall write every day."
+
+"So shall I, Bob."
+
+"You won't fret, old girl?"
+
+"Only if you do."
+
+"I shall be up at 5.5, and she'll be down at 4.50.  Give us a kiss--damn
+the porters.  God bless you!  I suppose she'd mind if--I--were to come
+down now and then?"
+
+"I'm afraid she would.  It's--it's--well, you know."
+
+"Yes, Yes; I do."  And he really did; for underneath, he had true
+delicacy.
+
+Her last words: "You're very sweet, Bob," remained in his ears all the
+way to Severn Junction.
+
+She went back to the house, emptied of her husband, daughter, boys, and
+maids; only the dogs left and the old nurse whom she had taken into
+confidence.  Even in that sheltered, wooded valley it was very cold this
+winter.  The birds hid themselves, not one flower bloomed, and the
+red-brown river was full and swift.  The sound of trees being felled for
+trench props, in the wood above the house resounded all day long in the
+frosty air.  She meant to do the cooking herself; and for the rest of the
+morning and early afternoon she concocted nice things, and thought out
+how she herself would feel if she were Noel and Noel she, so as to smooth
+out of the way anything which would hurt the girl.  In the afternoon she
+went down to the station in the village car, the same which had borne
+Cyril Morland away that July night, for their coachman had been taken for
+the army, and the horses were turned out.
+
+Noel looked tired and white, but calm--too calm.  Her face seemed to
+Thirza to have fined down, and with those brooding eyes, to be more
+beautiful.  In the car she possessed herself of the girl's hand, and
+squeezed it hard; their only allusion to the situation, except Noel's
+formal:
+
+"Thank you so much, Auntie, for having me; it's most awfully sweet of you
+and Uncle Bob."
+
+"There's no one in the house, my dear, except old Nurse.  It'll be very
+dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather useful."
+
+The smile which slipped on to Noel's face gave Thirza quite a turn.
+
+She had assigned the girl a different room, and had made it
+extraordinarily cheerful with a log fire, chrysanthemums, bright copper
+candlesticks, warming-pans, and such like.
+
+She went up with her at bedtime, and standing before the fire, said:
+
+"You know, Nollie, I absolutely refuse to regard this as any sort of
+tragedy.  To bring life into the worlds in these days, no matter how,
+ought to make anyone happy.  I only wish I could do it again, then I
+should feel some use.  Good night dear; and if you want anything, knock
+on the wall.  I'm next door.  Bless you!"  She saw that the girl was
+greatly moved, underneath her pale mask; and went out astonished at her
+niece's powers of self-control.
+
+But she did not sleep at all well; for in imagination, she kept on seeing
+Noel turning from side to side in the big bed, and those great eyes of
+hers staring at the dark.
+
+
+2
+
+The meeting of the brothers Pierson took place at the dinner-hour, and
+was characterised by a truly English lack of display.  They were so
+extremely different, and had been together so little since early days in
+their old Buckinghamshire home, that they were practically strangers,
+with just the potent link of far-distant memories in common.  It was of
+these they talked, and about the war.  On this subject they agreed in the
+large, and differed in the narrow.  For instance, both thought they knew
+about Germany and other countries, and neither of course had any real
+knowledge of any country outside their own; for, though both had passed
+through considerable tracts of foreign ground at one time or another,
+they had never remarked anything except its surface,--its churches, and
+its sunsets.  Again, both assumed that they were democrats, but neither
+knew the meaning of the word, nor felt that the working man could be
+really trusted; and both revered Church and, King: Both disliked
+conscription, but considered it necessary.  Both favoured Home Rule for
+Ireland, but neither thought it possible to grant it.  Both wished for
+the war to end, but were for prosecuting it to Victory, and neither knew
+what they meant by that word.  So much for the large.  On the narrower
+issues, such as strategy, and the personality of their country's leaders,
+they were opposed.  Edward was a Westerner, Robert an Easterner, as was
+natural in one who had lived twenty-five years in Ceylon.  Edward
+favoured the fallen government, Robert the risen. Neither had any
+particular reasons for their partisanship except what he had read in the
+journals.  After all--what other reasons could they have had?  Edward
+disliked the Harmsworth Press; Robert thought it was doing good.  Robert
+was explosive, and rather vague; Edward dreamy, and a little didactic.
+Robert thought poor Ted looking like a ghost; Edward thought poor Bob
+looking like the setting sun.  Their faces were indeed as curiously
+contrasted as their views and voices; the pale-dark, hollowed, narrow
+face of Edward, with its short, pointed beard, and the red-skinned,
+broad, full, whiskered face of Robert.  They parted for the night with an
+affectionate hand-clasp. So began a queer partnership which consisted, as
+the days went on, of half an hour's companionship at breakfast, each
+reading the paper; and of dinner together perhaps three times a week.
+Each thought his brother very odd, but continued to hold the highest
+opinion of him. And, behind it all, the deep tribal sense that they stood
+together in trouble, grew.  But of that trouble they never spoke, though
+not seldom Robert would lower his journal, and above the glasses perched
+on his well-shaped nose, contemplate his brother, and a little frown of
+sympathy would ridge his forehead between his bushy eyebrows.  And once
+in a way he would catch Edward's eyes coming off duty from his journal,
+to look, not at his brother, but at--the skeleton; when that happened,
+Robert would adjust his glasses hastily, damn the newspaper type, and
+apologise to Edward for swearing.  And he would think: 'Poor Ted!  He
+ought to drink port, and--and enjoy himself, and forget it.  What a pity
+he's a parson!'
+
+In his letters to Thirza he would deplore Edward's asceticism.  "He eats
+nothing, he drinks nothing, he smokes a miserable cigarette once in a
+blue moon.  He's as lonely as a coot; it's a thousand pities he ever lost
+his wife.  I expect to see his wings sprout any day; but--dash it all
+I--I don't believe he's got the flesh to grow them on. Send him up some
+clotted cream; I'll see if I can get him to eat it." When the cream came,
+he got Edward to eat some the first morning, and at tea time found that
+he had finished it himself.  "We never talk about Nollie," he wrote, "I'm
+always meaning to have it out with him and tell him to buck up, but when
+it comes to the point I dry up; because, after all, I feel it too; it
+sticks in my gizzard horribly. We Piersons are pretty old, and we've
+always been respectable, ever since St. Bartholomew, when that Huguenot
+chap came over and founded us.  The only black sheep I ever heard of is
+Cousin Leila.  By the way, I saw her the other day; she came round here
+to see Ted.  I remember going to stay with her and her first husband;
+young Fane, at Simla, when I was coming home, just before we were
+married.  Phew!  That was a queer menage; all the young chaps fluttering
+round her, and young Fane looking like a cynical ghost.  Even now she
+can't help setting her cap a little at Ted, and he swallows her whole;
+thinks her a devoted creature reformed to the nines with her hospital and
+all that.  Poor old Ted; he is the most dreamy chap that ever was."
+
+"We have had Gratian and her husband up for the week-end," he wrote a
+little later; "I don't like her so well as Nollie; too serious and
+downright for me.  Her husband seems a sensible fellow, though; but the
+devil of a free-thinker.  He and poor Ted are like cat and dog. We had
+Leila in to dinner again on Saturday, and a man called Fort came too.
+She's sweet on him, I could see with half an eye, but poor old Ted can't.
+The doctor and Ted talked up hill and down dale.  The doctor said a thing
+which struck me.  'What divides us from the beasts?  Will power: nothing
+else.  What's this war, really, but a death carnival of proof that man's
+will is invincible?'  I stuck it down to tell you, when I got upstairs.
+He's a clever fellow.  I believe in God, as you know, but I must say when
+it comes to an argument, poor old Ted does seem a bit weak, with his:
+'We're told this,' and 'We're told that: Nobody mentioned Nollie.  I must
+have the whole thing out with Ted; we must know how to act when it's all
+over."
+
+But not till the middle of March, when the brothers had been sitting
+opposite each other at meals for two months, was the subject broached
+between them, and then not by Robert.  Edward, standing by the hearth
+after dinner, in his familiar attitude, one foot on the fender, one hand
+grasping the mantel-shelf, and his eyes fixed on the flames, said: "I've
+never asked your forgiveness, Bob."
+
+Robert, lingering at the table over his glass of port, started, looked at
+Edward's back in its parson's coat, and answered:
+
+"My dear old chap!"
+
+"It has been very difficult to speak of this."
+
+"Of course, of course!"  And there was a silence, while Robert's eyes
+travelled round the walls for inspiration.  They encountered only the
+effigies of past Piersons very oily works, and fell back on the
+dining-table.  Edward went on speaking to the fire:
+
+"It still seems to me incredible.  Day and night I think of what it's my
+duty to do."
+
+"Nothing!" ejaculated Robert.  "Leave the baby with Thirza; we'll take
+care of it, and when Nollie's fit, let her go back to work in a hospital
+again.  She'll soon get over it."  He saw his brother shake his head, and
+thought: 'Ah! yes; now there's going to be some d--d conscientious
+complication.'
+
+Edward turned round on him: "That is very sweet of you both, but it would
+be wrong and cowardly for me to allow it."
+
+The resentment which springs up in fathers when other fathers dispose of
+young lives, rose in Robert.
+
+"Dash it all, my dear Ted, that's for Nollie to say.  She's a woman now,
+remember."
+
+A smile went straying about in the shadows of his brother's face.  "A
+woman?  Little Nollie!  Bob, I've made a terrible mess of it with my
+girls."  He hid his lips with his hand, and turned again to the flames.
+Robert felt a lump in his throat.  "Oh!  Hang it, old boy, I don't think
+that.  What else could you have done?  You take too much on yourself.
+After all, they're fine girls.  I'm sure Nollie's a darling.  It's these
+modern notions, and this war.  Cheer up!  It'll all dry straight."  He
+went up to his brother and put a hand on his shoulder.  Edward seemed to
+stiffen under that touch.
+
+"Nothing comes straight," he said, "unless it's faced; you know that,
+Bob."
+
+Robert's face was a study at that moment.  His cheeks filled and
+collapsed again like a dog's when it has been rebuked.  His colour
+deepened, and he rattled some money in a trouser pocket.
+
+"Something in that, of course," he said gruffly.  "All the same, the
+decision's with Nollie.  We'll see what Thirza says.  Anyway, there's no
+hurry.  It's a thousand pities you're a parson; the trouble's enough
+without that:"
+
+Edward shook his head.  "My position is nothing; it's the thought of my
+child, my wife's child.  It's sheer pride; and I can't subdue it. I can't
+fight it down.  God forgive me, I rebel."
+
+And Robert thought: 'By George, he does take it to heart!  Well, so
+should I!  I do, as it is!'  He took out his pipe, and filled it, pushing
+the tobacco down and down.
+
+"I'm not a man of the world," he heard his brother say; "I'm out of touch
+with many things.  It's almost unbearable to me to feel that I'm joining
+with the world to condemn my own daughter; not for their reasons,
+perhaps--I don't know; I hope not, but still, I'm against her."
+
+Robert lit his pipe.
+
+"Steady, old man!"  he said.  "It's a misfortune.  But if I were you I
+should feel: 'She's done a wild, silly thing, but, hang it, if anybody
+says a word against her, I'll wring his neck.'  And what's more, you'll
+feel much the same, when it comes to the point."  He emitted a huge puff
+of smoke, which obscured his brother's face, and the blood, buzzing in
+his temples, seemed to thicken the sound of Edward's voice.
+
+"I don't know; I've tried to see clearly.  I have prayed to be shown what
+her duty is, and mine.  It seems to me there can be no peace for her
+until she has atoned, by open suffering; that the world's judgment is her
+cross, and she must bear it; especially in these days, when all the world
+is facing suffering so nobly.  And then it seems so hard-so bitter; my
+poor little Nollie!"
+
+There was a silence, broken only by the gurgling of Robert's pipe, till
+he said abruptly:
+
+"I don't follow you, Ted; no, I don't.  I think a man should screen his
+children all he can.  Talk to her as you like, but don't let the world do
+it.  Dash it, the world's a rotten gabbling place.  I call myself a man
+of the world, but when it comes to private matters--well, then I draw the
+line.  It seems to me it seems to me inhuman. What does George Laird
+think about it?  He's a knowing chap.  I suppose you've--no, I suppose
+you haven't--"  For a peculiar smile had come on Edward's face.
+
+"No," he said, "I should hardly ask George Laird's opinion."
+
+And Robert realised suddenly the stubborn loneliness of that thin black
+figure, whose fingers were playing with a little gold cross. 'By Jove!'
+he thought, 'I believe old Ted's like one of those Eastern chaps who go
+into lonely places.  He's got himself surrounded by visions of things
+that aren't there.  He lives in unreality--something we can't understand.
+I shouldn't be surprised if he heard voices, like--'who was it?  Tt, tt!
+What a pity!'  Ted was deceptive. He was gentle and--all that, a
+gentleman of course, and that disguised him; but underneath; what was
+there--a regular ascetic, a fakir!  And a sense of bewilderment, of
+dealing with something which he could not grasp, beset Bob Pierson, so
+that he went back to the table, and sat down again beside his port.
+
+"It seems to me," he said rather gruffly, "that the chicken had better be
+hatched before we count it."  And then, sorry for his brusqueness,
+emptied his glass.  As the fluid passed over his palate, he thought:
+'Poor old Ted!  He doesn't even drink--hasn't a pleasure in life, so far
+as I can see, except doing his duty, and doesn't even seem to know what
+that is.  There aren't many like him--luckily!  And yet I love
+him--pathetic chap!'
+
+The "pathetic chap" was still staring at the flames.
+3
+
+And at this very hour, when the brothers were talking--for thought and
+feeling do pass mysteriously over the invisible wires of space Cyril
+Morland's son was being born of Noel, a little before his time.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+I
+
+Down by the River Wye, among plum-trees in blossom, Noel had laid her
+baby in a hammock, and stood reading a letter:
+
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE, "Now that you are strong again, I feel that I must
+put before you my feeling as to your duty in this crisis of your life.
+Your aunt and uncle have made the most kind and generous offer to adopt
+your little boy.  I have known that this was in their minds for some
+time, and have thought it over day and night for weeks.  In the worldly
+sense it would be the best thing, no doubt.  But this is a spiritual
+matter.  The future of our souls depends on how we meet the consequences
+of our conduct.  And painful, dreadful, indeed, as they must be, I am
+driven to feel that you can only reach true peace by facing them in a
+spirit of brave humility.  I want you to think and think--till you arrive
+at a certainty which satisfies your conscience.  If you decide, as I
+trust you will, to come back to me here with your boy, I shall do all in
+my power to make you happy while we face the future together.  To do as
+your aunt and uncle in their kindness wish, would, I am sore afraid, end
+in depriving you of the inner strength and happiness which God only gives
+to those who do their duty and try courageously to repair their errors.
+I have confidence in you, my dear child. "Ever your most loving father,
+"EDWARD PIERSON."
+
+She read it through a second time, and looked at her baby.  Daddy seemed
+to think that she might be willing to part from this wonderful creature!
+Sunlight fell through the plum blossom, in an extra patchwork quilt over
+the bundle lying there, touched the baby's nose and mouth, so that he
+sneezed.  Noel laughed, and put her lips close to his face.  'Give you
+up!' she thought: 'Oh, no!  And I'm going to be happy too.  They shan't
+stop me:
+
+In answer to the letter she said simply that she was coming up; and a
+week later she went, to the dismay of her uncle and aunt.  The old nurse
+went too.  Everything had hitherto been so carefully watched and guarded
+against by Thirza, that Noel did not really come face to face with her
+position till she reached home.
+
+Gratian, who had managed to get transferred to a London Hospital, was now
+living at home.  She had provided the house with new maids against her
+sister's return; and though Noel was relieved not to meet her old
+familiars, she encountered with difficulty the stolid curiosity of new
+faces.  That morning before she left Kestrel, her aunt had come into her
+room while she was dressing, taken her left hand and slipped a little
+gold band on to its third finger. "To please me, Nollie, now that you're
+going, just for the foolish, who know nothing about you."
+
+Noel had suffered it with the thought: 'It's all very silly!'  But now,
+when the new maid was pouring out her hot water, she was suddenly aware
+of the girl's round blue eyes wandering, as it were, mechanically to her
+hand.  This little hoop of gold, then, had an awful power!  A rush of
+disgust came over her.  All life seemed suddenly a thing of forms and
+sham.  Everybody then would look at that little ring; and she was a
+coward, saving herself from them!  When she was alone again, she slipped
+it off, and laid it on the washstand, where the sunlight fell.  Only this
+little shining band of metal, this little yellow ring, stood between her
+and the world's hostile scorn!  Her lips trembled.  She took up the ring,
+and went to the open window; to throw it out.  But she did not, uncertain
+and unhappy--half realising the cruelty of life.  A knock at the door
+sent her flying back to the washstand.  The visitor was Gratian.
+
+"I've been looking at him," she said softly; "he's like you, Nollie,
+except for his nose."
+
+"He's hardly got one yet.  But aren't his eyes intelligent?  I think
+they're wonderful."  She held up the ring: "What shall I do about this,
+Gratian?"
+
+Gratian flushed.  "Wear it.  I don't see why outsiders should know. For
+the sake of Dad I think you ought.  There's the parish."
+
+Noel slipped the ring back on to her finger.  "Would you?"
+
+"I can't tell.  I think I would."
+
+Noel laughed suddenly.  "I'm going to get cynical; I can feel it in my
+bones.  How is Daddy looking?"
+
+"Very thin; Mr. Lauder is back again from the Front for a bit, and taking
+some of the work now."
+
+"Do I hurt him very much still?"
+
+"He's awfully pleased that you've come.  He's as sweet as he can be about
+you."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel, "that's what's dreadful.  I'm glad he wasn't in
+when I came.  Has he told anyone?"
+
+Gratian shook her head.  "I don't think anybody knows; unless--perhaps
+Captain Fort.  He came in again the other night; and somehow--"
+
+Noel flushed.  "Leila!"  she said enigmatically.  "Have you seen her?"
+
+"I went to her flat last week with Dad--he likes her."
+
+"Delilah is her real name, you know.  All men like her.  And Captain Fort
+is her lover."
+
+Gratian gasped.  Noel would say things sometimes which made her feel the
+younger of the two.
+
+"Of course he is," went on Noel in a hard voice.  "She has no men
+friends; her sort never have, only lovers.  Why do you think he knows
+about me?"
+
+"When he asked after you he looked--"
+
+"Yes; I've seen him look like that when he's sorry for anything.  I don't
+care.  Has Monsieur Lavendie been in lately?"
+
+"Yes; he looks awfully unhappy."
+
+"His wife drugs."
+
+"Oh, Nollie!  How do you know?"
+
+"I saw her once; I'm sure she does; there was a smell; and she's got
+wandering eyes that go all glassy.  He can paint me now, if he likes. I
+wouldn't let him before.  Does he know?"
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"He knows there was something; he's got second sight, I think.  But I
+mind him less than anybody.  Is his picture of Daddy good?"
+
+"Powerful, but it hurts, somehow."
+
+"Let's go down and see it."
+
+The picture was hung in the drawing-room, and its intense modernity made
+that old-fashioned room seem lifeless and strange.  The black figure,
+with long pale fingers touching the paler piano keys, had a frightening
+actuality.  The face, three-quarters full, was raised as if for
+inspiration, and the eyes rested, dreamy and unseeing, on the face of a
+girl painted and hung on a background of wall above the piano.
+
+"It's the face of that girl," said Gratian, when they had looked at the
+picture for some time in silence:
+
+"No," said Noel, "it's the look in his eyes."
+
+"But why did he choose such a horrid, common girl?  Isn't she fearfully
+alive, though?  She looks as if she were saying: 'Cheerio!'"
+
+"She is; it's awfully pathetic, I think.  Poor Daddy!"
+
+"It's a libel," said Gratian stubbornly.
+
+"No.  That's what hurts.  He isn't quite--quite all there.  Will he be
+coming in soon?"
+
+Gratian took her arm, and pressed it hard.  "Would you like me at dinner
+or not; I can easily be out?"
+
+Noel shook her head.  "It's no good to funk it.  He wanted me, and now
+he's got me.  Oh! why did he?  It'll be awful for him."
+
+Gratian sighed.  "I've tried my best, but he always said: 'I've thought
+so long about it all that I can't think any longer.  I can only feel the
+braver course is the best.  When things are bravely and humbly met, there
+will be charity and forgiveness.'"
+
+"There won't," said Noel, "Daddy's a saint, and he doesn't see."
+
+"Yes, he is a saint.  But one must think for oneself--one simply must.  I
+can't believe as he does, any more; can you, Nollie?"
+
+"I don't know.  When I was going through it, I prayed; but I don't know
+whether I really believed.  I don't think I mind much about that, one way
+or the other."
+
+"I mind terribly," said Gratian, "I want the truth."
+
+"I don't know what I want," said Noel slowly, "except that sometimes I
+want--life; awfully."
+
+And the two sisters were silent, looking at each other with a sort of
+wonder.
+
+Noel had a fancy to put on a bright-coloured blue frock that evening, and
+at her neck she hung a Breton cross of old paste, which had belonged to
+her mother.  When she had finished dressing she went into the nursery and
+stood by the baby's cot.  The old nurse who was sitting there beside him,
+got up at once and said:
+
+"He's sleeping beautiful--the lamb.  I'll go down and get a cup o' tea,
+and come up, ma'am, when the gong goes."  In the way peculiar to those
+who have never to initiate, but only to support positions in which they
+are placed by others, she had adopted for herself the theory that Noel
+was a real war-widow.  She knew the truth perfectly; for she had watched
+that hurried little romance at Kestrel, but by dint of charity and
+blurred meditations it was easy for her to imagine the marriage ceremony
+which would and should have taken place; and she was zealous that other
+people should imagine it too. It was so much more regular and natural
+like that, and "her" baby invested with his proper dignity.  She went
+downstairs to get a "cup o' tea," thinking: 'A picture they make--that
+they do, bless his little heart; and his pretty little mother--no more
+than a child, all said and done.'
+
+Noel had been standing there some minutes in the failing light, absorbed
+in the face of the sleeping baby, when, raising her eyes, she saw in a
+mirror the refection of her father's dark figure by the door.  She could
+hear him breathing as if the ascent of the stairs had tired him; and
+moving to the head of the cot, she rested her hand on it, and turned her
+face towards him.  He came up and stood beside her, looking silently down
+at the baby.  She saw him make the sign of the Cross above it, and the
+movement of his lips in prayer.  Love for her father, and rebellion
+against this intercession for her perfect baby fought so hard in the
+girl's heart that she felt suffocated, and glad of the dark, so that he
+could not see her eyes. Then he took her hand and put it to his lips, but
+still without a word; and for the life of her she could not speak either.
+In silence, he kissed her forehead; and there mounted in Noel a sudden
+passion of longing to show him her pride and love for her baby.  She put
+her finger down and touched one of his hands.  The tiny sleeping fingers
+uncurled and, like some little sea anemone, clutched round it.  She heard
+her father draw his breath in; saw him turn away quickly, silently, and
+go out.  And she stayed, hardly breathing, with the hand of her baby
+squeezing her finger.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1
+
+When Edward Pierson, afraid of his own emotion, left the twilit nursery,
+he slipped into his own room, and fell on his knees beside his bed,
+absorbed in the vision he had seen.  That young figure in Madonna blue,
+with the halo of bright hair; the sleeping babe in the fine dusk; the
+silence, the adoration in that white room!  He saw, too; a vision of the
+past, when Noel herself had been the sleeping babe within her mother's
+arm, and he had stood beside them, wondering and giving praise.  It
+passed with its other-worldliness and the fine holiness which belongs to
+beauty, passed and left the tormenting realism of life.  Ah! to live with
+only the inner meaning, spiritual and beautifed, in a rare wonderment
+such as he had experienced just now!
+
+His alarum clock, while he knelt in his narrow, monkish little
+room--ticked the evening hour away into darkness.  And still he knelt,
+dreading to come back into it all, to face the world's eyes, and the
+sound of the world's tongue, and the touch of the rough, the gross, the
+unseemly.  How could he guard his child?  How preserve that vision in her
+life, in her spirit, about to enter such cold, rough waters?  But the
+gong sounded; he got up, and went downstairs.
+
+But this first family moment, which all had dreaded, was relieved, as
+dreaded moments so often are, by the unexpected appearance of the Belgian
+painter.  He had a general invitation, of which he often availed himself;
+but he was so silent, and his thin, beardless face, which seemed all eyes
+and brow, so mournful, that all three felt in the presence of a sorrow
+deeper even than their own family grief. During the meal he gazed
+silently at Noel.  Once he said: "You will let me paint you now,
+mademoiselle, I hope?" and his face brightened a little when she nodded.
+There was never much talk when he came, for any depth of discussion, even
+of art, brought out at once too wide a difference.  And Pierson could
+never avoid a vague irritation with one who clearly had spirituality, but
+of a sort which he could not understand.  After dinner he excused
+himself, and went off to his study.  Monsieur would be happier alone with
+the two girls!  Gratian, too, got up.  She had remembered Noel's words:
+"I mind him less than anybody."  It was a chance for Nollie to break the
+ice.
+
+
+2
+
+"I have not seen you for a long time, mademoiselle," said the painter,
+when they were alone.
+
+Noel was sitting in front of the empty drawing-room hearth, with her arms
+stretched out as if there had been a fire there.
+
+"I've been away.  How are you going to paint me, monsieur?"
+
+"In that dress, mademoiselle; Just as you are now, warming yourself at
+the fire of life."
+
+"But it isn't there."
+
+"Yes, fires soon go out.  Mademoiselle, will you come and see my wife?
+She is ill."
+
+"Now?" asked Noel, startled.
+
+"Yes, now.  She is really ill, and I have no one there.  That is what I
+came to ask of your sister; but--now you are here, it's even better.  She
+likes you."
+
+Noel got up.  "Wait one minute!" she said, and ran upstairs.  Her baby
+was asleep, and the old nurse dozing.  Putting on a cloak and cap of grey
+rabbit's fur, she ran down again to the hall where the painter was
+waiting; and they went out together.
+
+"I do not know if I am to blame," he said, "my wife has been no real wife
+to me since she knew I had a mistress and was no real husband to her."
+
+Noel stared round at his face lighted by a queer, smile.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "from that has come her tragedy.  But she should have
+known before I married her.  Nothing was concealed.  Bon Dieu! she should
+have known!  Why cannot a woman see things as they are?  My mistress,
+mademoiselle, is not a thing of flesh.  It is my art. It has always been
+first with me, and always will.  She has never accepted that, she is
+incapable of accepting it.  I am sorry for her. But what would you?  I
+was a fool to marry her.  Chere mademoiselle, no troubles are anything
+beside the trouble which goes on day and night, meal after meal, year,
+after year, between two people who should never have married, because one
+loves too much and requires all, and the other loves not at all--no, not
+at all, now, it is long dead--and can give but little."
+
+"Can't you separate?"  asked Noel, wondering.
+
+"It is hard to separate from one who craves for you as she craves her
+drugs--yes, she takes drugs now, mademoiselle.  It is impossible for one
+who has any compassion in his soul.  Besides, what would she do?  We live
+from hand to mouth, in a strange land.  She has no friends here, not one.
+How could I leave her while this war lasts?  As well could two persons on
+a desert island separate.  She is killing herself, too, with these drugs,
+and I cannot stop her."
+
+"Poor madame!"  murmured Noel.  "Poor monsieur!"
+
+The painter drew his hand across his eyes.
+
+"I cannot change my nature," he said in a stifled voice, "nor she hers.
+So we go on.  But life will stop suddenly some day for one of us.  After
+all, it is much worse for her than for me.  Enter, mademoiselle.  Do not
+tell her I am going to paint you; she likes you, because you refused to
+let me."
+
+Noel went up the stairs, shuddering; she had been there once before, and
+remembered that sickly scent of drugs.  On the third floor they entered a
+small sitting-room whose walls were covered with paintings and drawings;
+from one corner a triangular stack of canvases jutted out.  There was
+little furniture save an old red sofa, and on this was seated a stoutish
+man in the garb of a Belgian soldier, with his elbows on his knees and
+his bearded cheeks resting on his doubled fists.  Beside him on the sofa,
+nursing a doll, was a little girl, who looked up at Noel.  She had a most
+strange, attractive, pale little face, with pointed chin and large eyes,
+which never moved from this apparition in grey rabbits' skins.
+
+"Ah, Barra!  You here!"  said the painter:
+
+"Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Barra, a friend of ours from the front;
+and this is our landlady's little girl.  A little refugee, too, aren't
+you, Chica?"
+
+The child gave him a sudden brilliant smile and resumed her grave
+scrutiny of the visitor.  The soldier, who had risen heavily, offered
+Noel one of his podgy hands, with a sad and heavy giggle.
+
+"Sit down, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, placing a chair for her: "I will
+bring my wife in," and he went out through some double doors.
+
+Noel sat down.  The soldier had resumed his old attitude, and the little
+girl her nursing of the doll, though her big eyes still watched the
+visitor.  Overcome by strangeness, Noel made no attempt to talk.  And
+presently through the double doors the painter and his wife came in.  She
+was a thin woman in a red wrapper, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones,
+and hungry eyes; her dark hair hung loose, and one hand played restlessly
+with a fold of her gown.  She took Noel's hand; and her uplifted eyes
+seemed to dig into the girl's face, to let go suddenly, and flutter.
+
+"How do you do?"  she said in English.  "So Pierre brought you, to see me
+again.  I remember you so well.  You would not let him paint you.  Ah!
+que c'est drole!  You are so pretty, too.  Hein, Monsieur Barra, is not
+mademoiselle pretty?"
+
+The soldier gave his heavy giggle, and resumed his scrutiny of the floor.
+
+"Henriette," said Lavendie, "sit down beside Chica--you must not stand.
+Sit down, mademoiselle, I beg."
+
+"I'm so sorry you're not well," said Noel, and sat down again.
+
+The painter stood leaning against the wall, and his wife looked up at his
+tall, thin figure, with eyes which had in them anger, and a sort of
+cunning.
+
+"A great painter, my husband, is he not?"  she said to Noel.  "You would
+not imagine what that man can do.  And how he paints--all day long; and
+all night in his head.  And so you would not let him paint you, after
+all?"
+
+Lavendie said impatiently: "Voyons, Henriette, causez d'autre chose."
+
+His wife plucked nervously at a fold in her red gown, and gave him the
+look of a dog that has been rebuked.
+
+"I am a prisoner here, mademoiselle, I never leave the house.  Here I
+live day after day--my husband is always painting.  Who would go out
+alone under this grey sky of yours, and the hatreds of the war in every
+face?  I prefer to keep my room.  My husband goes painting; every face he
+sees interests him, except that which he sees every day.  But I am a
+prisoner.  Monsieur Barra is our first visitor for a long time."
+
+The soldier raised his face from his fists.  "Prisonnier, madame!  What
+would you say if you were out there?"  And he gave his thick giggle.  "We
+are the prisoners, we others.  What would you say to imprisonment by
+explosion day and night; never a minute free.  Bom!  Bom!  Bom!  Ah! les
+tranchees!  It's not so free as all that, there."
+
+"Every one has his own prison," said Lavendie bitterly. "Mademoiselle
+even, has her prison--and little Chica, and her doll. Every one has his
+prison, Barra.  Monsieur Barra is also a painter, mademoiselle."
+
+"Moi!"  said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand.  "I paint puddles,
+star-bombs, horses' ribs--I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and
+wire and wire, and water--long white ugly water.  I paint splinters, and
+men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare--nightmare--all
+day and all night--I paint them in my head."  He suddenly ceased speaking
+and relapsed into contemplation of the carpet, with his bearded cheeks
+resting on his fists.  "And their souls as white as snow, les camarades,"
+he added suddenly and loudly, "millions of Belgians, English, French,
+even the Boches, with white souls.  I paint those souls!"
+
+A little shiver ran through Noel, and she looked appealingly at Lavendie.
+
+"Barra," he said, as if the soldier were not there, "is a great painter,
+but the Front has turned his head a little.  What he says is true,
+though.  There is no hatred out there.  It is here that we are prisoners
+of hatred, mademoiselle; avoid hatreds--they are poison!"
+
+His wife put out her hand and touched the child's shoulder.
+
+"Why should we not hate?"  she said.  "Who killed Chica's father, and
+blew her home to-rags?  Who threw her out into this horrible
+England--pardon, mademoiselle, but it is horrible.  Ah! les Boches!  If
+my hatred could destroy them there would not be one left.  Even my
+husband was not so mad about his painting when we lived at home.  But
+here--!"  Her eyes darted at his face again, and then sank as if rebuked.
+Noel saw the painter's lips move.  The sick woman's whole figure writhed.
+
+"It is mania, your painting!"  She looked at Noel with a smile. "Will you
+have some tea, mademoiselle?  Monsieur Barra, some tea?"
+
+The soldier said thickly: "No, madame; in the trenches we have tea
+enough.  It consoles us.  But when we get away--give us wine, le bon vin;
+le bon petit vin!"
+
+"Get some wine, Pierre!"
+
+Noel saw from the painter's face that there was no wine, and perhaps no
+money to get any; but he went quickly out.  She rose and said:
+
+"I must be going, madame."
+
+Madame Lavendie leaned forward and clutched her wrist.  "Wait a little,
+mademoiselle.  We shall have some wine, and Pierre shall take you back
+presently.  You cannot go home alone--you are too pretty. Is she not,
+Monsieur Barra?"
+
+The soldier looked up: "What would you say," he said, "to bottles of wine
+bursting in the air, bursting red and bursting white, all day long, all
+night long?  Great steel bottles, large as Chica: bits of bottles,
+carrying off men's heads?  Bsum, garra-a-a, and a house comes down, and
+little bits of people ever so small, ever so small, tiny bits in the air
+and all over the ground.  Great souls out there, madame.  But I will tell
+you a secret," and again he gave his heavy giggle, "all a little, little
+mad; nothing to speak of--just a little bit mad; like a watch, you know,
+that you can wind for ever.  That is the discovery of this war,
+mademoiselle," he said, addressing Noel for the first time, "you cannot
+gain a great soul till you are a little mad."  And lowering his piggy
+grey eyes at once, he resumed his former attitude.  "It is that madness I
+shall paint some day," he announced to the carpet; "lurking in one tiny
+corner of each soul of all those millions, as it creeps, as it peeps,
+ever so sudden, ever so little when we all think it has been put to bed,
+here--there, now--then, when you least think; in and out like a mouse
+with bright eyes.  Millions of men with white souls, all a little mad.  A
+great subject, I think," he added heavily.  Involuntarily Noel put her
+hand to her heart, which was beating fast.  She felt quite sick.
+
+"How long have you been at the Front, monsieur?"
+
+"Two years, mademoiselle.  Time to go home and paint, is it not?  But
+art--!" he shrugged his heavy round shoulders, his whole bear-like body.
+"A little mad," he muttered once more.  "I will tell you a story.  Once
+in winter after I had rested a fortnight, I go back to the trenches at
+night, and I want some earth to fill up a hole in the ground where I was
+sleeping; when one has slept in a bed one becomes particular.  Well, I
+scratch it from my parapet, and I come to something funny.  I strike my
+briquet, and there is a Boche's face all frozen and earthy and dead and
+greeny-white in the flame from my briquet."
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Oh! but yes, mademoiselle; true as I sit here.  Very useful in the
+parapet--dead Boche.  Once a man like me.  But in the morning I could not
+stand him; we dug him out and buried him, and filled the hole up with
+other things.  But there I stood in the night, and my face as close to
+his as this"--and he held his thick hand a foot before his face.  "We
+talked of our homes; he had a soul, that man.  'Il me disait des choses',
+how he had suffered; and I, too, told him my sufferings.  Dear God, we
+know all; we shall never know more than we know out there, we others, for
+we are mad--nothing to speak of, but just a little, little mad.  When you
+see us, mademoiselle, walking the streets, remember that."  And he
+dropped his face on to his fists again.
+
+A silence had fallen in the room-very queer and complete.  The little
+girl nursed her doll, the soldier gazed at the floor, the woman's mouth
+moved stealthily, and in Noel the thought rushed continually to the verge
+of action: 'Couldn't I get up and run downstairs?' But she sat on,
+hypnotised by that silence, till Lavendie reappeared with a bottle and
+four glasses.
+
+"To drink our health, and wish us luck, mademoiselle," he said.
+
+Noel raised the glass he had given her.  "I wish you all happiness."
+
+"And you, mademoiselle," the two men murmured.
+
+She drank a little, and rose.
+
+"And now, mademoiselle," said Lavendie, "if you must go, I will see you
+home."
+
+Noel took Madame Lavendie's hand; it was cold, and returned no pressure;
+her eyes had the glazed look that she remembered.  The soldier had put
+his empty glass down on the floor, and was regarding it unconscious of
+her.  Noel turned quickly to the door; the last thing she saw was the
+little girl nursing her doll.
+
+In the street the painter began at once in his rapid French:
+
+'I ought not to have asked you to come, mademoiselle; I did not know our
+friend Barra was there.  Besides, my wife is not fit to receive a lady;
+vous voyez qu'il y a de la manie dans cette pauvre tote.  I should not
+have asked you; but I was so miserable."
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Noel, "I know."
+
+"In our home over there she had interests.  In this great town she can
+only nurse her grief against me.  Ah! this war!  It seems to me we are
+all in the stomach of a great coiling serpent.  We lie there, being
+digested.  In a way it is better out there in the trenches; they are
+beyond hate, they have attained a height that we have not. It is
+wonderful how they still can be for going on till they have beaten the
+Boche; that is curious and it is very great.  Did Barra tell you how,
+when they come back--all these fighters--they are going to rule, and
+manage the future of the world?  But it will not be so. They will mix in
+with life, separate--be scattered, and they will be ruled as they were
+before.  The tongue and the pen will rule them: those who have not seen
+the war will rule them."
+
+"Oh!"' cried Noel, "surely they will be the bravest and strongest in the
+future."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"War makes men simple," he said, "elemental; life in peace is neither
+simple nor elemental, it is subtle, full of changing environments, to
+which man must adapt himself; the cunning, the astute, the adaptable,
+will ever rule in times of peace.  It is pathetic, the belief of those
+brave soldiers that the-future is theirs."
+
+"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a little
+mad."
+
+"He is a man of queer genius--Barra; you should see some of his earlier
+pictures.  Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is
+rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced
+in one direction.  I tell you, mademoiselle, this war is one great
+forcing-house; every living plant is being made to grow too fast, each
+quality, each passion; hate and love, intolerance and lust and avarice,
+courage and energy; yes, and self-sacrifice--all are being forced and
+forced beyond their strength, beyond the natural flow of the sap, forced
+till there has come a great wild luxuriant crop, and then--Psum!  Presto!
+The change comes, and these plants will wither and rot and stink.  But we
+who see Life in forms of Art are the only ones who feel that; and we are
+so few.  The natural shape of things is lost.  There is a mist of blood
+before all eyes.  Men are afraid of being fair.  See how we all hate not
+only our enemies, but those who differ from us.  Look at the streets
+too--see how men and women rush together, how Venus reigns in this
+forcing-house.  Is it not natural that Youth about to die should yearn
+for pleasure, for love, for union, before death?"
+
+Noel stared up at him.  'Now!' she thought: I will.'
+
+"Yes," she said, "I know that's true, because I rushed, myself.  I'd like
+you to know.  We couldn't be married--there wasn't time.  And--he was
+killed.  But his son is alive.  That's why I've been away so long.  I
+want every one to know."  She spoke very calmly, but her cheeks felt
+burning hot.
+
+The painter had made an upward movement of his hands, as if they had been
+jerked by an electric current, then he said quite quietly:
+
+"My profound respect, mademoiselle, and my great sympathy.  And your
+father?"
+
+"It's awful for him."
+
+The painter said gently: "Ah! mademoiselle, I am not so sure. Perhaps he
+does not suffer so greatly.  Perhaps not even your trouble can hurt him
+very much.  He lives in a world apart.  That, I think, is his true
+tragedy to be alive, and yet not living enough to feel reality.  Do you
+know Anatole France's description of an old woman: 'Elle vivait, mais si
+peu.'  Would that not be well said of the Church in these days: 'Elle
+vivait, mais si peu.'  I see him always like a rather beautiful dark
+spire in the night-time when you cannot see how it is attached to the
+earth.  He does not know, he never will know, Life."
+
+Noel looked round at him.  "What do you mean by Life, monsieur?  I'm
+always reading about Life, and people talk of seeing Life!  What is
+it--where is it?  I never see anything that you could call Life."
+
+The painter smiled.
+
+"To 'see life'!"  he said.  "Ah! that is different.  To enjoy yourself!
+Well, it is my experience that when people are 'seeing life' as they call
+it, they are not enjoying themselves.  You know when one is very thirsty
+one drinks and drinks, but the thirst remains all the same.  There are
+places where one can see life as it is called, but the only persons you
+will see enjoying themselves at such places are a few humdrums like
+myself, who go there for a talk over a cup of coffee.  Perhaps at your
+age, though, it is different."
+
+Noel clasped her hands, and her eyes seemed to shine in the gloom. "I
+want music and dancing and light, and beautiful things and faces; but I
+never get them."
+
+"No, there does not exist in this town, or in any other, a place which
+will give you that.  Fox-trots and ragtime and paint and powder and glare
+and half-drunken young men, and women with red lips you can get them in
+plenty.  But rhythm and beauty and charm never.  In Brussels when I was
+younger I saw much 'life' as they call it, but not one lovely thing
+unspoiled; it was all as ashes in the mouth. Ah! you may smile, but I
+know what I am talking of.  Happiness never comes when you are looking
+for it, mademoiselle; beauty is in Nature and in real art, never in these
+false silly make believes.  There is a place just here where we Belgians
+go; would you like to see how true my words are?
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Tres-bien!  Let us go in?"
+
+They passed into a revolving doorway with little glass compartments which
+shot them out into a shining corridor.  At the end of this the painter
+looked at Noel and seemed to hesitate, then he turned off from the room
+they were about to enter into a room on the right.  It was large, full of
+gilt and plush and marble tables, where couples were seated; young men in
+khaki and older men in plain clothes, together or with young women.  At
+these last Noel looked, face after face, while they were passing down a
+long way to an empty table.  She saw that some were pretty, and some only
+trying to be, that nearly all were powdered and had their eyes darkened
+and their lips reddened, till she felt her own face to be dreadfully
+ungarnished: Up in a gallery a small band was playing an attractive
+jingling hollow little tune; and the buzz of talk and laughter was almost
+deafening.
+
+"What will you have, mademoiselle?"  said the painter.  "It is just nine
+o'clock; we must order quickly."
+
+"May I have one of those green things?"
+
+"Deux cremes de menthe," said Lavendie to the waiter.
+
+Noel was too absorbed to see the queer, bitter little smile hovering
+about his face.  She was busy looking at the faces of women whose eyes,
+furtively cold and enquiring, were fixed on her; and at the faces of men
+with eyes that were furtively warm and wondering.
+
+"I wonder if Daddy was ever in a place like this?"  she said, putting the
+glass of green stuff to her lips.  "Is it nice?  It smells of
+peppermint."
+
+"A beautiful colour.  Good luck, mademoiselle!"  and he chinked his glass
+with hers.
+
+Noel sipped, held it away, and sipped again.
+
+"It's nice; but awfully sticky.  May I have a cigarette?"
+
+"Des cigarettes," said Lavendie to the waiter, "Et deux cafes noirs. Now,
+mademoiselle," he murmured when they were brought, "if we imagine that we
+have drunk a bottle of wine each, we shall have exhausted all the
+preliminaries of what is called Vice.  Amusing, isn't it?"  He shrugged
+his shoulders.
+
+His face struck Noel suddenly as tarnished and almost sullen.
+
+"Don't be angry, monsieur, it's all new to me, you see."
+
+The painter smiled, his bright, skin-deep smile.
+
+"Pardon!  I forget myself.  Only, it hurts me to see beauty in a place
+like this.  It does not go well with that tune, and these voices, and
+these faces.  Enjoy yourself, mademoiselle; drink it all in!  See the way
+these people look at each other; what love shines in their eyes!  A pity,
+too, we cannot hear what they are saying. Believe me, their talk is most
+subtle, tres-spirituel.  These young women are 'doing their bit,' as you
+call it; bringing le plaisir to all these who are serving their country.
+Eat, drink, love, for tomorrow we die.  Who cares for the world simple or
+the world beautiful, in days like these?  The house of the spirit is
+empty."
+
+He was looking at her sidelong as if he would enter her very soul.
+
+Noel got up.  "I'm ready to go, monsieur."
+
+He put her cloak on her shoulders, paid the bill, and they went out,
+threading again through the little tables, through the buzz of talk and
+laughter and the fumes of tobacco, while another hollow little tune
+jingled away behind them.
+
+"Through there," said the painter, pointing to another door, "they dance.
+So it goes.  London in war-time!  Well, after all, it is never very
+different; no great town is.  Did you enjoy your sight of 'life,'
+mademoiselle?"
+
+"I think one must dance, to be happy.  Is that where your friends go?"
+
+"Oh, no!  To a room much rougher, and play dominoes, and drink coffee and
+beer, and talk.  They have no money to throw away."
+
+"Why didn't you show me?"
+
+"Mademoiselle, in that room you might see someone perhaps whom one day
+you would meet again; in the place we visited you were safe enough at
+least I hope so."
+
+Noel shrugged.  "I suppose it doesn't matter now, what I do."
+
+And a rush of emotion caught at her throat--a wave from the past--the
+moonlit night, the dark old Abbey, the woods and the river.  Two tears
+rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"I was thinking of--something," she said in a muffled voice.  "It's all
+right."
+
+"Chere mademoiselle!"  Lavendie murmured; and all the way home he was
+timid and distressed.  Shaking his hand at the door, she murmured:
+
+"I'm sorry I was such a fool; and thank you awfully, monsieur.  Good
+night."
+
+"Good night; and better dreams.  There is a good time coming--Peace and
+Happiness once more in the world.  It will not always be this
+Forcing-House.  Good night, chere mademoiselle!"
+
+Noel went up to the nursery, and stole in.  A night-light was burning,
+Nurse and baby were fast asleep.  She tiptoed through into her own room.
+Once there, she felt suddenly so tired that she could hardly undress; and
+yet curiously rested, as if with that rush of emotion, Cyril and the past
+had slipped from her for ever.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Noel's first encounter with Opinion took place the following day. The
+baby had just come in from its airing; she had seen it comfortably
+snoozing, and was on her way downstairs, when a voice from the hall said:
+
+"How do you do?"  and she saw the khaki-clad figure of Adrian Lauder, her
+father's curate!  Hesitating just a moment, she finished her descent, and
+put her fingers in his.  He was a rather heavy, dough-coloured young man
+of nearly thirty, unsuited by khaki, with a round white collar buttoned
+behind; but his aspiring eyes redeemed him, proclaiming the best
+intentions in the world, and an inclination towards sentiment in the
+presence of beauty.
+
+"I haven't seen you for ages," he said rather fatuously, following her
+into her father's study.
+
+"No," said Noel.  "How--do you like being at the Front?"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they're wonderful!"  And his eyes shone.  "It's so nice
+to see you again."
+
+"Is it?"
+
+He seemed puzzled by that answer; stammered, and said:
+
+"I didn't know your sister had a baby.  A jolly baby."
+
+"She hasn't."
+
+Lauder's mouth opened.  'A silly mouth,' she thought.
+
+"Oh!" he said.  "Is it a protegee--Belgian or something?"
+
+"No, it's mine; my own."  And, turning round, she slipped the little ring
+off her finger.  When she turned back to him, his face had not recovered
+from her words.  It had a hapless look, as of one to whom such a thing
+ought not to have happened.
+
+"Don't look like that," said Noel.  "Didn't you understand?  It's
+mine-mine."  She put out her left hand.  "Look!  There's no ring."
+
+He stammered: "I say, you oughtn't to--you oughtn't to--!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Joke about--about such things; ought you?"
+
+"One doesn't joke if one's had a baby without being married, you know."
+
+Lauder went suddenly slack.  A shell might have burst a few paces from
+him.  And then, just as one would in such a case, he made an effort,
+braced himself, and said in a curious voice, both stiff and heavy: "I
+can't--one doesn't--it's not--"
+
+"It is," said Noel.  "If you don't believe me, ask Daddy."
+
+He put his hand up to his round collar; and with the wild thought that he
+was going to tear it off, she cried: "Don't!"
+
+"You!" he said.  "You!  But--"
+
+Noel turned away from him to the window: She stood looking out, but saw
+nothing whatever.
+
+"I don't want it hidden," she said without turning round, "I want every
+one to know.  It's stupid as it is--stupid!" and she stamped her foot.
+"Can't you see how stupid it is--everybody's mouth falling open!"
+
+He uttered a little sound which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang
+of compunction.  He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost
+its heaviness.  A dull flush coloured his cheeks.  Noel had a feeling, as
+if she had been convicted of treachery.  It was his silence, the curious
+look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him
+something much deeper than mere disapproval--something which echoed
+within herself.  She walked quickly past him and escaped.  She ran
+upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  He was nothing: it was not that!
+It was in herself, the awful feeling, for the first time developed and
+poignant, that she had betrayed her caste, forfeited the right to be
+thought a lady, betrayed her secret reserve and refinement, repaid with
+black ingratitude the love lavished on her up bringing, by behaving like
+any uncared-for common girl.  She had never felt this before--not even
+when Gratian first heard of it, and they had stood one at each end of the
+hearth, unable to speak.  Then she still had her passion, and her grief
+for the dead.  That was gone now as if it had never been; and she had no
+defence, nothing between her and this crushing humiliation and chagrin.
+She had been mad!  She must have been mad!  The Belgian Barra was right:
+"All a little mad" in this "forcing-house" of a war!  She buried her face
+deep in the pillow, till it almost stopped her power of breathing; her
+head and cheeks and ears seemed to be on fire.  If only he had shown
+disgust, done something which roused her temper, her sense of justice,
+her feeling that Fate had been too cruel to her; but he had just stood
+there, bewilderment incarnate, like a creature with some very deep
+illusion shattered.  It was horrible!  Then, feeling that she could not
+stay still, must walk, run, get away somehow from this feeling of
+treachery and betrayal, she sprang up.  All was quiet below, and she
+slipped downstairs and out, speeding along with no knowledge of
+direction, taking the way she had taken day after day to her hospital.
+It was the last of April, trees and shrubs were luscious with blossom and
+leaf; the dogs ran gaily; people had almost happy faces in the sunshine.
+'If I could get away from myself, I wouldn't care,' she thought.  Easy to
+get away from people, from London, even from England perhaps; but from
+oneself--impossible!  She passed her hospital; and looked at it dully, at
+the Red Cross flag against its stucco wall, and a soldier in his blue
+slops and red tie, coming out.  She had spent many miserable hours there,
+but none quite so miserable as this.  She passed the church opposite to
+the flats where Leila lived, and running suddenly into a tall man coming
+round the corner, saw Fort. She bent her head, and tried to hurry past.
+But his hand was held out, she could not help putting hers into it; and
+looking up hardily, she said:
+
+"You know about me, don't you?"
+
+His face, naturally so frank, seemed to clench up, as if he were riding
+at a fence.  'He'll tell a lie,' she thought bitterly.  But he did not.
+
+"Yes, Leila told me."
+
+And she thought: 'I suppose he'll try and pretend that I've not been a
+beast!'
+
+"I admire your pluck," he said.
+
+"I haven't any."
+
+"We never know ourselves, do we?  I suppose you wouldn't walk my pace a
+minute or two, would you?  I'm going the same way."
+
+"I don't know which way I'm going."
+
+"That is my case, too."
+
+They walked on in silence.
+
+"I wish to God I were back in France," said Fort abruptly.  "One doesn't
+feel clean here."
+
+Noel's heart applauded.
+
+Ah! to get away--away from oneself!  But at the thought of her baby, her
+heart fell again.  "Is your leg quite hopeless?"  she said.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"That must be horrid."
+
+"Hundreds of thousands would look on it as splendid luck; and so it is if
+you count it better to be alive than dead, which I do, in spite of the
+blues."
+
+"How is Cousin Leila?"
+
+"Very well.  She goes on pegging away at the hospital; she's a brick."
+But he did not look at her, and again there was silence, till he stopped
+by Lord's Cricket-ground.
+
+"I mustn't keep you crawling along at this pace."
+
+"Oh, I don't mind!"
+
+"I only wanted to say that if I can be of any service to you at any time
+in any way whatever, please command me."
+
+He gave her hand a squeeze, took his hat off; and Noel walked slowly on.
+The little interview, with its suppressions, and its implications, had
+but exasperated her restlessness, and yet, in a way, it had soothed the
+soreness of her heart.  Captain Fort at all events did not despise her;
+and he was in trouble like herself.  She felt that somehow by the look of
+his face, and the tone of his voice when he spoke of Leila.  She
+quickened her pace.  George's words came back to her: "If you're not
+ashamed of yourself, no one will be of you!"  How easy to say!  The old
+days, her school, the little half grown-up dances she used to go to, when
+everything was happy.  Gone!  All gone!
+
+But her meetings with Opinion were not over for the day, for turning
+again at last into the home Square, tired out by her three hours' ramble,
+she met an old lady whom she and Gratian had known from babyhood--a
+handsome dame, the widow of an official, who spent her days, which showed
+no symptom of declining, in admirable works.  Her daughter, the widow of
+an officer killed at the Marne, was with her, and the two greeted Noel
+with a shower of cordial questions: So she was back from the country, and
+was she quite well again?  And working at her hospital?  And how was her
+dear father?  They had thought him looking very thin and worn.  But now
+Gratian was at home--How dreadfully the war kept husbands and wives
+apart!  And whose was the dear little baby they had in the house?
+
+"Mine," said Noel, walking straight past them with her head up.  In every
+fibre of her being she could feel the hurt, startled, utterly bewildered
+looks of those firm friendly persons left there on the pavement behind
+her; could feel the way they would gather themselves together, and walk
+on, perhaps without a word, and then round the corner begin: "What has
+come to Noel?  What did she mean?"  And taking the little gold hoop out
+of her pocket, she flung it with all her might into the Square Garden.
+The action saved her from a breakdown; and she went in calmly.  Lunch was
+long over, but her father had not gone out, for he met her in the hall
+and drew her into the dining-room.
+
+"You must eat, my child," he said.  And while she was swallowing down
+what he had caused to be kept back for her, he stood by the hearth in
+that favourite attitude of his, one foot on the fender, and one hand
+gripping the mantel-shelf.
+
+"You've got your wish, Daddy," she said dully: "Everybody knows now. I've
+told Mr. Lauder, and Monsieur, and the Dinnafords."
+
+She saw his fingers uncrisp, then grip the shelf again.  "I'm glad," he
+said.
+
+"Aunt Thirza gave me a ring to wear, but I've thrown it away."
+
+"My dearest child," he began, but could not go on, for the quivering of
+his lips.
+
+"I wanted to say once more, Daddy, that I'm fearfully sorry about you.
+And I am ashamed of myself; I thought I wasn't, but I am--only, I think
+it was cruel, and I'm not penitent to God; and it's no good trying to
+make me."
+
+Pierson turned and looked at her.  For a long time after, she could not
+get that look out of her memory.
+
+Jimmy Fort had turned away from Noel feeling particularly wretched. Ever
+since the day when Leila had told him of the girl's misfortune he had
+been aware that his liaison had no decent foundation, save a sort of
+pity.  One day, in a queer access of compunction, he had made Leila an
+offer of marriage.  She had refused; and he had respected her the more,
+realising by the quiver in her voice and the look in her eyes that she
+refused him, not because she did not love him well enough, but because
+she was afraid of losing any of his affection. She was a woman of great
+experience.
+
+To-day he had taken advantage of the luncheon interval to bring her some
+flowers, with a note to say that he could not come that evening. Letting
+himself in with his latchkey, he had carefully put those Japanese azaleas
+in the bowl "Famille Rose," taking water from her bedroom.  Then he had
+sat down on the divan with his head in his hands.
+
+Though he had rolled so much about the world, he had never had much to do
+with women.  And there was nothing in him of the Frenchman, who takes
+what life puts in his way as so much enjoyment on the credit side, and
+accepts the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly
+arrive.  It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this
+apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by
+an obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired of
+her, so long as she was not tired of him.  And he sat there trying to
+remember any sign, however small, of such a consummation, quite without
+success.  On the contrary, he had even the wretched feeling that if only
+he had loved her, she would have been much more likely to have tired of
+him by now.  For her he was still the unconquered, in spite of his loyal
+endeavour to seem conquered.  He had made a fatal mistake, that evening
+after the concert at Queen's Hall, to let himself go, on a mixed tide of
+desire and pity!
+
+His folly came to him with increased poignancy after he had parted from
+Noel.  How could he have been such a base fool, as to have committed
+himself to Leila on an evening when he had actually been in the company
+of that child?  Was it the vague, unseizable likeness between them which
+had pushed him over the edge?  'I've been an ass,' he thought; 'a
+horrible ass.'  I would always have given every hour I've ever spent with
+Leila, for one real smile from that girl.'
+
+This sudden sight of Noel after months during which he had tried loyally
+to forget her existence, and not succeeded at all, made him realise as he
+never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love with her
+that the thought of Leila was become nauseating.  And yet the instincts
+of a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of
+them.  It was an accursed coil!  He hailed a cab, for he was late; and
+all the way back to the War Office he continued to see the girl's figure
+and her face with its short hair.  And a fearful temptation rose within
+him.  Was it not she who was now the real object for chivalry and pity?
+Had he not the right to consecrate himself to championship of one in such
+a deplorable position?  Leila had lived her life; but this child's
+life--pretty well wrecked--was all before her.  And then he grinned from
+sheer disgust.  For he knew that this was Jesuitry.  Not chivalry was
+moving him, but love!  Love!  Love of the unattainable!  And with a heavy
+heart, indeed, he entered the great building, where, in a small room,
+companioned by the telephone, and surrounded by sheets of paper covered
+with figures, he passed his days.  The war made everything seem dreary,
+hopeless.  No wonder he had caught at any distraction which came
+along--caught at it, till it had caught him!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+To find out the worst is, for human nature, only a question of time. But
+where the "worst" is attached to a family haloed, as it were, by the
+authority and reputation of an institution like the Church, the process
+of discovery has to break through many a little hedge.  Sheer
+unlikelihood, genuine respect, the defensive instinct in those identified
+with an institution, who will themselves feel weaker if its strength be
+diminished, the feeling that the scandal is too good to be true--all
+these little hedges, and more, had to be broken through.  To the
+Dinnafords, the unholy importance of what Noel had said to them would
+have continued to keep them dumb, out of self-protection; but its
+monstrosity had given them the feeling that there must be some mistake,
+that the girl had been overtaken by a wild desire to "pull their legs" as
+dear Charlie would say.  With the hope of getting this view confirmed,
+they lay in wait for the old nurse who took the baby out, and obtained
+the information, shortly imparted: "Oh, yes; Miss Noel's.  Her 'usband
+was killed--poor lamb!" And they felt rewarded.  They had been sure there
+was some mistake. The relief of hearing that word "'usband" was intense.
+One of these hasty war marriages, of which the dear Vicar had not
+approved, and so it had been kept dark.  Quite intelligible, but so sad!
+Enough misgiving however remained in their minds, to prevent their going
+to condole with the dear Vicar; but not enough to prevent their roundly
+contradicting the rumours and gossip already coming to their ears. And
+then one day, when their friend Mrs. Curtis had said too positively:
+"Well, she doesn't wear a wedding-ring, that I'll swear, because I took
+very good care to look!" they determined to ask Mr. Lauder.  He
+would--indeed must--know; and, of course, would not tell a story.  When
+they asked him it was so manifest that he did know, that they almost
+withdrew the question.  The poor young man had gone the colour of a
+tomato.
+
+"I prefer not to answer," he said.  The rest of a very short interview
+was passed in exquisite discomfort.  Indeed discomfort, exquisite and
+otherwise, within a few weeks of Noel's return, had begun to pervade all
+the habitual congregation of Pierson's church. It was noticed that
+neither of the two sisters attended Service now. Certain people who went
+in the sincere hope of seeing Noel, only fell off again when she did not
+appear.  After all, she would not have the face!  And Gratian was too
+ashamed, no doubt.  It was constantly remarked that the Vicar looked very
+grave and thin, even for him.  As the rumours hardened into certainty,
+the feeling towards him became a curious medley of sympathy and
+condemnation.  There was about the whole business that which English
+people especially resent.  By the very fact of his presence before them
+every Sunday, and his public ministrations, he was exhibiting to them, as
+it were, the seamed and blushing face of his daughter's private life,
+besides affording one long and glaring demonstration of the failure of
+the Church to guide its flock: If a man could not keep his own daughter
+in the straight path--whom could he?  Resign!  The word began to be
+thought about, but not yet spoken.  He had been there so long; he had
+spent so much money on the church and the parish; his gentle dreamy
+manner was greatly liked.  He was a gentleman; and had helped many
+people; and, though his love of music and vestments had always caused
+heart-burnings, yet it had given a certain cachet to the church.  The
+women, at any rate, were always glad to know that the church they went to
+was capable of drawing their fellow women away from other churches.
+Besides, it was war-time, and moral delinquency which in time of peace
+would have bulked too large to neglect, was now less insistently dwelt
+on, by minds preoccupied by food and air-raids. Things, of course, could
+not go on as they were; but as yet they did go on.
+
+The talked-about is always the last to hear the talk; and nothing
+concrete or tangible came Pierson's way.  He went about his usual routine
+without seeming change.  And yet there was a change, secret and creeping.
+Wounded almost to death himself, he felt as though surrounded by one
+great wound in others; but it was some weeks before anything occurred to
+rouse within him the weapon of anger or the protective impulse.
+
+And then one day a little swift brutality shook him to the very soul. He
+was coming home from a long parish round, and had turned into the Square,
+when a low voice behind him said:
+
+"Wot price the little barstard?"
+
+A cold, sick feeling stifled his very breathing; he gasped, and spun
+round, to see two big loutish boys walking fast away.  With swift and
+stealthy passion he sprang after them, and putting his hands on their two
+neighbouring shoulders, wrenched them round so that they faced him, with
+mouths fallen open in alarm.  Shaking them with all his force, he said:
+
+"How dare you--how dare you use that word?"  His face and voice must have
+been rather terrible, for the scare in their faces brought him to sudden
+consciousness of his own violence, and he dropped his hands.  In two
+seconds they were at the corner.  They stopped there for a second; one of
+them shouted "Gran'pa"; then they vanished.  He was left with lips and
+hands quivering, and a feeling that he had not known for years--the weak
+white empty feeling one has after yielding utterly to sudden murderous
+rage.  He crossed over, and stood leaning against the Garden railings,
+with the thought: 'God forgive me!  I could have killed them--I could
+have killed them!'  There had been a devil in him.  If he had had
+something in his hand, he might now have been a murderer: How awful!
+Only one had spoken;  but he could have killed them both!  And the word
+was true, and was in all mouths--all low common mouths, day after day, of
+his own daughter's child!  The ghastliness of this thought, brought home
+so utterly, made him writhe, and grasp the railings as if he would have
+bent them.
+
+From that day on, a creeping sensation of being rejected of men, never
+left him; the sense of identification with Noel and her tiny outcast
+became ever more poignant, more real; the desire to protect them ever
+more passionate; and the feeling that round about there were whispering
+voices, pointing fingers, and a growing malevolence was ever more
+sickening.  He was beginning too to realise the deep and hidden truth:
+How easily the breath of scandal destroys the influence and sanctity of
+those endowed therewith by vocation; how invaluable it is to feel
+untarnished, and how difficult to feel that when others think you
+tarnished.
+
+He tried to be with Noel as much as possible; and in the evenings they
+sometimes went walks together, without ever talking of what was always in
+their minds.  Between six and eight the girl was giving sittings to
+Lavendie in the drawing-room, and sometimes Pierson would come there and
+play to them.  He was always possessed now by a sense of the danger Noel
+ran from companionship with any man.  On three occasions, Jimmy Fort made
+his appearance after dinner.  He had so little to say that it was
+difficult to understand why he came; but, sharpened by this new dread for
+his daughter, Pierson noticed his eyes always following her.  'He admires
+her,' he thought; and often he would try his utmost to grasp the
+character of this man, who had lived such a roving life.  'Is he--can he
+be the sort of man I would trust Nollie to?' he would think.  'Oh, that I
+should have to hope like this that some good man would marry her--my
+little Nollie, a child only the other day!'
+
+In these sad, painful, lonely weeks he found a spot of something like
+refuge in Leila's sitting-room, and would go there often for half an hour
+when she was back from her hospital.  That little black-walled room with
+its Japanese prints and its flowers, soothed him.  And Leila soothed him,
+innocent as he was of any knowledge of her latest aberration, and perhaps
+conscious that she herself was not too happy. To watch her arranging
+flowers, singing her little French songs, or to find her beside him,
+listening to his confidences, was the only real pleasure he knew in these
+days.  And Leila, in turn, would watch him and think: 'Poor Edward!  He
+has never lived; and never will; now!'  But sometimes the thought would
+shoot through her: 'Perhaps he's to be envied.  He doesn't feel what I
+feel, anyway.  Why did I fall in love again?'
+
+They did not speak of Noel as a rule, but one evening she expressed her
+views roundly.
+
+"It was a great mistake to make Noel come back.  Edward.  It was
+Quixotic.  You'll be lucky if real mischief doesn't come of it. She's not
+a patient character; one day she'll do something rash. And, mind you,
+she'll be much more likely to break out if she sees the world treating
+you badly than if it happens to herself.  I should send her back to the
+country, before she makes bad worse."
+
+"I can't do that, Leila.  We must live it down together."
+
+"Wrong, Edward.  You should take things as they are."
+
+With a heavy sigh Pierson answered:
+
+"I wish I could see her future.  She's so attractive.  And her defences
+are gone.  She's lost faith, and belief in all that a good woman should
+be.  The day after she came back she told me she was ashamed of herself.
+But since--she's not given a sign.  She's so proud--my poor little
+Nollie.  I see how men admire her, too.  Our Belgian friend is painting
+her.  He's a good man; but he finds her beautiful, and who can wonder.
+And your friend Captain Fort. Fathers are supposed to be blind, but they
+see very clear sometimes."
+
+Leila rose and drew down a blind.
+
+"This sun," she said.  "Does Jimmy Fort come to you--often?"
+
+"Oh! no; very seldom.  But still--I can see."
+
+'You bat--you blunderer!' thought Leila: 'See!  You can't even see this
+beside you!'
+
+"I expect he's sorry for her," she said in a queer voice.
+
+"Why should he be sorry?  He doesn't know:"
+
+"Oh, yes!  He knows; I told him."
+
+"You told him!"
+
+"Yes," Leila repeated stubbornly; "and he's sorry for her."
+
+And even then "this monk" beside her did not see, and went blundering on.
+
+"No, no; it's not merely that he's sorry.  By the way he looks at her, I
+know I'm not mistaken.  I've wondered--what do you think, Leila.  He's
+too old for her; but he seems an honourable, kind man."
+
+"Oh! a most honourable, kind man."  But only by pressing her hand against
+her lips had she smothered a burst of bitter laughter.  He, who saw
+nothing, could yet notice Fort's eyes when he looked at Noel, and be
+positive that he was in love with her!  How plainly those eyes must
+speak!  Her control gave way.
+
+"All this is very interesting," she said, spurning her words like Noel,
+"considering that he's more than my friend, Edward."  It gave her a sort
+of pleasure to see him wince.  'These blind bats!' she thought, terribly
+stung that he should so clearly assume her out of the running.  Then she
+was sorry, his face had become so still and wistful.  And turning away,
+she said:
+
+"Oh!  I shan't break my heart; I'm a good loser.  And I'm a good fighter,
+too; perhaps I shan't lose."  And snapping off a sprig of geranium, she
+pressed it to her lips.
+
+"Forgive me," said Pierson slowly; "I didn't know.  I'm stupid.  I
+thought your love for your poor soldiers had left no room for other
+feelings."
+
+Leila uttered a shrill laugh.  "What have they to do with each other?
+Did you never hear of passion, Edward?  Oh!  Don't look at me like that.
+Do you think a woman can't feel passion at my age?  As much as ever, more
+than ever, because it's all slipping away."
+
+She took her hand from her lips, but a geranium petal was left clinging
+there, like a bloodstain.  "What has your life been all these years," she
+went on vehemently--"suppression of passion, nothing else!  You monks
+twist Nature up with holy words, and try to disguise what the eeriest
+simpleton can see.  Well, I haven't suppressed passion, Edward.  That's
+all."
+
+"And are you happier for that?"
+
+"I was; and I shall be again."
+
+A little smile curled Pierson's lips.  "Shall be?" he said.  "I hope so.
+It's just two ways of looking at things, Leila."
+
+"Oh, Edward!  Don't be so gentle!  I suppose you don't think a person
+like me can ever really love?"
+
+He was standing before her with his head down, and a sense that, naive
+and bat-like as he was, there was something in him she could not reach or
+understand, made her cry out:
+
+"I've not been nice to you.  Forgive me, Edward!  I'm so unhappy."
+
+"There was a Greek who used to say: 'God is the helping of man by man.'
+It isn't true, but it's beautiful.  Good-bye, dear Leila, and don't be
+sorrowful"
+
+She squeezed his hand, and turned to the window.
+
+She stood there watching his black figure cross the road in the sunshine,
+and pass round the corner by the railings of the church. He walked
+quickly, very upright; there was something unseeing even about that back
+view of him; or was it that he saw-another world?  She had never lost the
+mental habits of her orthodox girlhood, and in spite of all impatience,
+recognised his sanctity.  When he had disappeared she went into her
+bedroom.  What he had said, indeed, was no discovery.  She had known.
+Oh!  She had known.  'Why didn't I accept Jimmy's offer?  Why didn't I
+marry him?  Is it too late?' she thought.  'Could I?  Would he--even
+now?' But then she started away from her own thought.  Marry him! knowing
+his heart was with this girl?
+
+She looked long at her face in the mirror, studying with a fearful
+interest the little hard lines and markings there beneath their light
+coating of powder.  She examined the cunning touches of colouring matter
+here and there in her front hair.  Were they cunning enough?  Did they
+deceive?  They seemed to her suddenly to stare out.  She fingered and
+smoothed the slight looseness and fulness of the skin below her chin.
+She stretched herself, and passed her hands down over her whole form,
+searching as it were for slackness, or thickness.  And she had the bitter
+thought: 'I'm all out.  I'm doing all I can.' The lines of a little poem
+Fort had showed her went thrumming through her head:
+
+         "Time, you old gipsy man
+            Will you not stay
+          Put up your caravan
+            Just for a day?"
+
+What more could she do?  He did not like to see her lips reddened. She
+had marked his disapprovals, watched him wipe his mouth after a kiss,
+when he thought she couldn't see him.  'I need'nt!' she thought.  'Noel's
+lips are no redder, really.  What has she better than I?  Youth--dew on
+the grass!'  That didn't last long!  But long enough to "do her in" as
+her soldier-men would say.  And, suddenly she revolted against herself,
+against Fort, against this chilled and foggy country; felt a fierce
+nostalgia for African sun, and the African flowers; the happy-go-lucky,
+hand-to-mouth existence of those five years before the war began.  High
+Constantia at grape harvest!  How many years ago--ten years, eleven
+years!  Ah!  To have before her those ten years, with him!  Ten years in
+the sun!  He would have loved her then, and gone on loving her!  And she
+would not have tired of him, as she had tired of those others.  'In half
+an hour,' she thought, 'he'll be here, sit opposite me; I shall see him
+struggling forcing himself to seem affectionate!  It's too humbling!  But
+I don't care; I want him!'
+
+She searched her wardrobe, for some garment or touch of colour, novelty
+of any sort, to help her.  But she had tried them all--those little
+tricks--was bankrupt.  And such a discouraged, heavy mood came on her,
+that she did not even "change," but went back in her nurse's dress and
+lay down on the divan, pretending to sleep, while the maid set out the
+supper.  She lay there moody and motionless, trying to summon courage,
+feeling that if she showed herself beaten she was beaten; knowing that
+she only held him by pity.  But when she heard his footstep on the stairs
+she swiftly passed her hands over her cheeks, as if to press the blood
+out of them, and lay absolutely still.  She hoped that she was white, and
+indeed she was, with finger-marks under the eyes, for she had suffered
+greatly this last hour.  Through her lashes she saw him halt, and look at
+her in surprise.  Asleep, or-ill, which?  She did not move.  She wanted
+to watch him.  He tiptoed across the room and stood looking down at her.
+There was a furrow between his eyes.  'Ah!' she thought, 'it would suit
+you, if I were dead, my kind friend.'  He bent a little towards her; and
+she wondered suddenly whether she looked graceful lying there, sorry now
+that she had not changed her dress.  She saw him shrug his shoulders ever
+so faintly with a puzzled little movement. He had not seen that she was
+shamming.  How nice his face was--not mean, secret, callous!  She opened
+her eyes, which against her will had in them the despair she was feeling.
+He went on his knees, and lifting her hand to his lips, hid them with it.
+
+"Jimmy," she said gently, "I'm an awful bore to you.  Poor Jimmy!  No!
+Don't pretend!  I know what I know!"  'Oh, God!  What am I saying?' she
+thought.  'It's fatal-fatal.  I ought never!'  And drawing his head to
+her, she put it to her heart.  Then, instinctively aware that this moment
+had been pressed to its uttermost, she scrambled up, kissed his forehead,
+stretched herself, and laughed.
+
+"I was asleep, dreaming; dreaming you loved me.  Wasn't it funny?  Come
+along.  There are oysters, for the last time this season."
+
+All that evening, as if both knew they had been looking over a precipice,
+they seemed to be treading warily, desperately anxious not to rouse
+emotion in each other, or touch on things which must bring a scene.  And
+Leila talked incessantly of Africa.
+
+"Don't you long for the sun, Jimmy?  Couldn't we--couldn't you go?  Oh!
+why doesn't this wretched war end?  All that we've got here at home every
+scrap of wealth, and comfort, and age, and art, and music, I'd give it
+all for the light and the sun out there.  Wouldn't you?"
+
+And Fort said he would, knowing well of one thing which he would not
+give.  And she knew that, as well as he.
+
+They were both gayer than they had been for a long time; so that when he
+had gone, she fell back once more on to the divan, and burying her face
+in a cushion, wept bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1
+
+It was not quite disillusionment that Pierson felt while he walked away.
+Perhaps he had not really believed in Leila's regeneration. It was more
+an acute discomfort, an increasing loneliness.  A soft and restful spot
+was now denied him; a certain warmth and allurement had gone out of his
+life.  He had not even the feeling that it was his duty to try and save
+Leila by persuading her to marry Fort.  He had always been too sensitive,
+too much as it were of a gentleman, for the robuster sorts of evangelism.
+Such delicacy had been a stumbling-block to him all through professional
+life.  In the eight years when his wife was with him, all had been more
+certain, more direct and simple, with the help of her sympathy, judgment;
+and companionship.  At her death a sort of mist had gathered in his soul.
+No one had ever spoken plainly to him.  To a clergyman, who does?  No one
+had told him in so many words that he should have married again--that to
+stay unmarried was bad for him, physically and spiritually, fogging and
+perverting life; not driving him, indeed, as it drove many, to
+intolerance and cruelty, but to that half-living dreaminess, and the
+vague unhappy yearnings which so constantly beset him.  All these
+celibate years he had really only been happy in his music, or in far-away
+country places, taking strong exercise, and losing himself in the
+beauties of Nature; and since the war began he had only once, for those
+three days at Kestrel, been out of London.
+
+He walked home, going over in his mind very anxiously all the evidence he
+had of Fort's feeling for Noel.  How many times had he been to them since
+she came back?  Only three times--three evening visits!  And he had not
+been alone with her a single minute!  Before this calamity befell his
+daughter, he would never have observed anything in Fort's demeanour; but,
+in his new watchfulness, he had seen the almost reverential way he looked
+at her, noticed the extra softness of his voice when he spoke to her, and
+once a look of sudden pain, a sort of dulling of his whole self, when
+Noel had got up and gone out of the room.  And the girl herself?  Twice
+he had surprised her gazing at Fort when he was not looking, with a sort
+of brooding interest.  He remembered how, as a little girl, she would
+watch a grown-up, and then suddenly one day attach herself to him, and be
+quite devoted.  Yes, he must warn her, before she could possibly become
+entangled.  In his fastidious chastity, the opinion he had held of Fort
+was suddenly lowered.  He, already a free-thinker, was now revealed as a
+free-liver.  Poor little Nollie!  Endangered again already!  Every man a
+kind of wolf waiting to pounce on her!
+
+He found Lavendie and Noel in the drawing-room, standing before the
+portrait which was nearing completion.  He looked at it for a long
+minute, and turned away:
+
+"Don't you think it's like me, Daddy?"
+
+"It's like you; but it hurts me.  I can't tell why."
+
+He saw the smile of a painter whose picture is being criticised come on
+Lavendie's face.
+
+"It is perhaps the colouring which does not please you, monsieur?"
+
+"No, no; deeper.  The expression; what is she waiting for?"
+
+The defensive smile died on Lavendie's lips.
+
+"It is as I see her, monsieur le cure."
+
+Pierson turned again to the picture, and suddenly covered his eyes. "She
+looks 'fey,"' he said, and went out of the room.
+
+Lavendie and Noel remained staring at the picture.  "Fey?  What does that
+mean, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Possessed, or something."
+
+And they continued to stare at the picture, till Lavendie said:
+
+"I think there is still a little too much light on that ear."
+
+The same evening, at bedtime, Pierson called Noel back.
+
+"Nollie, I want you to know something.  In all but the name, Captain Fort
+is a married man."
+
+He saw her flush, and felt his own face darkening with colour.
+
+She said calmly: "I know; to Leila."
+
+"Do you mean she has told you?"
+
+Noel shook her head.
+
+"Then how?"
+
+"I guessed.  Daddy, don't treat me as a child any more.  What's the use,
+now?"
+
+He sat down in the chair before the hearth, and covered his face with his
+hands.  By the quivering of those hands, and the movement of his
+shoulders, she could tell that he was stifling emotion, perhaps even
+crying; and sinking down on his knees she pressed his hands and face to
+her, murmuring: "Oh, Daddy dear!  Oh, Daddy dear!"
+
+He put his arms round her, and they sat a long time with their cheeks
+pressed together, not speaking a word.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1
+
+The day after that silent outburst of emotion in the drawing-room was a
+Sunday.  And, obeying the longing awakened overnight to be as good as she
+could to her father; Noel said to him:
+
+"Would you like me to come to Church?"
+
+"Of course, Nollie."
+
+How could he have answered otherwise?  To him Church was the home of
+comfort and absolution, where people must bring their sins and
+troubles--a haven of sinners, the fount of charity, of forgiveness, and
+love.  Not to have believed that, after all these years, would have been
+to deny all his usefulness in life, and to cast a slur on the House of
+God.
+
+And so Noel walked there with him, for Gratian had gone down to George,
+for the week-end.  She slipped quietly up the side aisle to their empty
+pew, under the pulpit.  Never turning her eyes from the chancel, she
+remained unconscious of the stir her presence made, during that hour and
+twenty minutes.  Behind her, the dumb currents of wonder, disapproval,
+and resentment ran a stealthy course.  On her all eyes were fixed sooner
+or later, and every mind became the play ground of judgments.  From every
+soul, kneeling, standing, or sitting, while the voice of the Service
+droned, sang, or spoke, a kind of glare radiated on to that one small
+devoted head, which seemed so ludicrously devout.  She disturbed their
+devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class.
+She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there
+was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she
+was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too
+visible a rent in the raiment of their priest.  Her figure focused all
+the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers
+quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives
+with the idea that their husbands were seeing her.  Men experienced
+sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness.  Young
+folk wondered, and felt inclined to giggle.  Old maids could hardly bear
+to look.  Here and there a man or woman who had seen life face to face,
+was simply sorry!  The consciousness of all who knew her personally was
+at stretch how to behave if they came within reach of her in going out.
+For, though only half a dozen would actually rub shoulders with her, all
+knew that they might be, and many felt it their duty to be, of that
+half-dozen, so as to establish their attitude once for all.  It was, in
+fact, too severe a test for human nature and the feelings which Church
+ought to arouse. The stillness of that young figure, the impossibility of
+seeing her face and judging of her state of mind thereby; finally, a
+faint lurking shame that they should be so intrigued and disturbed by
+something which had to do with sex, in this House of Worship--all
+combined to produce in every mind that herd-feeling of defence, which so
+soon becomes, offensive.  And, half unconscious, half aware of it all,
+Noel stood, and sat, and knelt.  Once or twice she saw her father's eyes
+fixed on her; and, still in the glow of last night's pity and remorse,
+felt a kind of worship for his thin grave face. But for the most part,
+her own wore the expression Lavendie had translated to his canvas--the
+look of one ever waiting for the extreme moments of life, for those few
+and fleeting poignancies which existence holds for the human heart.  A
+look neither hungry nor dissatisfied, but dreamy and expectant, which
+might blaze into warmth and depth at any moment, and then go back to its
+dream.
+
+When the last notes of the organ died away she continued to sit very
+still, without looking round.
+
+There was no second Service, and the congregation melted out behind her,
+and had dispersed into the streets and squares long before she came
+forth.  After hesitating whether or no to go to the vestry door, she
+turned away and walked home alone.
+
+It was this deliberate evasion of all contact which probably clinched the
+business.  The absence of vent, of any escape-pipe for the feelings, is
+always dangerous.  They felt cheated.  If Noel had come out amongst all
+those whose devotions her presence had disturbed, if in that exit, some
+had shown and others had witnessed one knows not what of a manifested
+ostracism, the outraged sense of social decency might have been appeased
+and sleeping dogs allowed to lie, for we soon get used to things; and,
+after all, the war took precedence in every mind even over social
+decency.  But none of this had occurred, and a sense that Sunday after
+Sunday the same little outrage would happen to them, moved more than a
+dozen quite unrelated persons, and caused the posting that evening of as
+many letters, signed and unsigned, to a certain quarter.  London is no
+place for parish conspiracy, and a situation which in the country would
+have provoked meetings more or less public, and possibly a resolution,
+could perhaps only thus be dealt with.  Besides, in certain folk there is
+ever a mysterious itch to write an unsigned letter--such missives satisfy
+some obscure sense of justice, some uncontrollable longing to get even
+with those who have hurt or disturbed them, without affording the
+offenders chance for further hurt or disturbance.
+
+Letters which are posted often reach their destination.
+
+On Wednesday morning Pierson was sitting in his study at the hour devoted
+to the calls of his parishioners, when the maid announced, "Canon
+Rushbourne, sir," and he saw before him an old College friend whom he had
+met but seldom in recent years.  His visitor was a short, grey-haired man
+of rather portly figure, whose round, rosy, good-humoured face had a look
+of sober goodness, and whose light-blue eyes shone a little.  He grasped
+Pierson's hand, and said in a voice to whose natural heavy resonance
+professional duty had added a certain unction:
+
+"My dear Edward, how many years it is since we met!  Do you remember dear
+old Blakeway?  I saw him only yesterday.  He's just the same. I'm
+delighted to see you again," and he laughed a little soft nervous laugh.
+Then for a few moments he talked of the war and old College days, and
+Pierson looked at him and thought: 'What has he come for?'
+
+"You've something to say to me, Alec," he said, at last.
+
+Canon Rushbourne leaned forward in his chair, and answered with evident
+effort: "Yes; I wanted to have a little talk with you, Edward.  I hope
+you won't mind.  I do hope you won't."
+
+"Why should I mind?"
+
+Canon Rushbourne's eyes shone more than ever, there was real friendliness
+in his face.
+
+"I know you've every right to say to me: 'Mind your own business.' But I
+made up my mind to come as a friend, hoping to save you from--er" he
+stammered, and began again: "I think you ought to know of the feeling in
+your parish that--er--that--er--your position is very delicate.  Without
+breach of confidence I may tell you that letters have been sent to
+headquarters; you can imagine perhaps what I mean. Do believe, my dear
+friend, that I'm actuated by my old affection for you; nothing else, I do
+assure you."
+
+In the silence, his breathing could be heard, as of a man a little
+touched with asthma, while he continually smoothed his thick black knees,
+his whole face radiating an anxious kindliness.  The sun shone brightly
+on those two black figures, so very different, and drew out of their
+well-worn garments the faint latent green mossiness which. underlies the
+clothes of clergymen.
+
+At last Pierson said: "Thank you, Alec; I understand."
+
+The Canon uttered a resounding sigh.  "You didn't realise how very easily
+people misinterpret her being here with you; it seems to them a kind--a
+kind of challenge.  They were bound, I think, to feel that; and I'm
+afraid, in consequence--" He stopped, moved by the fact that Pierson had
+closed his eyes.
+
+"I am to choose, you mean, between my daughter and my parish?"
+
+The Canon seemed, with a stammer of words, to try and blunt the edge of
+that clear question.
+
+"My visit is quite informal, my dear fellow; I can't say at all.  But
+there is evidently much feeling; that is what I wanted you to know. You
+haven't quite seen, I think, that--"
+
+Pierson raised his hand.  "I can't talk of this."
+
+The Canon rose.  "Believe me, Edward, I sympathise deeply.  I felt I had
+to warn you."  He held out his hand.  "Good-bye, my dear friend, do
+forgive me"; and he went out.  In the hall an adventure befell him so
+plump, and awkward, that he could barely recite it to Mrs. Rushbourne
+that night.
+
+"Coming out from my poor friend," he said, "I ran into a baby's
+perambulator and that young mother, whom I remember as a little
+thing"--he held his hand at the level of his thigh--"arranging it for
+going out.  It startled me; and I fear I asked quite foolishly: 'Is it a
+boy?'  The poor young thing looked up at me.  She has very large eyes,
+quite beautiful, strange eyes.  'Have you been speaking to Daddy about
+me?'  'My dear young lady,' I said, 'I'm such an old friend, you see.
+You must forgive me.'  And then she said: 'Are they going to ask him to
+resign?'  'That depends on you,' I said.  Why do I say these things,
+Charlotte?  I ought simply to have held my tongue.  Poor young thing; so
+very young!  And the little baby!" "She has brought it on herself, Alec,"
+Mrs, Rushbourne replied.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+1
+
+The moment his visitor had vanished, Pierson paced up and down the study,
+with anger rising in his, heart.  His daughter or his parish!  The old
+saw, "An Englishman's house is his castle!"  was being attacked within
+him.  Must he not then harbour his own daughter, and help her by candid
+atonement to regain her inward strength and peace?  Was he not thereby
+acting as a true Christian, in by far the hardest course he and she could
+pursue?  To go back on that decision and imperil his daughter's spirit,
+or else resign his parish--the alternatives were brutal!  This was the
+centre of his world, the only spot where so lonely a man could hope to
+feel even the semblance of home; a thousand little threads tethered him
+to his church, his parishioners, and this house--for, to live on here if
+he gave up his church was out of the question.  But his chief feeling was
+a bewildered anger that for doing what seemed to him his duty, he should
+be attacked by his parishioners.
+
+A passion of desire to know what they really thought and felt--these
+parishioners of his, whom he had befriended, and for whom he had worked
+so long--beset him now, and he went out.  But the absurdity of his quest
+struck him before he had gone the length of the Square. One could not go
+to people and say: "Stand and deliver me your inmost judgments."  And
+suddenly he was aware of how far away he really was from them.  Through
+all his ministrations had he ever come to know their hearts?  And now, in
+this dire necessity for knowledge, there seemed no way of getting it.  He
+went at random into a stationer's shop; the shopman sang bass in his
+choir.  They had met Sunday after Sunday for the last seven years.  But
+when, with this itch for intimate knowledge on him, he saw the man behind
+the counter, it was as if he were looking on him for the first time.  The
+Russian proverb, "The heart of another is a dark forest," gashed into his
+mind, while he said:
+
+"Well, Hodson, what news of your son?"
+
+"Nothing more, Mr.  Pierson, thank you, sir, nothing more at present."
+
+And it seemed to Pierson, gazing at the man's face clothed in a short,
+grizzling beard cut rather like his own, that he must be thinking: 'Ah!
+sir, but what news of your daughter?' No one would ever tell him to his
+face what he was thinking.  And buying two pencils, he went out.  On the
+other side of the road was a bird-fancier's shop, kept by a woman whose
+husband had been taken for the Army.  She was not friendly towards him,
+for it was known to her that he had expostulated with her husband for
+keeping larks, and other wild birds.  And quite deliberately he crossed
+the road, and stood looking in at the window, with the morbid hope that
+from this unfriendly one he might hear truth.  She was in her shop, and
+came to the door.
+
+"Have you any news of your husband, Mrs.  Cherry?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson, I 'ave not; not this week."
+
+"He hasn't gone out yet?"
+
+"No, Mr.  Pierson; 'e 'as not."
+
+There was no expression on her face, perfectly blank it was--Pierson had
+a mad longing to say 'For God's sake, woman, speak out what's in your
+mind; tell me what you think of me and my daughter.  Never mind my
+cloth!'  But he could no more say it than the woman could tell him what
+was in her mind.  And with a "Good morning" he passed on.  No man or
+woman would tell him anything, unless, perhaps, they were drunk.  He came
+to a public house, and for a moment even hesitated before it, but the
+thought of insult aimed at Noel stopped him, and he passed that too.  And
+then reality made itself known to him. Though he had come out to hear
+what they were thinking, he did not really want to hear it, could not
+endure it if he did.  He had been too long immune from criticism, too
+long in the position of one who may tell others what he thinks of them.
+And standing there in the crowded street, he was attacked by that longing
+for the country which had always come on him when he was hard pressed.
+He looked at his memoranda.  By stupendous luck it was almost a blank
+day.  An omnibus passed close by which would take him far out.  He
+climbed on to it, and travelled as far as Hendon; then getting down, set
+forth on foot. It was bright and hot, and the May blossom in full foam.
+He walked fast along the perfectly straight road till he came to the top
+of Elstree Hill.  There for a few moments he stood gazing at the school
+chapel, the cricket-field, the wide land beyond.  All was very quiet, for
+it was lunch-time.  A horse was tethered there, and a strolling cat, as
+though struck by the tall black incongruity of his figure, paused in her
+progress, then, slithering under the wicket gate, arched her back and
+rubbed herself against his leg, crinkling and waving the tip of her tail.
+Pierson bent down and stroked the creature's head; but uttering a faint
+miaou, the cat stepped daintily across the road, Pierson too stepped on,
+past the village, and down over the stile, into a field path.  At the
+edge of the young clover, under a bank of hawthorn, he lay down on his
+back, with his hat beside him and his arms crossed over his chest, like
+the effigy of some crusader one may see carved on an old tomb.  Though he
+lay quiet as that old knight, his eyes were not closed, but fixed on the
+blue, where a lark was singing.  Its song refreshed his spirit; its
+passionate light-heartedness stirred all the love of beauty in him, awoke
+revolt against a world so murderous and uncharitable.  Oh! to pass up
+with that song into a land of bright spirits, where was nothing ugly,
+hard, merciless, and the gentle face of the Saviour radiated everlasting
+love!  The scent of the mayflowers, borne down by the sun shine, drenched
+his senses; he closed his eyes, and, at once, as if resenting that
+momentary escape, his mind resumed debate with startling intensity.  This
+matter went to the very well-springs, had a terrible and secret
+significance.  If to act as conscience bade him rendered him unfit to
+keep his parish, all was built on sand, had no deep reality, was but
+rooted in convention.  Charity, and the forgiveness of sins honestly
+atoned for--what became of them?  Either he was wrong to have espoused
+straightforward confession and atonement for her, or they were wrong in
+chasing him from that espousal.  There could be no making those extremes
+to meet.  But if he were wrong, having done the hardest thing
+already--where could he turn?  His Church stood bankrupt of ideals.  He
+felt as if pushed over the edge of the world, with feet on space, and
+head in some blinding cloud.  'I cannot have been wrong,' he thought;
+'any other course was so much easier.  I sacrificed my pride, and my poor
+girl's pride; I would have loved to let her run away.  If for this we are
+to be stoned and cast forth, what living force is there in the religion I
+have loved; what does it all come to?  Have I served a sham?  I cannot
+and will not believe it.  Something is wrong with me, something is
+wrong--but where--what?'  He rolled over, lay on his face, and prayed.
+He prayed for guidance and deliverance from the gusts of anger which kept
+sweeping over him; even more for relief from the feeling of personal
+outrage, and the unfairness of this thing.  He had striven to be loyal to
+what he thought the right, had sacrificed all his sensitiveness, all his
+secret fastidious pride in his child and himself.  For that he was to be
+thrown out!  Whether through prayer, or in the scent and feel of the
+clover, he found presently a certain rest.  Away in the distance he could
+see the spire of Harrow Church.
+
+The Church!  No!  She was not, could not be, at fault.  The fault was in
+himself.  'I am unpractical,' he thought.  'It is so, I know. Agnes used
+to say so, Bob and Thirza think so.  They all think me unpractical and
+dreamy.  Is it a sin--I wonder?'  There were lambs in the next field; he
+watched their gambollings and his heart relaxed; brushing the clover dust
+off his black clothes, he began to retrace his steps.  The boys were
+playing cricket now, and he stood a few minutes watching them.  He had
+not seen cricket played since the war began; it seemed almost
+otherworldly, with the click of the bats, and the shrill young 'voices,
+under the distant drone of that sky-hornet threshing along to Hendon.  A
+boy made a good leg hit.  "Well played!" he called.  Then, suddenly
+conscious of his own incongruity and strangeness in that green spot, he
+turned away on the road back to London.  To resign; to await events; to
+send Noel away--of those three courses, the last alone seemed impossible.
+'Am I really so far from them,' he thought, 'that they can wish me to go,
+for this?  If so, I had better go.  It will be just another failure.  But
+I won't believe it yet; I can't believe it.'
+
+The heat was sweltering, and he became very tired before at last he
+reached his omnibus, and could sit with the breeze cooling his hot face.
+He did not reach home till six, having eaten nothing since breakfast.
+Intending to have a bath and lie down till dinner, he went upstairs.
+
+Unwonted silence reigned.  He tapped on the nursery door.  It was
+deserted; he passed through to Noel's room; but that too was empty. The
+wardrobe stood open as if it had been hastily ransacked, and her
+dressing-table was bare.  In alarm he went to the bell and pulled it
+sharply.  The old-fashioned ring of it jingled out far below.  The
+parlour-maid came up.
+
+"Where are Miss Noel and Nurse, Susan?"
+
+"I didn't know you were in, sir.  Miss Noel left me this note to give
+you.  They--I--"
+
+Pierson stopped her with his hand.  "Thank you, Susan; get me some tea,
+please."  With the note unopened in his hand, he waited till she was
+gone.  His head was going round, and he sat down on the side of Noel's
+bed to read:
+"DARLING DADDY,
+
+"The man who came this morning told me of what is going to happen.  I
+simply won't have it.  I'm sending Nurse and baby down to Kestrel at
+once, and going to Leila's for the night, until I've made up my mind what
+to do.  I knew it was a mistake my coming back.  I don't care what
+happens to me, but I won't have you hurt.  I think it's hateful of people
+to try and injure you for my fault.  I've had to borrow money from
+Susan--six pounds.  Oh!  Daddy dear, forgive me.
+
+"Your loving
+"NOLLIE."
+
+He read it with unutterable relief; at all events he knew where she
+was--poor, wilful, rushing, loving-hearted child; knew where she was, and
+could get at her.  After his bath and some tea, he would go to Leila's
+and bring her back.  Poor little Nollie, thinking that by just leaving
+his house she could settle this deep matter!  He did not hurry, feeling
+decidedly exhausted, and it was nearly eight before he set out, leaving a
+message for Gratian, who did not as a rule come in from her hospital till
+past nine.
+
+The day was still glowing, and now, in the cool of evening, his refreshed
+senses soaked up its beauty.  'God has so made this world,' he thought,
+'that, no matter what our struggles and sufferings, it's ever a joy to
+live when the sun shines, or the moon is bright, or the night starry.
+Even we can't spoil it.'  In Regent's Park the lilacs and laburnums were
+still in bloom though June had come, and he gazed at them in passing, as
+a lover might at his lady.  His conscience pricked him suddenly.  Mrs.
+Mitchett and the dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve,
+the very night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy--had he ever
+thought of them since?  How had that poor girl fared?  He had been too
+impatient of her impenetrable mood.  What did he know of the hearts of
+others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of
+anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of
+safety!  And Leila!  Had he not been too censorious in thought?  How
+powerful, how strange was this instinct of sex, which hovered and swooped
+on lives, seized them, bore them away, then dropped them exhausted and
+defenceless!  Some munition-wagons, painted a dull grey, lumbered past,
+driven by sunburned youths in drab.  Life-force, Death-force--was it all
+one; the great unknowable momentum from which there was but the one
+escape, in the arms of their Heavenly Father?  Blake's little old stanzas
+came into his mind:
+
+    "And we are put on earth a little space,
+     That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
+     And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
+     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
+
+    "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
+     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
+     Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,
+     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!"
+
+Learned the heat to bear!  Those lambs he had watched in a field that
+afternoon, their sudden little leaps and rushes, their funny quivering
+wriggling tails, their tiny nuzzling black snouts--what little miracles
+of careless joy among the meadow flowers!  Lambs, and flowers, and
+sunlight!  Famine, lust, and the great grey guns!  A maze, a wilderness;
+and but for faith, what issue, what path for man to take which did not
+keep him wandering hopeless, in its thicket? 'God preserve our faith in
+love, in charity, and the life to come!' he thought.  And a blind man
+with a dog, to whose neck was tied a little deep dish for pennies, ground
+a hurdy-gurdy as he passed. Pierson put a shilling in the dish.  The man
+stopped playing, his whitish eyes looked up.  "Thank you kindly, sir;
+I'll go home now. Come on, Dick!"  He tapped his way round the corner,
+with his dog straining in front.  A blackbird hidden among the blossoms
+of an acacia, burst into evening song, and another great grey
+munition-wagon rumbled out through the Park gate.
+2
+
+The Church-clock was striking nine when he reached Leila's flat, went up,
+and knocked.  Sounds from-a piano ceased; the door was opened by Noel.
+She recoiled when she saw who it was, and said:
+
+"Why did you come, Daddy?  It was much better not."
+
+"Are you alone here?"
+
+"Yes; Leila gave me her key.  She has to be at the hospital till ten
+to-night"
+
+"You must come home with me, my dear."
+
+Noel closed the piano, and sat down on the divan.  Her face had the same
+expression as when he had told her that she could not marry Cyril
+Morland.
+
+"Come, Nollie," he said; "don't be unreasonable.  We must see this
+through together."
+
+"No."
+
+"My dear, that's childish.  Do you think the mere accident of your being
+or not being at home can affect my decision as to what my duty is?"
+
+"Yes; it's my being there that matters.  Those people don't care, so long
+as it isn't an open scandal"
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+"But it is so, Daddy.  Of course it's so, and you know it.  If I'm away
+they'll just pity you for having a bad daughter.  And quite right too.  I
+am a bad daughter."
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Just like when you were a tiny."
+
+"I wish I were a tiny again, or ten years older.  It's this half age--But
+I'm not coming back with you, Daddy; so it's no good."
+
+Pierson sat down beside her.
+
+"I've been thinking this over all day," he said quietly.  "Perhaps in my
+pride I made a mistake when I first knew of your trouble.  Perhaps I
+ought to have accepted the consequences of my failure, then, and have
+given up, and taken you away at once.  After all, if a man is not fit to
+have the care of souls, he should have the grace to know it."
+
+"But you are fit," cried Noel passionately; "Daddy, you are fit!"
+
+"I'm afraid not.  There is something wanting in me, I don't know exactly
+what; but something very wanting."
+
+"There isn't.  It's only that you're too good--that's why!"
+
+Pierson shook his head.  "Don't, Nollie!"
+
+"I will," cried Noel.  "You're too gentle, and you're too good. You're
+charitable, and you're simple, and you believe in another world; that's
+what's the matter with you, Daddy.  Do you think they do, those people
+who want to chase us out?  They don't even begin to believe, whatever
+they say or think.  I hate them, and sometimes I hate the Church; either
+it's hard and narrow, or else it's worldly." She stopped at the
+expression on her father's face, the most strange look of pain, and
+horror, as if an unspoken treachery of his own had been dragged forth for
+his inspection.
+
+"You're talking wildly," he said, but his lips were trembling.  "You
+mustn't say things like that; they're blasphemous and wicked."
+
+Noel bit her lips, sitting very stiff and still, against a high blue
+cushion.  Then she burst out again:
+
+"You've slaved for those people years and years, and you've had no
+pleasure and you've had no love; and they wouldn't care that if you broke
+your heart.  They don't care for anything, so long as it all seems
+proper.  Daddy, if you let them hurt you, I won't forgive you!"
+
+"And what if you hurt me now, Nollie?"
+
+Noel pressed his hand against her warm cheek.
+
+"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  I don't--I won't.  Not again.  I've done that
+already."
+
+"Very well, my dear! then come home with me, and we'll see what's best to
+be done.  It can't be settled by running away."
+
+Noel dropped his hand.  "No.  Twice I've done what you wanted, and it's
+been a mistake.  If I hadn't gone to Church on Sunday to please you,
+perhaps it would never have come to this.  You don't see things, Daddy.
+I could tell, though I was sitting right in front.  I knew what their
+faces were like, and what they were thinking."
+
+"One must do right, Nollie, and not mind."
+
+"Yes; but what is right?  It's not right for me to hurt you, and I'm not
+going to."
+
+Pierson understood all at once that it was useless to try and move her.
+
+"What are you going to do, then?"
+
+"I suppose I shall go to Kestrel to-morrow.  Auntie will have me, I know;
+I shall talk to Leila."
+
+"Whatever you do, promise to let me know."
+
+Noel nodded.
+
+"Daddy, you--look awfully, awfully tired.  I'm going to give you some
+medicine."  She went to a little three-cornered cupboard, and bent down.
+Medicine!  The medicine he wanted was not for the body; knowledge of what
+his duty was--that alone could heal him!
+
+The loud popping of a cork roused him.  "What are you doing, Nollie?"
+
+Noel rose with a flushed face, holding in one hand a glass of champagne,
+in the other a biscuit.
+
+"You're to take this; and I'm going to have some myself."
+
+"My dear," said Pierson bewildered; "it's not yours."
+
+"Drink it; Daddy!  Don't you know that Leila would never forgive me if I
+let you go home looking like that.  Besides, she told me I was to eat.
+Drink it.  You can send her a nice present.  Drink it!"  And she stamped
+her foot.
+
+Pierson took the glass, and sat there nibbling and sipping.  It was nice,
+very!  He had not quite realised how much he needed food and drink.  Noel
+returned from the cupboard a second time; she too had a glass and a
+biscuit.
+
+"There, you look better already.  Now you're to go home at once, in a cab
+if you can get one; and tell Gratian to make you feed up, or you won't
+have a body at all; you can't do your duty if you haven't one, you know."
+
+Pierson smiled, and finished the champagne.
+
+Noel took the glass from him.  "You're my child to-night, and I'm going
+to send you to bed.  Don't worry, Daddy; it'll all come right." And,
+taking his arm, she went downstairs with him, and blew him a kiss from
+the doorway.
+
+He walked away in a sort of dream.  Daylight was not quite gone, but the
+moon was up, just past its full, and the search-lights had begun their
+nightly wanderings.  It was a sky of ghosts and shadows, fitting to the
+thought which came to him.  The finger of Providence was in all this,
+perhaps!  Why should he not go out to France!  At last; why not?  Some
+better man, who understood men's hearts, who knew the world, would take
+his place; and he could go where death made all things simple, and he
+could not fail.  He walked faster and faster, full of an intoxicating
+relief.  Thirza and Gratian would take care of Nollie far better than he.
+Yes, surely it was ordained!  Moonlight had the town now; and all was
+steel blue, the very air steel-blue; a dream-city of marvellous beauty,
+through which he passed, exalted.  Soon he would be where that poor boy,
+and a million others, had given their lives; with the mud and the shells
+and the scarred grey ground, and the jagged trees, where Christ was daily
+crucified--there where he had so often longed to be these three years
+past.  It was ordained!
+
+And two women whom he met looked at each other when he had gone by, and
+those words 'the blighted crow' which they had been about to speak, died
+on their lips.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Noel felt light-hearted too, as if she had won a victory.  She found some
+potted meat, spread it on another biscuit, ate it greedily, and finished
+the pint bottle of champagne.  Then she hunted for the cigarettes, and
+sat down at the piano.  She played old tunes--"There is a Tavern in the
+Town," "Once I Loved a Maiden Fair," "Mowing the Barley," "Clementine,"
+"Lowlands," and sang to them such words as she remembered.  There was a
+delicious running in her veins, and once she got up and danced.  She was
+kneeling at the window, looking out, when she heard the door open, and
+without getting up, cried out:
+
+"Isn't it a gorgeous night!  I've had Daddy here.  I gave him some of
+your champagne, and drank the rest--" then was conscious of a figure far
+too tall for Leila, and a man's voice saying:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry.  It's only I, Jimmy Fort."
+
+Noel scrambled up.  "Leila isn't in; but she will be directly--it's past
+ten."
+
+He was standing stock-still in the middle of the room.
+
+"Won't you sit down?  Oh! and won't you have a cigarette?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+By the flash of his briquette she saw his face clearly; the look on it
+filled her with a sort of malicious glee.
+
+"I'm going now," she said.  "Would you mind telling Leila that I found I
+couldn't stop?"  She made towards the divan to get her hat. When she had
+put it on, she found him standing just in front of her.
+
+"Noel-if you don't mind me calling you that?"
+
+"Not a bit."
+
+"Don't go; I'm going myself."
+
+"Oh, no!  Not for worlds."  She tried to slip past, but he took hold of
+her wrist.
+
+"Please; just one minute!"
+
+Noel stayed motionless, looking at him, while his hand still held her
+wrist.  He said quietly:
+
+"Do you mind telling me why you came here?"
+
+"Oh, just to see Leila."
+
+"Things have come to a head at home, haven't they?"
+
+Noel shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You came for refuge, didn't you?"
+
+"From whom?"
+
+"Don't be angry; from the need of hurting your father."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I knew it would come to that.  What are you going to do?"
+
+"Enjoy myself."  She was saying something fatuous, yet she meant it.
+
+"That's absurd.  Don't be angry!  You're quite right.  Only, you must
+begin at the right end, mustn't you?  Sit down!"
+
+Noel tried to free her wrist.
+
+"No; sit down, please."
+
+Noel sat down; but as he loosed her wrist, she laughed.  This was where
+he sat with Leila, where they would sit when she was gone. "It's awfully
+funny, isn't it?" she said.
+
+"Funny?"  he muttered savagely.  "Most things are, in this funny world."
+
+The sound of a taxi stopping not far off had come to her ears, and she
+gathered her feet under her, planting them firmly.  If she sprang up,
+could she slip by him before he caught her arm again, and get that taxi?
+
+"If I go now," he said, "will you promise me to stop till you've seen
+Leila?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That's foolish.  Come, promise!"
+
+Noel shook her head.  She felt a perverse pleasure at his embarrassment.
+
+"Leila's lucky, isn't she?  No children, no husband, no father, no
+anything.  Lovely!"
+
+She saw his arm go up as if to ward off a blow.  "Poor Leila!" he said.
+
+"Why are you sorry for her?  She has freedom!  And she has you!"
+
+She knew it would hurt; but she wanted to hurt him.
+
+"You needn't envy her for that."
+
+He had just spoken, when Noel saw a figure over by the door.
+
+She jumped up, and said breathlessly:
+
+"Oh, here you are, Leila!  Father's been here, and we've had some of your
+champagne!"
+
+"Capital!  You are in the dark!"
+
+Noel felt the blood rush into her cheeks.  The light leaped up, and Leila
+came forward.  She looked extremely pale, calm, and self-contained, in
+her nurse's dress; her full lips were tightly pressed together, but Noel
+could see her breast heaving violently.  A turmoil of shame and wounded
+pride began raging in the girl.  Why had she not flown long ago?  Why had
+she let herself be trapped like this?  Leila would think she had been
+making up to him!  Horrible!  Disgusting!  Why didn't he--why didn't some
+one, speak?  Then Leila said:
+
+"I didn't expect you, Jimmy; I'm glad you haven't been dull.  Noel is
+staying here to-night.  Give me a cigarette.  Sit down, both of you. I'm
+awfully tired!"
+
+She sank into a chair, leaning back, with her knees crossed; and at that
+moment Noel admired her.  She had said it beautifully; she looked so
+calm.  Fort was lighting her cigarette; his hand was shaking, his face
+all sorry and mortified.
+
+"Give Noel one, too, and draw the curtains, Jimmy.  Quick!  Not that it
+makes any difference; it's as light as day.  Sit down, dear."
+
+But Noel remained standing.
+
+"What have you been talking of?  Love and Chinese lanterns, or only me?"
+
+At those words Fort, who was drawing the last curtain, turned round; his
+tall figure was poised awkwardly against the wall, his face, unsuited to
+diplomacy, had a look as of flesh being beaten.  If weals had started up
+across it, Noel would not have been surprised.
+
+He said with painful slowness:
+
+"I don't exactly know; we had hardly begun, had we?"
+
+"The night is young," said Leila.  "Go on while I just take off my
+things."
+
+She rose with the cigarette between her lips, and went into the inner
+room.  In passing, she gave Noel a look.  What there was in that look,
+the girl could never make clear even to herself.  Perhaps a creature shot
+would gaze like that, with a sort of profound and distant questioning,
+reproach, and anger, with a sort of pride, and the quiver of death.  As
+the door closed, Fort came right across the room.
+
+"Go to her;" cried Noel; "she wants you.  Can't you see, she wants you?"
+
+And before he could move, she was at the door.  She flew downstairs, and
+out into the moonlight.  The taxi, a little way off, was just beginning
+to move away; she ran towards it, calling out:
+
+"Anywhere!  Piccadilly!" and jumping in, blotted herself against the
+cushions in the far corner.
+
+She did not come to herself, as it were, for several minutes, and then
+feeling she 'could no longer bear the cab, stopped it, and got out.
+Where was she?  Bond Street!  She began, idly, wandering down its narrow
+length; the fullest street by day, the emptiest by night. Oh! it had been
+horrible!  Nothing said by any of them--nothing, and yet everything
+dragged out--of him, of Leila, of herself!  She seemed to have no pride
+or decency left, as if she had been caught stealing. All her happy
+exhilaration was gone, leaving a miserable recklessness.  Nothing she did
+was right, nothing turned out well, so what did it all matter?  The
+moonlight flooding down between the tall houses gave her a peculiar heady
+feeling.  "Fey" her father had called her.  She laughed.  'But I'm not
+going home,' she thought. Bored with the street's length; she turned off,
+and was suddenly in Hanover Square.  There was the Church, grey-white,
+where she had been bridesmaid to a second cousin, when she was fifteen.
+She seemed to see it all again--her frock, the lilies in her hand, the
+surplices of the choir, the bride's dress, all moonlight-coloured, and
+unreal. 'I wonder what's become of her!' she thought.  'He's dead, I
+expect, like Cyril!'  She saw her father's face as he was marrying them,
+heard his voice: "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
+sickness and in health, till death do you part."  And the moonlight on
+the Church seemed to shift and quiver-some pigeons perhaps had been
+disturbed up there.  Then instead of that wedding vision, she saw
+Monsieur Barra, sitting on his chair, gazing at the floor, and Chica
+nursing her doll.  "All mad, mademoiselle, a little mad. Millions of men
+with white souls, but all a little tiny bit mad, you know."  Then Leila's
+face came before her, with that look in her eyes.  She felt again the hot
+clasp of Fort's fingers on her wrist, and walked on, rubbing it with the
+other hand.  She turned into Regent Street.  The wide curve of the
+Quadrant swept into a sky of unreal blue, and the orange-shaded lamps
+merely added to the unreality.  'Love and Chinese lanterns!  I should
+like some coffee,' she thought suddenly.  She was quite close to the
+place where Lavendie had taken her.  Should she go in there?  Why not?
+She must go somewhere.  She turned into the revolving cage of glass.  But
+no sooner was she imprisoned there than in a flash Lavendie's face of
+disgust; and the red-lipped women, the green stuff that smelled of
+peppermint came back, filling her with a rush of dismay.  She made the
+full circle in the revolving cage; and came out into the street again
+with a laugh.  A tall young man in khaki stood there: "Hallo!" he said.
+"Come in and dance!"  She started, recoiled from him and began to walk
+away as fast as ever she could.  She passed a woman whose eyes seemed to
+scorch her.  A woman like a swift vision of ruin with those eyes, and
+thickly powdered cheeks, and loose red mouth. Noel shuddered and fled
+along, feeling that her only safety lay in speed.  But she could not walk
+about all night.  There would be no train for Kestrel till the
+morning--and did she really want to go there, and eat her heart out?
+Suddenly she thought of George.  Why should she not go down to him?  He
+would know what was best for her to do.  At the foot of the steps below
+the Waterloo Column she stood still.  All was quiet there and empty, the
+great buildings whitened, the trees blurred and blue; and sweeter air was
+coming across their flowering tops.  The queer "fey" moony sensation was
+still with her; so that she felt small and light, as if she could have
+floated through a ring.  Faint rims of light showed round the windows of
+the Admiralty.  The war!  However lovely the night, however sweet the
+lilac smelt-that never stopped!  She turned away and passed out under the
+arch, making for the station.  The train of the wounded had just come in,
+and she stood in the cheering crowd watching the ambulances run out.
+Tears of excited emotion filled her eyes, and trickled down.  Steady,
+smooth, grey, one after the other they came gliding, with a little burst
+of cheers greeting each one.  All were gone now, and she could pass in.
+She went to the buffet and got a large cup of coffee, and a bun.  Then,
+having noted the time of her early morning train, she sought the ladies'
+waiting-room, and sitting down in a corner, took out her purse and
+counted her money.  Two pounds fifteen-enough to go to the hotel, if she
+liked.  But, without luggage--it was so conspicuous, and she could sleep
+in this corner all right, if she wanted.  What did girls do who had no
+money, and no friends to go to?  Tucked away in the corner of that empty,
+heavy, varnished room, she seemed to see the cruelty and hardness of life
+as she had never before seen it, not even when facing her confinement.
+How lucky she had been, and was!  Everyone was good to her.  She had no
+real want or dangers, to face.  But, for women--yes, and men too--who had
+no one to fall back on, nothing but their own hands and health and luck,
+it must be awful.  That girl whose eyes had scorched her--perhaps she had
+no one--nothing.  And people who were born ill, and the millions of poor
+women, like those whom she had gone visiting with Gratian sometimes in
+the poorer streets of her father's parish--for the first time she seemed
+to really know and feel the sort of lives they led.  And then, Leila's
+face came back to her once more--Leila whom she had robbed.  And the
+worst of it was, that, alongside her remorseful sympathy, she felt a sort
+of satisfaction.  She could not help his not loving Leila, she could not
+help it if he loved herself!  And he did--she knew it!  To feel that
+anyone loved her was so comforting.  But it was all awful!  And she--the
+cause of it!  And yet--she had never done or said anything to attract
+him.  No!  She could not have helped it.
+
+She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.  And gradually there
+came on her a cosey sensation, as if she were leaning up against someone
+with her head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so often leaned
+as a child against her father, coming back from some long darkening drive
+in Wales or Scotland.  She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air
+on her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of a frieze coat; to hear
+the jog of hoofs and the rolling of the wheels; to feel the closing in of
+the darkness.  Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that it
+was not her father, but someone--someone--then no more, no more at all.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked around her
+amazed.  Her neck had fallen sideways while she slept, and felt horridly
+stiff; her head ached, and she was shivering.  She saw by the clock that
+it was past five.  'If only I could get some tea!' she thought.  'Anyway
+I won't stay here any longer!'  When she had washed, and rubbed some of
+the stiffness out of her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure
+wonderfully.  Her train did not start for an hour; she had time for a
+walk, to warm herself, and went down to the river.  There was an early
+haze, and all looked a little mysterious; but people were already passing
+on their way to work. She walked along, looking at the water flowing up
+under the bright mist to which the gulls gave a sort of hovering life.
+She went as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat down on a
+bench under a plane-tree, just as the sun broke through.  A little pasty
+woman with a pinched yellowish face was already sitting there, so still,
+and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of what she could be
+thinking.  While she watched, the woman's face began puckering, and tears
+rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to pucker, till, summoning up
+her courage, Noel sidled nearer, and said:
+
+"Oh!  What's the matter?"
+
+The tears seemed to stop from sheer surprise; little grey eyes gazed
+round, patient little eyes from above an almost bridgeless nose.
+
+"I'ad a baby.  It's dead....  its father's dead in France....  I was
+goin' in the water, but I didn't like the look of it, and now I never
+will."
+
+That "Now I never will," moved Noel terribly.  She slid her arm along the
+back of the bench and clasped the skinniest of shoulders.
+
+"Don't cry!"
+
+"It was my first.  I'm thirty-eight.  I'll never 'ave another.  Oh!  Why
+didn't I go in the water?"
+
+The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears ran down.  'Of course
+she must cry,' thought Noel; 'cry and cry till it feels better.' And she
+stroked the shoulder of the little woman, whose emotion was disengaging
+the scent of old clothes.
+
+"The father of my baby was killed in France, too," she said at last. The
+little sad grey eyes looked curiously round.
+
+"Was 'e?  'Ave you got your baby still?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes!"
+
+"I'm glad of that.  It 'urts so bad, it does.  I'd rather lose me 'usband
+than me baby, any day."  The sun was shining now on a cheek of that
+terribly patient face; its brightness seemed cruel perching there.
+
+"Can I do anything to help you?"  Noel murmured.
+
+"No, thank you, miss.  I'm goin' 'ome now.  I don't live far.  Thank you
+kindly."  And raising her eyes for one more of those half-bewildered
+looks, she moved away along the Embankment wall.  When she was out of
+sight, Noel walked back to the station.  The train was in, and she took
+her seat.  She had three fellow passengers, all in khaki; very silent and
+moody, as men are when they have to get up early.  One was tall, dark,
+and perhaps thirty-five; the second small, and about fifty, with cropped,
+scanty grey hair; the third was of medium height and quite sixty-five,
+with a long row of little coloured patches on his tunic, and a bald,
+narrow, well-shaped head, grey hair brushed back at the sides, and the
+thin, collected features and drooping moustache of the old school.  It
+was at him that Noel looked.  When he glanced out of the window, or
+otherwise retired within himself, she liked his face; but when he turned
+to the ticket-collector or spoke to the others, she did not like it half
+so much. It was as if the old fellow had two selves, one of which he used
+when alone, the other in which he dressed every morning to meet the
+world. They had begun to talk about some Tribunal on which they had to
+sit. Noel did not listen, but a word or two carried to her now and then.
+
+"How many to-day?"  she heard the old fellow ask, and the little cropped
+man answering: "Hundred and fourteen."
+
+Fresh from the sight of the poor little shabby woman and her grief, she
+could not help a sort of shrinking from that trim old soldier, with his
+thin, regular face, who held the fate of a "Hundred and fourteen" in his
+firm, narrow grasp, perhaps every day.  Would he understand their
+troubles or wants?  Of course he wouldn't!  Then, she saw him looking at
+her critically with his keen eyes.  If he had known her secret, he would
+be thinking: 'A lady and act like that!  Oh, no!  Quite-quite out of the
+question!'  And she felt as if she could, sink under the seat with shame.
+But no doubt he was only thinking: 'Very young to be travelling by
+herself at this hour of the morning.  Pretty too!'  If he knew the real
+truth of her--how he would stare!  But why should this utter stranger,
+this old disciplinarian, by a casual glance, by the mere form of his
+face, make her feel more guilty and ashamed than she had yet felt?  That
+puzzled her.  He was, must be, a narrow, conventional old man; but he had
+this power to make her feel ashamed, because she felt that he had faith
+in his gods, and was true to them; because she knew he would die sooner
+than depart from his creed of conduct.  She turned to the window, biting
+her lips-angry and despairing.  She would never--never get used to her
+position; it was no good!  And again she had the longing of her dream, to
+tuck her face away into that coat, smell the scent of the frieze, snuggle
+in, be protected, and forget.  'If I had been that poor lonely little
+woman,' she thought, 'and had lost everything, I should have gone into
+the water.  I should have rushed and jumped.  It's only luck that I'm
+alive.  I won't look at that old man again: then I shan't feel so bad.'
+
+She had bought some chocolate at the station, and nibbled it, gazing
+steadily at the fields covered with daisies and the first of the
+buttercups and cowslips.  The three soldiers were talking now in
+carefully lowered voices.  The words: "women," "under control," "perfect
+plague," came to her, making her ears burn.  In the hypersensitive mood
+caused by the strain of yesterday, her broken night, and the emotional
+meeting with the little woman, she felt as if they were including her
+among those "women."  'If we stop, I'll get out,' she thought.  But when
+the train did stop it was they who got out.  She felt the old General's
+keen veiled glance sum her up for the last time, and looked full at him
+just for a moment.  He touched his cap, and said: "Will you have the
+window up or down?" and lingered to draw it half-way up.' His
+punctiliousness made her feel worse than ever.  When the train had
+started again she roamed up and down her empty carriage; there was no
+more a way out of her position than out of this rolling cushioned
+carriage!  And then she seemed to hear Fort's voice saying: 'Sit down,
+please!' and to feel his fingers clasp her wrist, Oh! he was nice and
+comforting; he would never reproach or remind her!  And now, probably,
+she would never see him again.
+
+The train drew up at last.  She did not know where George lodged, and
+would have to go to his hospital.  She planned to get there at half past
+nine, and having eaten a sort of breakfast at the station, went forth
+into the town.  The seaside was still wrapped in the early glamour which
+haunts chalk of a bright morning.  But the streets were very much alive.
+Here was real business of the war.  She passed houses which had been
+wrecked.  Trucks clanged and shunted, great lorries rumbled smoothly by.
+Sea--and Air-planes were moving like great birds far up in the bright
+haze, and khaki was everywhere.  But it was the sea Noel wanted.  She
+made her way westward to a little beach; and, sitting down on a stone,
+opened her arms to catch the sun on her face and chest.  The tide was
+nearly up, with the wavelets of a blue bright sea.  The great fact, the
+greatest fact in the world, except the sun; vast and free, making
+everything human seem small and transitory!  It did her good, like a
+tranquillising friend.  The sea might be cruel and terrible, awful things
+it could do, and awful things were being done on it; but its wide level
+line, its never-ending song, its sane savour, were the best medicine she
+could possibly have taken.  She rubbed the Shelly sand between her
+fingers in absurd ecstasy; took off her shoes and stockings, paddled, and
+sat drying her legs in the sun.
+
+When she left the little beach, she felt as if someone had said to her:
+
+'Your troubles are very little.  There's the sun, the sea, the air; enjoy
+them.  They can't take those from you.'
+
+At the hospital she had to wait half an hour in a little bare room before
+George came.
+
+"Nollie!  Splendid.  I've got an hour.  Let's get out of this cemetery.
+We'll have time for a good stretch on the tops.  Jolly of you to have
+come to me.  Tell us all about it."
+
+When she had finished, he squeezed her arm.  348
+
+"I knew it wouldn't do.  Your Dad forgot that he's a public figure, and
+must expect to be damned accordingly.  But though you've cut and run,
+he'll resign all the same, Nollie."
+
+"Oh, no!"  cried Noel.
+
+George shook his head.
+
+"Yes, he'll resign, you'll see, he's got no worldly sense; not a grain."
+
+"Then I shall have spoiled his life, just as if--oh, no!"
+
+"Let's sit down here.  I must be back at eleven."
+
+They sat down on a bench, where the green cliff stretched out before
+them, over a sea quite clear of haze, far down and very blue.
+
+"Why should he resign," cried Noel again, "now that I've gone?  He'll be
+lost without it all."
+
+George smiled.
+
+"Found, my dear.  He'll be where he ought to be, Nollie, where the Church
+is, and the Churchmen are not--in the air!"
+
+"Don't!"  cried Noel passionately.
+
+"No, no, I'm not chaffing.  There's no room on earth for saints in
+authority.  There's use for a saintly symbol, even if one doesn't hold
+with it, but there's no mortal use for those who try to have things both
+ways--to be saints and seers of visions, and yet to come the practical
+and worldly and rule ordinary men's lives.  Saintly example yes; but not
+saintly governance.  You've been his deliverance, Nollie."
+
+"But Daddy loves his Church."
+
+George frowned.  "Of course, it'll be a wrench.  A man's bound to have a
+cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is
+something about a Church--the drone, the scent, the half darkness;
+there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug.  But he's not being asked to
+give up the drug habit; only to stop administering drugs to others.
+Don't worry, Nollie; I don't believe that's ever suited him, it wants a
+thicker skin than he's got."
+
+"But all the people he helps?"
+
+"No reason he shouldn't go on helping people, is there?"
+
+"But to go on living there, without--Mother died there, you know!"
+
+George grunted.  "Dreams, Nollie, all round him; of the past and the
+future, of what people are and what he can do with them.  I never see him
+without a skirmish, as you know, and yet I'm fond of him.  But I should
+be twice as fond, and half as likely to skirmish, if he'd drop the habits
+of authority.  Then I believe he'd have some real influence over me;
+there's something beautiful about him, I know that quite well."
+
+"Yes," murmured Noel fervently.
+
+"He's such a queer mixture," mused George.  "Clean out of his age; chalks
+above most of the parsons in a spiritual sense and chalks below most of
+them in the worldly.  And yet I believe he's in the right of it.  The
+Church ought to be a forlorn hope, Nollie; then we should believe in it.
+Instead of that, it's a sort of business that no one can take too
+seriously.  You see, the Church spiritual can't make good in this
+age--has no chance of making good, and so in the main it's given it up
+for vested interests and social influence. Your father is a symbol of
+what the Church is not.  But what about you, my dear?  There's a room at
+my boarding-house, and only one old lady besides myself, who knits all
+the time.  If Grace can get shifted we'll find a house, and you can have
+the baby.  They'll send your luggage on from Paddington if you write; and
+in the meantime Gracie's got some things here that you can have."
+
+"I'll have to send a wire to Daddy."
+
+"I'll do that.  You come to my diggings at half past one, and I'll settle
+you in.  Until then, you'd better stay up here."
+
+When he had gone she roamed a little farther, and lay down on the short
+grass, where the chalk broke through in patches.  She could hear a
+distant rumbling, very low, travelling in that grass, the long mutter of
+the Flanders guns.  'I wonder if it's as beautiful a day there,' she
+thought.  'How dreadful to see no green, no butterflies, no flowers-not
+even sky-for the dust of the shells.  Oh! won't it ever, ever end?'  And
+a sort of passion for the earth welled up in her, the warm grassy earth
+along which she lay, pressed so close that she could feel it with every
+inch of her body, and the soft spikes of the grass against her nose and
+lips.  An aching sweetness tortured her, she wanted the earth to close
+its arms about her, she wanted the answer to her embrace of it.  She was
+alive, and wanted love.  Not death--not loneliness--not death!  And out
+there, where the guns muttered, millions of men would be thinking that
+same thought!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Pierson had passed nearly the whole night with the relics of his past,
+the records of his stewardship, the tokens of his short married life.
+The idea which had possessed him walking home in the moonlight sustained
+him in that melancholy task of docketing and destruction. There was not
+nearly so much to do as one would have supposed, for, with all his
+dreaminess, he had been oddly neat and businesslike in all parish
+matters.  But a hundred times that night he stopped, overcome by
+memories.  Every corner, drawer, photograph, paper was a thread in the
+long-spun web of his life in this house.  Some phase of his work, some
+vision of his wife or daughters started forth from each bit of furniture,
+picture, doorway.  Noiseless, in his slippers, he stole up and down
+between the study, diningroom, drawing-room, and anyone seeing him at his
+work in the dim light which visited the staircase from above the front
+door and the upper-passage window, would have thought: 'A ghost, a ghost
+gone into mourning for the condition of the world.'  He had to make this
+reckoning to-night, while the exaltation of his new idea was on him; had
+to rummage out the very depths of old association, so that once for all
+he might know whether he had strength to close the door on the past.
+Five o'clock struck before he had finished, and, almost dropping from
+fatigue, sat down at his little piano in bright daylight.  The last
+memory to beset him was the first of all; his honeymoon, before they came
+back to live in this house, already chosen, furnished, and waiting for
+them.  They had spent it in Germany--the first days in Baden-baden, and
+each morning had been awakened by a Chorale played down in the gardens of
+the Kurhaus, a gentle, beautiful tune, to remind them that they were in
+heaven.  And softly, so softly that the tunes seemed to be but dreams he
+began playing those old Chorales, one after another, so that the stilly
+sounds floated out, through the opened window, puzzling the early birds
+and cats and those few humans who were abroad as yet.....
+
+He received the telegram from Noel in the afternoon of the same day, just
+as he was about to set out for Leila's to get news of her; and close on
+the top of it came Lavendie.  He found the painter standing disconsolate
+in front of his picture.
+
+"Mademoiselle has deserted me?"
+
+"I'm afraid we shall all desert you soon, monsieur."
+
+"You are going?"
+
+"Yes, I am leaving here.  I hope to go to France."
+
+"And mademoiselle?"
+
+"She is at the sea with my son-in-law."
+
+The painter ran his hands through his hair, but stopped them half-way, as
+if aware that he was being guilty of ill-breeding.
+
+"Mon dieu!"  he said: "Is this not a calamity for you, monsieur le cure?"
+But his sense of the calamity was so patently limited to his unfinished
+picture that Pierson could not help a smile.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!"  said the painter, on whom nothing was lost.  "Comme je
+suis egoiste!  I show my feelings; it is deplorable.  My disappointment
+must seem a bagatelle to you, who will be so distressed at leaving your
+old home.  This must be a time of great trouble.  Believe me; I
+understand.  But to sympathise with a grief which is not shown would be
+an impertinence, would it not?  You English gentlefolk do not let us
+share your griefs; you keep them to yourselves."
+
+Pierson stared.  "True," he said.  "Quite true!"
+
+"I am no judge of Christianity, monsieur, but for us artists the doors of
+the human heart stand open, our own and others.  I suppose we have no
+pride--c'est tres-indelicat.  Tell me, monsieur, you would not think it
+worthy of you to speak to me of your troubles, would you, as I have
+spoken of mine?"
+
+Pierson bowed his head, abashed.
+
+"You preach of universal charity and love," went on Lavendie; "but how
+can there be that when you teach also secretly the keeping of your
+troubles to yourselves?  Man responds to example, not to teaching; you
+set the example of the stranger, not the brother.  You expect from others
+what you do not give.  Frankly, monsieur, do you not feel that with every
+revelation of your soul and feelings, virtue goes out of you?  And I will
+tell you why, if you will not think it an offence.  In opening your
+hearts you feel that you lose authority. You are officers, and must never
+forget that.  Is it not so?"
+
+Pierson grew red.  "I hope there is another feeling too.  I think we feel
+that to speak of our sufferings or, deeper feelings is to obtrude
+oneself, to make a fuss, to be self-concerned, when we might be concerned
+with others."
+
+"Monsieur, au fond we are all concerned with self.  To seem selfless is
+but your particular way of cultivating the perfection of self. You admit
+that not to obtrude self is the way to perfect yourself. Eh bien!  What
+is that but a deeper concern with self?  To be free of this, there is no
+way but to forget all about oneself in what one is doing, as I forget
+everything when I am painting.  But," he added, with a sudden smile, "you
+would not wish to forget the perfecting of self--it would not be right in
+your profession.  So I must take away this picture, must I not?  It is
+one of my best works: I regret much not to have finished it."
+
+"Some day, perhaps--"
+
+"Some day!  The picture will stand still, but mademoiselle will not. She
+will rush at something, and behold! this face will be gone.  No; I prefer
+to keep it as it is.  It has truth now."  And lifting down the canvas, he
+stood it against the wall and folded up the easel. "Bon soir, monsieur,
+you have been very good to me."  He wrung Pierson's hand; and his face
+for a moment seemed all eyes and spirit. "Adieu!"
+
+"Good-bye," Pierson murmured.  "God bless you!"
+
+"I don't know if I have great confidence in Him," replied Lavendie, "but
+I shall ever remember that so good a man as you has wished it. To
+mademoiselle my distinguished salutations, if you please.  If you will
+permit me, I will come back for my other things to-morrow."  And carrying
+easel and canvas, he departed.
+
+Pierson stayed in the old drawing-room, waiting for Gratian to come in,
+and thinking over the painter's words.  Had his education and position
+really made it impossible for him to be brotherly?  Was this the secret
+of the impotence which he sometimes felt; the reason why charity and love
+were not more alive in the hearts of his congregation?  'God knows I've
+no consciousness of having felt myself superior,' he thought; 'and yet I
+would be truly ashamed to tell people of my troubles and of my struggles.
+Can it be that Christ, if he were on earth, would count us Pharisees,
+believing ourselves not as other men?  But surely it is not as Christians
+but rather as gentlemen that we keep ourselves to ourselves.  Officers,
+he called us.  I fear--I fear it is true.'  Ah, well!  There would not be
+many more days now.  He would learn out there how to open the hearts of
+others, and his own.  Suffering and death levelled all barriers, made all
+men brothers.  He was still sitting there when Gratian came in; and
+taking her hand, he said:
+
+"Noel has gone down to George, and I want you to get transferred and go
+to them, Gracie.  I'm giving up the parish and asking for a chaplaincy."
+
+"Giving up?  After all this time?  Is it because of Nollie?"
+
+"No, I think not; I think the time has come.  I feel my work here is
+barren."
+
+"Oh, no!  And even if it is, it's only because--"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "Because of what, Gracie?"
+
+"Dad, it's what I've felt in myself.  We want to think and decide things
+for ourselves, we want to own our consciences, we can't take things at
+second-hand any longer."
+
+Pierson's face darkened.  "Ah!" he said, "to have lost faith is a
+grievous thing."
+
+"We're gaining charity," cried Gratian.
+
+"The two things are not opposed, my dear."
+
+"Not in theory; but in practice I think they often are.  Oh, Dad! you
+look so tired.  Have you really made up your mind?  Won't you feel lost?"
+
+"For a little.  I shall find myself, out there."
+
+But the look on his face was too much for Gratian's composure, and she
+turned away.
+
+Pierson went down to his study to write his letter of resignation.
+Sitting before that blank sheet of paper, he realised to the full how
+strongly he had resented the public condemnation passed on his own flesh
+and blood, how much his action was the expression of a purely mundane
+championship of his daughter; of a mundane mortification. 'Pride,' he
+thought.  'Ought I to stay and conquer it?'  Twice he set his pen down,
+twice took it up again.  He could not conquer it.  To stay where he was
+not wanted, on a sort of sufferance--never!  And while he sat before that
+empty sheet of paper he tried to do the hardest thing a man can do--to
+see himself as others see him; and met with such success as one might
+expect--harking at once to the verdicts, not of others at all, but of his
+own conscience; and coming soon to that perpetual gnawing sense which had
+possessed him ever since the war began, that it was his duty to be dead.
+This feeling that to be alive was unworthy of him when so many of his
+flock had made the last sacrifice, was reinforced by his domestic tragedy
+and the bitter disillusionment it had brought.  A sense of having lost
+caste weighed on him, while he sat there with his past receding from him,
+dusty and unreal.  He had the queerest feeling of his old life falling
+from him, dropping round his feet like the outworn scales of a serpent,
+rung after rung of tasks and duties performed day after day, year after
+year.  Had they ever been quite real?  Well, he had shed them now, and
+was to move out into life illumined by the great reality-death!  And
+taking up his pen, he wrote his resignation.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+1
+
+The last Sunday, sunny and bright!  Though he did not ask her to go,
+Gratian went to every Service that day.  And the sight of her, after this
+long interval, in their old pew, where once he had been wont to see his
+wife's face, and draw refreshment therefrom, affected Pierson more than
+anything else.  He had told no one of his coming departure, shrinking
+from the falsity and suppression which must underlie every allusion and
+expression of regret.  In the last minute of his last sermon he would
+tell them!  He went through the day in a sort of dream.  Truly proud and
+sensitive, under this social blight, he shrank from all alike, made no
+attempt to single out supporters or adherents from those who had fallen
+away.  He knew there would be some, perhaps many, seriously grieved that
+he was going; but to try and realise who they were, to weigh them in the
+scales against the rest and so forth, was quite against his nature.  It
+was all or nothing.  But when for the last time of all those hundreds, he
+mounted the steps of his dark pulpit, he showed no trace of finality, did
+not perhaps even feel it yet.  For so beautiful a summer evening the
+congregation was large.  In spite of all reticence, rumour was busy and
+curiosity still rife.  The writers of the letters, anonymous and
+otherwise, had spent a week, not indeed in proclaiming what they had
+done, but in justifying to themselves the secret fact that they had done
+it.  And this was best achieved by speaking to their neighbours of the
+serious and awkward situation of the poor Vicar. The result was visible
+in a better attendance than had been seen since summer-time began.
+
+Pierson had never been a great preacher, his voice lacked resonance and
+pliancy, his thought breadth and buoyancy, and he was not free from, the
+sing-song which mars the utterance of many who have to speak
+professionally.  But he always made an impression of goodness and
+sincerity.  On this last Sunday evening he preached again the first
+sermon he had ever preached from that pulpit, fresh from the honeymoon
+with his young wife.  "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one
+of these."  It lacked now the happy fervour of that most happy of all his
+days, yet gained poignancy, coming from so worn a face and voice.
+Gratian, who knew that he was going to end with his farewell, was in a
+choke of emotion long before he came to it. She sat winking away her
+tears, and not till he paused, for so long that she thought his strength
+had failed, did she look up.  He was leaning a little forward, seeming to
+see nothing; but his hands, grasping the pulpit's edge, were quivering.
+There was deep silence in the Church, for the look of his face and figure
+was strange, even to Gratian.  When his lips parted again to speak, a
+mist covered her eyes, and she lost sight of him.
+
+"Friends, I am leaving you; these are the last words I shall ever speak
+in this place.  I go to other work.  You have been very good to me.  God
+has been very good to me.  I pray with my whole heart that He may bless
+you all.  Amen!  Amen!"
+
+The mist cleared into tears, and she could see him again gazing down at
+her.  Was it at her?  He was surely seeing something--some vision sweeter
+than reality, something he loved more dearly.  She fell on her knees, and
+buried her face in her hand.  All through the hymn she knelt, and through
+his clear slow Benediction: "The peace of God, which passeth all
+understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of
+God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God
+Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you and
+remain with you always."  And still she knelt on; till she was alone in
+the Church.  Then she rose and stole home.  He did not come in; she did
+not expect him.  'It's over,' she kept thinking; 'all over.  My beloved
+Daddy!  Now he has no home; Nollie and I have pulled him down.  And yet I
+couldn't help it, and perhaps she couldn't.  Poor Nollie!...'
+
+
+2
+
+Pierson had stayed in the vestry, talking with his choir and wardens;
+there was no hitch, for his resignation had been accepted, and he had
+arranged with a friend to carry on till the new Vicar was appointed. When
+they were gone he went back into the empty Church, and mounted to the
+organ-loft.  A little window up there was open, and he stood leaning
+against the stone, looking out, resting his whole being. Only now that it
+was over did he know what stress he had been through.  Sparrows were
+chirping, but sound of traffic had almost ceased, in that quiet Sunday
+hour of the evening meal.  Finished!  Incredible that he would never come
+up here again, never see those roof-lines, that corner of Square Garden,
+and hear this familiar chirping of the sparrows.  He sat down at the
+organ and began to play.  The last time the sound would roll out and echo
+'round the emptied House of God.  For a long time he played, while the
+building darkened slowly down there below him.  Of all that he would
+leave, he would miss this most--the right to come and play here in the
+darkening Church, to release emotional sound in this dim empty space
+growing ever more beautiful.  From chord to chord he let himself go
+deeper and deeper into the surge and swell of those sound waves, losing
+all sense of actuality, till the music and the whole dark building were
+fused in one rapturous solemnity.  Away down there the darkness crept
+over the Church, till the pews, the altar-all was invisible, save the
+columns; and the walls.  He began playing his favourite slow movement
+from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony--kept to the end, for the visions it
+ever brought him.  And a cat, which had been stalking the sparrows, crept
+in through the little window, and crouched, startled, staring at him with
+her green eyes.  He closed the organ, went quickly down, and locked up
+his Church for the last time.  It was warmer outside than in, and
+lighter, for daylight was not quite gone.  He moved away a few yards, and
+stood looking up. Walls, buttresses, and spire were clothed in milky
+shadowy grey.  The top of the spire seemed to touch a star.  'Goodbye, my
+Church!' he thought.  'Good-bye, good-bye!' He felt his face quiver;
+clenched his teeth, and turned away.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+When Noel fled, Fort had started forward to stop her; then, realising
+that with his lameness he could never catch her, he went back and entered
+Leila's bedroom.
+
+She had taken off her dress, and was standing in front of her glass, with
+the cigarette still in her mouth; and the only movement was the curling
+of its blue smoke.  He could see her face reflected, pale, with a little
+spot of red in each cheek, and burning red ears.  She had not seemed to
+hear him coming in, but he saw her eyes change when they caught his
+reflection in the mirror.  From lost and blank, they became alive and
+smouldering.
+
+"Noel's gone!"  he said.
+
+She answered, as if to his reflection in the glass
+
+"And you haven't gone too?  Ah, no!  Of course--your leg!  She fled, I
+suppose?  It was rather a jar, my coming in, I'm afraid."
+
+"No; it was my coming in that was the jar."
+
+Leila turned round.  "Jimmy!  I wonder you could discuss me.  The rest--"
+She shrugged her shoulders--"But that!"
+
+"I was not discussing you.  I merely said you were not to be envied for
+having me.  Are you?"
+
+The moment he had spoken, he was sorry.  The anger in her eyes changed
+instantly, first to searching, then to misery.  She cried out:
+
+"I was to be envied.  Oh!  Jimmy; I was!" and flung herself face down on
+the bed.
+
+Through Fort's mind went the thought: 'Atrocious!'  How could he
+soothe--make her feel that he loved her, when he didn't--that he wanted
+her, when he wanted Noel.  He went up to the bedside and touched her
+timidly:
+
+"Leila, what is it?  You're overtired.  What's the matter?  I couldn't
+help the child's being here.  Why do you let it upset you?  She's gone.
+It's all right.  Things are just as they were."
+
+"Yes!" came the strangled echo; "just!"
+
+He knelt down and stroked her arm.  It shivered under the touch, seemed
+to stop shivering and wait for the next touch, as if hoping it might be
+warmer; shivered again.
+
+"Look at me!" he said.  "What is it you want?  I'm ready to do anything."
+
+She turned and drew herself up on the bed, screwing herself back against
+the pillow as if for support, with her knees drawn under her. He was
+astonished at the strength of her face and figure, thus entrenched.
+
+"My dear Jimmy!" she said, "I want you to do nothing but get me another
+cigarette.  At my age one expects no more than one gets!"  She held out
+her thumb and finger: "Do you mind?"
+
+Fort turned away to get the cigarette.  With what bitter restraint and
+curious little smile she had said that!  But no sooner was he out of the
+room and hunting blindly for the cigarettes, than his mind was filled
+with an aching concern for Noel, fleeing like that, reckless and hurt,
+with nowhere to go.  He found the polished birch-wood box which held the
+cigarettes, and made a desperate effort to dismiss the image of the girl
+before he again reached Leila.  She was still sitting there, with her
+arms crossed, in the stillness of one whose every nerve and fibre was
+stretched taut.
+
+"Have one yourself," she said.  "The pipe of peace."
+
+Fort lit the cigarettes, and sat down on the edge of the bed; and his
+mind at once went back to Noel.
+
+"Yes," she said suddenly; "I wonder where she's gone.  Can you see her?
+She might do something reckless a second time.  Poor Jimmy!  It would be
+a pity.  And so that monk's been here, and drunk champagne. Good idea!
+Get me some, Jimmy!"
+
+Again Fort went, and with him the image of the girl.  When he came back
+the second time; she had put on that dark silk garment in which she had
+appeared suddenly radiant the fatal night after the Queen's Hall concert.
+She took the wineglass, and passed him, going into the sitting-room.
+
+"Come and sit down," she said.  "Is your leg hurting you?"
+
+"Not more than usual," and he sat down beside her.
+
+"Won't you have some?  'In vino veritas;' my friend."
+
+He shook his head, and said humbly: "I admire you, Leila."
+
+"That's lucky.  I don't know anyone else who, would."  And she drank her
+champagne at a draught.
+
+"Don't you wish," she said suddenly, "that I had been one of those
+wonderful New Women, all brain and good works.  How I should have talked
+the Universe up and down, and the war, and Causes, drinking tea, and
+never boring you to try and love me.  What a pity!"
+
+But to Fort there had come Noel's words: "It's awfully funny, isn't it?"
+
+"Leila," he said suddenly, "something's got to be done.  So long as you
+don't wish me to, I'll promise never to see that child again."
+
+"My dear boy, she's not a child.  She's ripe for love; and--I'm too ripe
+for love.  That's what's the matter, and I've got to lump it." She
+wrenched her hand out of his and, dropping the empty glass, covered her
+face.  The awful sensation which visits the true Englishman when a scene
+stares him in the face spun in Fort's brain. Should he seize her hands,
+drag them down, and kiss her?  Should he get up and leave her alone?
+Speak, or keep silent; try to console; try to pretend?  And he did
+absolutely nothing.  So far as a man can understand that moment in a
+woman's life when she accepts the defeat of Youth and Beauty, he
+understood perhaps; but it was only a glimmering.  He understood much
+better how she was recognising once for all that she loved where she was
+not loved.
+
+'And I can't help that,' he thought dumbly; 'simply can't help that!'
+Nothing he could say or do would alter it.  No words can convince a woman
+when kisses have lost reality.  Then, to his infinite relief, she took
+her hands from her face, and said:
+
+"This is very dull.  I think you'd better go, Jimmy."
+
+He made an effort to speak, but was too afraid of falsity in his voice.
+
+"Very nearly a scene!" said Leila.  "My God!
+
+"How men hate them!  So do I.  I've had too many in my time; nothing
+comes of them but a headache next morning.  I've spared you that, Jimmy.
+Give me a kiss for it."
+
+He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried to
+answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and said
+faintly:
+
+"Thank you; you did try!"
+
+Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just then
+moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp hand, put it
+to his lips, and murmured:
+
+"I shall come in to-morrow.  We'll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good
+night, Leila!"
+
+But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him,
+evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look.  They
+went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.
+
+She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling. Without
+knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could not make up
+his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning against
+them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very good to him.  He felt
+like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the
+loser his revenge.  If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been a
+soulless companionship, a quite sordid business.  Anything rather than
+this!  English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of
+guilt.  To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made
+him feel intensely mean.  'Shall I go up again?' he thought.  The
+window-curtain moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  'She's
+gone to bed,' he thought.  'I should only upset her worse.  Where is
+Noel, now, I wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether
+a bad business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!'
+
+And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.
+
+Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real,
+poignant, and important to those outside morality's ring fence than to
+those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and
+poignant, just as a wild fruit's flavour is sharper than that of the tame
+product.  Opinion--she knew--would say, that having wilfully chosen a
+position outside morality she had not half the case for brokenheartedness
+she would have had if Fort had been her husband: Opinion--she knew--would
+say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal tie was broken,
+the better!  But she felt fully as wretched as if she had been married.
+She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be
+that.  She was like those who by confession shed their sins and start
+again with a clear conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and
+when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though
+a gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes
+were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and she
+knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was hope,
+even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!  But for Leila the lamp of
+belief had suddenly gone out, and when this next curtain dropped she felt
+that she must sit in the dark until old age made her indifferent.  And
+between forty-four and real old age a gulf is fixed.  This was the first
+time a man had tired of her.  Why! he had been tired before he began, or
+so she felt.  In one swift moment as of a drowning person, she saw again
+all the passages of their companionship, knew with certainty that it had
+never been a genuine flame.  Shame ran, consuming, in her veins.  She
+buried her face in the cushions.  This girl had possessed his real heart
+all the time. With a laugh she thought: 'I put my money on the wrong
+horse; I ought to have backed Edward.  I could have turned that poor
+monk's head. If only I had never seen Jimmy again; if I had torn his
+letter up, I could have made poor Edward love me!'  Ifs!  What folly!
+Things happened as they must!
+
+And, starting up, she began to roam the little room.  Without Jimmy she
+would be wretched, with him she would be wretched too!  'I can't bear to
+see his face,' she thought; 'and I can't live here without him!  It's
+really funny!'  The thought of her hospital filled her with loathing.  To
+go there day after day with this despair eating at her heart--she simply
+could not.  She went over her resources.  She had more money than she
+thought; Jimmy had given her a Christmas present of five hundred pounds.
+She had wanted to tear up the cheque, or force him to take it back; but
+the realities of the previous five years had prevailed with her, and she
+had banked it. She was glad now.  She had not to consider money.  Her
+mind sought to escape in the past.  She thought of her first husband,
+Ronny Fane; of their mosquito-curtained rooms in that ghastly Madras
+heat.  Poor Ronny!  What a pale, cynical young ghost started up under
+that name. She thought of Lynch, his horsey, matter-of-fact solidity.
+She had loved them both--for a time.  She thought of the veldt, of
+Constantia, and the loom of Table Mountain under the stars; and the first
+sight of Jimmy, his straight look, the curve of his crisp head, the kind,
+fighting-schoolboy frankness of his face.  Even now, after all those
+months of their companionship, that long-ago evening at grape harvest,
+when she sang to him under the scented creepers, was the memory of him
+most charged with real feeling.  That one evening at any rate he had
+longed for her, eleven: years ago, when she was in her prime.  She could
+have held her own then; Noel would have come in vain.  To think that this
+girl had still fifteen years before she would be even in her prime.
+Fifteen years of witchery; and then another ten before she was on the
+shelf.  Why! if Noel married Jimmy, he would be an old man doting on her
+still, by the time she had reached this fatal age of forty-four: She felt
+as if she must scream, and; stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth,
+turned out the light. Darkness cooled her, a little.  She pulled aside
+the curtains, and let in the moon light.  Jimmy and that girl were out in
+it some where, seeking each other, if not in body, then in thought.  And
+soon, somehow, somewhere, they would come together--come together because
+Fate meant them to!  Fate which had given her young cousin a likeness to
+herself; placed her, too, in just such a hopeless position as appealed to
+Jimmy, and gave him a chance against younger men.  She saw it with bitter
+surety.  Good gamblers cut their losses!  Yes, and proud women did not
+keep unwilling lovers!  If she had even an outside chance, she would
+trail her pride, drag it through the mud, through thorns!  But she had
+not.  And she clenched her fist, and struck out at the night, as though
+at the face of that Fate which one could never reach--impalpable,
+remorseless, surrounding Fate with its faint mocking smile, devoid of all
+human warmth.  Nothing could set back the clock, and give her what this
+girl had.  Time had "done her in," as it "did in" every woman, one by
+one.  And she saw herself going down the years, powdering a little more,
+painting a little more, touching up her hair, till it was all artifice,
+holding on by every little device--and all, to what end?  To see his face
+get colder and colder, hear his voice more and more constrained to
+gentleness; and know that underneath, aversion was growing with the
+thought 'You are keeping me from life, and love!'  till one evening, in
+sheer nerve-break, she would say or do some fearful thing, and he would
+come no more.  'No, Jimmy!' she thought; 'find her, and stay with her.
+You're not worth all that!'  And puffing to the curtains, as though with
+that gesture she could shut out her creeping fate, she turned up the
+light and sat down at her writing table.  She stayed some minutes
+motionless, her chin resting on her hands, the dark silk fallen down from
+her arms.  A little mirror, framed in curiously carved ivory, picked up
+by her in an Indian bazaar twenty-five years ago, hung on a level with
+her face and gave that face back to her. 'I'm not ugly,' she thought
+passionately, 'I'm not.  I still have some looks left.  If only that girl
+hadn't come.  And it was all my doing.  Oh, what made me write to both of
+them, Edward and Jimmy?' She turned the mirror aside, and took up a pen.
+
+"MY DEAR JIMMY," she wrote: "It will be better for us both if you take a
+holiday from here.  Don't come again till I write for you. I'm sorry I
+made you so much disturbance to-night.  Have a good time, and a good
+rest; and don't worry. "Your--"
+
+So far she had written when a tear dropped on the page, and she had to
+tear it up and begin again.  This time she wrote to the end--"Your
+Leila."  'I must post it now,' she thought, 'or he may not get it before
+to-morrow evening.  I couldn't go through with this again.' She hurried
+out with it and slipped it in a pillar box.  The night smelled of
+flowers; and, hastening back, she lay down, and stayed awake for hours,
+tossing, and staring at the dark.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+1
+
+Leila had pluck, but little patience.  Her one thought was to get away
+and she at once began settling up her affairs and getting a permit to
+return to South Africa.  The excitements of purchase and preparation were
+as good an anodyne as she could have taken.  The perils of the sea were
+at full just then, and the prospect of danger gave her a sort of
+pleasure.  'If I go down,' she thought, 'all the better; brisk, instead
+of long and dreary.'  But when she had the permit and her cabin was
+booked, the irrevocability of her step came to her with full force.
+Should she see him again or no?  Her boat started in three days, and she
+must decide.  If in compunction he were to be affectionate, she knew she
+would never keep to her decision, and then the horror would begin again,
+till again she was forced to this same action.  She let the hours go and
+go till the very day before, when the ache to see him and the dread of it
+had become so unbearable that she could not keep quiet.  Late that
+afternoon--everything, to the last label, ready--she went out, still
+undecided.  An itch to turn the dagger in her wound, to know what had
+become of Noel, took her to Edward's house.  Almost unconsciously she had
+put on her prettiest frock, and spent an hour before the glass. A
+feverishness of soul, more than of body, which had hung about her ever
+since that night, gave her colour.  She looked her prettiest; and she
+bought a gardenia at a shop in Baker Street and fastened it in her dress.
+Reaching the old Square, she was astonished to see a board up with the
+words: "To let," though the house still looked inhabited.  She rang, and
+was shown into the drawing-room.  She had only twice been in this house
+before; and for some reason, perhaps because of her own unhappiness, the
+old, rather shabby room struck her as pathetic, as if inhabited by the
+past.  'I wonder what his wife was like,' she thought: And then she saw,
+hanging against a strip of black velvet on the wall, that faded colour
+sketch of the slender young woman leaning forward, with her hands crossed
+in her lap.  The colouring was lavender and old ivory, with faint touches
+of rose.  The eyes, so living, were a little like Gratian's; the whole
+face delicate, eager, good.  'Yes,' she thought, 'he must have loved you
+very much.  To say good-bye must have been hard.' She was still standing
+before it when Pierson came in.
+
+"That's a dear face, Edward.  I've come to say good-bye.  I'm leaving for
+South Africa to-morrow."  And, as her hand touched his, she thought: 'I
+must have been mad to think I could ever have made him love me.'
+
+"Are you--are you leaving him?"
+
+Leila nodded:
+
+"That's very brave, and wonderful."
+
+"Oh! no.  Needs must when the devil drives--that's all.  I don't give up
+happiness of my own accord.  That's not within a hundred miles of the
+truth.  What I shall become, I don't know, but nothing better, you may be
+sure.  I give up because I can't keep, and you know why. Where is Noel?"
+
+"Down at the sea, with George and Gratian."
+
+He was looking at her in wonder; and the pained, puzzled expression on
+his face angered her.
+
+"I see the house is to let.  Who'd have thought a child like that could
+root up two fossils like us?  Never mind, Edward, there's the same blood
+in us.  We'll keep our ends up in our own ways.  Where are you going?"
+
+"They'll give me a chaplaincy in the East, I think."
+
+For a wild moment Leila thought: 'Shall I offer to go with him--the two
+lost dogs together?'
+
+"What would have happened, Edward, if you had proposed to me that May
+week, when we were--a little bit in love?  Which would it have been,
+worst for, you or me?"
+
+"You wouldn't have taken me, Leila."
+
+"Oh, one never knows.  But you'd never have been a priest then, and you'd
+never have become a saint."
+
+"Don't use that silly word.  If you knew--"
+
+"I do; I can see that you've been half burned alive; half burned and half
+buried!  Well, you have your reward, whatever it is, and I mine.
+Good-bye, Edward!"  She took his hand.  "You might give me your blessing;
+I want it."
+
+Pierson put his other hand on her shoulder and, bending forward, kissed
+her forehead.
+
+The tears rushed up in Leila's eyes.  "Ah me!" she said, "it's a sad
+world!"  And wiping the quivering off her lips with the back of her
+gloved hand, she went quickly past him to the door.  She looked back from
+there.  He had not stirred, but his lips were moving.  'He's praying for
+me!' she thought.  'How funny!'
+
+
+2
+
+The moment she was outside, she forgot him; the dreadful ache for Fort
+seemed to have been whipped up within her, as if that figure of lifelong
+repression had infuriated the love of life and pleasure in her.  She must
+and would see Jimmy again, if she had to wait and seek for him all night!
+It was nearly seven, he would surely have finished at the War Office; he
+might be at his Club or at his rooms. She made for the latter.
+
+The little street near Buckingham Gate, where no wag had chalked "Peace"
+on the doors for nearly a year now, had an arid look after a hot day's
+sun.  The hair-dresser's shop below his rooms was still open, and the
+private door ajar: 'I won't ring,' she thought; 'I'll go straight up.'
+While she was mounting the two flights of stairs, she stopped twice,
+breathless, from a pain in her side.  She often had that pain now, as if
+the longing in her heart strained it physically.  On the modest landing
+at the top, outside his rooms, she waited, leaning against the wall,
+which was covered with a red paper. A window at the back was open and the
+confused sound of singing came in--a chorus "Vive-la, vive-la, vive-la
+ve.  Vive la compagnie."  So it came to her.  'O God!' she thought: 'Let
+him be in, let him be nice to me.  It's the last time.'  And, sick from
+anxiety, she opened the door.  He was in--lying on a wicker-couch against
+the wall in the far corner, with his arms crossed behind his head, and a
+pipe in his mouth; his eyes were closed, and he neither moved, nor opened
+them, perhaps supposing her to be the servant.  Noiseless as a cat, Leila
+crossed the room till she stood above him.  And waiting for him to come
+out of that defiant lethargy, she took her fill of his thin, bony face,
+healthy and hollow at the same time.  With teeth clenched on the pipe it
+had a look of hard resistance, as of a man with his head back, his arms
+pinioned to his sides, stiffened against some creature, clinging and
+climbing and trying to drag him down.  The pipe was alive, and dribbled
+smoke; and his leg, the injured one, wriggled restlessly, as if worrying
+him; but the rest of him was as utterly and obstinately still as though
+he were asleep.  His hair grew thick and crisp, not a thread of grey in
+it, the teeth which held the pipe glinted white and strong.  His face was
+young; so much younger than hers.  Why did she love it--the face of a man
+who couldn't love her?  For a second she felt as if she could seize the
+cushion which had slipped down off the couch, and smother him as he lay
+there, refusing, so it seemed to her, to come to consciousness. Love
+despised!  Humiliation!  She nearly turned and stole away.  Then through
+the door, left open, behind her, the sound of that chorus: "Vive-la,
+vive-la, vive-la ve!" came in and jolted her nerves unbearably.  Tearing
+the gardenia from her breast, she flung it on to his upturned face.
+
+"Jimmy!"
+
+Fort struggled up, and stared at her.  His face was comic from
+bewilderment, and she broke into a little nervous laugh.
+
+"You weren't dreaming of me, dear Jimmy, that's certain.  In what garden
+were you wandering?"
+
+"Leila!  You!  How--how jolly!"
+
+"How--how jolly!  I wanted to see you, so I came.  And I have seen you,
+as you are, when you aren't with me.  I shall remember it; it was good
+for me--awfully good for me."
+
+"I didn't hear you."
+
+"Far, far away, my dear.  Put my gardenia in, your buttonhole.  Stop,
+I'll pin it in.  Have you had a good rest all this week?  Do you like my
+dress?  It's new.  You wouldn't have noticed it, would you?"
+
+"I should have noticed.  I think it's charming.
+
+"Jimmy, I believe that nothing--nothing will ever shake your chivalry."
+
+"Chivalry?  I have none."
+
+"I am going to shut the door, do you mind?"  But he went to the door
+himself, shut it, and came back to her.  Leila looked up at him.
+
+"Jimmy, if ever you loved me a little bit, be nice to me today.  And if I
+say things--if I'm bitter--don't mind; don't notice it. Promise!"
+
+"I promise."
+
+She took off her hat and sat leaning against him on the couch, so that
+she could not see his face.  And with his arm round her, she let herself
+go, deep into the waters of illusion; down-down, trying to forget there
+was a surface to which she must return; like a little girl she played
+that game of make-believe.  'He loves me-he loves me--he loves me!'  To
+lose herself like that for, just an hour, only an hour; she felt that she
+would give the rest of the time vouchsafed to her; give it all and
+willingly.  Her hand clasped his against her heart, she turned her face
+backward, up to his, closing her eyes so as still not to see his face;
+the scent of the gardenia in his coat hurt her, so sweet and strong it
+was.
+
+
+3
+
+When with her hat on she stood ready to go, it was getting dark.  She had
+come out of her dream now, was playing at make-believe no more. And she
+stood with a stony smile, in the half-dark, looking between her lashes at
+the mortified expression on his unconscious face.
+
+"Poor Jimmy!" she said; "I'm not going to keep you from dinner any
+longer.  No, don't come with me.  I'm going alone; and don't light up,
+for heaven's sake."
+
+She put her hand on the lapel of his coat.  "That flower's gone brown at
+the edges.  Throw it away; I can't bear faded flowers.  Nor can you.  Get
+yourself a fresh one tomorrow."
+
+She pulled the flower from his buttonhole and, crushing it in her hand,
+held her face up.
+
+"Well, kiss me once more; it won't hurt you."
+
+For one moment her lips clung to his with all their might.  She wrenched
+them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting it
+in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs.  She trailed
+a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help her.  At the
+last half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she
+stopped and listened.  There wasn't a sound.  'If I stand here behind
+this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him again.' She slipped behind
+the curtain, close drawn but for a little chink.  It was so dark there
+that she could not see her own hand.  She heard the door open, and his
+slow footsteps coming down the stairs.  His feet, knees, whole figure
+came into sight, his face just a dim blur.  He passed, smoking a
+cigarette.  She crammed her hand against her mouth to stop herself from
+speaking and the crushed gardenia filled her nostrils with its cold,
+fragrant velvet.  He was gone, the door below was shut.  A wild,
+half-stupid longing came on her to go up again, wait till he came in,
+throw herself upon him, tell him she was going, beg him to keep her with
+him.  Ah! and he would!  He would look at her with that haggard pity she
+could not bear, and say, "Of course, Leila, of course."  No!  By God, no!
+"I am going quietly home," she muttered; "just quietly home!  Come along,
+be brave; don't be a fool!  Come along!"  And she went down into the
+street: At the entrance to the Park she saw him, fifty yards in front,
+dawdling along.  And, as if she had been his shadow lengthened out to
+that far distance, she moved behind him.  Slowly, always at that
+distance, she followed him under the plane-trees, along the Park
+railings, past St. James's Palace, into Pall Mall.  He went up some
+steps, and vanished into his Club.  It was the end.  She looked up at the
+building; a monstrous granite tomb, all dark.  An emptied cab was just
+moving from the door.  She got in.  "Camelot Mansions, St. John's Wood."
+And braced against the cushions, panting, and clenching her hands, she
+thought: 'Well, I've seen him again.  Hard crust's better than no bread.
+Oh, God!  All finished--not a crumb, not a crumb!  Vive-la, vive-la,
+vive-la ve.  Vive-la compagnie!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+Fort had been lying there about an hour, sleeping and awake, before that
+visit: He had dreamed a curious and wonderfully emotionalising dream.  A
+long grey line, in a dim light, neither of night nor morning, the whole
+length of the battle-front in France, charging in short drives, which
+carried the line a little forward, with just a tiny pause and suck-back;
+then on again irresistibly, on and on; and at each rush, every voice, his
+own among them, shouted "Hooray! the English!  Hooray! the English!"  The
+sensation of that advancing tide of dim figures in grey light, the throb
+and roar, the wonderful, rhythmic steady drive of it, no more to be
+stopped than the waves of an incoming tide, was gloriously fascinating;
+life was nothing, death nothing.  "Hooray, the English!"  In that dream,
+he was his country, he was every one of that long charging line, driving
+forward in. those great heaving pulsations, irresistible, on and on.  Out
+of the very centre of this intoxicating dream he had been dragged by some
+street noise, and had closed his eyes again, in the vain hope that he
+might dream it on to its end.  But it came no more; and lighting his
+pipe, he lay there wondering at its fervid, fantastic realism.  Death was
+nothing, if his country lived and won.  In waking hours he never had
+quite that single-hearted knowledge of himself.  And what marvellously
+real touches got mixed into the fantastic stuff of dreams, as if
+something were at work to convince the dreamer in spite of
+himself--"Hooray!" not "Hurrah!"  Just common "Hooray!"  And "the
+English," not the literary "British."  And then the soft flower had
+struck his forehead, and Leila's voice cried: "Jimmy!"
+
+When she left him, his thought was just a tired: 'Well, so it's begun
+again!' What did it matter, since common loyalty and compassion cut him
+off from what his heart desired; and that desire was absurd, as little
+likely of attainment as the moon.  What did it matter?  If it gave her
+any pleasure to love him, let it go on!  Yet, all the time that he was
+walking across under the plane trees, Noel seemed to walk in front of
+him, just out of reach, so that he ached with the thought that he would
+never catch her up, and walk beside her.
+
+Two days later, on reaching his rooms in the evening, he found this
+letter on ship's note-paper, with the Plymouth postmark--
+
+    "Fare thee well, and if for ever,
+     Then for ever fare thee well"
+                         "Leila"
+
+He read it with a really horrible feeling, for all the world as if he had
+been accused of a crime and did not know whether he had committed it or
+not.  And, trying to collect his thoughts, he took a cab and drove to her
+fiat.  It was closed, but her address was given him; a bank in Cape Town.
+He had received his release.  In his remorse and relief, so confusing and
+so poignant, he heard the driver of the cab asking where he wanted to go
+now.  "Oh, back again!"  But before they had gone a mile he corrected the
+address, in an impulse of which next moment he felt thoroughly ashamed.
+What he was doing indeed, was as indecent as if he were driving from the
+funeral of his wife to the boudoir of another woman.  When he reached the
+old Square, and the words "To let" stared him in the face, he felt a
+curious relief, though it meant that he would not see her whom to see for
+ten minutes he felt he would give a year of life.  Dismissing his cab, he
+stood debating whether to ring the bell.  The sight of a maid's face at
+the window decided him.  Mr. Pierson was out, and the young ladies were
+away.  He asked for Mrs. Laird's address, and turned away, almost into
+the arms of Pierson himself.  The greeting was stiff and strange.  'Does
+he know that Leila's gone?' he thought.  'If so, he must think me the
+most awful skunk.  And am I?  Am I?' When he reached home, he sat down to
+write to Leila.  But having stared at the paper for an hour and written
+these three lines--
+
+"MY DEAR LEILA, "I cannot express to you the feelings with which I
+received your letter--"
+
+he tore it up.  Nothing would be adequate, nothing would be decent. Let
+the dead past bury its dead--the dead past which in his heart had never
+been alive!  Why pretend?  He had done his best to keep his end up.  Why
+pretend?
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+I
+
+In the boarding-house, whence the Lairds had not yet removed, the old
+lady who knitted, sat by the fireplace, and light from the setting sun
+threw her shadow on the wall, moving spidery and grey, over the yellowish
+distemper, in time to the tune of her needles.  She was a very old
+lady--the oldest lady in the world, Noel thought--and she knitted without
+stopping, without breathing, so that the girl felt inclined to scream.
+In the evening when George and Gratian were not in, Noel would often sit
+watching the needles, brooding over her as yet undecided future.  And now
+and again the old lady would look up above her spectacles; move the
+corners of her lips ever so slightly, and drop her gaze again.  She had
+pitted herself against Fate; so long as she knitted, the war could not
+stop--such was the conclusion Noel had come to.  This old lady knitted
+the epic of acquiescence to the tune of her needles; it was she who kept
+the war going such a thin old lady!  'If I were to hold her elbows from
+behind,' the girl used to think, 'I believe she'd die.  I expect I ought
+to; then the war would stop.  And if the war stopped, there'd be love and
+life again.'  Then the little silvery tune would click itself once more
+into her brain, and stop her thinking.  In her lap this evening lay a
+letter from her father.
+"MY DEAREST NOLLIE,
+
+"I am glad to say I have my chaplaincy, and am to start for Egypt very
+soon.  I should have wished to go to France, but must take what I can
+get, in view of my age, for they really don't want us who are getting on,
+I fear.  It is a great comfort to me to think that Gratian is with you,
+and no doubt you will all soon be in a house where my little grandson can
+join you.  I have excellent accounts of him in a letter from your aunt,
+just received: My child, you must never again think that my resignation
+has been due to you.  It is not so.  You know, or perhaps you don't, that
+ever since the war broke out, I have chafed over staying at home, my
+heart has been with our boys out there, and sooner or later it must have
+come to this, apart from anything else.  Monsieur Lavendie has been round
+in the evening, twice; he is a nice man, I like him very much, in spite
+of our differences of view.  He wanted to give me the sketch he made of
+you in the Park, but what can I do with it now?  And to tell you the
+truth, I like it no better than the oil painting.  It is not a likeness,
+as I know you.  I hope I didn't hurt his feelings, the feelings of an
+artist are so very easily wounded.  There is one thing I must tell you.
+Leila has gone back to South Africa; she came round one evening about ten
+days ago, to say goodbye.  She was very brave, for I fear it means a
+great wrench for her.  I hope and pray she may find comfort and
+tranquillity out there.  And now, my dear, I want you to promise me not
+to see Captain Fort.  I know that he admires you.  But, apart from the
+question of his conduct in regard to Leila, he made the saddest
+impression on me by coming to our house the very day after her departure.
+There is something about that which makes me feel he cannot be the sort
+of man in whom I could feel any confidence.  I don't suppose for a moment
+that he is in your thoughts, and yet before going so far from you, I feel
+I must warn you.  I should rejoice to see you married to a good man; but,
+though I don't wish to think hardly of anyone, I cannot believe Captain
+Fort is that.
+
+"I shall come down to you before I start, which may be in quite a short
+time now.  My dear love to you and Gracie, and best wishes to George.
+
+"Your ever loving father, "EDWARD PIERSON
+
+Across this letter lying on her knees, Noel gazed at the spidery movement
+on the wall.  Was it acquiescence that the old lady knitted, or was it
+resistance--a challenge to death itself, a challenge dancing to the tune
+of the needles like the grey ghost of human resistance to Fate!  She
+wouldn't give in, this oldest lady in the world, she meant to knit till
+she fell into the grave.  And so Leila had gone!  It hurt her to know
+that; and yet it pleased her. Acquiescence--resistance!  Why did Daddy
+always want to choose the way she should go?  So gentle he was, yet he
+always wanted to!  And why did he always make her feel that she must go
+the other way?  The sunlight ceased to stream in, the old lady's shadow
+faded off the wall, but the needles still sang their little tune.  And
+the girl said:
+
+"Do you enjoy knitting, Mrs. Adam?"
+
+The old lady looked at her above the spectacles.
+
+"Enjoy, my dear?  It passes the time."
+
+"But do you want the time to pass?"
+
+There was no answer for a moment, and Noel thought: 'How dreadful of me
+to have said that!'
+
+"Eh?"  said the old lady.
+
+"I said: Isn't it very tiring?"
+
+"Not when I don't think about it, my dear."
+
+"What do you think about?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh--well!"  she said.
+
+And Noel thought: 'It must be dreadful to grow old, and pass the time!'
+
+She took up her father's letter, and bent it meditatively against her
+chin.  He wanted her to pass the time--not to live, not to enjoy!  To
+pass the time.  What else had he been doing himself, all these years,
+ever since she could remember, ever since her mother died, but just
+passing the time?  Passing the time because he did not believe in this
+life; not living at all, just preparing for the life he did believe in.
+Denying himself everything that was exciting and nice, so that when he
+died he might pass pure and saintly to his other world.  He could not
+believe Captain Fort a good man, because he had not passed the time, and
+resisted Leila; and Leila was gone!  And now it was a sin for him to love
+someone else; he must pass the time again.  'Daddy doesn't believe in
+life,' she thought; 'it's monsieur's picture.  Daddy's a saint; but I
+don't want to be a saint, and pass the time.  He doesn't mind making
+people unhappy, because the more they're repressed, the saintlier they'll
+be.  But I can't bear to be unhappy, or to see others unhappy.  I wonder
+if I could bear to be unhappy to save someone else--as Leila is?  I
+admire her!  Oh!  I admire her!  She's not doing it because she thinks it
+good for her soul; only because she can't bear making him unhappy.  She
+must love him very much.  Poor Leila!  And she's done it all by herself,
+of her own accord.'  It was like what George said of the soldiers; they
+didn't know why they were heroes, it was not because they'd been told to
+be, or because they believed in a future life.  They just had to be, from
+inside somewhere, to save others.  'And they love life as much as I do,'
+she thought.  'What a beast it makes one feel!'  Those needles!
+Resistance--acquiescence?  Both perhaps.  The oldest lady in the world,
+with her lips moving at the corners, keeping things in, had lived her
+life, and knew it.  How dreadful to live on when you were of no more
+interest to anyone, but must just "pass the time" and die.  But how much
+more dreadful to "pass the time" when you were strong, and life and love
+were yours for the taking!  'I shan't answer Daddy,' she thought.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The maid, who one Saturday in July opened the door to Jimmy Fort, had
+never heard the name of Laird, for she was but a unit in the ceaseless
+procession which pass through the boarding-houses of places subject to
+air-raids.  Placing him in a sitting-room, she said she would find Miss
+'Allow.  There he waited, turning the leaves of an illustrated Journal,
+wherein Society beauties; starving Servians, actresses with pretty legs,
+prize dogs, sinking ships, Royalties, shells bursting, and padres reading
+funeral services, testified to the catholicity of the public taste, but
+did not assuage his nerves. What if their address were not known here?
+Why, in his fear of putting things to the test, had he let this month go
+by?  An old lady was sitting by the hearth, knitting, the click of whose
+needles blended with the buzzing of a large bee on the window-pane.  'She
+may know,' he thought, 'she looks as if she'd been here for ever.' And
+approaching her, he said:
+
+"I can assure you those socks are very much appreciated, ma'am."
+
+The old lady bridled over her spectacles.
+
+"It passes the time," she said.
+
+"Oh, more than that; it helps to win the war, ma'am."
+
+The old lady's lips moved at the corners; she did not answer. 'Deaf!' he
+thought.
+
+"May I ask if you knew my friends, Doctor and Mrs. Laird, and Miss
+Pierson?"
+
+The old lady cackled gently.
+
+"Oh, yes!  A pretty young girl; as pretty as life.  She used to sit with
+me.  Quite a pleasure to watch her; such large eyes she had."
+
+"Where have they gone?  Can you tell me?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know at all."
+
+It was a little cold douche on his heart.  He longed to say: 'Stop
+knitting a minute, please.  It's my life, to know.'  But the tune of the
+needles answered: 'It's my life to knit.'  And he turned away to the
+window.
+
+"She used to sit just there; quite still; quite still."
+
+Fort looked down at the window-seat.  So, she used to sit just here,
+quite still.
+
+"What a dreadful war this is!" said the old lady.  "Have you been at the
+front?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To think of the poor young girls who'll never have husbands!  I'm sure I
+think it's dreadful."
+
+"Yes," said Fort; "it's dreadful--"  And then a voice from the doorway
+said:
+
+"Did you want Doctor and Mrs. Laird, sir?  East Bungalow their address
+is; it's a little way out on the North Road.  Anyone will tell you."
+
+With a sigh of relief Fort looked gratefully at the old lady who had
+called Noel as pretty as life.  "Good afternoon, ma'am."
+
+"Good afternoon."  The needles clicked, and little movements occurred at
+the corners of her mouth.  Fort went out.  He could not find a vehicle,
+and was a long time walking.  The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick
+pointed with red.  It lay about two-thirds up between the main road and
+cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the
+afternoon sunlight.  He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers
+which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything.  A baby's
+crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!'
+Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back of the house and
+a perambulator out there under a holm-oak tree, and Noel--surely Noel
+herself!  Hardening his heart, he went forward.  In a lilac sunbonnet she
+was bending over the perambulator.  He trod softly on the grass, and was
+quite close before she heard him.  He had prepared no words, but just
+held out his hand.  The baby, interested in the shadow failing across its
+pram, ceased crying.  Noel took his hand.  Under the sunbonnet, which hid
+her hair, she seemed older and paler, as if she felt the heat. He had no
+feeling that she was glad to see him.
+
+"How do you do?  Have you seen Gratian; she ought to be in."
+
+"I didn't come to see her; I came to see you."
+
+Noel turned to the baby.
+
+"Here he is."
+
+Fort stood at the end of the perambulator, and looked at that other
+fellow's baby.  In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it
+seemed to him lying with its head downhill.  It had scratched its snub
+nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes,
+which seemed to have no underlids so fat were its cheeks.
+
+"I wonder what they think about," he said.
+
+Noel put her finger into the baby's fist.
+
+"They only think when they want some thing."
+
+"That's a deep saying: but his eyes are awfully interested in you."
+
+Noel smiled; and very slowly the baby's curly mouth unclosed, and
+discovered his toothlessness.
+
+"He's a darling," she said in a whisper.
+
+'And so are you,' he thought, 'if only I dared say it!'
+
+"Daddy is here," she said suddenly, without looking up.  "He's sailing
+for Egypt the day after to-morrow.  He doesn't like you."
+
+Fort's heart gave a jump.  Why did she tell him that, unless--unless she
+was just a little on his side?
+
+"I expected that," he said.  "I'm a sinner, as you know."
+
+Noel looked up at him.  "Sin!" she said, and bent again over her baby.
+The word, the tone in which she said it, crouching over her baby, gave
+him the thought: 'If it weren't for that little creature, I shouldn't
+have a dog's chance.'  He said, "I'll go and see your father.  Is he in?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"May I come to-morrow?"
+
+"It's Sunday; and Daddy's last day."
+
+"Ah!  Of course."  He did not dare look back, to see if her gaze was
+following him, but he thought: 'Chance or no chance, I'm going to fight
+for her tooth and nail.'
+
+In a room darkened against the evening sun Pierson was sitting on a sofa
+reading.  The sight of that figure in khaki disconcerted Fort, who had
+not realised that there would be this metamorphosis.  The narrow face,
+clean-shaven now, with its deep-set eyes and compressed lips, looked more
+priestly than ever, in spite of this brown garb. He felt his hope
+suddenly to be very forlorn indeed.  And rushing at the fence, he began
+abruptly:
+
+"I've come to ask you, sir, for your permission to marry Noel, if she
+will have me."
+
+He had thought Pierson's face gentle; it was not gentle now.  "Did you
+know I was here, then, Captain Fort?"
+
+"I saw Noel in the garden.  I've said nothing to her, of course.  But she
+told me you were starting to-morrow for Egypt, so I shall have no other
+chance."
+
+"I am sorry you have come.  It is not for me to judge, but I don't think
+you will make Noel happy."
+
+"May I ask you why, sir?"
+
+"Captain Fort, the world's judgment of these things is not mine; but
+since you ask me.  I will tell you frankly.  My cousin Leila has a claim
+on you.  It is her you should ask to marry you."
+
+"I did ask her; she refused."
+
+"I know.  She would not refuse you again if you went out to her."
+
+"I am not free to go out to her; besides, she would refuse.  She knows I
+don't love her, and never have."
+
+"Never have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Because I'm a man, I suppose, and a fool"
+
+"If it was simply, 'because you are a man' as you call it, it is clear
+that no principle or faith governs you.  And yet you ask me to give you
+Noel; my poor Noel, who wants the love and protection not of a 'man' but
+of a good man.  No, Captain Fort, no!"
+
+Fort bit his lips.  "I'm clearly not a good man in your sense of the
+word; but I love her terribly, and I would protect her.  I don't in the
+least know whether she'll have me.  I don't expect her to, naturally.
+But I warn you that I mean to ask her, and to wait for her.  I'm so much
+in love that I can do nothing else."
+
+"The man who is truly in love does what is best for the one he loves."
+Fort bent his head; he felt as if he were at school again, confronting
+his head-master.  "That's true," he said.  "And I shall never trade on
+her position.  If she can't feel anything for me now or in the future, I
+shan't trouble her, you may be sure of that.  But if by some wonderful
+chance she should, I know I can make her happy, sir."
+
+"She is a child."
+
+"No, she's not a child," said Fort stubbornly.
+
+Pierson touched the lapel of his new tunic.  "Captain Fort, I am going
+far away from her, and leaving her without protection.  I trust to your
+chivalry not to ask her, till I come back."
+
+Fort threw back his head.  "No, no, I won't accept that position. With or
+without your presence the facts will be the same.  Either she can love
+me, or she can't.  If she can, she'll be happier with me. If she can't,
+there's an end of it."
+
+Pierson came slowly up to him.  "In my view," he said, "you are as bound
+to Leila as if you were married to her."
+
+"You can't, expect me to take the priest's view, sir."
+
+Pierson's lips trembled.
+
+"You call it a priest's view; I think it is only the view of a man of
+honour."
+
+Fort reddened.  "That's for my conscience," he said stubbornly. "I can't
+tell you, and I'm not going to, how things began.  I was a fool.  But I
+did my best, and I know that Leila doesn't think I'm bound.  If she had,
+she would never have gone.  When there's no feeling--there never was real
+feeling on my side--and when there's this terribly real feeling for Noel,
+which I never sought, which I tried to keep down, which I ran away
+from--"
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"Yes.  To go on with the other was foul.  I should have thought you might
+have seen that, sir; but I did go on with it.  It was Leila who made an
+end."
+
+"Leila behaved nobly, I think."
+
+"She was splendid; but that doesn't make me a brute.".
+
+Pierson turned away to the window, whence he must see Noel.
+
+"It is repugnant to me," he said.  "Is there never to be any purity in
+her life?"
+
+"Is there never to be any life for her?  At your rate, sir, there will be
+none.  I'm no worse than other men, and I love her more than they could."
+
+For fully a minute Pierson stood silent, before he said: "Forgive me if
+I've spoken harshly.  I didn't mean to.  I love her intensely; I wish for
+nothing but her good.  But all my life I have believed that for a man
+there is only one woman--for a woman only one man."
+
+"Then, Sir," Fort burst out, "you wish her--"
+
+Pierson had put his hand up, as if to ward off a blow; and, angry though
+he was, Fort stopped.
+
+"We are all made of flesh and blood," he continued coldly, "and it seems
+to me that you think we aren't."
+
+"We have spirits too, Captain Fort."  The voice was suddenly so gentle
+that Fort's anger evaporated.
+
+"I have a great respect for you, sir; but a greater love for Noel, and
+nothing in this world will prevent me trying to give my life to her."
+
+A smile quivered over Pierson's face.  "If you try, then I can but pray
+that you will fail."
+
+Fort did not answer, and went out.
+
+He walked slowly away from the bungalow, with his head down, sore, angry,
+and yet-relieved.  He knew where he stood; nor did he feel that he had
+been worsted--those strictures had not touched him. Convicted of
+immorality, he remained conscious of private justifications, in a way
+that human beings have.  Only one little corner of memory, unseen and
+uncriticised by his opponent, troubled him.  He pardoned himself the
+rest; the one thing he did not pardon was the fact that he had known Noel
+before his liaison with Leila commenced; had even let Leila sweep him
+away on, an evening when he had been in Noel's company.  For that he felt
+a real disgust with himself.  And all the way back to the station he kept
+thinking: 'How could I?  I deserve to lose her!  Still, I shall try; but
+not now--not yet!'  And, wearily enough, he took the train back to town.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Both girls rose early that last day, and went with their father to
+Communion.  As Gratian had said to George: "It's nothing to me now, but
+it will mean a lot to him out there, as a memory of us.  So I must go."
+And he had answered: "Quite right, my dear.  Let him have all he can get
+of you both to-day.  I'll keep out of the way, and be back the last thing
+at night."  Their father's smile when he saw them waiting for him went
+straight to both their hearts.  It was a delicious day, and the early
+freshness had not yet dried out of the air, when they were walking home
+to breakfast.  Each girl had slipped a hand under his arm.  'It's like
+Moses or was it Aaron?' Noel thought absurdly Memory had complete hold of
+her.  All the old days!  Nursery hours on Sundays after tea, stories out
+of the huge Bible bound in mother-o'pearl, with photogravures of the Holy
+Land--palms, and hills, and goats, and little Eastern figures, and funny
+boats on the Sea of Galilee, and camels--always camels.  The book would
+be on his knee, and they one on each arm of his chair, waiting eagerly
+for the pages to be turned so that a new picture came.  And there would
+be the feel of his cheek, prickly against theirs; and the old names with
+the old glamour--to Gratian, Joshua, Daniel, Mordecai, Peter; to Noel
+Absalom because of his hair, and Haman because she liked the sound, and
+Ruth because she was pretty and John because he leaned on Jesus' breast.
+Neither of them cared for Job or David, and Elijah and Elisha they
+detested because they hated the name Eliza.  And later days by firelight
+in the drawing-room, roasting chestnuts just before evening church, and
+telling ghost stories, and trying to make Daddy eat his share.  And hours
+beside him at the piano, each eager for her special hymns--for Gratian,
+"Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Lead, Kindly Light," and "O God Our Help";
+for Noel, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," the one with "The Hosts of Midian"
+in it, and "For Those in Peril on the Sea."  And carols!  Ah!  And
+Choristers!  Noel had loved one deeply--the word "chorister" was so
+enchanting; and because of his whiteness, and hair which had no grease on
+it, but stood up all bright; she had never spoken to him--a far worship,
+like that for a star.  And always, always Daddy had been gentle;
+sometimes angry, but always gentle; and they sometimes not at all!  And
+mixed up with it all, the dogs they had had, and the cats they had had,
+and the cockatoo, and the governesses, and their red cloaks, and the
+curates, and the pantomimes, and "Peter Pan," and "Alice in
+Wonderland"--Daddy sitting between them, so that one could snuggle up.
+And later, the school-days, the hockey, the prizes, the holidays, the
+rush into his arms; and the great and wonderful yearly exodus to far
+places, fishing and bathing; walks and drives; rides and climbs, always
+with him.  And concerts and Shakespeare plays in the Christmas and Easter
+holidays; and the walk home through the streets--all lighted in those
+days--one on each side of him.  And this was the end!  They waited on him
+at breakfast: they kept stealing glances at him, photographing him in
+their minds.  Gratian got her camera and did actually photograph him in
+the morning sunlight with Noel, without Noel, with the baby; against all
+regulations for the defence of the realm.  It was Noel who suggested:
+"Daddy, let's take lunch out and go for all day on the cliffs, us three,
+and forget there's a war."
+
+So easy to say, so difficult to do, with the boom of the guns travelling
+to their ears along the grass, mingled with the buzz of insects.  Yet
+that hum of summer, the innumerable voices of tiny lives, gossamer things
+all as alive as they, and as important to their frail selves; and the
+white clouds, few and so slow-moving, and the remote strange purity which
+clings to the chalky downs, all this white and green and blue of land and
+sea had its peace, which crept into the spirits of those three alone with
+Nature, this once more, the last time for--who could say how long?  They
+talked, by tacit agreement, of nothing but what had happened before the
+war began, while the flock of the blown dandelions drifted past.  Pierson
+sat cross-legged on the grass, without his cap, suffering a little still
+from the stiffness of his unwonted garments.  And the girls lay one on
+each side of him, half critical, and half admiring.  Noel could not bear
+his collar.
+
+"If you had a soft collar you'd be lovely, Daddy.  Perhaps out there
+they'll let you take it off.  It must be fearfully hot in Egypt.  Oh!  I
+wish I were going.  I wish I were going everywhere in the world. Some
+day!"  Presently he read to them, Murray's "Hippolytus" of Euripides.
+And now and then Gratian and he discussed a passage.  But Noel lay
+silent, looking at the sky.  Whenever his voice ceased, there was the
+song of the larks, and very faint, the distant mutter of the guns.
+
+They stayed up there till past six, and it was time to go and have tea
+before Evening Service.  Those hours in the baking sun had drawn virtue
+out of them; they were silent and melancholy all the evening. Noel was
+the first to go up to her bedroom.  She went without saying good
+night--she knew her father would come to her room that last evening.
+George had not yet come in; and Gratian was left alone with Pierson in
+the drawing-room, round whose single lamp, in spite of close-drawn
+curtains, moths were circling: She moved over to him on the sofa.
+
+"Dad, promise me not to worry about Nollie; we'll take care of her."
+
+"She can only take care of herself, Gracie, and will she?  Did you know
+that Captain Fort was here yesterday?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What is her feeling about him?"
+
+"I don't think she knows.  Nollie dreams along, and then suddenly
+rushes."
+
+"I wish she were safe from that man."
+
+"But, Dad, why?  George likes him and so do I."
+
+A big grey moth was fluttering against the lamp.  Pierson got up and
+caught it in the curve of his palm.  "Poor thing!  You're like my Nollie;
+so soft, and dreamy, so feckless, so reckless."  And going to the
+curtains, he thrust his hand through, and released the moth.
+
+"Dad!"  said Gratian suddenly, "we can only find out for ourselves, even
+if we do singe our wings in doing it.  We've been reading James's
+'Pragmatism.'  George says the only chapter that's important is
+missing--the one on ethics, to show that what we do is not wrong till
+it's proved wrong by the result.  I suppose he was afraid to deliver that
+lecture."
+
+Pierson's face wore the smile which always came on it when he had to deal
+with George, the smile which said: "Ah, George, that's very clever; but I
+know."
+
+"My dear," he said, "that doctrine is the most dangerous in the world.  I
+am surprised at George."
+
+"I don't think George is in danger, Dad."
+
+"George is a man of wide experience and strong judgment and character;
+but think how fatal it would be for Nollie, my poor Nollie, whom a little
+gust can blow into the candle."
+
+"All the same," said Gratian stubbornly, "I don't think anyone can be
+good or worth anything unless they judge for themselves and take risks."
+
+Pierson went close to her; his face was quivering.
+
+"Don't let us differ on this last night; I must go up to Nollie for a
+minute, and then to bed.  I shan't see you to-morrow; you mustn't get up;
+I can bear parting better like this.  And my train goes at eight. God
+bless you, Gracie; give George my love.  I know, I have always known that
+he's a good man, though we do fight so.  Good-bye, my darling."
+
+He went out with his cheeks wet from Gratian's tears, and stood in the
+porch a minute to recover his composure.  The shadow of the house
+stretched velvet and blunt over the rock-garden.  A night-jar was
+spinning; the churring sound affected him oddly.  The last English
+night-bird he would hear.  England!  What a night-to say good-bye! 'My
+country!' he thought; 'my beautiful country!' The dew was lying thick and
+silvery already on the little patch of grass-the last dew, the last scent
+of an English night.  The call of a bugle floated out. "England!"  he
+prayed; "God be about you!"  A little sound answered from across the
+grass, like an old man's cough, and the scrape and rattle of a chain.  A
+face emerged at the edge of the house's shadow; bearded and horned like
+that of Pan, it seemed to stare at him.  And he saw the dim grey form of
+the garden goat, heard it scuttle round the stake to which it was
+tethered, as though alarmed at this visitor to its' domain.
+
+He went up the half-flight of stairs to Noel's narrow little room, next
+the nursery.  No voice answered his tap.  It was dark, but he could see
+her at the window, leaning far out, with her chin on her hands.
+
+"Nollie!"
+
+She answered without turning: "Such a lovely night, Daddy.  Come and
+look!  I'd like to set the goat free, only he'd eat the rock plants. But
+it is his night, isn't it?  He ought to be running and skipping in it:
+it's such a shame to tie things up.  Did you never, feel wild in your
+heart, Daddy?"
+
+"Always, I think, Nollie; too wild.  It's been hard to tame oneself."
+
+Noel slipped her hand through his arm.  "Let's go and take the goat and
+skip together on the hills.  If only we had a penny whistle!  Did you
+hear the bugle?  The bugle and the goat!"
+
+Pierson pressed the hand against him.
+
+"Nollie, be good while I'm away.  You know what I don't want.  I told you
+in my letter."  He looked at her cheek, and dared say no more. Her face
+had its "fey" look again.
+
+"Don't you feel," she said suddenly, "on a night like this, all the
+things, all the things--the stars have lives, Daddy, and the moon has a
+big life, and the shadows have, and the moths and the birds and the goats
+and the trees, and the flowers, and all of us--escaped?  Oh!  Daddy, why
+is there a war?  And why are people so bound and so unhappy?  Don't tell
+me it's God--don't!"
+
+Pierson could not answer, for there came into his mind the Greek song he
+had been reading aloud that afternoon--
+
+    "O for a deep and dewy Spring,
+     With runlets cold to draw and drink,
+     And a great meadow blossoming,
+     Long-grassed, and poplars in a ring,
+     To rest me by the brink.
+     O take me to the mountain, O,
+     Past the great pines and through the wood,
+     Up where the lean hounds softly go,
+     A-whine for wild things' blood,
+     And madly flies the dappled roe,
+     O God, to shout and speed them there;
+     An arrow by my chestnut hair
+     Drawn tight and one keen glimmering spear
+     Ah! if I could!"
+
+All that in life had been to him unknown, of venture and wild savour; all
+the emotion he had stifled; the swift Pan he had denied; the sharp
+fruits, the burning suns, the dark pools, the unearthly moonlight, which
+were not of God--all came with the breath of that old song, and the look
+on the girl's face.  And he covered his eyes.
+
+Noel's hand tugged at his arm.  "Isn't beauty terribly alive," she
+murmured, "like a lovely person? it makes you ache to kiss it."
+
+His lips felt parched.  "There is a beauty beyond all that," he said
+stubbornly.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Holiness, duty, faith.  O Nollie, my love!"  But Noel's hand tightened
+on his arm.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I should like?"  she whispered.  "To take God's
+hand and show Him things.  I'm certain He's not seen everything."
+
+A shudder went through Pierson, one of those queer sudden shivers, which
+come from a strange note in a voice, or a new sharp scent or sight.
+
+"My dear, what things you say!"
+
+"But He hasn't, and it's time He did.  We'd creep, and peep, and see it
+all for once, as He can't in His churches.  Daddy, oh!  Daddy!  I can't
+bear it any more; to think of them being killed on a night like this;
+killed and killed so that they never see it all again--never see
+it--never see it!"  She sank down, and covered her face with her arms.
+
+"I can't, I can't!  Oh! take it all away, the cruelty!  Why does it
+come--why the stars and the flowers, if God doesn't care any more than
+that?"
+
+Horribly affected he stood bending over her, stroking her head.  Then the
+habit of a hundred death-beds helped him.  "Come, Nollie!  This life is
+but a minute.  We must all die."
+
+"But not they--not so young!"  She clung to his knees, and looked up.
+"Daddy, I don't want you to go; promise me to come back!"
+
+The childishness of those words brought back his balance.
+
+"My dear sweetheart, of course!  Come, Nollie, get up.  The sun's been
+too much for you."
+
+Noel got up, and put her hands on her father's shoulders.  "Forgive me
+for all my badness, and all my badness to come, especially all my badness
+to come!"
+
+Pierson smiled.  "I shall always forgive you, Nollie; but there won't
+be--there mustn't be any badness to come.  I pray God to keep you, and
+make you like your mother."
+
+"Mother never had a devil, like you and me."
+
+He was silent from surprise.  How did this child know the devil of wild
+feeling he had fought against year after year; until with the many years
+he had felt it weakening within him!  She whispered on: "I don't hate my
+devil.
+
+"Why should I?--it's part of me.  Every day when the sun sets, I'll think
+of you, Daddy; and you might do the same--that'll keep me good. I shan't
+come to the station tomorrow, I should only cry.  And I shan't say
+good-bye now.  It's unlucky."
+
+She flung her arms round him; and half smothered by that fervent embrace,
+he kissed her cheeks and hair.  Freed of each other at last, he stood for
+a moment looking at her by the moonlight.
+
+"There never was anyone more loving than you; Nollie!"  he said quietly.
+"Remember my letter.  And good night, my love!"  Then, afraid to stay
+another second, he went quickly out of the dark little room....
+
+George Laird, returning half an hour later, heard a voice saying softly:
+"George, George!"
+
+Looking up, he saw a little white blur at the window, and Noel's face
+just visible.
+
+"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me."
+
+Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm
+moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had
+no music in his soul.  He loosed the goat.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1
+
+In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George
+often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic
+theory.  George held a suitably scientific view.  Just as he would point
+out to his wife--in the physical world, creatures who diverged from the
+normal had to justify their divergence in competition with their
+environments, or else go under, so in the ethical world it was all a
+question of whether Nollie could make good her vagary.  If she could, and
+grew in strength of character thereby, it was ipso facto all right, her
+vagary would be proved an advantage, and the world enriched.  If not, the
+world by her failure to make good would be impoverished, and her vagary
+proved wrong.  The orthodox and academies--he insisted--were always
+forgetting the adaptability of living organisms; how every action which
+was out of the ordinary, unconsciously modified all the other actions
+together with the outlook, and philosophy of the doer.  "Of course Nollie
+was crazy," he said, "but when she did what she did, she at once began to
+think differently about life and morals.  The deepest instinct we all
+have is the instinct that we must do what we must, and think that what
+we've done is really all right; in fact the--instinct of
+self-preservation.  We're all fighting animals; and we feel in our bones
+that if we admit we're beaten--we are beaten; but that every fight we
+win, especially against odds, hardens those bones.  But personally I
+don't think she can make good on her own."
+
+Gratian, whose Pragmatism was not yet fully baked, responded doubtfully:
+
+"No, I don't think she can.  And if she could I'm not sure.  But isn't
+Pragmatism a perfectly beastly word, George?  It has no sense of humour
+in it at all."
+
+"It is a bit thick, and in the hands of the young, deuced likely to
+become Prigmatism; but not with Nollie."
+
+They watched the victim of their discussions with real anxiety.  The
+knowledge that she would never be more sheltered than she was with them,
+at all events until she married, gravely impeded the formation of any
+judgment as to whether or no she could make good.  Now and again there
+would come to Gratian who after all knew her sister better than
+George--the disquieting thought that whatever conclusion Noel led them to
+form, she would almost certainly force them to abandon sooner or later.
+
+Three days after her father's departure Noel had declared that she wanted
+to work on the land.  This George had promptly vetoed.
+
+"You aren't strong enough yet, my dear: Wait till the harvest begins.
+Then you can go and help on the farm here.  If you can stand that without
+damage, we'll think about it."
+
+But the weather was wet and harvest late, and Noel had nothing much to do
+but attend to her baby, already well attended to by Nurse, and dream and
+brood, and now and then cook an omelette or do some housework for the
+sake of a gnawing conscience.  Since Gratian and George were away in
+hospital all day, she was very much alone. Several times in the evenings
+Gratian tried to come at the core of her thoughts, Twice she flew the
+kite of Leila.  The first time Noel only answered: "Yes, she's a brick."
+The second time, she said: "I don't want to think about her."
+
+But, hardening her heart, Gratian went on: "Don't you think it's queer
+we've never heard from Captain Fort since he came down?"
+
+In her calmest voice Noel answered: "Why should we, after being told that
+he wasn't liked?"
+
+"Who told him that?"
+
+"I told him, that Daddy didn't; but I expect Daddy said much worse
+things."  She gave a little laugh, then softly added: "Daddy's wonderful,
+isn't he?"
+
+"How?"
+
+"The way he drives one to do the other thing.  If he hadn't opposed my
+marriage to Cyril, you know, that wouldn't have happened, it just made
+all the difference.  It stirred me up so fearfully."  Gratian stared at
+her, astonished that she could see herself so clearly. Towards the end of
+August she had a letter from Fort.
+
+"DEAR MRS.  LAIRD, "You know all about things, of course, except the one
+thing which to me is all important.  I can't go on without knowing
+whether I have a chance with your sister.  It is against your father's
+expressed wish that she should have anything to do with me, but I told
+him that I could not and would not promise not to ask her.  I get my
+holiday at the end of this month, and am coming down to put it to the
+touch.  It means more to me than you can possibly imagine. "I am, dear
+Mrs. Laird, "Your very faithful servant, "JAMES FORT."
+
+She discussed the letter with George, whose advice was: "Answer it
+politely, but say nothing; and nothing to Nollie.  I think it would be a
+very good thing.  Of course it's a bit of a make-shift--twice her age;
+but he's a genuine man, if not exactly brilliant."
+
+Gratian answered almost sullenly: "I've always wanted the very best for
+Nollie."
+
+George screwed up his steel-coloured eyes, as he might have looked at one
+on whom he had to operate.  "Quite so," he said.  "But you must remember,
+Gracie, that out of the swan she was, Nollie has made herself into a lame
+duck.  Fifty per cent at least is off her value, socially.  We must look
+at things as they are."
+
+"Father is dead against it."
+
+George smiled, on the point of saying: 'That makes me feel it must be a
+good thing!'  But he subdued the impulse.
+
+"I agree that we're bound by his absence not to further it actively.
+Still Nollie knows his wishes, and it's up to her and no one else. After
+all, she's no longer a child."
+
+His advice was followed.  But to write that polite letter, which said
+nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours'
+penmanship.  She was very conscientious.  Knowledge of this impending
+visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the
+only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl
+showed her a letter she had received from Thirza, asking her to come back
+to Kestrel.  A postscript, in Uncle Bob's handwriting, added these words:
+
+"We're getting quite fossilised down here; Eve's gone and left us again.
+We miss you and the youngster awfully.  Come along down, Nollie there's a
+dear!"
+
+"They're darlings," Noel said, "but I shan't go.  I'm too restless, ever
+since Daddy went; you don't know how restless.  This rain simply makes me
+want to die."
+
+
+2
+
+The weather improved next day, and at the end of that week harvest began.
+By what seemed to Noel a stroke of luck the farmer's binder was broken;
+he could not get it repaired, and wanted all the human binders he could
+get.  That first day in the fields blistered her hands, burnt her face
+and neck, made every nerve and bone in her body ache; but was the
+happiest day she had spent for weeks, the happiest perhaps since Cyril
+Morland left her, over a year ago.  She had a bath and went to bed the
+moment she got in.
+
+Lying there nibbling chocolate and smoking a cigarette, she luxuriated in
+the weariness which had stilled her dreadful restlessness.  Watching the
+smoke of her cigarette curl up against the sunset glow which filled her
+window, she mused: If only she could be tired out like this every day!
+She would be all right then, would lose the feeling of not knowing what
+she wanted, of being in a sort o of large box, with the lid slammed down,
+roaming round it like a dazed and homesick bee in an overturned tumbler;
+the feeling of being only half alive, of having a wing maimed so that she
+could only fly a little way, and must then drop.
+
+She slept like a top that night.  But the next day's work was real
+torture, and the third not much better.  By the end of the week, however,
+she was no longer stiff.
+
+Saturday was cloudless; a perfect day.  The field she was working in lay
+on a slope.  It was the last field to be cut, and the best wheat yet,
+with a glorious burnt shade in its gold and the ears blunt and full.  She
+had got used now to the feel of the great sheaves in her arms, and the
+binding wisps drawn through her hand till she held them level, below the
+ears, ready for the twist.  There was no new sensation in it now; just
+steady, rather dreamy work, to keep her place in the row, to the
+swish-swish of the cutter and the call of the driver to his horses at the
+turns; with continual little pauses, to straighten and rest her back a
+moment, and shake her head free from the flies, or suck her finger, sore
+from the constant pushing of the straw ends under.  So the hours went on,
+rather hot and wearisome, yet with a feeling of something good being
+done, of a job getting surely to its end.  And gradually the centre patch
+narrowed, and the sun slowly slanted down.
+
+When they stopped for tea, instead of running home as usual, she drank it
+cold out of a flask she had brought, ate a bun and some chocolate, and
+lay down on her back against the hedge.  She always avoided that group of
+her fellow workers round the tea-cans which the farmer's wife brought
+out.  To avoid people, if she could, had become habitual to her now.
+They must know about her, or would soon if she gave them the chance.  She
+had never lost consciousness of her ring-finger, expecting every eye to
+fall on it as a matter of course. Lying on her face, she puffed her
+cigarette into the grass, and watched a beetle, till one of the
+sheep-dogs, scouting for scraps, came up, and she fed him with her second
+bun.  Having finished the bun, he tried to eat the beetle, and, when she
+rescued it, convinced that she had nothing more to give him, sneezed at
+her, and went away. Pressing the end of her cigarette out against the
+bank, she turned over.  Already the driver was perched on his tiny seat,
+and his companion, whose business it was to free the falling corn, was
+getting up alongside.  Swish-swish!  It had begun again.  She rose,
+stretched herself, and went back to her place in the row.  The field
+would be finished to-night; she would have a lovely rest-all Sunday I
+Towards seven o'clock a narrow strip, not twenty yards broad, alone was
+left.  This last half hour was what Noel dreaded.  To-day it was worse,
+for the farmer had no cartridges left, and the rabbits were dealt with by
+hullabaloo and sticks and chasing dogs.  Rabbits were vermin, of course,
+and ate the crops, and must be killed; besides, they were good food, and
+fetched two shillings apiece; all this she knew but to see the poor
+frightened things stealing out, pounced on, turned, shouted at, chased,
+rolled over by great swift dogs, fallen on by the boys and killed and
+carried with their limp grey bodies upside down, so dead and soft and
+helpless, always made her feel quite sick.  She stood very still, trying
+not to see or hear, and in the corn opposite to her a rabbit stole along,
+crouched, and peeped. 'Oh!' she thought, 'come out here, bunny.  I'll let
+you away--can't you see I will?  It's your only chance.  Come out!'  But
+the rabbit crouched, and gazed, with its little cowed head poked forward,
+and its ears laid flat; it seemed trying to understand whether this still
+thing in front of it was the same as those others.  With the thought, 'Of
+course it won't while I look at it,' Noel turned her head away. Out of
+the corner of her eye she could see a man standing a few yards off.  The
+rabbit bolted out.  Now the man would shout and turn it. But he did not,
+and the rabbit scuttled past him and away to the hedge.  She heard a
+shout from the end of the row, saw a dog galloping.  Too late!  Hurrah!
+And clasping her hands, she looked at the man.  It was Fort!  With the
+queerest feeling--amazement, pleasure, the thrill of conspiracy, she saw
+him coming up to her.
+
+"I did want that rabbit to get off," she sighed out; "I've been watching
+it.  Thank you!"
+
+He looked at her.  "My goodness!"  was all he said.
+
+Noel's hands flew up to her cheeks.  "Yes, I know; is my nose very red?"
+
+"No; you're as lovely as Ruth, if she was lovely."
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter came by; Noel started forward to her place in
+the row; but catching her arm, he said: "No, let me do this little bit.
+I haven't had a day in the fields since the war began.  Talk to me while
+I'm binding."
+
+She stood watching him.  He made a different, stronger twist from hers,
+and took larger sheaves, so that she felt a sort of jealousy.
+
+"I didn't know you knew about this sort of thing."
+
+"Oh, Lord, yes!  I had a farm once out West.  Nothing like field-work, to
+make you feel good.  I've been watching you; you bind jolly well."
+
+Noel gave a sigh of pleasure.
+
+"Where have you come from?"  she asked.
+
+"Straight from the station.  I'm on my holiday."  He looked up at her,
+and they both fell silent.
+
+Swish-swish!  The cutter was coming again.  Noel went to the beginning of
+her portion of the falling corn, he to the end of it. They worked towards
+each other, and met before the cutter was on them a third time.
+
+"Will you come in to supper?"
+
+"I'd love to."
+
+"Then let's go now, please.  I don't want to see any more rabbits
+killed."
+
+They spoke very little on the way to the bungalow, but she felt his eyes
+on her all the time.  She left him with George and Gratian who had just
+come in, and went up for her bath.
+
+Supper had been laid out in the verandah, and it was nearly dark before
+they had finished.  In rhyme with the failing of the light Noel became
+more and more silent.  When they went in, she ran up to her baby.  She
+did not go down again, but as on the night before her father went away,
+stood at her window, leaning out.  A dark night, no moon; in the
+starlight she could only just see the dim garden, where no goat was
+grazing.  Now that her first excitement had worn off, this sudden
+reappearance of Fort filled her with nervous melancholy: She knew
+perfectly well what he had come for, she had always known. She had no
+certain knowledge of her own mind; but she knew that all these weeks she
+had been between his influence and her father's, listening to them, as it
+were, pleading with her.  And, curiously, the pleading of each, instead
+of drawing her towards the pleader, had seemed dragging her away from
+him, driving her into the arms of the other.  To the protection of one or
+the other she felt she must go; and it humiliated her to think that in
+all the world there was no other place for her.  The wildness of that one
+night in the old Abbey seemed to have power to govern all her life to
+come.  Why should that one night, that one act, have this uncanny power
+to drive her this way or that, to those arms or these?  Must she, because
+of it, always need protection?  Standing there in the dark it was almost
+as if they had come up behind her, with their pleadings; and a shiver ran
+down her back.  She longed to turn on them, and cry out: "Go away; oh; go
+away!  I don't want either of you; I just want to be left alone!" Then
+something, a moth perhaps, touched her neck.  She gasped and shook
+herself.  How silly!
+
+She heard the back door round the corner of the house opening; a man's
+low voice down in the dark said:
+
+"Who's the young lady that comes out in the fields?"
+
+Another voice--one of the maids--answered:
+
+"The Missis's sister."
+
+"They say she's got a baby."
+
+"Never you mind what she's got."
+
+Noel heard the man's laugh.  It seemed to her the most odious laugh she
+had ever heard.  She thought swiftly and absurdly: 'I'll get away from
+all this.'  The window was only a few feet up.  She got out on to the
+ledge, let herself down, and dropped.  There was a flower-bed below,
+quite soft, with a scent of geranium-leaves and earth.  She brushed
+herself, and went tiptoeing across the gravel and the little front lawn,
+to the gate.  The house was quite dark, quite silent. She walked on, down
+the road.  'Jolly!' she thought.  'Night after night we sleep, and never
+see the nights: sleep until we're called, and never see anything.  If
+they want to catch me they'll have to run.'  And she began running down
+the road in her evening frock and shoes, with nothing on her head.  She
+stopped after going perhaps three hundred yards, by the edge of the wood.
+It was splendidly dark in there, and she groped her way from trunk to
+trunk, with a delicious, half-scared sense of adventure and novelty.  She
+stopped at last by a thin trunk whose bark glimmered faintly.  She felt
+it with her cheek, quite smooth--a birch tree; and, with her arms round
+it, she stood perfectly still.  Wonderfully, magically silent, fresh and
+sweet-scented and dark!  The little tree trembled suddenly within her
+arms, and she heard the low distant rumble, to which she had grown so
+accustomed--the guns, always at work, killing--killing men and killing
+trees, little trees perhaps like this within her arms, little trembling
+trees!  Out there, in this dark night, there would not be a single
+unscarred tree like this smooth quivering thing, no fields of corn, not
+even a bush or a blade of grass, no leaves to rustle and smell sweet, not
+a bird, no little soft-footed night beasts, except the rats; and she
+shuddered, thinking of the Belgian soldier-painter.  Holding the tree
+tight, she squeezed its smooth body against her.  A rush of the same
+helpless, hopeless revolt and sorrow overtook her, which had wrung from
+her that passionate little outburst to her father, the night before he
+went away.  Killed, torn, and bruised; burned, and killed, like Cyril!
+All the young things, like this little tree.
+
+Rumble!  Rumble!  Quiver!  Quiver!  And all else so still, so sweet and
+still, and starry, up there through the leaves....  'I can't bear it!'
+she thought.  She pressed her lips, which the sun had warmed all day,
+against the satiny smooth bark.  But the little tree stood within her
+arms insentient, quivering only to the long rumbles.  With each of those
+dull mutterings, life and love were going out, like the flames of candles
+on a Christmas-tree, blown, one by one.  To her eyes, accustomed by now
+to the darkness in there, the wood seemed slowly to be gathering a sort
+of life, as though it were a great thing watching her; a great thing with
+hundreds of limbs and eyes, and the power of breathing.  The little tree,
+which had seemed so individual and friendly, ceased to be a comfort and
+became a part of the whole living wood, absorbed in itself, and coldly
+watching her, this intruder of the mischievous breed, the fatal breed
+which loosed those rumblings on the earth.  Noel unlocked her arms, and
+recoiled. A bough scraped her neck, some leaves flew against her eyes;
+she stepped aside, tripped over a root, and fell.  A bough had hit her
+too, and she lay a little dazed, quivering at such dark unfriendliness.
+She held her hands up to her face for the mere pleasure of seeing
+something a little less dark; it was childish, and absurd, but she was
+frightened.  The wood seemed to have so many eyes, so many arms, and all
+unfriendly; it seemed waiting to give her other blows, other falls, and
+to guard her within its darkness until--!  She got up, moved a few steps,
+and stood still, she had forgotten from where she had come in.  And
+afraid of moving deeper into the unfriendly wood, she turned slowly
+round, trying to tell which way to go.  It was all just one dark watching
+thing, of limbs on the ground and in the air.  'Any way,' she thought;
+'any way of course will take me out!' And she groped forward, keeping her
+hands up to guard her face.  It was silly, but she could not help the
+sinking, scattered feeling which comes to one bushed, or lost in a fog.
+If the wood had not been so dark, so,--alive!  And for a second she had
+the senseless, terrifying thought of a child: 'What if I never get out!'
+Then she laughed at it, and stood still again, listening.  There was no
+sound to guide her, no sound at all except that faint dull rumble, which
+seemed to come from every side, now. And the trees watched her.  'Ugh!'
+she thought; 'I hate this wood!' She saw it now, its snaky branches, its
+darkness, and great forms, as an abode of giants and witches.  She groped
+and scrambled on again, tripped once more, and fell, hitting her forehead
+against a trunk. The blow dazed and sobered her.  'It's idiotic,' she
+thought; 'I'm a baby!  I'll Just walk very slowly till I reach the edge.
+I know it isn't a large wood!'  She turned deliberately to face each
+direction; solemnly selected that from which the muttering of the guns
+seemed to come, and started again, moving very slowly with her hands
+stretched out.  Something rustled in the undergrowth, quite close; she
+saw a pair of green eyes shining.  Her heart jumped into her mouth.  The
+thing sprang--there was a swish of ferns and twigs, and silence. Noel
+clasped her breast.  A poaching cat!  And again she moved forward.  But
+she had lost direction.  'I'm going round and round,' she thought.  'They
+always do.' And the sinking scattered feeling of the "bushed" clutched at
+her again.  'Shall I call?' she thought. 'I must be near the road.  But
+it's so babyish.' She moved on again. Her foot struck something soft.  A
+voice muttered a thick oath; a hand seized her ankle.  She leaped, and
+dragged and wrenched it free; and, utterly unnerved, she screamed, and
+ran forward blindly.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+No one could have so convinced a feeling as Jimmy Fort that he would be a
+'bit of a makeshift' for Noel.  He had spent the weeks after his
+interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself
+"It won't do.  It's playing it too low down to try and get that child,
+when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a chance."  He
+had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself
+absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London.  He loathed the
+Office job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of
+officialdom.  Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple!
+He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical
+assets now that he had this dream of young beauty.  He would be forty
+next month, and she was nineteen!  But there would be times too when he
+would feel that, with her, he could be as much of a "three-year-old" as
+the youngster she had loved.  Having little hope of winning her, he took
+her "past" but lightly.  Was it not that past which gave him what chance
+he had?  On two things he was determined: He would not trade on her past.
+And if by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
+remembered that she had one.
+
+After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
+in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made him
+feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever.  He got up early, rode
+in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises; neither
+smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had been going
+to ride a steeplechase.  On the afternoon, when at last he left on that
+terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of despair, it was
+so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a dozen grey hairs.
+
+When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
+corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on his
+side.  Such a meeting would be easier than any other!  He had been
+watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart
+beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and that
+new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the greeting, throughout
+supper, and even after she had left them and gone upstairs.  Then, with
+the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he sat on, trying
+to talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and restless.
+
+"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
+kindly but that she should say it at all was ominous.  He got up at last,
+having lost hope of seeing Noel again, conscious too that he had answered
+the last three questions at random.
+
+In the porch George said: "You'll come in to lunch tomorrow, won't you?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm afraid it'll bore you all."
+
+"Not a bit.  Nollie won't be so tired."
+
+Again--so well meant.  They were very kind.  He looked up from the gate,
+trying to make out which her window might be; but all was dark. A little
+way down the road he stopped to light a cigarette; and, leaning against a
+gate, drew the smoke of it deep into his lungs, trying to assuage the
+ache in his heart.  So it was hopeless!  She had taken the first, the
+very first chance, to get away from him!  She knew that he loved her,
+could not help knowing, for he had never been able to keep it out of his
+eyes and voice.  If she had felt ever so little for him, she would not
+have avoided him this first evening. 'I'll go back to that desert,' he
+thought; 'I'm not going to whine and crawl.  I'll go back, and bite on
+it; one must have some pride. Oh, why the hell am I crocked-up like this?
+If only I could get out to France again!' And then Noel's figure bent
+over the falling corn formed before him.  'I'll have one more try,' he
+thought; 'one more--tomorrow somewhere, I'll get to know for certain.
+And if I get what Leila's got I shall deserve it, I suppose.  Poor Leila!
+Where is she?  Back at High Constantia?'  What was that?  A cry--of
+terror--in that wood!  Crossing to the edge, he called "Coo-ee!" and
+stood peering into its darkness.  He heard the sound of bushes being
+brushed aside, and whistled.  A figure came bursting out, almost into his
+arms.
+
+"Hallo!"  he said; "what's up?"
+
+A voice gasped: "Oh!  It's--it's nothing!"
+
+He saw Noel.  She had swayed back, and stood about a yard away.  He could
+dimly see her covering her face with her arms.  Feeling instinctively
+that she wanted to hide her fright, he said quietly:
+
+"What luck!  I was just passing.  It's awfully dark."
+
+"I--I got lost; and a man--caught my foot, in there!"
+
+Moved beyond control by the little gulps and gasps of her breathing, he
+stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders.  He held her lightly,
+without speaking, terrified lest he should wound her pride.
+
+"I-I got in there," she gasped, "and the trees--and I stumbled over a
+roan asleep, and he--"
+
+"Yes, Yes, I know," he murmured, as if to a child.  She had dropped her
+arms now, and he could see her face, with eyes unnaturally dilated, and
+lips quivering.  Then moved again beyond control, he drew her so close
+that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, and put his lips to her
+forehead all wet with heat.  She closed her eyes, gave a little choke,
+and buried her face against his coat.
+
+"There, there, my darling!" he kept on saying.  "There, there, my
+darling!"  He could feel the snuggling of her cheek against his shoulder.
+He had got her--had got her!  He was somehow certain that she would not
+draw back now.  And in the wonder and ecstasy of that thought, all the
+world above her head, the stars in their courses, the wood which had
+frightened her, seemed miracles of beauty and fitness.  By such fortune
+as had never come to man, he had got her!  And he murmured over and over
+again:
+
+"I love you!"  She was resting perfectly quiet against him, while her
+heart ceased gradually to beat so fast.  He could feel her cheek rubbing
+against his coat of Harris tweed.  Suddenly she sniffed at it, and
+whispered:
+
+"It smells good."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+When summer sun has burned all Egypt, the white man looks eagerly each
+day for evening, whose rose-coloured veil melts opalescent into the dun
+drift, of the hills, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening
+blue.  Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the
+little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the
+hospital.  Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone
+was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
+like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of
+their flight; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels
+of the water-wells creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was
+stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind.  On either hand an
+old road ran out, whose line could be marked by the little old
+watch-towers of another age.  For how many hundred years had human life
+passed along it to East and West; the brown men and their camels,
+threading that immemorial track over the desert, which ever filled him
+with wonder, so still it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so
+beautiful!  He sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it;
+as though its cruel mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never
+looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.
+
+So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or at
+least he did not feel it had.  Both at the regimental base, and now in
+this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft with which he
+would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly,
+and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some
+well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic
+inventor who came visiting their offices.  He had even the feeling that
+they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their
+mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple
+comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him to
+give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be forward and
+impertinent to offer it.  Moreover, he no longer knew how.  He was very
+lonely.  'When I come face to face with death,' he would think, 'it will
+be different.  Death makes us all brothers.  I may be of real use to them
+then.'
+
+They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
+even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
+"DARLING DAD,
+
+"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine.  You said
+in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get it.
+There is one great piece of news, which I'm afraid will hurt and trouble
+you; Nollie is married to Jimmy Fort.  They were married down here this
+afternoon, and have just gone up to Town.  They have to find a house of
+course.  She has been very restless, lonely, and unhappy ever since you
+went, and I'm sure it is really for the best: She is quite another
+creature, and simply devoted, headlong.  It's just like Nollie.  She says
+she didn't know what she wanted, up to the last minute.  But now she
+seems as if she could never want anything else.
+
+"Dad dear, Nollie could never have made good by herself.  It isn't her
+nature, and it's much better like this, I feel sure, and so does George.
+Of course it isn't ideal--and one wanted that for her; but she did break
+her wing, and he is so awfully good and devoted to her, though you didn't
+believe it, and perhaps won't, even now.  The great thing is to feel her
+happy again, and know she's safe.  Nollie is capable of great devotion;
+only she must be anchored.  She was drifting all about; and one doesn't
+know what she might have done, in one of her moods.  I do hope you won't
+grieve about it.  She's dreadfully anxious about how you'll feel.  I know
+it will be wretched for you, so far off; but do try and believe it's for
+the best.... She's out of danger; and she was really in a horrible
+position.  It's so good for the baby, too, and only fair to him.  I do
+think one must take things as they are, Dad dear.  It was impossible to
+mend Nollie's wing.  If she were a fighter, and gloried in it, or if she
+were the sort who would 'take the veil'--but she isn't either.  So it is
+all right, Dad.  She's writing to you herself.  I'm sure Leila didn't
+want Jimmy Fort to be unhappy because he couldn't love her; or she would
+never have gone away.  George sends you his love; we are both very well.
+And Nollie is looking splendid still, after her harvest work.  All, all
+my love, Dad dear.  Is there anything we can get, and send you?  Do take
+care of your blessed self, and don't grieve about Nollie.
+"GRATIAN."
+
+A half-sheet of paper fluttered down; he picked it up from among the
+parched fibre of dead palm-leaves.
+"DADDY DARLING,
+
+"I've done it.  Forgive me-I'm so happy.
+
+"Your NOLLIE."
+
+The desert shimmered, the palm-leaves rustled, and Pierson stood trying
+to master the emotion roused in him by those two letters.  He felt no
+anger, not even vexation; he felt no sorrow, but a loneliness so utter
+and complete that he did not know how to bear it.  It seemed as if some
+last link with life had' snapped.  'My girls are happy,' he thought.  'If
+I am not--what does it matter?  If my faith and my convictions mean
+nothing to them--why should they follow?  I must and will not feel
+lonely.  I ought to have the sense of God present, to feel His hand in
+mine.  If I cannot, what use am I--what use to the poor fellows in there,
+what use in all the world?'
+
+An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little
+wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it.  A
+nurse met him there.
+
+"The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect he'd
+like to see you,"
+
+He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window
+end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot. Another nurse,
+who was sitting beside it, rose at once.
+
+"He's quite conscious," she whispered; "he can still speak a little. He's
+such a dear."  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out behind
+the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was twenty, but
+the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost colourless.  His eyes
+were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did not seem in pain; but there
+was about him that which told he was going; something resigned, already
+of the grave.  The window was wide open, covered by mosquito-netting, and
+a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through across the foot of the cot,
+crept slowly backwards over the sheets and the boy's body, shortening as
+it crept.  In the grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy's face,
+just that pale yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue
+from a little flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward
+behind the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness;
+but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.
+Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might pass
+like this, it would be God's mercy.  Then he saw the boy's eyes open,
+wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his lips
+moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.
+
+"I'm goin' West, zurr."  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips
+quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.
+
+Through Pierson's mind there flashed the thought: 'O God!  Let me be some
+help to him!'
+
+"To God, my dear son!"  he said.
+
+A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy's lips.
+
+Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.
+His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar
+of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy's smile had been the whole of
+stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him with an unconscious
+challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson took his hand, which lay
+outside the sheet.  The boy's lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a
+long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes
+closed.  Pierson bent over the hand. When he looked up the boy was dead.
+He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.
+
+The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond
+the track on the desert's edge, and stood looking at the afterglow.  The
+sun and the boy--together they had gone West, into that wide glowing
+nothingness.
+
+The muezzin call to sunset prayer in the Arab village came to him clear
+and sharp, while he sat there, unutterably lonely.  Why had that smile so
+moved him?  Other death smiles had been like this evening smile on the
+desert hills--a glowing peace, a promise of heaven.  But the boy's smile
+had said: 'Waste no breath on me--you cannot help.  Who knows--who knows?
+I have no hope, no faith; but I am adventuring.  Good-bye!'  Poor boy!
+He had braved all things, and moved out uncertain, yet undaunted!  Was
+that, then, the uttermost truth, was faith a smaller thing?  But from
+that strange notion he. recoiled with horror.  'In faith I have lived, in
+faith I will die!' he thought, 'God helping me!'  And the breeze,
+ruffling the desert sand, blew the grains against the palms of his hands,
+outstretched above the warm earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy
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