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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Island Pharisees, 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: The Island Pharisees
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #2771]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ISLAND PHARISEES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ISLAND PHARISEES
+
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+             "But this is a worshipful society"
+                                  KING JOHN
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go a
+journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road.  At first he
+sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands reaching at nothing,
+and his little solemn eyes staring into space. As soon as he can toddle,
+he moves, by the queer instinct we call the love of life, straight along
+this road, looking neither to the right nor left, so pleased is he to
+walk.  And he is charmed with everything--with the nice flat road, all
+broad and white, with his own feet, and with the prospect he can see on
+either hand.  The sun shines, and he finds the road a little hot and
+dusty; the rain falls, and he splashes through the muddy puddles.  It
+makes no matter--all is pleasant; his fathers went this way before him;
+they made this road for him to tread, and, when they bred him, passed
+into his fibre the love of doing things as they themselves had done them.
+So he walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights under the roofs that
+have been raised to shelter him, by those who went before.
+
+Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening in
+the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
+undiscovered.  After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge; one
+day, with a beating heart, he tries one.
+
+And this is where the fun begins.
+
+Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to the
+broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they say: "No,
+no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after that-ah! after
+that!  The way my fathers went is good enough for me, and it is obviously
+the proper one; for nine of me came back, and that poor silly tenth--I
+really pity him!"
+
+And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed, bed,
+he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had to spend
+the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think, occur to him
+that the broad road he treads all day was once a trackless heath itself.
+
+But the poor silly tenth is faring on.  It is a windy night that he is
+travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and nothing
+to help him but his courage.  Nine times out of ten that courage fails,
+and he goes down into the bog.  He has seen the undiscovered, and--like
+Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has engulfed him; his spirit,
+tougher than the spirit of the nine that burned back to sleep in inns,
+was yet not tough enough.  The tenth time he wins across, and on the
+traces he has left others follow slowly, cautiously--a new road is opened
+to mankind!  A true saying goes: Whatever is, is right!  And if all men
+from the world's beginning had said that, the world would never have
+begun--at all. Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its
+journey; there would have been no motive force to make it start.
+
+And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could set up
+business: Whatever is, is wrong!  But since the Cosmic Spirit found that
+matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that are, are
+wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that are, are
+right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a spiritual way
+of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All things that are, are
+wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking "All things that are, are
+right."  The Cosmic Spirit, who was very much an artist, knew its work,
+and had previously devised a quality called courage, and divided it in
+three, naming the parts spiritual, moral, physical.  To all the male-bird
+spirits, but to no female (spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It
+gave courage that was spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It
+gave courage that was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave
+moral courage too.  But, because It knew that if all the male-bird
+spirits were complete, the proportion of male to female--one to
+ten--would be too great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only
+one in ten male-bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so
+that the other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in
+moral or in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.
+And having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as
+best they might.
+
+Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
+proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
+course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with
+every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the interesting
+question ought to be, "Am I that one?"  Ninety very soon find out that
+they are not, and, having found it out, lest others should discover, they
+say they are.  Nine of the other ten, blinded by their spiritual courage,
+are harder to convince; but one by one they sink, still proclaiming their
+virility.  The hundredth Pharisee alone sits out the play.
+
+Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
+hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of the
+truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All things that
+are, are right."
+
+The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
+countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing of
+the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's frock.
+Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in their fashion
+they are always thirty years at least behind the fashions of those
+spirits who are concerned with what shall take their place.  The
+conditions that dictate our education, the distribution of our property,
+our marriage laws, amusements, worship, prisons, and all other things,
+change imperceptibly from hour to hour; the moulds containing them, being
+inelastic, do not change, but hold on to the point of bursting, and then
+are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged.  The ninety desiring peace and
+comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have
+it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is
+ordered and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and
+worship in the way that they themselves are marrying, playing,
+worshipping. They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred
+those who speculate with thought.  This is the function they were made
+for. They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life which
+comes and works about in them.  The Yeasty Stuff--the other ten--chafed
+by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and moulds, hate in
+their turn the comfortable ninety.  Each party has invented for the other
+the hardest names that it can think of: Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs.
+Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and Ne'er-do-weels.  So we go on!  And so, as
+each of us is born to go his journey, he finds himself in time ranged on
+one side or on the other, and joins the choruses of name-slingers.
+
+But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that thing
+which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them both, and
+positively smile to see the fun.
+
+When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
+Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--and
+so, no doubt, he is.  Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they felt, in
+fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of the ten.
+Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their epithets upon
+Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called them Pharisees; as
+dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.
+
+One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives the
+author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons, of
+analysing human nature through the criticism that his work
+evokes--criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions,
+out of the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
+often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a fawn
+from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy.  And so, all authors
+love to be abused--as any man can see.
+
+In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
+whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
+Island.
+JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+January 1, 1908
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE TOWN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIETY
+
+A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a short,
+fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station.  He was about to
+journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner of a
+third-class carriage.
+
+After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
+offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
+answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man and
+wife.  The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness of the
+station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people, air, and
+voices, all brought to him the sense of home.  Meanwhile he wavered
+between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he had read and
+would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's French Revolution,
+which he had not read and was doubtful of enjoying; he felt that he ought
+to buy the latter, but he did not relish giving up the former.  While he
+hesitated thus, his carriage was beginning to fill up; so, quickly buying
+both, he took up a position from which he could defend his rights.
+"Nothing," he thought, "shows people up like travelling."
+
+The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack, he
+took his seat.  At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a girl
+with a pale face, scrambled in.
+
+"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
+from behind his journal.
+
+They were seven.  A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
+pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
+with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their lives in
+the current of hard facts.  Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-shouldered man
+was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged person the condition
+of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes till it occurred to him
+how curious a look was in them--a watchful friendliness, an allied
+distrust--and that their voices, cheerful, even jovial, seemed to be
+cautious all the time.  His glance strayed off, and almost rebounded from
+the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and wholly self-complacent face of a
+stout lady in a black-and-white costume, who was reading the Strand
+Magazine, while her other, sleek, plump hand, freed from its black glove,
+and ornamented with a thick watch-bracelet, rested on her lap.  A
+younger, bright-cheeked, and self-conscious female was sitting next her,
+looking at the pale girl who had just got in.
+
+"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't like."
+Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were of a foreign
+cut.  Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of eyes; these eyes,
+prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle roguery from above a
+thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted. They gave Shelton the
+impression that he was being judged, and mocked, enticed, initiated.  His
+own gaze did not fall; this sanguine face, with its two-day growth of
+reddish beard, long nose, full lips, and irony, puzzled him.  "A cynical
+face!" he thought, and then, "but sensitive!" and then, "too cynical,"
+again.
+
+The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
+dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his yellow
+finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes.  A strange air of
+detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap of
+luggage filled the rack above his head.
+
+The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
+possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select him
+for her confidence.
+
+"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?
+
+"The young man shook his head.
+
+"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."
+
+The girl sighed.
+
+"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"
+
+The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
+Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on animals
+at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards the figures
+of the foreigners.
+
+"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
+evening--old Tom."
+
+"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."
+
+Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust. The
+plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved convulsively;
+and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating Shelton's heart.
+It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be asked for something.
+
+"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
+unhappy; can you tell me what to do?  I had no money for a ticket."
+
+The foreign youth's face flickered.
+
+"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."
+
+"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.
+
+"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle."  The young man slid his eyes from left
+to right, and rested them on Shelton.  "Although I don't as yet see your
+way out."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none but
+Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly feeling in
+the carriage.
+
+"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately----"
+he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to Shelton.
+
+The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.
+
+"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.
+
+"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest possible
+service by lending her the money for a ticket."
+
+Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took.  Passing it to
+the girl, he said:
+
+"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"
+
+The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
+mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he stole
+covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to the girl in
+a language that he did not understand.  Though vagabond in essence, the
+fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and irony not found upon
+the face of normal man, and in turning from it to the other passengers
+Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt, and questioning, that he could
+not define.  Leaning back with half-closed eyes, he tried to diagnose
+this new sensation.  He found it disconcerting that the faces and
+behaviour of his neighbours lacked anything he could grasp and secretly
+abuse.  They continued to converse with admirable and slightly conscious
+phlegm, yet he knew, as well as if each one had whispered to him
+privately, that this shady incident had shaken them.  Something
+unsettling to their notions of propriety-something dangerous and
+destructive of complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.
+Each had a different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or
+sly, of showing this resentment.  But by a flash of insight Shelton saw
+that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
+same.  Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them and
+with himself.  He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman with the
+Roman nose.  The insulation and complacency of its pale skin, the passive
+righteousness about its curve, the prim separation from the others of the
+fat little finger, had acquired a wholly unaccountable importance.  It
+embodied the verdict of his fellow-passengers, the verdict of Society;
+for he knew that, whether or no repugnant to the well-bred mind, each
+assemblage of eight persons, even in a third-class carriage, contains the
+kernel of Society.
+
+But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be immune
+from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental image of the
+cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant smile that now in his
+probationary exile haunted his imagination; he took out his fiancee's
+last letter, but the voice of the young foreigner addressing him in rapid
+French caused him to put it back abruptly.
+
+"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
+hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case.  I should have been only
+too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by which
+Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am not
+Rothschild.  She has been abandoned by the man who brought her over to
+Dover under promise of marriage.  Look"--and by a subtle flicker of his
+eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from the French girl
+"they take good care not to let their garments touch her.  They are
+virtuous women.  How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and finer to know you
+have it, especially when you are never likely to be tempted."
+
+Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face grew
+soft.
+
+"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those who
+by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce judgment
+are usually the first to judge?  The judgments of Society are always
+childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of individuals who
+have never smelt the fire.  And look at this: they who have money run too
+great a risk of parting with it if they don't accuse the penniless of
+being rogues and imbeciles."
+
+Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from an
+utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of his own
+private thoughts.  Stifling his sense of the unusual for the queer
+attraction this young man inspired, he said:
+
+"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"
+
+"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied the
+other.  "I count on doing some good there--it is time!"  A bitter and
+pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips.  "It won't be my fault if
+I fail.  You are English, Sir?"
+
+Shelton nodded.
+
+"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always noticed
+in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--cocksureness, coming
+from your nation's greatest quality."
+
+"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.
+
+"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.
+
+"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"
+
+"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a great
+people.  You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on the earth;
+you suffer a little from the fact.  If I were an English preacher my
+desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."
+
+Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
+
+"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're any
+cockier than other nations."
+
+The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
+
+"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease.  Look at
+these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the inmates of
+the carnage,--"very average persons!  What have they done to warrant
+their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as they do?  That
+old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at all--but look at
+those two occupied with their stupidities about the price of hops, the
+prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a thousand things all of
+that sort--look at their faces; I come of the bourgeoisie myself--have
+they ever shown proof of any quality that gives them the right to pat
+themselves upon the back?  No fear!  Outside potatoes they know nothing,
+and what they do not understand they dread and they despise--there are
+millions of that breed. 'Voila la Societe'!  The sole quality these
+people have shown they have is cowardice.  I was educated by the
+Jesuits," he concluded; "it has given me a way of thinking."
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-bred
+voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the Daily
+Telegraph.  In place of this, for some reason that he did not understand,
+he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
+
+"Why do you say all this to me?"
+
+The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--hesitated.
+
+"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
+truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you speak.
+It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you must learn
+all that sort of thing to make face against life."
+
+Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but observe
+the complimentary nature of these words.  It was like saying "I'm not
+afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal just because
+I study human nature."
+
+"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"
+
+His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her.  She's going to a
+cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the means
+of getting there--it's all that you can do.  One knows too well what'll
+become of her."
+
+Shelton said gravely,
+
+"Oh! that's horrible!  Could n't she be induced to go back home?  I
+should be glad--"
+
+The foreign vagrant shook his head.
+
+"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had occasion to
+know what the 'family' is like.  'The family' does not like damaged
+goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands have dipped into
+the till or daughters no longer to be married.  What the devil would they
+do with her?  Better put a stone about her neck and let her drown at
+once.  All the world is Christian, but Christian and good Samaritan are
+not quite the same."
+
+Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her hands
+crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of life arose
+within him.
+
+"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts, "what's
+called virtue is nearly always only luck."  He rolled his eyes as though
+to say: "Ah!  La, Conventions?  Have them by all means--but don't look
+like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is but cowardice and
+luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"
+
+"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she wants to
+go back to her family she can write to me."
+
+"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."
+
+Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of
+her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young
+man's words were true came over him.
+
+"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing at
+the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard Paramor
+Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."
+
+"You're very good, sir.  My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at present.
+I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."
+
+Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read; the
+young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears.  He raised his eyes.
+The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on her lap;
+it had been recased in its black glove with large white stitching.  Her
+frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he had outraged her
+sense of decency.
+
+"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced man,
+ending a talk on tax-gatherers.  The train whistled loudly, and Shelton
+reverted to his paper.  This time he crossed his legs, determined to
+enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself looking at the
+vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face.  "That fellow," he thought, "has seen
+and felt ten times as much as I, although he must be ten years younger."
+
+He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds, trim
+hedgerows, homely coverts.  But strange ideas would come, and he was
+discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the personality
+of this young foreigner, disturbed him.  It was all as though he had made
+a start in some fresh journey through the fields of thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ANTONIA
+
+Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
+afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer races.
+He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these Olympian
+contests still attracted him.
+
+The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his arm
+came in contact with a soft young shoulder.  He saw close to him a young
+girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager with
+excitement.  The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
+gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed him
+vividly.
+
+"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.
+
+"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and he
+was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the warmer
+fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the dry
+hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a quizzical brown
+face.
+
+"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said the
+lady.  "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard!  He was your fag, was
+n't he?  How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the boats!"
+
+"Mother, they like it!" cried the girl.
+
+"Antonia ought to be rowing, herself," said her father, whose name was
+Dennant.
+
+Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
+through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
+life.  He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a feeling
+like that produced by a first glass of champagne.
+
+The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two days
+later he drove over and paid a call.  Amidst the avocations of reading
+for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a whiff of
+some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring Antonia's face
+before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank, distant eyes.  But
+two years passed before he again saw her.  Then, at an invitation from
+Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the Manor of Holm Oaks against a
+neighbouring house; in the evening there was dancing oh the lawn.  The
+fair hair was now turned up, but the eyes were quite unchanged.  Their
+steps went together, and they outlasted every other couple on the
+slippery grass.  Thence, perhaps, sprang her respect for him; he was
+wiry, a little taller than herself, and seemed to talk of things that
+interested her.  He found out she was seventeen, and she found out that
+he was twenty-nine. The following two years Shelton went to Holm Oaks
+whenever he was asked; to him this was a period of enchanted games, of
+cub-hunting, theatricals, and distant sounds of practised music, and
+during it Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and more curious, and his own
+more shy, and schooled, more furtive and more ardent.  Then came his
+father's death, a voyage round the world, and that peculiar hour of mixed
+sensations when, one March morning, abandoning his steamer at Marseilles,
+he took train for Hyeres.
+
+He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines where
+the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian princesses, and
+Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to find her elsewhere,
+but he would have been surprised.  His sunburnt face and the new beard,
+on which he set some undefined value, apologetically displayed, were
+scanned by those blue eyes with rapid glances, at once more friendly and
+less friendly.  "Ah!" they seemed to say, "here you are; how glad I am!
+But--what now?"
+
+He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy oblong
+in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss Dennant, and
+the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with insufficient lungs,
+sat twice a day in their own atmosphere.  A momentary weakness came on
+Shelton the first time he saw them sitting there at lunch.  What was it
+gave them their look of strange detachment?  Mrs. Dennant was bending
+above a camera.
+
+"I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed," she said.
+
+"What a pity!  The kitten was rather nice!"  The maiden aunt, placing the
+knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
+well-bred gaze on Shelton.
+
+"Look, Auntie," said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, "there's the
+funny little man again!"
+
+"Oh," said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she looked
+for the funny little man (who was not English)--"he's rather nice!"
+
+Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
+barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny upward
+slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by a windy
+walk.  From that moment he became her slave.
+
+"Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic binoculars?"
+said Mrs. Dennant's voice; "they're splendid for buildin's, but buildin's
+are so disappointin'.  The thing is to get human interest, isn't it?" and
+her glance wandered absently past Shelton in search of human interest.
+
+"You haven't put down what you've taken, mother."
+
+From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.
+
+"It's so easy to forget what they're about," she said, "that's so
+annoyin'."
+
+Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment; he
+accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite sublime
+about the way that they would leave the dining-room, unconscious that
+they themselves were funny to all the people they had found so funny
+while they had been sitting there, and he would follow them out
+unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.
+
+In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs. Dennant
+disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many drives; he
+played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings after
+dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs dragged
+as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed so very
+near her.  The community of isolation drew them closer.  In place of a
+companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she could confide
+all her home-sick aspirations.  So that, even when she was sitting
+silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending with an air of
+cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she would not show
+him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet freshness that clung
+about her, by her quick, offended glances at the strange persons round,
+she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way that he was necessary.  He
+was far from realising this; his intellectual and observant parts were
+hypnotised and fascinated even by her failings.  The faint freckling
+across her nose, the slim and virginal severeness of her figure, with its
+narrow hips and arms, the curve of her long neck-all were added charms.
+She had the wind and rain look, a taste of home; and over the glaring
+roads, where the palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to pass like
+the very image of an English day.
+
+One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
+afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view.  Down the Toulon road
+gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an evening
+crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the sun's
+numbing, ran gladly in the veins.  On the right hand of the road was a
+Frenchman playing bowls.  Enormous, busy, pleased, and upright as a
+soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end to end, he
+delighted Shelton.  But Antonia threw a single look at the huge creature,
+and her face expressed disgust.  She began running up towards the ruined
+tower.
+
+Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone and
+throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind.  She stood at the top,
+and he looked up at her.  Over the world, gloriously spread below, she,
+like a statue, seemed to rule.  The colour was brilliant in her cheeks,
+her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the flowing droop of her
+long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the look of one who flies.
+He pulled himself up and stood beside her; his heart choked him, all the
+colour had left his cheeks.
+
+"Antonia," he said, "I love you."
+
+She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his face
+must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes vanished.
+
+They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
+Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face.  Had he
+a chance then?  Was it possible?  That evening the instinct vouchsafed at
+times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack his bag and go to
+Cannes.  On returning, two days later, and approaching the group in the
+centre of the Winter Garden, the voice of the maiden aunt reading aloud
+an extract from the Morning Post reached him across the room.
+
+"Don't you think that's rather nice?" he heard her ask, and then: "Oh,
+here you aye!  It's very nice to see you back!"
+
+Shelton slipped into a wicker chair.  Antonia looked up quickly from her
+sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.
+
+He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom. With
+desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of inquiry,
+where had he been, what had he been doing?  Then once again the maiden
+aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.
+
+A touch on his sleeve startled him.  Antonia was leaning forward; her
+cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.
+
+"Would you like to see my sketches?"
+
+To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
+maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound that
+he had ever listened to.
+
+"My dear Dick," Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, "we would
+rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again until
+July.  Of course I know you count it an engagement and all that, and
+everybody's been writin' to congratulate you.  But Algie thinks you ought
+to give yourselves a chance.  Young people don't always know what they're
+about, you know; it's not long to wait."
+
+"Three months!"  gasped Shelton.
+
+He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command. There
+was no alternative.  Antonia had acquiesced in the condition with a
+queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.
+
+"It'll be something to look forward to, Dick," she said.
+
+He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the end
+of April that he left for England.  She came alone to see him off.  It
+was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape looked
+impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives. Desperately he
+clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her smile seemed heartless
+in its brilliancy.  He whispered "You will write?"
+
+"Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!"
+
+She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear "Good-bye!" sounded
+shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels.  He saw her raise her
+hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still amongst receding
+shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
+
+After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his luggage
+at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in spite of his
+desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing out but a
+shame-faced smile.  Her figure vanished, wavering into the hurly-burly;
+one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of her soon faded
+from his mind.  His cab, however, overtook the foreign vagrant marching
+along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy stride--an observant,
+disillusioned figure.
+
+The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands. July
+loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes beckoned him
+faintly, hopelessly.  She would not even be coming back to England for
+another month.
+
+. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
+her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected me.
+Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good things in
+life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me yesterday; the
+poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for Parliament.  Why should I
+think myself fit to legislate for the unhappy wretches one sees about in
+the streets?  If people's faces are a fair test of their happiness, I' d
+rather not feel in any way responsible . . . .
+
+The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded him
+much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by; the
+utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-driven
+women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he saw
+everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the steps
+of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling chaos of hard-eyed,
+capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked hunted-looking men;
+of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging creatures in their
+broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!
+
+One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
+
+                                   3, BLANK ROW
+                                        WESTMINSTER.
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
+kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
+was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you.  Having beaten the
+whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
+of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
+myself of your permission, knowing your good heart.  Since I saw you
+I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
+tell what door is left at which I have not knocked.  I presented
+myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
+being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
+Is this not very much in the English character?  They told me to
+write, and said they would forward the letter.  I put all my hopes in
+you.
+     Believe me, my dear sir,
+          (whatever you may decide)
+               Your devoted
+                    LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week ago.
+The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking, sensitive;
+the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and, oddly, the whole
+whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly than ever his memories
+of Antonia.  It had been at the end of the journey from Hyeres to London
+that he had met him; that seemed to give the youth a claim.
+
+He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row.  Dismissing his cab at the
+corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in question.
+It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in other words, a
+"doss-house."  By tapping on a sort of ticket-office with a sliding
+window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman with soap-suds on
+her arms, who informed him that the person he was looking for had gone
+without leaving his address.
+
+"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make inquiry?"
+
+"Yes; there's a Frenchman."  And opening an inner door she bellowed:
+"Frenchy!  Wanted!" and disappeared.
+
+A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
+moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
+sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular impression
+of some little creature in a cage.
+
+"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto.  What do you
+want with him, if I may ask?"  The little man's yellow cheeks were
+wrinkled with suspicion.
+
+Shelton produced the letter.
+
+"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
+crow's-feet--"he spoke of you.  'If I can only find him,' he used to say,
+'I 'm saved.'  I liked that young man; he had ideas."
+
+"Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?"
+
+The Frenchman shook his head.
+
+"Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea."
+
+"Do you think he will come back here?  But by that time I suppose, you'll
+hardly be here yourself?"
+
+A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
+
+"I?  Oh, yes, sir!  Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging; I
+no longer have illusions.  I shave these specimens for a living, and
+shall shave them till the day of judgment.  But leave a letter with me by
+all means; he will come back.  There's an overcoat of his here on which
+he borrowed money--it's worth more.  Oh, yes; he will come back--a youth
+of principle.  Leave a letter with me; I'm always here."
+
+Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, "I'm always here," touched
+him in their simplicity.  Nothing more dreadful could be said.
+
+"Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?" he asked; "please keep the
+change for the trouble I am giving you."
+
+"Thank you," said the Frenchman simply; "he told me that your heart was
+good.  If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at your
+ease."
+
+Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen in
+company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to himself;
+and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention, suspecting that he
+was not sober.  Just as he was about to take his leave, however, the old
+fellow thus accosted him:
+
+"Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?" he said, working at a loose
+tooth with his shrivelled fingers.  "I went to a dentist once, who
+professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop my
+teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings?  No, my bhoy;
+they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I shimply ask you,
+d'you call that dentistry?"  Fixing his eyes on Shelton's collar, which
+had the misfortune to be high and clean, he resumed with drunken scorn:
+"Ut's the same all over this pharisaical counthry.  Talk of high morality
+and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation!  The world was never at such low ebb!
+Phwhat's all this morality?  Ut stinks of the shop.  Look at the
+condition of Art in this counthry! look at the fools you see upon th'
+stage! look at the pictures and books that sell!  I know what I'm talking
+about, though I am a sandwich man.  Phwhat's the secret of ut all?  Shop,
+my bhoy!  Ut don't pay to go below a certain depth!  Scratch the skin,
+but pierce ut--Oh! dear, no!  We hate to see the blood fly, eh?"
+
+Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply; but
+the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
+
+"Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think blanks
+loike me ought to exist?  Whoy don't they kill us off?
+Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy?  Because they object to th' extreme
+course.  Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the world.
+They won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam high!  They
+blink the truth in this middle-class counthry.  My bhoy"--and he
+whispered confidentially--"ut pays 'em.  Eh? you say, why shouldn't they,
+then?"  (But Shelton had not spoken.)  "Well, let'em! let 'em!  But don't
+tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh civilisation!  What can
+you expect in a counthry where the crimson, emotions are never allowed to
+smell the air?  And what'sh the result?  My bhoy, the result is
+sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots, like a fungus or a Stilton
+cheese.  Go to the theatre, and see one of these things they call plays.
+Tell me, are they food for men and women?  Why, they're pap for babes and
+shop-boys!  I was a blanky actor moyself!"
+
+Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till the
+old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the table.
+
+"You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?" he said suddenly--"too much of 'n
+Englishman, no doubt."
+
+"Very seldom," said Shelton.
+
+"Pity!  Think of the pleasures of oblivion!  Oi 'm dhrunk every night."
+
+"How long will you last at that rate?"
+
+"There speaks the Englishman!  Why should Oi give up me only pleasure to
+keep me wretched life in?  If you've anything left worth the keeping
+shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you are dhrunk
+the better--that stands to reason."
+
+In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came from.
+
+"Oh, and Englishman!  Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man. You
+are a drunken nation"--he made a motion with his hands "he no longer
+eats--no inside left.  It is unfortunate-a man of spirit.  If you have
+never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy to show you
+over it."
+
+Shelton took out his cigarette case.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a cigarette;
+"I'm accustomed to it.  But you're wise to fumigate the air; one is n't
+in a harem."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
+
+"This," said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, "is a
+specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the blood."
+There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air of a showman,
+the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt.  "They go out in the mornings,
+earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off, and then begin again.
+That's their life.  There are people who think they ought to be reformed.
+'Mon cher monsieur', one must face reality a little, even in this
+country.  It would be a hundred times better for these people to spend
+their time reforming high Society. Your high Society makes all these
+creatures; there's no harvest without cutting stalks.  'Selon moi'," he
+continued, putting back the quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through
+his nose, "there's no grand difference between your high Society and
+these individuals here; both want pleasure, both think only of
+themselves, which is very natural.  One lot have had the luck, the
+other--well, you see." He shrugged.  "A common set!  I've been robbed
+here half a dozen times.  If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an
+overcoat, you want eyes in the back of your head.  And they are
+populated!  Change your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not
+sleeping alone. 'V'la ma clientele'!  The half of them don't pay me!"
+He, snapped his yellow sticks of fingers.  "A penny for a shave, twopence
+a cut! 'Quelle vie'!  Here," he continued, standing by a bed, "is a
+gentleman who owes me fivepence.  Here's one who was a soldier; he's done
+for!  All brutalised; not one with any courage left!  But, believe me,
+monsieur," he went on, opening another door, "when you come down to
+houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as necessary as breath is
+to the lungs.  No matter what, you must have a vice to give you a little
+solace--'un peu de soulagement'.  Ah, yes! before you judge these swine,
+reflect on life!  I've been through it. Monsieur, it is not nice never to
+know where to get your next meal. Gentlemen who have food in their
+stomachs, money in their pockets, and know where to get more, they never
+think.  Why should they--'pas de danger'!  All these cages are the same.
+Come down, and you shall see the pantry."  He took Shelton through the
+kitchen, which seemed the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an
+inner room furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.
+Another fire was burning there.  "We always have hot water," said the
+Frenchman, "and three times a week they make a fire down there"--he
+pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin.  Oh, yes, we
+have all the luxuries."
+
+Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
+little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
+trying to adopt him as a patron:
+
+"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have your
+letter without fail.  My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I am always
+at your service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE PLAY
+
+Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare.  "That old
+actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman; still,
+there may be truth in what he said.  I am a Pharisee, like all the rest
+who are n't in the pit.  My respectability is only luck.  What should I
+have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?" and he stared at a
+stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to pierce the mask of
+their serious, complacent faces.  If these ladies and gentlemen were put
+into that pit into which he had been looking, would a single one of them
+emerge again?  But the effort of picturing them there was too much for
+him; it was too far--too ridiculously far.
+
+One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst of
+all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and desperately
+jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence, had evidently
+bought some article which pleased them.  There was nothing offensive in
+their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at the passing of the other
+people.  The man had that fine solidity of shoulder and of waist, the
+glossy self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and
+dressing-bags.  The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept
+her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled
+voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic.  It
+was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been
+exhausted, or passionate, or afraid.  Their talk, like that of many
+dozens of fine couples invading London from their country places, was of
+where to dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what
+they should buy.  And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even
+in their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation.  They
+were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
+accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his soul.
+Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them.  They were the
+best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew everybody, had
+clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such conduct as seemed to
+them "impossible," all breaches of morality, such as mistakes of
+etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy (except with a canonised
+class of objects--the legitimate sufferings, for instance, of their own
+families and class).  How healthy they were!  The memory of the
+doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like poison.  He was conscious that
+in his own groomed figure, in the undemonstrative assurance of his walk,
+he bore resemblance to the couple he apostrophised.  "Ah!" he thought,
+"how vulgar our refinement is!"  But he hardly believed in his own
+outburst.  These people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so
+healthy, he could not really understand what irritated him.  What was the
+matter with them?  They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear
+consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
+lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
+animals which no longer had a need for using them.  Some rare national
+faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had destroyed
+their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
+
+The lady looked up at her husband.  The light of quiet, proprietary
+affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her features
+slightly reddened by the wind.  And the husband looked back at her, calm,
+practical, protecting.  They were very much alike.  So doubtless he
+looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves for her to
+straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would look, standing
+before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon her bosom.  Calm,
+proprietary, kind!  He passed them and walked behind a second less
+distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual dislike as matter-of-fact
+and free from nonsense as the unruffled satisfaction of the first; this
+dislike was just as healthy, and produced in Shelton about the same
+sensation.  It was like knocking at a never-opened door, looking at a
+circle--couple after couple all the same.  No heads, toes, angles of
+their souls stuck out anywhere. In the sea of their environments they
+were drowned; no leg braved the air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving
+at the skies; shop-persons, aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were
+all respectable.  And he himself as respectable as any.
+
+He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
+distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen and
+poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
+
+. . . . Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the matter
+with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean as
+caterpillars.  To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole
+out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us,
+is what we're all after.  There's something about human nature that is
+awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they
+seem to me to be . . . .
+
+He paused, biting his pen.  Had he one acquaintance who would not counsel
+him to see a doctor for writing in that style?  How would the world go
+round, how could Society exist, without common-sense, practical ability,
+and the lack of sympathy?
+
+He looked out of the open window.  Down in the street a footman was
+settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the decorous
+immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible to him, was
+like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
+
+He got up and walked up and down.  His rooms, in a narrow square skirting
+Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had made him a
+man of means.  Selected for their centrality, they were furnished in a
+very miscellaneous way.  They were not bare, but close inspection
+revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and there was
+absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in it.  His
+goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard acquisitions of a
+pressing need.  Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but everything was
+somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never rebuked a servant.
+Above all, there was nothing that indicated hobbies.
+
+Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
+
+.  .  .  I don't think I understand what you mean by "the healthier
+people are, the more repulsive they seem to be"; one must be healthy to
+be perfect, must n't one?  I don't like unhealthy people.  I had to play
+on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me feel
+unhappy.  I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got the
+back-handed lifting stroke at last--hurrah!  .  .  .
+
+By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic writing:
+
+DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
+My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few
+days.  If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at
+seven, and go to the theatre.  It's ages since I saw you.
+               Yours as ever,
+                    B. M. HALIDOME.
+
+Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend Halidome's
+well-appointed dinners.  At seven, therefore, he went to Chester Square.
+His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold by the light of an
+electric lamp.  The walls of the room were hung with costly etchings,
+arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from the carving of the
+mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the miraculously-coloured
+meerschaums to the chased fire-irons, everything displayed an
+unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish significant of life
+completely under rule of thumb.  Everything had been collected.  The
+collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure of a man, clean
+shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and the rather weighty
+dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance that one is in the
+right.
+
+Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
+where he examined him, smiling a slow smile.  "Glad to see you, old chap.
+I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness; and nothing,
+perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for forming independent
+judgments which Shelton found so admirable.  He made no apology for the
+smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of eight courses and three
+wines, served by a butler and one footman, smacked of the same perfection
+as the furniture; in fact, he never apologised for anything, except with
+a jovial brusqueness that was worse than the offence.  The suave and
+reasonable weight of his dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to
+feel ironical and insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid,
+humane, and healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the
+fact that this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his
+mixed sensations.
+
+"By the way, I congratulate you, old chap," said Halidome, while driving
+to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his congratulations, no
+more than about himself.  "They're awfully nice people, the Dennants."
+
+A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
+
+"Where are you going to live?  You ought to come down and live near us;
+there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a ripping
+neighbourhood.  Have you chucked the Bar?  You ought to do something, you
+know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do.  I tell you what,
+Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council."
+
+But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
+energies were spent in sidling to their stalls.  He had time to pass his
+neighbours in review before the play began.  Seated next to him was a
+lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid liberality;
+beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-grey moustache
+and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had known at Eton.  One
+of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a weather-tanned
+complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed out above the
+lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful eyes, gave him a
+satirical and resolute expression.  "I've got hold of your tail, old
+fellow," he seemed to say, as though he were always busy with the
+catching of some kind of fox.  The other's goggling eyes rested on
+Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair, brushed with water
+and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and admirable waistcoat,
+suggested the sort of dandyism that despises women.  From his recognition
+of these old schoolfellows Shelton turned to look at Halidome, who,
+having cleared his throat, was staring straight before him at the
+curtain.  Antonia's words kept running in her lover's head, "I don't like
+unhealthy people."  Well, all these people, anyway, were healthy; they
+looked as if they had defied the elements to endow them with a spark of
+anything but health.  Just then the curtain rose.
+
+Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
+recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
+drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made for
+morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play unfold
+with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
+
+A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of the
+story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a hundred
+reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were revealed to
+Shelton's eyes.  These reasons issued mainly from the mouth of a
+well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part of a sort of
+Moral Salesman.  He turned to Halidome and whispered:
+
+"Can you stand that old woman?"
+
+His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
+
+"What old woman?"
+
+"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"
+
+Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had been
+assailed in person.
+
+"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said.  "I think he's ripping."
+
+Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
+manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
+naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
+Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy people,"
+and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play.  It was healthy!
+
+The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with a
+cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep upon
+the mat.
+
+The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking off
+neat whisky.  He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a match;
+then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped cigarette....
+
+Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer.  He shifted his elbows, for he
+felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was pitched
+into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat.  The husband poured more
+whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the door; then,
+turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret of some
+tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke.  He left the
+room, returned, and once more filled his glass.  A lady now entered, pale
+of face and dark of eye--his wife.  The husband crossed the stage, and
+stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the attitude which somehow
+Shelton had felt sure he would assume.  He spoke:
+
+"Come in, and shut the door."
+
+Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
+dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
+hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-assorted
+creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had once witnessed
+in a restaurant.  He remembered with extreme minuteness how the woman and
+the man had sat facing each other across the narrow patch of white,
+emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades and a thin green vase with
+yellow flowers.  He remembered the curious scornful anger of their
+voices, subdued so that only a few words reached him.  He remembered the
+cold loathing in their eyes.  And, above all, he remembered his
+impression that this sort of scene happened between them every other day,
+and would continue so to happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid
+his bill he had asked himself, "Why in the name of decency do they go on
+living together?" And now he thought, as he listened to the two players
+wrangling on the stage: "What 's the good of all this talk?  There's
+something here past words."
+
+The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next him.
+She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was healthy
+and offended.
+
+"I do dislike these unhealthy women," he was saying, but catching
+Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
+
+The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
+clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been listening to
+something that had displeased him not a little.  The goggle-eyed man was
+yawning.  Shelton turned to Halidome:
+
+"Can you stand this sort of thing?" said he.
+
+"No; I call that scene a bit too hot," replied his friend.
+
+Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
+
+"I'll bet you anything," he said, "I know what's going to happen now.
+You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
+champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife.  He'll show her
+how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her hand and
+say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but the good
+opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself for saying it;
+but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means it.  And then
+he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't her own but his
+version of them, and show her the only way of salvation is to kiss her
+husband"; and Shelton grinned.  "Anyway, I'll bet you anything he takes
+her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'"
+
+Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he said,
+
+"I think Pirbright 's ripping!"
+
+But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great applause.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GOOD CITIZEN
+
+Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their coats;
+a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the doors, as if in
+momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false morals and emotions for
+the wet, gusty streets, where human plants thrive and die, human weeds
+flourish and fade under the fresh, impartial skies.  The lights revealed
+innumerable solemn faces, gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of
+hats, then passed to whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to
+flare on horses, on the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that
+do not bear the light.
+
+"Shall we walk?" asked Halidome.
+
+"Has it ever struck you," answered Shelton, "that in a play nowadays
+there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have acquired
+the attitude of God?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in the
+sound.
+
+"You're so d---d fastidious," was his answer.
+
+"I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate," went on Shelton.
+"That ending makes me sick."
+
+"Why?" replied Halidome.  "What other end is possible?  You don't want a
+play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth."
+
+"But this does."
+
+Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his walk, as
+in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be in front.
+
+"How do you mean?" he asked urbanely; "it's better than the woman making
+a fool of herself."
+
+"I'm thinking of the man."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"The husband."
+
+"What 's the matter with him?  He was a bit of a bounder, certainly."
+
+"I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't want
+him."
+
+Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment itself,
+caused his friend to reply with dignity:
+
+"There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing.  Women don't
+really care; it's only what's put into their heads."
+
+"That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really want
+anything; it's only what's put into your head!'  You are begging the
+question, my friend."
+
+But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he was
+"begging the question," for he prided himself on being strong in logic.
+
+"That be d---d," he said.
+
+"Not at all, old chap.  Here is a case where a woman wants her freedom,
+and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it."
+
+"Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court."
+
+Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance of
+his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that she
+was mad, and this struck him now as funny.  But then he thought: "Poor
+devil! he was bound to call her mad!  If he didn't, it would be
+confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a man to
+consider himself that."  But a glance at his friend's eye warned him that
+he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
+
+"Surely," he said, "even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave like
+a gentleman."
+
+"Depends on whether she behaves like a lady."
+
+"Does it?  I don't see the connection."
+
+Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door; there
+was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
+
+"My dear chap," he said, "you're too sentimental altogether."
+
+The word "sentimental" nettled Shelton.  "A gentleman either is a
+gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
+behave?"
+
+Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his hall,
+where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn towards
+the blaze.
+
+"No, Bird," he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-tails
+in his hands; "it's all very well to talk, but wait until you're married.
+A man must be master, and show it, too."
+
+An idea occurred to Shelton.
+
+"Look here, Hal," he said: "what should you do if your wife got tired of
+you?"
+
+The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
+contempt.
+
+"I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation to
+yourself."
+
+Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
+
+"I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind up.
+She'd soon come round."
+
+"But suppose she really loathed you?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent.  How
+could anybody loathe him?  With great composure, however, regarding
+Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
+
+"There are a great many things to be taken into consideration."
+
+"It appears to me," said Shelton, "to be a question of common pride. How
+can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it."
+
+His friend's voice became judicial.
+
+"A man ought not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky, "because a
+woman gets hysteria.  You have to think of Society, your children, house,
+money arrangements, a thousand things.  It's all very well to talk.  How
+do you like this whisky?"
+
+"The part of the good citizen, in fact," said Shelton,
+"self-preservation!"
+
+"Common-sense," returned his friend; "I believe in justice before
+sentiment."  He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton. "Besides,
+there are many people with religious views about it."
+
+"It's always seemed to me," said Shelton, "to be quaint that people
+should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an eye,'
+and call themselves Christians.  Did you ever know anybody stand on their
+rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of their own comfort?
+Let them call their reasons what they like, you know as well as I do that
+it's cant."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
+Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for the
+sake of Society as well as for your own.  If you want to do away with
+marriage, why don't you say so?"
+
+"But I don't," said Shelton, "is it likely?  Why, I'm going--"  He
+stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it suddenly
+occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and philosophic in
+the world.  "All I can say is," he went on soberly, "that you can't make
+a horse drink by driving him.  Generosity is the surest way of tightening
+the knot with people who've any sense of decency; as to the rest, the
+chief thing is to prevent their breeding."
+
+Halidome smiled.
+
+"You're a rum chap," he said.
+
+Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
+
+"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came to
+him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society; it's
+nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."
+
+But Halidome remained unruffled.
+
+"All right," he said, "call it that.  I don't see why I should go to the
+wall; it wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total of
+everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"
+
+Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
+
+"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"
+
+But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified posture of
+his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead, the perfectly
+humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton as ridiculous.
+
+"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud you
+are!  I'll be off."
+
+"No, look here!"  said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had appeared
+upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite wrong--"
+
+"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"
+
+Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him.  It was Saturday,
+and he passed many silent couples.  In every little patch of shadow he
+could see two forms standing or sitting close together, and in their
+presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their tongues.  The wind
+rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as diamonds, vanished the
+next.  In the lower streets a large part of the world was under the
+influence of drink, but by this Shelton was far from being troubled.  It
+seemed better than Drama, than dressing-bagged men, unruffled women, and
+padded points of view, better than the immaculate solidity of his
+friend's possessions.
+
+"So," he reflected, "it's right for every reason, social, religious, and
+convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired. There are
+obviously advantages about the married state; charming to feel
+respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk of life
+would bring on you contempt.  If old Halidome showed that he was tired of
+me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of a cad; but if
+his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd still consider
+himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving her the burden of
+his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion into it--a religion
+that says, 'Do unto others!'"
+
+But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it was
+for him to believe that a woman could not stand him.  He reached his
+rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the soft, gusty
+breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a moment before
+entering.
+
+"I wonder," thought he, "if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
+that chap in the play.  It's natural.  We all want our money's worth, our
+pound of flesh!  Pity we use such fine words--'Society, Religion,
+Morality.'  Humbug!"
+
+He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long time,
+his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of the dark
+square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective frown
+about his eyes.  A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a man
+in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver.
+
+"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say is,
+if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"
+
+They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose Antonia's
+face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and dignity; the
+forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair parted in the
+centre, and brushed across.  A light seemed to illumine the plane of
+their existence, as the electric lamp with the green shade had illumined
+the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before Shelton's vision lay that
+Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any kind, autocratic;
+complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any Midland landscape.  Healthy,
+wealthy, wise!  No room but for perfection, self-preservation, the
+survival of the fittest!  "The part of the good citizen," he thought:
+"no, if we were all alike, this would n't be a world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
+
+"My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be glad
+to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the question of your
+marriage settlement...."   At that hour accordingly Shelton made his way
+to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black letters the names "Paramor
+and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)" were written on the wall of a
+stone entrance.  He ascended the solid steps with nervousness, and by a
+small red-haired boy was introduced to a back room on the first floor.
+Here, seated at a table in the very centre, as if he thereby better
+controlled his universe, a pug-featured gentleman, without a beard, was
+writing.  He paused. "Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see you, sir.
+Take a chair. Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute"; and in the
+tone of his allusion to his employer was the satirical approval that
+comes with long and faithful service.  "He will do everything himself,"
+he went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest eyes, "and he 's not a
+young man."
+
+Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the prosperity
+deepening upon his face.  In place of the look of harassment which on
+most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty, his old friend's
+countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation, had expanded--a
+little greasily, a little genially, a little coarsely--every time he met
+it.  A contemptuous tolerance for people who were not getting on was
+spreading beneath its surface; it left each time a deeper feeling that
+its owner could never be in the wrong.
+
+"I hope you're well, sir," he resumed: "most important for you to have
+your health now you're going-to"--and, feeling for the delicate way to
+put it, he involuntarily winked--"to become a family man.  We saw it in
+the paper.  My wife said to me the other morning at breakfast: 'Bob,
+here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be married.  Is that any
+relative of your Mr. Shelton?'  'My dear,' I said to her, 'it's the very
+man!'"
+
+It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass the
+whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the room, but
+that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before his eyes) he
+actually lived another life where someone called him "Bob."  Bob!  And
+this, too, was a revelation.  Bob!  Why, of course, it was the only name
+for him!  A bell rang.
+
+"That's your uncle"; and again the head clerk's voice sounded ironical.
+"Good-bye, sir."
+
+He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
+Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an enormous
+room in the front where his uncle waited.
+
+Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose brown
+face was perfectly clean-shaven.  His grey, silky hair was brushed in a
+cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left side.  He stood
+before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had the springy
+abruptness of men who cannot fatten.  There was a certain youthfulness,
+too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had been through fire;
+and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising smiles.  The room was
+like the man--morally large, void of red-tape and almost void of
+furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the walls, no papers littered
+up the table; a single bookcase contained a complete edition of the law
+reports, and resting on the Law Directory was a single red rose in a
+glass of water.  It looked the room of one with a sober magnanimity, who
+went to the heart of things, despised haggling, and before whose smiles
+the more immediate kinds of humbug faded.
+
+"Well, Dick," said he, "how's your mother?"
+
+Shelton replied that his mother was all right.
+
+"Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
+this Brass thing.  You can say it's safe, from me."
+
+Shelton made a face.
+
+"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."
+
+His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance, and up
+went the corners of his mouth.
+
+"She's splendid," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."
+
+The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment in
+such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of questioning.
+
+"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr.
+Paramor walked up and down the room.  "Bring me the draft of Mr.
+Richard's marriage settlement."
+
+The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--"Now then,
+Dick," said Mr. Paramor.  "She 's not bringing anything into settlement,
+I understand; how 's that?"
+
+"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.
+
+Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
+pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read.  The latter,
+following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved when
+he paused suddenly.
+
+"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits her
+life interest--see?"
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."
+
+Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his mouth,
+and was decorously subdued.  It was Shelton's turn to walk about.
+
+"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.
+
+Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might have
+watched a fish he had just landed.
+
+"It's very usual," he remarked.
+
+Shelton took another turn.
+
+"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."
+
+When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she continued
+to belong to him.  Exactly!
+
+Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.
+
+"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"
+
+Exactly!  Why should she have his money if she married again?  She would
+forfeit it.  There was comfort in the thought.  Shelton came back and
+carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely business basis,
+and disguise the real significance of what was passing in his mind.
+
+"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."
+
+What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly have
+been devised?  His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely turning
+from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.
+
+"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.
+
+The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.
+
+"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.
+
+The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in a
+piece of sentiment.
+
+"Ye-es," he stammered.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Quite!"  The answer was a little sulky.
+
+Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the reading of
+the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too much occupied in
+considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused, and to do this he
+was obliged to keep his eyes upon him.  Those features, just pleasantly
+rugged; the springy poise of the figure; the hair neither straight nor
+curly, neither short nor long; the haunting look of his eyes and the
+humorous look of his mouth; his clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his
+serviceable, fine hands; above all, the equability of the hovering blue
+pencil, conveyed the impression of a perfect balance between heart and
+head, sensibility and reason, theory and its opposite.
+
+"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you understand,
+of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on taking?"
+
+If they didn't get on!  Shelton smiled.  Mr. Paramor did not smile, and
+again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against something poised
+but firm.  He remarked irritably:
+
+"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having it."
+
+This time his uncle smiled.  It was difficult for Shelton to feel angry
+at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too impersonal
+to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.
+
+"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
+settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned.  We 're bound to look
+at every case, you know, old boy."
+
+The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
+strong in Shelton.  He was not one of those who could not face the notion
+of transferred affections--at a safe distance.
+
+"All right, Uncle Ted," said he.  For one mad moment he was attacked by
+the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce.  Would it not be common
+chivalry to make her independent, able to change her affections if she
+wished, unhampered by monetary troubles?  You only needed to take out the
+words "during coverture."
+
+Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face.  There was no meanness
+there, but neither was there encouragement in that comprehensive brow
+with its wide sweep of hair.  "Quixotism," it seemed to say, "has merits,
+but--"  The room, too, with its wide horizon and tall windows, looking as
+if it dealt habitually in common-sense, discouraged him.  Innumerable men
+of breeding and the soundest principles must have bought their wives in
+here.  It was perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf.  The
+aroma of Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
+settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.
+
+"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going to
+be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.
+
+Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
+glass, and sniffed at it.  "Will you come with me as far as Pall Mall?  I
+'m going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I suppose?"
+
+They walked into the Strand.
+
+"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
+passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.
+
+"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d gloomy."
+
+Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head, his
+eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.
+
+"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"
+
+"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put in
+words?"
+
+"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians; why
+should n't we?"
+
+Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.
+
+"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong for
+us.  When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false. I should
+like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him to your
+mother."  He went in and bought a salmon:
+
+"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that it's
+decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels?  Is n't
+life bad enough already?"
+
+It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face had
+a look of crucifixion.  It was, perhaps, only the stronger sunlight in
+the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
+
+"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."
+
+"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
+Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button.  "Truth 's the very
+devil!"
+
+He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face; there
+seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle of
+tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness. Like the
+lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him look at her.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
+snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks.  You won't come
+to my club?  Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother when you see
+her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go on to his own
+club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle, but from the nation
+of which they were both members by birth and blood and education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CLUB
+
+He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The
+words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these:
+"Dennant!  Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants?  She was a Penguin."
+
+No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there had
+been an "Ah! that 's right; this is due to us" tone about the saying.
+
+Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: "Charles Penguin, fifth Baron
+Baltimore.  Issue: Alice, b.  184-, m. 186-Algernon Dennant, Esq., of
+Holm Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire."  He put down the Peerage and took
+up the 'Landed Gentry': "Dennant, Algernon Cuffe, eldest son of the late
+Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble.
+Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow; ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P.
+for Oxfordshire.  Residence, Holm Oaks," etc., etc.  Dropping the 'Landed
+Gentry', he took up a volume of the 'Arabian Nights', which some member
+had left reposing on the book-rest of his chair, but instead of reading
+he kept looking round the room.  In almost every seat, reading or
+snoozing, were gentlemen who, in their own estimation, might have married
+Penguins.  For the first time it struck him with what majestic
+leisureliness they turned the pages of their books, trifled with their
+teacups, or lightly snored.  Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with dark
+moustache, thick hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with
+stooping shoulders; a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and
+large white waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose
+face was like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine
+creature fast asleep.  Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin,
+hairy or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was complete.
+They were all the creatures of good form.  Staring at them or reading the
+Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner.  He had not been
+long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection strolled up and
+took the next table.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!  Back?  Somebody told me you were goin' round the world."
+He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass.  "Clear soup! .  .  .  Read
+Jellaby's speech?  Amusing the way he squashes all those fellows.  Best
+man in the House, he really is."
+
+Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in the
+habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why.  The red and shaven
+face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen by good
+humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed introspectively
+on the successful process of his eating.
+
+"Success!"  thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--"success is what we
+admire in Jellaby.  We all want success .  .  .  .  Yes," he admitted, "a
+successful beast."
+
+"Oh!" said his neighbour, "I forgot.  You're in the other camp?"
+
+"Not particularly.  Where did you get that idea?"
+
+His neighbour looked round negligently.
+
+"Oh," said he, "I somehow thought so"; and Shelton almost heard him
+adding, "There's something not quite sound about you."
+
+"Why do you admire Jellaby?" he asked.
+
+"Knows his own mind," replied his neighbour; "it 's more than the others
+do .  .  .  .  This whitebait is n't fit for cats!  Clever fellow,
+Jellaby!  No nonsense about him!  Have you ever heard him speak?  Awful
+good sport to watch him sittin' on the Opposition.  A poor lot they are!"
+and he laughed, either from appreciation of Jellaby sitting on a small
+minority, or from appreciation of the champagne bubbles in his glass.
+
+"Minorities are always depressing," said Shelton dryly.
+
+"Eh? what?"
+
+"I mean," said Shelton, "it's irritating to look at people who have n't a
+chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics, and all
+that."
+
+His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.
+
+"Er--yes, quite," said he; "don't you take mint sauce?  It's the best
+part of lamb, I always think."
+
+The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that every
+man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began to regain
+its influence on Shelton.  How many times had he not sat there, carefully
+nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table he was used to, a
+paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip with who was not a
+bounder; while the sensation of having drunk enough stole over him.
+Happy!  That is, happy as a horse is happy who never leaves his stall.
+
+"Look at poor little Bing puffin' about," said his neighbour, pointing to
+a weazened, hunchy waiter.  "His asthma's awf'ly bad; you can hear him
+wheezin' from the street."
+
+He seemed amused.
+
+"There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?" said Shelton.
+
+His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.
+
+"Here, take this away; it's overdone;" said he.  "Bring me some lamb."
+
+Shelton pushed his table back.
+
+"Good-night," he said; "the Stilton's excellent!"
+
+His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
+plate.
+
+In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales and
+took his weight.  "Eleven stone!"  he thought; "gone up!" and, clipping a
+cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.
+
+After half an hour he dropped the book.  There seemed something rather
+fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot, and was
+full of well-connected people, it had apparently been contrived to throw
+no light on anything whatever.  He looked at the author's name; everyone
+was highly recommending it.  He began thinking, and staring at the fire .
+.  .  .
+
+Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the Rifles,
+bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly just a little
+drunk.
+
+"Congratulate you, old chap!  I say, what made you grow that b-b-eastly
+beard?"
+
+Shelton grinned.
+
+"Pillbottle of the Duchess!"  read young Dennant, taking up the book.
+"You been reading that?  Rippin', is n't it?"
+
+"Oh, ripping!" replied Shelton.
+
+"Rippin' plot!  When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
+about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused."
+
+"Rather!"  murmured Shelton.
+
+"That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
+There's old Benjy!  Hallo, Benjy!"
+
+"Hallo, Bill, old man!"
+
+This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice and
+manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.
+
+In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery, a
+grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called Stroud,
+came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a moustache and
+a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be seen in the club any
+night of the year when there was no racing out of reach of London.
+
+"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the
+young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow.  Miss
+Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate."
+
+"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they would
+understand.
+
+"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best.  I tell you
+what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you won't
+get such another chance of practice.  Benjy 'll give you a card."
+
+"Delighted!"  murmured Benjy.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"St. Briabas; two-thirty.  Come and see how they do the trick.  I'll call
+for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he patted
+Benjy's knee.
+
+Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had made
+him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose suavity had
+never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater interest in some
+approaching race than in his coming marriage.  But Shelton knew from his
+own sensations that this could not really be the case; it was merely a
+question of "good form," the conceit of a superior breeding, the duty not
+to give oneself away.  And when in turn he marked the eyes of Stroud
+fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows, and the curious greedy glances of the
+racing man, he felt somehow sorry for him.
+
+"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"
+asked the racing man.
+
+And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in his
+hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.
+
+"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the
+Chinese--must have a grudge against them!  And now he 's got his leg he
+can't go there any more."
+
+"Chinese?  What does he do to them?"
+
+"Bibles or guns.  Don't ask me!  An adventurer."
+
+"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.
+
+Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once how
+it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests," and
+plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these people
+with untidy lives.  A minute later the man with the "game leg" passed
+close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how intelligible
+the resentment of his fellow-members was.  He had eyes which, not
+uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel bars; he seemed
+the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that were "bad form," a
+man who might even go as far as chivalry.  He looked straight at Shelton,
+and his uncompromising glance gave an impression of fierce loneliness;
+altogether, an improper person to belong to such a club.  Shelton
+remembered the words of an old friend of his father's: "Yes, Dick, all
+sorts of fellows belong here, and they come here for all sorts o'
+reasons, and a lot of em come because they've nowhere else to go, poor
+beggars"; and, glancing from the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it
+occurred to Shelton that even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor
+beggars.  One never knew!  A look at Benjy, contained and cheery,
+restored him.  Ah, the lucky devil!  He would not have to come here any
+more! and the thought of the last evening he himself would be spending
+before long flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.
+
+"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!"  said young Bill Dennant.
+
+Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left once
+more to reverie.
+
+"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel.  They'll go
+on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such
+foolery."
+
+He crossed over to the window.  Rain had begun to fall; the streets
+looked wild and draughty.  The cabmen were putting on their coats. Two
+women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-clothed,
+dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly, desperate step.
+Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way amongst his
+fellow-members.  A procession of old school and college friends came up
+before his eyes.  After all, what had there been in his own education, or
+theirs, to give them any other standard than this "good form"?  What had
+there been to teach them anything of life?  Their imbecility was
+incredible when you came to think of it. They had all the air of knowing
+everything, and really they knew nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the
+Emotions; nothing of the bonds that bind all men together.  Why, even
+such words were not "good form"; nothing outside their little circle was
+"good form." They had a fixed point of view over life because they came
+of certain schools, and colleges, and regiments!  And they were those in
+charge of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.
+Well, it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
+healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!
+
+"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-leather
+boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with gold
+nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"
+
+Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
+originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
+solemn pleasure as he read.  In the white of his eye there was a torpid
+and composed abstraction.  There was nothing in that book to startle him
+or make him think.
+
+The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking of
+his recent visit to the south of France.  He had a scandalous anecdote or
+two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold nose-nippers; he
+was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly humour that it was
+impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave so perfect an impression
+of enjoying life, and doing himself well. "Well, good-night!" he
+murmured--"An engagement!"--and the certainty he left behind that his
+engagement must be charming and illicit was pleasant to the soul.
+
+And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-being
+was upon him.  His superiority to these his fellow-members soothed him.
+He saw through all the sham of this club life, the meanness of this
+worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved novelists, "good form," and
+the terrific decency of our education. It was soothing thus to see
+through things, soothing thus to be superior; and from the soft recesses
+of his chair he puffed out smoke and stretched his limbs toward the fire;
+and the fire burned back at him with a discreet and venerable glow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE WEDDING
+
+Puncutal to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.
+
+"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of
+their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
+unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
+pavement.
+
+The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by her
+side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs of ragged
+matrimony.  Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price of his tie was
+their board and lodging for a week.  He followed his future
+brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with intuitive
+perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the opposing parties to
+this contract had its serried battalion, the arrows of whose suspicion
+kept glancing across and across the central aisle.
+
+Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.
+
+"There's old Benjy!"  he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of the
+day.  A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered uniformity of
+his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he bent upon the
+guests had its wonted steely suavity.  About his dress and his neat
+figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the ruck of common
+bridegrooms.  There were no holes in his armour through which the
+impertinent might pry.
+
+"Good old Benjy!"  whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit short
+of class, those Casserols."
+
+Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled.  The sensuous
+sanctity all round had begun to influence him.  A perfume of flowers and
+dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle of
+whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the aisles,
+and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in front; without in
+the least desiring to make a speculation of this sort, he wondered
+whether her face was as charming as the lines of her back in their
+delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his glance wandered to the
+chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the grave, business faces of the
+presiding priests, till the organ began rolling out the wedding march.
+
+"They're off!"  whispered young Dermant.
+
+Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
+reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain.  The bride came slowly
+up the aisle.  "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and the church
+will be filled with people like this .  .  .  .  She'll be a show to
+them!"  The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct of common
+chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame to look at
+that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect raiment; the
+modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure yearnings; the stately
+head where no such thought as "How am I looking, this day of all days,
+before all London?" had ever entered; the proud head, which no such fear
+as "How am I carrying it off?" could surely be besmirching.
+
+He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and set
+his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a sacrifice.  The
+words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better, for worse, for richer,
+for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and opening the Prayer Book he
+found the Marriage Service, which he had not looked at since he was a
+boy, and as he read he had some very curious sensations.
+
+All this would soon be happening to himself!  He went on reading in a
+kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!" All
+around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure mount the
+pulpit and stand motionless.  Massive and high-featured, sunken of eye,
+he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole, above the blackness of
+his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for his beauty.  Shelton was
+still gazing at the stitching of his gloves, when once again the organ
+played the Wedding March.  All were smiling, and a few were weeping,
+craning their heads towards the bride.  "Carnival of second-hand
+emotions!"  thought Shelton; and he, too, craned his head and brushed his
+hat.  Then, smirking at his friends, he made his way towards the door.
+
+In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the presents
+with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale violet, who had
+been chief bridesmaid.
+
+"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying
+
+"Oh, awfully!"
+
+"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
+bride to come."
+
+"Yes," murmured Shelton.
+
+"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"
+
+Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.
+
+"That was my idea; I think it 's very chic.  They 've had fifteen
+tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?"
+
+"By Jove!"  Shelton hastened to remark.
+
+"Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
+course, you change them for those you do."
+
+The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this room; he
+looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by the shrewd
+acquisitiveness of her small eyes.
+
+"Is that your future brother-in-law?" she asked, pointing to Bill Dennant
+with a little movement of her chin; "I think he's such a bright boy.  I
+want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep things jolly.  It's so
+deadly after a wedding."
+
+And Shelton said they would.
+
+They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure. Her
+face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a furtive
+trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd sensation of
+having sinned against his manhood.  Jammed close to him was her old
+nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion, while tears
+rolled from her eyes.  She was trying to say something, but in the hubbub
+her farewell was lost.  There was a scamper to the carriage, a flurry of
+rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against the sharply drawn-up window.
+Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a moment, bland and steely; the footman
+folded his arms, and with a solemn crunch the brougham wheels rolled
+away.  "How splendidly it went off!"  said a voice on Shelton's right.
+"She looked a little pale," said a voice on Shelton's left.  He put his
+hand up to his forehead; behind him the old nurse sniffed.
+
+"Dick," said young Dennant in his ear, "this isn't good enough; I vote we
+bolt."
+
+Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
+whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon champagne
+or to the ceremony that had gone so well.
+
+"What's up with you?" asked Dennant; "you look as glum as any m-monkey."
+
+"Nothing," said Shelton; "I was only thinking what humbugs we all are!"
+
+Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
+future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.
+
+"Oh," said he, "if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DINNER
+
+The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's friends
+who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities.  Shelton found himself
+between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the same degree.
+Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white waistcoat, black
+moustache, and hawk-like face.  This was, in fact, one of those
+interesting houses occupied by people of the upper middle class who have
+imbibed a taste for smart society.  Its inhabitants, by nature
+acquisitive and cautious, economical, tenacious, had learnt to worship
+the word "smart."  The result was a kind of heavy froth, an air of
+thoroughly domestic vice.  In addition to the conventionally fast,
+Shelton had met there one or two ladies, who, having been divorced, or
+having yet to be, still maintained their position in "society."  Divorced
+ladies who did not so maintain their place were never to be found, for
+the Casserols had a great respect for marriage.  He had also met there
+American ladies who were "too amusing"--never, of course, American men,
+Mesopotamians of the financial or the racing type, and several of those
+gentlemen who had been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction
+which might or again might not, "come off," and in conduct of an order
+which might, or again might not be spotted.  The line he knew, was always
+drawn at those in any category who were actually found out, for the value
+of these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity--nothing
+so sentimental--but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips, their
+"bridge parties," and their motors.
+
+In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
+sheltered those who were too "smart" to keep their heads for long above
+the water.
+
+His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
+trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
+down the table.  Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
+neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the incoherence
+of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art.  It was with surprise that
+he found Miss Casserol addressing him.
+
+"I always say that the great thing is to be jolly.  If you can't find
+anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to be
+amusin'.  Now don't you agree?"
+
+The philosophy seemed excellent.
+
+"We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly."
+
+Shelton hastened to look jolly.
+
+"I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the shutters
+and leave him.  What's the good of mopin' and lookin' miserable?  Are you
+going to the Four-in-Hand Meet?  We're making a party.  Such fun; all the
+smart people!"
+
+The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two hours
+out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but the frank
+shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of voice, were
+guarantees that she was part of the element at the table which was really
+quite respectable.  He had never realised before how "smart" she was, and
+with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of gaiety that would have
+killed a Frenchman.
+
+And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes when
+they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey. "What is
+it," their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say, "that makes you
+so really 'smart'?"  And while still seeking for the reason, he noticed
+his host pointing out the merits of his port to the hawk-like man, with a
+deferential air quite pitiful to see, for the hawk-like man was clearly a
+"bad hat."  What in the name of goodness did these staid bourgeois mean
+by making up to vice?  Was it a craving to be thought distinguished, a
+dread of being dull, or merely an effect of overfeeding?  Again he looked
+at his host, who had not yet enumerated all the virtues of his port, and
+again felt sorry for him.
+
+"So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?"  said a voice on his right,
+with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste.  "Pretty girl!
+They've a nice place, the, Dennants.  D' ye know, you're a lucky feller!"
+
+The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face, and
+peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly. He was
+always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the best people,
+as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every night.
+
+"You're a lucky feller," he repeated; "he's got some deuced good
+shootin', Dennant!  They come too high for me, though; never touched a
+feather last time I shot there.  She's a pretty girl.  You 're a lucky
+feller!"
+
+"I know that," said Shelton humbly.
+
+"Wish I were in your shoes.  Who was that sittin' on the other side of
+you?  I'm so dashed short-sighted.  Mrs. Carruther?  Oh, ay!"  An
+expression which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a leer,
+came on his lips.
+
+Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-book
+covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady. "The old
+ogre means," thought he, "that I'm lucky because his leaf is blank about
+Antonia."  But the old baronet had turned, with his smile, and his
+sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal on the other side.
+
+The two men to Shelton's left were talking.
+
+"What!  You don't collect anything?  How's that?  Everybody collects
+something.  I should be lost without my pictures."
+
+"No, I don't collect anything.  Given it up; I was too awfully had over
+my Walkers."
+
+Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
+Madeira in his glass.  That, had been "collected" by his host, and its
+price was going up!  You couldn't get it every day; worth two guineas a
+bottle!  How precious the idea that other people couldn't get it, made it
+seem!  Liquid delight; the price was going up!  Soon there would be none
+left; immense!  Absolutely no one, then, could drink it!
+
+"Wish I had some of this," said the old baronet, "but I have drunk all
+mine."
+
+"Poor old chap!"  thought Shelton; "after all, he's not a bad old boy.  I
+wish I had his pluck.  His liver must be splendid."
+
+The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with horses
+ridden by jockeys with the latest seat.  And Shelton was compelled to
+help in carrying on this sport till early in the morning.  At last he
+left, exhausted by his animation.
+
+He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine that
+he had drunk.  His mood of satisfaction fizzled out.  These people were
+incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most respectable;
+they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and to get the most
+that could be gotten for their money.
+
+Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
+thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was overtaken by
+the moment when the town is born again.  The first new air had stolen
+down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the trees were quivering
+faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing spoke except his heart.
+Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and Shelton saw that he was not
+alone; an unconsidered trifle with inferior boots was asleep upon his
+doorstep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AN ALIEN
+
+The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
+knees.  No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed by
+a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks.  Shelton
+endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.
+
+"Ah, it's you, monsieur!" he said "I received your letter this evening,
+and have lost no time."  He looked down at himself and tittered, as
+though to say, "But what a state I 'm in!"
+
+The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
+occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
+
+"You can well understand," stammered Ferrand, following his host, "that I
+did n't want to miss you this time.  When one is like this--" and a spasm
+gripped his face.
+
+"I 'm very glad you came," said Shelton doubtfully.
+
+His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan of
+his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit of,
+trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
+
+"Sit down-sit down," said Shelton; "you 're feeling ill!"
+
+Ferrand smiled.  "It's nothing," said he; "bad nourishment."
+
+Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him in
+some whisky.
+
+"Clothes," said Ferrand, when he had drunk, "are what I want.  These are
+really not good enough."
+
+The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
+bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home.  While the
+latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of
+self-denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
+portmanteaus.  This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
+
+The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent of
+boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying affluence.
+
+"This is a little different," he said.  "The boots, I fear"--and, pulling
+down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the size of half
+a crown.  "One does n't sow without reaping some harvest or another.  My
+stomach has shrunk," he added simply.  "To see things one must suffer.
+'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'!"
+
+Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the human
+animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos, a
+suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
+
+"I have eaten my illusions," said the young foreigner, smoking a
+cigarette.  "When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
+'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur': It 's not
+always the intellectuals who succeed."
+
+"When you get a job," said Shelton, "you throw it away, I suppose."
+
+"You accuse me of restlessness?  Shall I explain what I think about that?
+I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent
+position.  I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's
+no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere.  'Je ne
+veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a
+day, and save enough after forty years to drag out the remains of an
+exhausted existence.  That's not in my character."  This ingenious
+paraphrase of the words "I soon get tired of things" he pronounced with
+an air of letting Shelton into a precious secret.
+
+"Yes; it must be hard," agreed the latter.
+
+Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's not all butter," he replied; "one is obliged to do things that are
+not too delicate.  There's nothing I pride myself on but frankness."
+
+Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could stand in
+a judicious way.  "Yes, yes," he seemed to say, "you'd like me to think
+that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality, no prejudices, no
+illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel yourself on an equality
+with me, one human animal talking to another, without any barriers of
+position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca c'est un peu trop fort'!
+You're as good an imitation as I 've come across in your class,
+notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and I 'm grateful to you, but
+to tell you everything, as it passes through my mind would damage my
+prospects.  You can hardly expect that."
+
+In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air of
+natural, almost sensitive refinement.  The room looked as if it were
+accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of familiarity
+that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's soul.  It came
+as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond had taken such a
+place within his thoughts.  The pose of his limbs and head, irregular but
+not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the rings of smoke that issued
+from them--all signified rebellion, and the overthrow of law and order.
+His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid glances of his goggling, prominent
+eyes, were subtlety itself; he stood for discontent with the accepted.
+
+"How do I live when I am on the tramp?" he said, "well, there are the
+consuls.  The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
+starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created for
+the purpose.  There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living entirely
+upon consuls."  He hesitated for the fraction of a second, and resumed:
+"Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can try six or seven
+consuls in a single town.  You must know a language or two; but most of
+these gentlemen are not too well up in the tongues of the country they
+represent.  Obtaining money under false pretences?  Well, it is.  But
+what's the difference at bottom between all this honourable crowd of
+directors, fashionable physicians, employers of labour, ferry-builders,
+military men, country priests, and consuls themselves perhaps, who take
+money and give no value for it, and poor devils who do the same at far
+greater risk?  Necessity makes the law.  If those gentlemen were in my
+position, do you think that they would hesitate?"
+
+Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: "You're
+right; they would, from fear, not principle.  One must be hard pressed
+before committing these indelicacies.  Look deep enough, and you will see
+what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable for not half so
+good a reason as the want of meals."
+
+Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from property
+for which he gave no value in labour.
+
+"I can give you an instance," said Ferrand, "of what can be done by
+resolution.  One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I decided
+to try the French consul.  Well, as you know, I am a Fleming, but
+something had to be screwed out somewhere.  He refused to see me; I sat
+down to wait.  After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't the brute
+gone?' and my consul appears.  'I 've nothing for fellows like you,' says
+he; 'clear out!'
+
+"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
+assistance.'
+
+"'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'
+
+"I don't budge.  Another hour passes, and back he comes again.
+
+"'Still here?' says he.  'Fetch a sergeant.'
+
+"The sergeant comes.
+
+"'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'
+
+"'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!'  Naturally, I had calculated
+upon that.  In Germany they're not too fond of those who undertake the
+business of the French.
+
+"'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'
+
+"'You refuse?'
+
+"'Absolutely.' And he went away.
+
+"'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.
+
+"'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.
+
+"'What will you go for?'
+
+"'Ten marks.'
+
+"'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
+thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls."
+
+His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his ironical
+lips flickered.  Shelton thought of his own ignorance of life.  He could
+not recollect ever having gone without a meal.
+
+"I suppose," he said feebly, "you've often starved."  For, having always
+been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.
+
+Ferrand smiled.
+
+"Four days is the longest," said he.  "You won't believe that story. .  .
+.  It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course. There was
+some due from home which didn't come.  Four days and nights I lived on
+water.  My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery; but I never even
+thought of pawning them.  I suffered most from the notion that people
+might guess my state.  You don't recognise me now?"
+
+"How old were you then?" said Shelton.
+
+"Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age."
+
+By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with sensitive,
+smooth face, always on the move about the streets of Paris, for fear that
+people should observe the condition of his stomach.  The story was a
+valuable commentary.  His thoughts were brusquely interrupted; looking in
+Ferrand's face, he saw to his dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.
+
+"I 've suffered too much," he stammered; "what do I care now what becomes
+of me?"
+
+Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,' but,
+being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.
+
+"Your turn 's coming," he said at last.
+
+"Ah! when you've lived my life," broke out his visitor, "nothing 's any
+good.  My heart's in rags.  Find me anything worth keeping, in this
+menagerie."
+
+Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
+instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that forbade
+him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the revelation of other
+people's.  He could stand it on the stage, he could stand it in a book,
+but in real life he could not stand it. When Ferrand had gone off with a
+portmanteau in each hand, he sat down and told Antonia:
+
+.  .  .  The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and
+instead of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone.  The more
+sympathetic I wanted to be, the gruffer I grew.  Is it fear of ridicule,
+independence, or consideration, for others that prevents one from showing
+one's feelings?
+
+He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than face a
+pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it, the faces
+of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before him--Antonia's
+face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's face, a little
+creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's somewhat too thin-and they
+seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous, and the words "That's rather
+nice!" rang in his ears.  He went out to post the letter, and buying a
+five-shilling order enclosed it to the little barber, Carolan, as a
+reward for delivering his note to Ferrand.  He omitted to send his
+address with this donation, but whether from delicacy or from caution he
+could not have said.  Beyond doubt, however, on receiving through Ferrand
+the following reply, he felt ashamed and pleased.
+
+3, BLANK Row, WESTMINSTER.
+
+From every well-born soul humanity is owing.  A thousand thanks.  I
+received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
+will be placed beyond all praise.
+
+                                        J.  CAROLAN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE VISION
+
+A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him with
+excitement:
+
+.  .  .  Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we can
+go home-hurrah!  But she says that you and I must keep to our arrangement
+not to see each other till July.  There will be something fine in being
+so near and having the strength to keep apart .  .  . All the English are
+gone.  I feel it so empty out here; these people are so funny-all foreign
+and shallow.  Oh, Dick! how splendid to have an ideal to look up to!
+Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and tell me you think the same .  .  .  .
+We arrive at Charing Cross on Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's
+for a couple of nights, and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.
+
+Always your
+ANTONIA.
+
+"To-morrow!"  he thought; "she's coming tomorrow!"  and, leaving his
+neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion.  His square
+ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the most
+distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd assembled
+round a dogfight.  One of the dogs was being mauled, but the day was
+muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a horror of making
+himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he looked for a policeman.
+One was standing by, to see fair play, and Shelton made appeal to him.
+The official suggested that he should not have brought out a fighting
+dog, and advised him to throw cold water over them.
+
+"It is n 't my dog," said Shelton.
+
+"Then I should let 'em be," remarked the policeman with evident surprise.
+
+Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders.  The lower orders,
+however, were afraid of being bitten.
+
+"I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you," said one.
+
+"Nasty breed o' dawg is that."
+
+He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his trousers
+and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud, and separate
+the dogs.  At the conclusion of the "job," the lower orders said to him
+in a rather shamefaced spanner:
+
+"Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir"; but, like all men
+of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.
+
+"D----n it!"  he said, "one can't let a dog be killed"; and he marched
+off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and looking
+scornfully at harmless passers-by.  Having satisfied for once the
+smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low opinion of
+these men in the street.  "The brutes," he thought, "won't stir a finger
+to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen--" But, growing
+cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by "honest toil" could
+not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten hand, and that even the
+policeman, though he had looked so like a demi-god, was absolutely made
+of flesh and blood.  He took the dog home, and, sending for a vet., had
+him sewn up.
+
+He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture to
+meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with the dog
+to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to go and see
+his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him to decide.
+She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road, he was soon
+amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose structure architects
+have wrought the motto: "Keep what you have--wives, money, a good
+address, and all the blessings of a moral state!"
+
+Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
+respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them.  His blood was
+still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the loftiest
+philosophy.  He had been reading in his favourite review an article
+eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper middle
+class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to side he nodded
+his head ironically.  "Expansion and freedom," ran his thoughts: "Freedom
+and expansion!"
+
+Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
+three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against
+the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity. "Conscious
+of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is
+necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world.  The
+person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five
+pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax." Such seemed the
+legend of these houses.
+
+Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping, or
+to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance.  Hardly any men were seen, and
+they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned children were being
+wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses, accompanied by a great
+army of hairy or of hairless dogs.
+
+There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs. Shelton,
+a  tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly feet; fond
+as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy that has no
+insight.  She kissed her son at once with rapture, and, as usual, began
+to talk of his engagement.  For the first time a tremor of doubt ran
+through her son; his mother's view of it grated on him like the sight of
+a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy.  Her splendid optimism, damped him;
+it had too little traffic with the reasoning powers.
+
+"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain?  It seems to
+me a kind of blasphemy."
+
+"The dear!" she cooed.  "And she is coming back to-morrow?  Hurrah! how I
+long to see her!"
+
+"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."
+
+Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like a
+little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.
+
+"Dear old Dick!"  she said, "how happy you must be!"
+
+Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
+indifferent--beamed from her.
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at the
+station."
+
+"Cheer up!"  replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully depressed.
+
+That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
+through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
+flavour.
+
+"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right, really.
+Cheer up!"  She stretched her little figure, canting her head still more.
+
+"Wonderful woman!"  Shelton thought.  She had, in fact, like many of her
+fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and, enjoying the
+benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept as young in heart
+as any girl of thirty.
+
+Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as when
+he entered it.  He spent a restless afternoon.
+
+The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday.  He had made Ferrand a
+promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching at
+any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it.  The
+preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an original
+method of distributing the funds that he obtained.  To male sheep he gave
+nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty female sheep the
+rest.  Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a foreigner.  The
+Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as guided by a purely
+abstract love of beauty.  His eloquence, at any rate, was unquestionable,
+and Shelton came out feeling sick.
+
+It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to kill
+the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of wine for
+his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a cigarette,
+compressed his lips.  There was a strange, sweet sinking in his heart.
+His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his wine, crumbled his
+roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils, glancing caustically at the
+rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors, the hot, red velvet, the
+chandeliers.  His juicy lips seemed to be murmuring, "Ah! if you only
+knew of the dirt behind these feathers!" Shelton watched him with
+disgust.  Though his clothes were now so nice, his nails were not quite
+clean, and his fingertips seemed yellow to the bone.  An anaemic waiter
+in a shirt some four days old, with grease-spots on his garments and a
+crumpled napkin on his arm, stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful
+fruits, and reading an Italian journal.  Resting his tired feet in turn,
+he looked like overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb accused
+the sordid smartness of the walls.  In the far corner sat a lady eating,
+and, mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round face, its
+coat of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of disgust.  His
+companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.
+
+"Excuse me, monsieur," he said at length.  "I think I know that lady!"
+And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted her, and sat
+down.  With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from looking.  But
+presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the restaurant; she
+had been crying.  The young foreigner was flushed, his face contorted; he
+did not touch his wine.
+
+"I was right," he said; "she is the wife of an old friend.  I used to
+know her well."
+
+He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
+might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
+savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced with
+tragic sauce, to set before his patron.
+
+"You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
+hinders these paragons of virtue"--he nodded at the stream of
+carriages--"from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her sort
+pass.  She came to London--just three years ago.  After a year one of her
+little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband caught it, and
+died.  There she was, left with two children and everything gone to pay
+the debts.  She tried to get work; no one helped her.  There was no money
+to pay anyone to stay with the children; all the work she could get in
+the house was not enough to keep them alive.  She's not a strong woman.
+Well, she put the children out to nurse, and went to the streets.  The
+first week was frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to
+anything."
+
+"Can nothing be done?" asked Shelton, startled.
+
+"No," returned his companion.  "I know that sort; if they once take to it
+all's over.  They get used to luxury.  One does n't part with luxury,
+after tasting destitution.  She tells me she does very nicely; the
+children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them sometimes.  She
+was a girl of good family, too, who loved her husband, and gave up much
+for him.  What would you have?  Three quarters of your virtuous ladies
+placed in her position would do the same if they had the necessary
+looks."
+
+It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
+understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
+vagabond.
+
+"This is her beat," said the young foreigner, as they passed the
+illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and women
+fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to the station
+of Charing Cross.  There, as he stood waiting in the shadow, his heart
+was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he should have come to
+this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.
+
+Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia.  She was
+close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them were a
+maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags. Antonia's
+figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape, slender, tall,
+severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the bustle.  Her eyes,
+shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about, welcoming all she saw; a
+wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her cheeks glowed cold and rosy.
+She caught sight of Shelton, and bending her neck, stag-like, stood
+looking at him; a brilliant smile parted her lips, and Shelton trembled.
+Here was the embodiment of all he had desired for weeks.  He could not
+tell what was behind that smile of hers--passionate aching or only some
+ideal, some chaste and glacial intangibility.  It seemed to be shining
+past him into the gloomy station.  There was no trembling and
+uncertainty, no rage of possession in that brilliant smile; it had the
+gleam of fixedness, like the smiling of a star.  What did it matter?  She
+was there, beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was his,
+only divided from him by a space of time.  He took a step; her eyes fell
+at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by mother,
+footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away. It was over; she
+had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his delight lurked another
+feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face came up before him but the
+face of that lady in the restaurant--short, round, and powdered, with
+black-circled eyes.  What right had we to scorn them?  Had they mothers,
+footmen, porters, maids?  He shivered, but this time with physical
+disgust; the powdered face with dark-fringed eyes had vanished; the fair,
+remote figure of the railway-station came back again.
+
+He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after, smoking,
+dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams fumed in his
+brain.  The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the rays of clean wet
+light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the cab bell, the whirring
+wheels, the night air and the branches--it was all so good!  He threw
+back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the warm breeze.  The crowds
+on the pavement gave him strange delight; they were like shadows, in some
+great illusion, happy shadows, thronging, wheeling round the single
+figure of his world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ROTTEN ROW
+
+With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy, Shelton
+mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.
+
+In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the spring.
+The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of light that
+came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds. The air was
+rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of tranquil
+carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their responsibility of the
+firmament.
+
+Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.
+
+Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
+Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
+reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up in
+lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings that
+it would have been noticeable anywhere.  It belonged to Ferrand,
+obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron. Shelton
+found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly on his
+horse, hidden behind a tree.
+
+It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
+ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the bird
+of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them cantering,
+trotting, wheeling up and down.
+
+Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats before a
+horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the same air, as
+though in the modish performance of this ancient rite they were
+satisfying some instinct very dear to them.
+
+Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight. "Many
+thanks, gentlemen," it seemed to say; "in that charming little action you
+have shown me all your souls."
+
+What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people of
+their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
+phylacteries!  Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
+Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.
+
+He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge a
+violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
+behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
+and--Antonia herself!
+
+They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she stood
+on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance different from the
+calm and conquering radiance of that other moment. To Shelton's delight
+they fell into line with him, and all three went galloping along the
+strip between the trees and rails.  The look she gave him seemed to say,
+"I don't care if it is forbidden!"  but she did not speak.  He could not
+take his eyes off her.  How lovely she looked, with the resolute curve of
+her figure, the glimpse of gold under her hat, the glorious colour in her
+cheeks, as if she had been kissed.
+
+"It 's so splendid to be at home!  Let 's go faster, faster!"  she cried
+out.
+
+"Take a pull.  We shall get run in," grumbled her brother, with a
+chuckle.
+
+They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
+side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn spoke
+only to Bill Dennant.  He was afraid to speak to her, for he knew that
+her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a way quite
+different from his own.
+
+Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing against
+the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered a shock
+when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure.  He was about to
+raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting his
+instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it.  They passed
+again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition; followed by
+unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called. But the feeling of
+idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated at this silence.  It
+tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant had lagged behind to
+chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were alone, walking their
+horses, without a word, not even looking at each other.  At one moment he
+thought of galloping ahead and leaving her, then of breaking the vow of
+muteness she seemed to be imposing on him, and he kept thinking: "It
+ought to be either one thing or the other.  I can't stand this."  Her
+calmness was getting on his nerves; she seemed to have determined just
+how far she meant to go, to have fixed cold-bloodedly a limit.  In her
+happy young beauty and radiant coolness she summed up that sane
+consistent something existing in nine out of ten of the people Shelton
+knew.  "I can't stand it long," he thought, and all of a sudden spoke;
+but as he did so she frowned and cantered on.  When he caught her she was
+smiling, lifting her face to catch the raindrops which were falling fast.
+She gave him just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to go; and
+when he would not, she frowned.  He saw Bill Dennant, posting after them,
+and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat, and galloped
+off.
+
+The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying for
+shelter.  He looked back from the bend, and could still make out Antonia
+riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the shower.  Why
+had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the sweets the gods had
+sent?  It seemed wicked to have wasted such a chance, and, ploughing back
+to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head to see if by any chance she had
+relented.
+
+His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed.  Was ever anything
+so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the rain?  She
+seemed to love the rain.  It suited her--suited her ever so much better
+than the sunshine of the South.  Yes, she was very English!  Puzzling and
+fretting, he reached his rooms.  Ferrand had not arrived, in fact did not
+turn up that day.  His non-appearance afforded Shelton another proof of
+the delicacy that went hand in hand with the young vagrant's cynicism.
+In the afternoon he received a note.
+
+.  .  .  You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt too
+crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old London.
+Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of things one
+can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry afterwards.  I told
+mother.  She said I was quite right, but I don't think she took it in.
+Don't you feel that the only thing that really matters is to have an
+ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can always look forward and feel
+that you have been--I can't exactly express my meaning.
+
+Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned.  It seemed to him queer that she
+should set more store by an "ideal" than by the fact that they had met
+for the first and only time in many weeks.
+
+"I suppose she 's right," he thought--"I suppose she 's right.  I ought
+not to have tried to speak to her!"  As a matter of fact, he did not at
+all feel that she was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AN "AT HOME"
+
+On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance
+view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
+ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep him
+from actually entering the station and lurking about until she came.
+With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed Street to
+the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her. He paid a round
+of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations; and, seeking out Aunt
+Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter in the Row.  But she found
+it "rather nice," and on his pressing her with his views, she murmured
+that it was "quite romantic, don't you know."
+
+"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.
+
+As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the "at
+home" of one of his own cousins.  Her husband was a composer, and he had
+a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer some quite
+unusually free kind of atmosphere.  After dining at the club, therefore,
+he set out for Chelsea.  The party was held in a large room on the
+ground-floor, which was already crowded with people when Shelton entered.
+They stood or sat about in groups with smiles fixed on their lips, and
+the light from balloon-like lamps fell in patches on their heads and
+hands and shoulders.  Someone had just finished rendering on the piano a
+composition of his own.  An expert could at once have picked out from
+amongst the applauding company those who were musicians by profession,
+for their eyes sparkled, and a certain acidity pervaded their enthusiasm.
+This freemasonry of professional intolerance flew from one to the other
+like a breath of unanimity, and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as
+harmonious as though one of the high windows had been opened suddenly,
+admitting a draught of chill May air.
+
+Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman in
+black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him, until
+her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings, obliged her to
+break off conversation just as it began to interest him.  He was passed
+on to another lady who was already talking to two gentlemen, and, their
+volubility being greater than his own, he fell into the position of
+observer.  Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to
+hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such
+topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants.  Trifling
+with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way as
+his society friends of the other night had dissected the fellow--"smart";
+and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected
+on all the faces around.  Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.
+
+A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of
+one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert
+to his ingratiating voice.
+
+"War," he was saying, "is not necessary.  War is not necessary.  I hope I
+make myself clear.  War is not necessary; it depends on nationality, but
+nationality is not necessary."  He inclined his head to one side, "Why do
+we have nationality?  Let us do away with boundaries--let us have the
+warfare of commerce.  If I see France looking at Brighton"--he laid his
+head upon one side, and beamed at Shelton,--"what do I do?  Do I say
+'Hands off'?  No.  'Take it,' I say--take it!'"  He archly smiled.  "But
+do you think they would?"
+
+And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.
+
+"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is necessarily
+on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--than the
+philanthropist.  His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys the
+compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
+persuasively.  "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do I
+talk about it?"  But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat, he put
+his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my brother has
+one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from him?"
+
+Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."
+
+"Come, come!  Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage laws
+are barbarous."
+
+For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
+comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of another
+group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned. Here an Irish
+sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously, "Bees are not
+bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!"  A Scotch painter, who listened with a
+curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which appeared
+to have relation to the middle classes; and though agreeing with the
+Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of electricity.  Next
+to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent of hair belonging
+to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions aroused in them by
+Wagner's operas.
+
+"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
+one.
+
+"They 're just divine," said the fatter.
+
+"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
+thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.
+
+Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of formality
+was haunting Shelton.  Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a Prussian poet,
+he could understand neither of his neighbours; so, assuming an
+intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an assemblage of free
+spirits is as much bound by the convention of exchanging their ideas as
+commonplace people are by the convention of having no ideas to traffic
+in.  He could not help wondering whether, in the bulk, they were not just
+as dependent on each other as the inhabitants of Kensington; whether,
+like locomotives, they could run at all without these opportunities for
+blowing off the steam, and what would be left when the steam had all
+escaped.  Somebody ceased playing the violin, and close to him a group
+began discussing ethics. Aspirations were in the air all round, like a
+lot of hungry ghosts. He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the
+flavour vanishes from ideas which haunt the soul.
+
+Again the violinist played.
+
+"Cock gracious!"  said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
+fiddle ceased: "Colossal!  'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"
+
+"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"
+
+"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing but
+a volcanic eruption would cure him."
+
+Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They
+were two men of letters talking of a third.
+
+"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.
+
+"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed
+with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself.
+Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from
+those eyes what joy it was to say those words: "These fellows don't
+exist!"
+
+"Poor Besom!  You know what Moulter said .  .  ."
+
+Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair smelt
+of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned.  With the
+exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of English
+blood.  Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and
+Russians.  He was not contemptuous of them for being foreigners; it was
+simply that God and the climate had made him different by a skin or so.
+
+But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes happen)
+by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who, with smooth
+hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes, seemed a little
+anxious at his own presence there.  Shelton took a liking to him, partly
+from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of the gentle smile with which
+he was looking at his wife.  Almost before he had said "How do you do?"
+he was plunged into a discussion on imperialism.
+
+"Admitting all that," said Shelton, "what I hate is the humbug with which
+we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-called
+civilising methods."
+
+The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.
+
+"But is it humbug?"
+
+Shelton saw his argument in peril.  If we really thought it, was it
+humbug?  He replied, however:
+
+"Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume that
+our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race?  If it 's not
+humbug, it 's sheer stupidity."
+
+The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
+forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and just,
+re-replied:
+
+"Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation that
+we are."
+
+Shelton felt dazed.  The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the
+smiling prophet saying, "Altruism, altruism," and in his voice a
+something seemed to murmur, "Oh, I do so hope I make a good impression!"
+
+He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes, the
+tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he envied
+the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted hair.
+
+"I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen," he muttered; "I
+think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand illusions."
+
+"If you come to that," said the soldier, "the world lives by illusions.
+I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the creation of illusions
+has always been her business, don't you know."
+
+This Shelton was unable to deny.
+
+"So," continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated man),
+"if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that have been
+properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in fact, they're
+what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's crescendo," he rushed
+his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it--"why do you want to
+destroy them?"
+
+Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded arms,
+replied:
+
+"The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be destroyed;
+but how about the future?  It 's surely time to let in air.  Cathedrals
+are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of incense; but when they
+'ve been for centuries without ventilation you know what the atmosphere
+gets like."
+
+The soldier smiled.
+
+"By your own admission," he said, "you'll only be creating a fresh set of
+illusions."
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton, "but at all events they'll be the honest
+necessities of the present."
+
+The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
+conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:
+
+"I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us any
+good!"
+
+An "At Home!"
+
+Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to the
+remark:
+
+"One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I believe
+in what I don't."
+
+A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and Shelton
+watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.
+
+"Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?" said his cousin's voice
+behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a fresh-cheeked
+youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying nervously:
+
+"How do you do?  Yes, I am very well, thank you!"
+
+He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
+youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
+smiles.  He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with life--as
+though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put questions to
+the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions. He looked
+diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was evidently
+English.
+
+"Are you good at argument?" said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:
+
+"Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough for
+argument.  You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to each
+remark.  It 's awfully interesting"; and, bending from the waist in a
+mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and started to
+explain.
+
+Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he gave
+his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he was
+intensely interested.  The youth broke off, looked at his watch, and,
+blushing brightly, said:
+
+"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."
+
+"I must be off, too," said Shelton.  Making their adieux together, they
+sought their hats and coats.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE NIGHT CLUB
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the chilly
+street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"
+
+His companion smilingly answered:
+
+"Oh, the night club.  We take it in turns.  Thursday is my night. Would
+you like to come?  You see a lot of types.  It's only round the corner."
+
+Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:
+
+"Yes, immensely."
+
+They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street, through
+the open door of which two men had just gone in.  Following, they
+ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large boarded
+room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes. It was
+furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables, some wooden
+forms, and a wooden bookcase.  Seated on these wooden chairs, or standing
+up, were youths, and older men of the working class, who seemed to
+Shelton to be peculiarly dejected.  One was reading, one against the wall
+was drinking coffee with a disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and
+a group of four made a ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.
+
+A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-set,
+black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with an
+anaemic smile.
+
+"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
+Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play chess?
+There 's young Smith wants a game."
+
+A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown
+chess-board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white.  Shelton
+took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.
+
+The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
+attitude, and watched:
+
+"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd be
+able to give Banks a knight."  His eyes rested on Shelton, fanatical and
+dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal; he was continually
+sucking in his lips, as though determined to subdue 'the flesh.  "You
+should come here often," he said to Shelton, as the latter received
+checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice. We've several very fair
+players.  You're not as good as Jones or Bartholomew," he added to
+Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a duty to put the latter in his
+place.  "You ought to come here often," he repeated to Shelton; "we have
+a lot of very good young fellows"; and, with a touch of complacence, he
+glanced around the dismal room. "There are not so many here tonight as
+usual.  Where are Toombs and Body?"
+
+Shelton, too, looked anxiously around.  He could not help feeling
+sympathy with Toombs and Body.
+
+"They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man. "Our
+principle is to amuse everyone.  Excuse me a minute; I see that Carpenter
+is doing nothing."  He crossed over to the man who had been drinking
+coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his opponent and try to
+think of a remark, before the little man was back.  "Do you know anything
+about astronomy?" he asked of Shelton. "We have several very interested
+in astronomy; if you could talk to them a little it would help."
+
+Shelton made a motion of alarm.
+
+"Please-no," said he; "I--"
+
+"I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
+talks, and a service afterwards.  We're always anxious to get new blood";
+and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking face, as
+though trying to see how much blood there was in it.  "Young Curly says
+you 've just been around the world; you could describe your travels."
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, "how your club is made up?"
+
+Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the little
+man.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we take anybody, unless there 's anything against them.
+The Day Society sees to that.  Of course, we shouldn't take anyone if
+they were to report against them.  You ought to come to our committee
+meetings; they're on Mondays at seven.  The women's side, too--"
+
+"Thank you," said Shelton; "you 're very kind--"
+
+"We should be pleased," said the little man; and his face seemed to
+suffer more than ever.  "They 're mostly young fellows here to-night, but
+we have married men, too.  Of course, we 're very careful about that," he
+added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
+prejudices--"that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know."
+
+"And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the little man; "if you were to come to our committee
+meetings you would see for yourself.  Everything is most carefully gone
+into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, "you find a great deal of chaff?"
+
+The little man smiled a suffering smile.  The twang of his toneless voice
+sounded a trifle shriller.
+
+"I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
+people, with three small children.  He was ill and out of work; but on
+inquiry we found that they were not man and wife."
+
+There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
+nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
+Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.
+
+"And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?" he
+said.
+
+The little man's eyes began to smoulder.
+
+"We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course.  Excuse me a minute;
+I see they've finished bagatelle."
+
+He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again. He
+himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after the
+balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden acquiescence
+seemed to fall.
+
+Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly.  He was sitting on
+a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.
+
+"Are you staying here much longer?" Shelton asked.
+
+Young Curly rose with nervous haste.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, "there 's nobody very interesting here to-night."
+
+"Oh, not at all!"  said Shelton; "on the contrary.  Only I 've had a
+rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here."
+
+His new acquaintance smiled.
+
+"Oh, really! do you think--that is--"
+
+But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls ceased,
+and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying: "Anybody who
+wants a book will put his name down.  There will be the usual
+prayer-meeting on Wednesday next.  Will you all go quietly?  I am going
+to turn the lights out."
+
+One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly.  By its
+harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting. The
+figures of its occupants began filing through the door.  The little man
+was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the
+backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the
+turncock of the metre.
+
+"Do you know this part?" asked young Curly as they emerged into the
+street.  "It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it is
+really.  If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous place
+where the police never go."  He seemed so anxious for the honour that
+Shelton was loath to disappoint him.  "I come here pretty often," he went
+on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly between a wall and
+row of houses.
+
+"Why?" asked Shelton; "it does n't smell too nice."
+
+The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any new
+scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.
+
+"No, that's one of the reasons, you know," he said; "one must find out.
+The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here.  Last week there
+was a murder; there 's always the chance of one."
+
+Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against this
+fresh-cheeked stripling.
+
+"There's a splendid drain just here," his guide resumed; "the people are
+dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses"; and under the first
+light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the houses.  "If we
+were in the East End, I could show you other places quite as good.
+There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all the thieves in
+London; he 's a splendid type, but," he added, looking a little anxiously
+at Shelton, "it might n't be safe for you.  With me it's different; they
+'re beginning to know me.  I've nothing to take, you see."
+
+"I'm afraid it can't be to-night," said Shelton; "I must get back."
+
+"Do you mind if I walk with you?  It's so jolly now the stars are out."
+
+"Delighted," said Shelton; "do you often go to that club?"
+
+His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.
+
+"They 're rather too high-class for me," he said.  "I like to go where
+you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the country.  It
+does one good to see them eat.  They don't get enough, you see, as a
+rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and muscle.  There are
+some places in the winter where they give them bread and cocoa; I like to
+go to those."
+
+"I went once," said Shelton, "but I felt ashamed for putting my nose in."
+
+"Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know. You
+see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs .  .  .  .  It 's useful to me,"
+he went on as they passed a police-station, "to walk about at night; one
+can take so much more notice.  I had a jolly night last week in Hyde
+Park; a chance to study human nature there."
+
+"And do you find it interesting?" asked Shelton.
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"Awfully," he replied; "I saw a fellow pick three pockets."
+
+"What did you do?"
+
+"I had a jolly talk with him."
+
+Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
+encouraging sin.
+
+"He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me his
+life.  Never had a chance, of course.  The most interesting part was
+telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into a cave,
+when you can't tell what 's inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny."
+
+"And what became of your friend?" asked Shelton.
+
+"Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead."
+
+They had reached Shelton's rooms.
+
+"Will you come in," said the latter, "and have a drink?"
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
+
+"No, thank you," he said; "I have to walk to Whitechapel.  I 'm living on
+porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone.  I generally live on
+porridge for a week at the end of every month.  It 's the best diet if
+you're hard up"; once more blushing and smiling, he was gone.
+
+Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed.  He felt a little
+miserable.  Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white tie,
+disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed wonderingly
+on him.  And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--just as that
+morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a passer-by stop
+suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him in a flash that
+that man had thoughts and feelings of his own.  He would never know what
+Antonia really felt and thought.  "Till I saw her at the station, I did
+n't know how much I loved her or how little I knew her"; and, sighing
+deeply, he hurried into bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+POLE TO POLE
+
+The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to
+Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to breakfast,
+he would have deserted the Metropolis.  On June first the latter
+presented himself rather later than was his custom, and announced that,
+through a friend, he had heard of a position as interpreter to an hotel
+at Folkestone.
+
+"If I had money to face the first necessities," he said, swiftly turning
+over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers, as if
+searching for his own identity, "I 'd leave today.  This London blackens
+my spirit."
+
+"Are you certain to get this place," asked Shelton.
+
+"I think so," the young foreigner replied; "I 've got some good enough
+recommendations."
+
+Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand.  A
+hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
+moustache.
+
+"You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft.  No, no; I shall
+never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities," said he, with pride
+and bitterness.  "That's not in my character. I never do harm to anyone.
+This"--he touched the papers--"is not delicate, but it does harm to no
+one.  If you have no money you must have papers; they stand between you
+and starvation.  Society, has an excellent eye for the helpless--it never
+treads on people unless they 're really down."  He looked at Shelton.
+
+"You 've made me what I am, amongst you," he seemed to say; "now put up
+with me!"
+
+"But there are always the workhouses," Shelton remarked at last.
+
+"Workhouses!" returned Ferrand; "certainly there are--regular palaces: I
+will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so discouraging as
+your workhouses; they take one's very heart out."
+
+"I always understood," said Shelton coldly; "that our system was better
+than that of other countries."
+
+Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
+attitude when particularly certain of his point.
+
+"Well," he replied, "it 's always permissible to think well of your own
+country.  But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with little
+strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why."  His lips lost
+their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the result of his
+experience.  "You spend your money freely, you have fine buildings,
+self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of hospitality.  The
+reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy. You invite us--and when
+we come you treat us justly enough, but as if we were numbers, criminals,
+beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted a personal injury on you; and
+when we get out again, we are naturally degraded."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.
+
+"How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?" he
+asked.
+
+The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how far
+the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no money in
+their pockets.  He took the note that Shelton proffered him.
+
+"A thousand thanks," said he; "I shall never forget what you have done
+for me"; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true emotion
+behind his titter of farewell.
+
+He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again; then
+looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of things that
+had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless friends, the old
+arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes.  Into him restlessness had
+passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's damp hand.  To wait
+about in London was unbearable.
+
+He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the river.
+It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers before it.
+During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank Street.  "I
+wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting on!"  he thought.
+On a fine day he would probably have passed by on the other side; he now
+entered and tapped upon the wicket.
+
+No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
+dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry.  Yes, Carolan was
+always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go into the
+street!  To her call the little Frenchman made his appearance as
+punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer. His face was as
+yellow as a guinea.
+
+"Ah! it's you, monsieur!"  he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton; "and how are you?"
+
+"It 's five days since I came out of hospital," muttered the little
+Frenchman, tapping on his chest; "a crisis of this bad atmosphere. I live
+here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South. If there's
+anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me pleasure."
+
+"Nothing," replied Shelton, "I was just passing, and thought I should
+like to hear how you were getting on."
+
+"Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there.  'Brr!  Il
+fait un froid etonnant'!"
+
+"What sort of customers have you just now?"  asked Shelton, as they
+passed into the kitchen.
+
+"Always the same clientele," replied the little man; "not so numerous, of
+course, it being summer."
+
+"Could n't you find anything better than this to do?"
+
+The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
+
+"When I first came to London," said he, "I secured an engagement at one
+of your public institutions.  I thought my fortune made. Imagine,
+monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the rate of ten
+a penny!  Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the time; but when I'm
+paid, I 'm paid.  In this, climate, and being 'poitrinaire', one doesn't
+make experiments.  I shall finish my days here.  Have you seen that young
+man who interested you?  There 's another!  He has spirit, as I had
+once--'il fait de la philosophie', as I do--and you will see, monsieur,
+it will finish him.  In this world what you want is to have no spirit.
+Spirit ruins you."
+
+Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
+half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word "spirit" in his mouth
+struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it than
+any burst of tears.
+
+"Shall we 'sit down?" he said, offering a cigarette.
+
+"Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette. You
+remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad?  Well, he's dead.  I
+was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'.  He was another who had
+spirit.  And you will see, monsieur, that young man in whom you take an
+interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some hole or other, or even on
+the highroad; having closed his eyes once too often some cold night; and
+all because he has something in him which will not accept things as they
+are, believing always that they should be better.  'Il n'y a riens de
+plus tragique'!"
+
+"According to you, then," said Shelton--and the conversation seemed to
+him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--"rebellion of any sort
+is fatal."
+
+"Ah!"  replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal it
+is to sit under the awning of a cafe, and talk life upside down, "you
+pose me a great problem there!  If one makes rebellion; it is always
+probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's self.  The
+law of the majority arranges that.  But I would draw your attention to
+this"--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to blow smoke
+through his nose--"if you rebel it is in all likelihood because you are
+forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the most certain things in
+life.  In any case, it is necessary to avoid falling between two
+stools--which is unpardonable," he ended with complacence.
+
+Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as if
+he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to feel
+that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action logically
+required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.
+
+"By nature," went on the little man, "I am an optimist; it is in
+consequence of this that I now make pessimism.  I have always had ideals;
+seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to complain,
+monsieur, is very sweet!"
+
+Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready; so
+he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
+Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
+
+"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow, "is
+to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you. At
+present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead.  Ah! there
+was a man who was rebellion incarnate!  He made rebellion as other men
+make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer capable of active
+revolution, he made it getting drunk.  At the last this was his only way
+of protesting against Society.  An interesting personality, 'je le
+regrette beaucoup'.  But, as you see, he died in great distress, without
+a soul to wave him farewell, because as you can well understand,
+monsieur, I don't count myself.  He died drunk. 'C'etait un homme'!"
+
+Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber added
+hastily:
+
+"It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of weakness."
+
+"Yes," assented Shelton, "one has indeed."
+
+The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "it 's to the destitute that such things are important.
+When one has money, all these matters--"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-feet;
+he waved his hand as though to end the subject.
+
+A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.
+
+"You think, then," said he, "that discontent is peculiar to the
+destitute?"
+
+"Monsieur," replied the little barber, "a plutocrat knows too well that
+if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets more lost
+than he."
+
+Shelton rose.
+
+"The rain is over.  I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll accept
+this in memory of that old actor," and he slipped a sovereign into the
+little Frenchman's hand.
+
+The latter bowed.
+
+"Whenever you are passing, monsieur," he said eagerly, "I shall be
+charmed to see you."
+
+And Shelton walked away.  "'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'" thought
+he; "now what did he mean by that?"
+
+Something of that "lost dog" feeling had gripped his spirit.  Another
+month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might even
+kill his love.  In the excitement of his senses and his nerves, caused by
+this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all was beyond life
+size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily use, are thus,
+unpopular with healthy people.  As will the, bones in a worn face, the
+spirit underlying things had reached the surface; the meanness and
+intolerable measure of hard facts, were too apparent.  Some craving for
+help, some instinct, drove him into Kensington, for he found himself
+before his, mother's house. Providence seemed bent on flinging him from
+pole to pole.
+
+Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
+warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour, was
+crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not rebellion.
+She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round her eyes
+twinkled, with vitality.
+
+"Well, my dear boy," she said, "it's lovely to see you.  And how is that
+sweet girl?"
+
+"Very well, thank you," replied Shelton.
+
+"She must be such a dear!"
+
+"Mother," stammered Shelton, "I must give it up."
+
+"Give it up?  My dear Dick, give what up?  You look quite worried. Come
+and sit down, and have a cosy chat.  Cheer up!"  And Mrs. Shelton; with
+her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.
+
+"Mother," said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never, since
+his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't go on
+waiting about like this."
+
+"My dear boy, what is the matter?";
+
+"Everything is wrong!"
+
+"Wrong?" cried Mrs. Shelton.  "Come, tell me all, about it!"
+
+But Shelton, shook his head.
+
+"You surely have not had a quarrel----"
+
+Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have asked
+it of a groom.
+
+"No," said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.
+
+"You know, my dear old Dick," murmured his mother, "it seems a little
+mad."
+
+"I know it seems mad."
+
+"Come!" said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; "you never
+used to be like this."
+
+"No," said Shelton, with a laugh; "I never used to be like this."
+
+Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.
+
+"Oh," she said, with cheery sympathy, "I know exactly how you feel!"
+
+Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and bubbled
+like his mother's face.
+
+"But you're so fond of each other," she began again.  "Such a sweet
+girl!"
+
+"You don't understand," muttered Shelton gloomily; "it 's not her--it's
+nothing--it's--myself!"
+
+Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her soft,
+warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.
+
+"Oh!" she cried again; "I understand.  I know exactly what you 're
+feeling."  But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she had
+not an inkling.  To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to try to
+give her one.  Mrs. Shelton sighed.  "It would be so lovely if you could
+wake up to-morrow and think differently.  If I were you, my dear, I would
+have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
+write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how beautifully
+it'll all come straight"; and in the enthusiasm of advice Mrs. Shelton
+rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure, still so young,
+clasped her hands together.  "Now do, that 's a dear old Dick!  You 'll
+just see how lovely it'll be!"  Shelton smiled; he had not the heart to
+chase away this vision.  "And give her my warmest love, and tell her I 'm
+longing for the wedding.  Come, now, my dear boy, promise me that's what
+you 'll do."
+
+And Shelton said: "I'll think about it."
+
+Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in spite
+of her sciatica.
+
+"Cheer up!"  she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
+sympathy.
+
+Wonderful woman!  The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
+good and ill had not descended to her son.
+
+From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French barber,
+whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose little
+fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his own
+mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with sufficient glow,
+but who, until she died, would never stir a finger. When Shelton reached
+his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:
+
+I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford to
+start a walking tour.  I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay there till
+I may come to Holm Oaks.  I shall send you my address; do write as usual.
+
+He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken by
+Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-jacket.
+There was one where she was standing just below her little brother, who
+was perched upon a wall.  In her half-closed eyes, round throat, and
+softly tilted chin, there was something cool and watchful, protecting the
+ragamuffin up above her head.  This he kept apart to be looked at daily,
+as a man says his prayers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE INDIAN CIVILIAN
+
+One morning then, a week later, Shelton found himself at the walls of
+Princetown Prison.
+
+He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before.  But the magic of his
+morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of
+the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building.  He left
+the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning the walls
+with morbid fascination.
+
+This, then, was the system by which men enforced the will of the
+majority, and it was suddenly borne in on him that all the ideas and
+maxims which his Christian countrymen believed themselves to be
+fulfilling daily were stultified in every cellule of the social
+honeycomb.  Such teachings as "He that is without sin amongst you" had
+been pronounced unpractical by peers and judges, bishops, statesmen,
+merchants, husbands--in fact, by every truly Christian person in the
+country.
+
+"Yes," thought Shelton, as if he had found out something new, "the more
+Christian the nation, the less it has to do with the Christian spirit."
+
+Society was a charitable organisation, giving nothing for nothing, little
+for sixpence; and it was only fear that forced it to give at all!
+
+He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a warder who was slowly
+paring a last year's apple.  The expression of his face, the way he stood
+with his solid legs apart, his head poked forward and his lower jaw
+thrust out, all made him a perfect pillar of Society.  He was undisturbed
+by Shelton's scrutiny, watching the rind coil down below the apple; until
+in a springing spiral it fell on the path and collapsed like a toy snake.
+He took a bite; his teeth were jagged; and his mouth immense.  It was
+obvious that he considered himself a most superior man.  Shelton frowned,
+got down slowly, from the wall, and proceeded on his way.
+
+A little further down the hill he stopped again to watch a group of
+convicts in a field.  They seemed to be dancing in a slow and sad
+cotillon, while behind the hedge on every side were warders armed with
+guns.  Just such a sight, substituting spears could have been seen in
+Roman times.
+
+While he thus stood looking, a man, walking, rapidly, stopped beside him,
+and asked how many miles it was to Exeter.  His round visage; and long,
+brown eyes, sliding about beneath their, brows, his cropped hair and
+short neck, seemed familiar.
+
+"Your name is Crocker, is n't it?"
+
+"Why! it's the Bird!"  exclaimed the traveller; putting out his hand.
+"Have n't seen you since we both went down."
+
+Shelton returned his handgrip.  Crocker had lived above his head at
+college, and often kept him, sleepless half the night by playing on the
+hautboy.
+
+"Where have you sprung from?"
+
+"India.  Got my long leave.  I say, are you going this way?  Let's go
+together."
+
+They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.
+
+"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.
+
+"London."
+
+"Oh! only as far as London?"
+
+"I 've set myself to do it in a week."
+
+"Are you in training?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You 'll kill yourself."
+
+Crocker answered with a chuckle.
+
+Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort of
+stubborn aspiration in it.  "Still an idealist!"  he thought; "poor
+fellow!"  "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you had in
+India?"
+
+"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Crocker smiled, and added:
+
+"Caught it on famine duty."
+
+"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine!  I suppose you fellows really
+think you 're doing good out there?"
+
+His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:
+
+"We get very good screws."
+
+"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.
+
+After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him, asked:
+
+"Don't you think we are doing good?"
+
+"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."
+
+Crocker seemed disconcerted.
+
+"Why?" he bluntly asked.
+
+Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.
+
+His friend repeated:
+
+"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"
+
+"Well," said Shelton gruffly, "how can progress be imposed on nations
+from outside?"
+
+The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and doubtful
+way, replied:
+
+"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."
+
+"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
+Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that matter,
+who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from within."
+
+Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."
+
+"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from our
+own, and stop their natural development by substituting a civilisation
+grown for our own use.  Suppose, looking at a tropical fern in a
+hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me; therefore it
+must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it outside in the
+fresh air.'"
+
+"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
+shrewdly.
+
+"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"
+
+Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see the point of view his friend was
+showing him.
+
+"Come, now!  Should we go on administering India if it were dead loss?
+No.  Well, to talk about administering the country for the purpose of
+pocketing money is cynical, and there 's generally some truth in
+cynicism; but to talk about the administration of a country by which we
+profit, as if it were a great and good thing, is cant. I hit you in the
+wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of nature; but to say it
+does you good at the same time is beyond me."
+
+"No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me
+that we 're not doing good."
+
+"Wait a bit.  It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from too
+close.  Put the horizon further back.  You hit India in the wind, and say
+it's virtuous.  Well, now let's see what happens.  Either the wind never
+comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the wind does come
+back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to say your
+labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have spent where it
+would n't have been lost."
+
+"Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.
+
+"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're conferring
+upon other people."
+
+"Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?"
+
+"What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with India?"
+
+"If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be all
+adrift."
+
+"Quite so.  We always think our standards best for the whole world. It's
+a capital belief for us.  Read the speeches of our public men. Does n't
+it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the right?  It's
+so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same time, though, when
+you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually another's poison.
+Look at nature.  But in England we never look at nature--there's no
+necessity.  Our national point of view has filled our pockets, that's all
+that matters."
+
+"I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort of
+wondering sadness.
+
+"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat, and at
+the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon. I must stick a
+pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape." Shelton was surprised at
+his own heat, and for some strange reason thought of Antonia--surely, she
+was not a Pharisee.
+
+His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of
+trouble on his face.
+
+"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing.  One has
+just got to do things without thinking of why we do them."
+
+"Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton. "I
+suppose not.  You always begin to act before you stop thinking, don't
+you?"
+
+Crocker grinned.
+
+"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
+Queer thing that!"
+
+After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled out:
+
+"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up India."
+
+Shelton smiled uneasily.
+
+"Why should n't we fill our pockets?  I only object to the humbug that we
+talk."
+
+The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.
+
+"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in
+India."
+
+And to this Shelton made no reply.
+
+The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic was
+stealing again upon the moor.  They were nearing the outskirt fields of
+cultivation.  It was past five when, dropping from the level of the tors,
+they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.
+
+"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this
+place occupies a position of unique isolation."
+
+The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an old
+lime-tree on the village green.  The smoke of their pipes, the sleepy
+air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made Shelton
+drowsy.
+
+"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to have
+with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?  How is old
+Halidome?"
+
+"Married," replied Shelton.
+
+Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."
+
+Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he
+grunted.  Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him more;
+there was the spice of envy in them.
+
+"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian after a
+long pause.  His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows on the
+green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a little to one
+side.  An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.
+
+The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the
+ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy
+perfume.  From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged
+by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished
+into the cottages that headed the incline.  A clock struck seven, and
+round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy insect commenced its
+booming rushes.  All was marvellously sane and slumbrous.  The soft air,
+the drawling voices, the shapes and murmurs, the rising smell of
+wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--were full of the spirit of security
+and of home.  The outside world was far indeed.  Typical of some island
+nation was this nest of refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened,
+and without fuss dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished,
+as sunflowers flourished in the sun.
+
+Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
+From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a
+thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the
+struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his
+prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange
+peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!
+
+The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and boomed
+away.  Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face, jogged
+Shelton's arm.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A PARSON
+
+Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday
+night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of
+Dowdenhame.  All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with
+thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms.  Once or twice they had
+broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a canal, which,
+choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds, brooded sluggishly
+beside the fields.  Nature, in one of her ironic moods, had cast a grey
+and iron-hard cloak over all the country's bland luxuriance.  From dawn
+till darkness fell there had been no movement in the steely distant sky;
+a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-tops, and sent shivers through the
+branches of the elms.  The cattle, dappled, pied, or bay, or white,
+continued grazing with an air of grumbling at their birthright.  In a
+meadow close to the canal Shelton saw five magpies, and about five
+o'clock the rain began, a steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker,
+looking at the sky, declared was going to be over in a minute.  But it
+was not over in a minute; they were soon drenched.  Shelton was tired,
+and it annoyed him very much that his companion, who was also tired,
+should grow more cheerful.  His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This
+must be something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when
+you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed."  And sulkily
+he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the exasperating
+Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping horribly.  It suddenly
+came home to him that life for three quarters of the world meant physical
+exhaustion every day, without a possibility of alternative, and that as
+soon as, for some cause beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust
+themselves, they were reduced to beg or starve.  "And then we, who don't
+know the meaning of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'" he
+said aloud.
+
+It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame.  The street
+yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed the
+church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was certainly
+the parsonage.
+
+"Suppose," said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, "we ask him
+where to go"; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang the
+bell.
+
+The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man,
+whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle.
+Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile
+played on the curves of his thin lips.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.  "Inn? yes, there's the Blue Chequers,
+but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut.  They 're early people, I 'm glad
+to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the proper fold for these damp
+sheep.  "Are you Oxford men, by any chance?" he asked, as if that might
+throw some light upon the matter. "Of Mary's?  Really!  I'm of Paul's
+myself.  Ladyman--Billington Ladyman; you might remember my youngest
+brother.  I could give you a room here if you could manage without
+sheets.  My housekeeper has two days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the
+keys."
+
+Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's
+voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to
+patronise.
+
+"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp.  I'm very much afraid there
+'s--er--nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water; hot
+lemonade is better than nothing."
+
+Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on to
+boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes, returned
+with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some blankets.
+Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the travellers followed to
+the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he seemed, from books upon the
+table, to have been working at his sermon.
+
+"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
+good of you."
+
+"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is empty."
+
+It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had been
+passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless lips,
+although complacent, was pathetic.  It was peculiar, that voice of his,
+seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what was fat and
+fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money, while all the time
+his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as speech they said, "Oh,
+to know what it must be like to have a pound or two to spare just once a
+year, or so!"
+
+Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries were
+there, and necessaries not enough.  It was bleak and bare; the ceiling
+cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim, shining
+books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the surrounding
+barrenness.
+
+"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the house.
+The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told.  You can,
+unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have come
+down so terribly in value!  He was a married man--large family!"
+
+Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
+nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round his
+throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched towards the
+feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather patchy air.
+Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of fatigue; the
+strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he kept stealing
+glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson, the furniture,
+the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by seeing legs that have
+outgrown their trousers.  But there was something underlying that
+leanness of the landscape, something superior and academic, which defied
+all sympathy.  It was pure nervousness which made him say:
+
+"Ah! why do they have such families?"
+
+A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
+startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who feels
+bound to show that he is not asleep.
+
+"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many cases."
+
+Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
+unhappy Crocker snored.  Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
+
+"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's eyebrows
+rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."
+
+"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"
+
+Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of
+cases--clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who--"
+
+A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had tightened,
+and his chin receded slightly.  "Why, he 's like a mule!" thought
+Shelton.  His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more parroty.
+Shelton no longer liked his face.
+
+"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each other on
+such matters."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed.
+
+"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson said,
+as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do you justify
+marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"
+
+"I can only tell you what I personally feel."
+
+"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
+motherhood."
+
+"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
+repetition.  Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."
+
+"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still keeping
+on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated to populate
+the world."
+
+"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked.  "It always makes me feel
+a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."
+
+"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of his
+fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are leaving out
+duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"
+
+"There are two ways of looking at that.  It depends on what you want your
+country to become."
+
+"I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his
+smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."
+
+The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more
+controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this subject,
+to which he had hardly ever given thought.
+
+"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in
+which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open
+question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated as
+to be quite incapable of supporting itself."
+
+"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're not a
+Little Englander?"
+
+On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect.  Resisting an impulse to
+discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
+
+"Of course I'm not!"
+
+The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the
+discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
+
+"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality.  It is,
+if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."
+
+But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied
+with heat:
+
+"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'?  Any opinion which
+goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I believe."
+
+"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton to
+his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant and
+unhealthy.  The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."
+
+Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
+
+"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a man
+of your standing panders to these notions."
+
+"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule of
+morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."
+
+"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon."  He was in danger of forgetting
+the delicate position he was in.  "He wants to ram his notions down my
+throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had
+grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more
+dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance,
+whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever.  That which,
+however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ever have
+agreed.
+
+But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that a
+peculiar whistling arose instead.  Both Shelton and the parson looked at
+him, and the sight sobered them.
+
+"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.
+
+Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly pathetic,
+with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly reddened nose
+that comes from not imbibing quite enough.  A kind fellow, after all!
+
+The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed
+himself before the blackening fire.  Whole centuries of authority stood
+behind him.  It was an accident that the mantelpiece was chipped and
+rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed about the cuffs.
+
+"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that you
+are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax views of
+the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."
+
+Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on her
+pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in Shelton, and
+that word--"lax" seemed ridiculous.  And the women he was wont to see
+dragging about the streets of London with two or three small children,
+Women bent beneath the weight of babies that they could not leave, women
+going to work with babies still unborn, anaemic-looking women,
+impecunious mothers in his own class, with twelve or fourteen children,
+all the victims of the sanctity of marriage, and again the word "lax"
+seemed to be ridiculous.
+
+"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"--muttered Shelton.
+
+"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.
+
+"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the country
+is more crowded now.  I can't see why we should n't decide it for
+ourselves."
+
+"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker with
+a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."
+
+Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
+
+"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are to
+bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if they
+don't fall in with our views."
+
+"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in the
+hands of God."
+
+Shelton was silent.
+
+"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always lain
+through God in the hands of men, not women.  We are the reasonable sex."
+
+Shelton stubbornly replied
+
+"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."
+
+"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.
+
+"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the same
+views as our grandmothers?  We men, by our commercial enterprise, have
+brought about a different state of things; yet, for the sake of our own
+comfort, we try to keep women where they were. It's always those men who
+are most keen about their comfort"--and in his heat the sarcasm of using
+the word "comfort" in that room was lost on him--"who are so ready to
+accuse women of deserting the old morality."
+
+The parson quivered with impatient irony.
+
+"Old morality! new morality!" he said.  "These are strange words."
+
+"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality, I
+imagine.  There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true morality."
+
+The eyes of his host contracted.
+
+"I think," he said--and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in the
+endeavour to impress his listener--"that any well-educated man who
+honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly--I say humbly--to
+claim morality."
+
+Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked himself.
+"Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like an old
+woman."
+
+At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went towards
+the door.
+
+"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the wet."
+He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms.  "They will get
+out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face, suffused by
+stooping.  And absently he stroked the dripping cat, while a drop of wet
+ran off his nose.  "Poor pussy, poor pussy!"  The sound of that "Poor
+pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked superiority, the softness of
+that smile, like the smile of gentleness itself, haunted Shelton till he
+fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ACADEMIC
+
+The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered
+that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men.  The spirit hovering
+above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and
+gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.
+
+"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the club.
+
+But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
+suits were coming out.
+
+"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.
+
+Shelton shook his head.  Never before had he felt such love for this old
+city.  It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed
+so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble. Clothed in the
+calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the
+alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's
+dress.  At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey
+patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox--secluded,
+mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of the sacred past.  Pale and
+trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at
+his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard.  The college
+porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed--stood at his lodge
+door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked
+like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes.
+His blue eyes rested on the travellers.  "I don't know you, sirs, but if
+you want to speak I shall be glad to hear the observations you may have
+to make," they seemed to say.
+
+Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
+handle.  A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
+snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was
+fastened stayed immovable.  Through this narrow mouth, human metal had
+been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
+
+"Come along," said Shelton.
+
+They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
+where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
+youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown
+by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving
+Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter.  When they had finished,
+Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the
+old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm; the
+old eagerness to dare and do something heroic--and unlawful; the old
+sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the forest
+country in the finest world.  The streets, all grave and mellow in the
+sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of
+his old college--spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the
+heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life,
+casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought
+him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety.
+The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty
+water-bottles, failed to rouse him.  Nor when they passed the staircase
+where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate disturbing tutor, did
+he feel remorse.  High on that staircase were the rooms in which he had
+crammed for his degree, upon the system by which the scholar simmers on
+the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of examination, and is
+extinct for ever after.  His coach's face recurred to him, a man with
+thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week, and disappeared to
+town on Sundays.
+
+They passed their tutor's staircase.
+
+"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should like
+to see him.  Shall we go and look him up?"
+
+"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.
+
+Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
+
+"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.
+
+A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
+pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.
+
+"Don't you know me, sir?"
+
+"God bless me!  Crocker, isn't it?  I didn't recognise you with a beard."
+
+Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled
+feebly.
+
+"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.
+
+"Shelton?  Oh yes!  How do you do, Shelton?  Sit down; take a cigar";
+and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up
+and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all you
+know, why come and wake me up like this?"
+
+Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
+"Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?"  And Shelton, who could
+not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar. The
+panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains; the
+soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet; the backs
+of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps; the culture
+and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended
+Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose
+face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a
+queer resemblance to a moon.  The door was opened, and a tall creature,
+whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and ironical,
+entered with a manly stride.
+
+"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, "am I
+intruding, Turl?"
+
+The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
+
+"Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"
+
+The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his
+fine eyes.
+
+Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the newcomer
+sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
+
+"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the door
+opened to admit these gentlemen.  Of the same height, but different
+appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly supercilious, as if
+they tolerated everything.  The one whose name was Trimmer had patches of
+red on his large cheek-bones, and on his cheeks a bluish tint.  His lips
+were rather full, so that he had a likeness to a spider.  Washer, who was
+thin and pale, wore an intellectual smile.
+
+The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
+
+"Crocker, Shelton," he said.
+
+An awkward silence followed.  Shelton tried to rouse the cultured portion
+of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated seriously
+paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the glowing tip of
+his cigar.  It seemed to him unfair to have intruded on these gentlemen
+without its having been made quite clear to them beforehand who and what
+he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer had begun to speak.
+
+"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book on
+the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
+boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame
+Bovary!"
+
+"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said Berryman.
+
+As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had galvanised
+him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down a book, opened
+it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way about the room.
+
+"Ha!  Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from Trimmer,
+who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with either hand a
+fistful of his gown--"the book's a classic!"
+
+"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes; "the
+fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such putridity!"
+
+A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at his
+little host, who, however, merely blinked.
+
+"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his smile,
+"that the author is n't one of his particular pets."
+
+"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!"  growled the
+little fat man suddenly.
+
+Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down. There
+was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-mindedness.
+
+"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at Eton!
+What do we want to know about that sort of thing?  A writer should be a
+sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over his chin at
+Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the sentiment.
+
+"Don't you--" began the latter.
+
+But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
+
+"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she is
+going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."
+
+The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
+
+"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."
+
+He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
+gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales.  His lowering smile
+embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions.  "After all," he
+seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's not very much
+in anything.  This is the modern spirit; why not give it a look in?"
+
+"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
+book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little fat
+man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing pleasanter,
+don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."
+
+Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to dip
+into his volume and walk up and down.
+
+"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking
+down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being justified
+through Art.  I call a spade a spade."
+
+Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman was
+addressing him or society at large.  And Berryman went on:
+
+"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
+taste for vice?   Tell me the point of it.  No man who was in the habit
+of taking baths would choose such a subject."
+
+"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer genially
+buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back--"my dear
+fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."
+
+"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and taking
+down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian; for
+garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."
+
+There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn.  With the
+exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically, they
+wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider any
+subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were so
+profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
+impertinent.  It may have been some glimmer in this glance of Shelton's
+that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his compromising air.
+
+"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from ourselves in
+literature, just as they have a different standard in regard to honour.
+All this is purely artificial."
+
+What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
+
+"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
+wives--"
+
+He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little fat
+man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it within
+two inches of his chin, murmured:
+
+"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."
+
+He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
+
+Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a
+fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
+dumb-bells.
+
+"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is
+profoundly--"
+
+Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in
+Shelton's estimate he did not know himself.  Fortunately Berryman broke
+in:
+
+"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
+punch his head!"
+
+"Come, come!"  said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
+
+Shelton had a gleam of inspiration.  "If your wife deceived you," he
+thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold it
+over her."
+
+Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never wavered;
+he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an epigram.
+
+The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level with
+his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of view.
+His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical. Almost
+painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the student who was
+bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
+
+"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of thing,
+I don't believe in sentiment."
+
+The words were high-pitched and sarcastic.  Shelton looked hastily
+around.  All their faces were complacent.  He grew red, and suddenly
+remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
+
+"I see!"
+
+He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
+sort, and that he never would again.  The cold hostility flashing out all
+round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
+satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men.  Crocker rose
+nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
+following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
+good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
+
+"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed behind
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN INCIDENT
+
+"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college.  "I don't
+feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"
+
+Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the dons
+to heed the soreness of his feet.  This, too, was the last day of his
+travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at Oxford till
+July.
+
+"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great
+building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to me
+as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."
+
+Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars, calculating
+possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.
+
+"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to strain
+our minds.  We know when it's time to stop.  We pile up news of Papias
+and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of oneself!  Real
+seekers after knowledge are a different sort.  They fight in the dark--no
+quarter given.  We don't grow that sort up here."
+
+"How jolly the limes smell!"  said Crocker.
+
+He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a button of
+his coat.  His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully.  It seemed as though
+he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.
+
+"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up here.
+We learn that better through one incident that stirs our hearts than we
+learn it here in all the time we're up."
+
+"Hum!"  muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who
+seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts afterwards."
+
+"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up here.  I
+believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant; my "set"
+were nothing but--"
+
+Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to
+Shelton's "set."
+
+"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.
+
+Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes.  Images were
+thronging through his mind.  The faces of his old friends strangely mixed
+with those of people he had lately met--the girl in the train, Ferrand,
+the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little barber; others,
+too, and floating, mysterious,--connected with them all, Antonia's face.
+The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with its magic sweetness.
+From the street behind, the footsteps of the passers-by sounded muffled,
+yet exact, and on the breeze was borne the strain: "For he's a jolly good
+fellow!"
+
+"For he's a jolly good fellow!  For he's a jolly good fe-ellow!  And so
+say all of us!"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."
+
+"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too much
+side."
+
+And Shelton laughed.
+
+"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish business.
+The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so beastly
+comfortable."
+
+Crocker shook his head.
+
+"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on
+Shelton's boots.  "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you--you
+ought to take care!"
+
+"Take care?  What of?"
+
+Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.
+
+"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow--to
+be--to be losing yourself."
+
+"Losing myself!  Finding myself, you mean!"
+
+Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed.  Of what exactly was
+he thinking?  In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in knowing
+that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of contempt, a
+sort of aching.  Crocker broke the silence.
+
+"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel very
+fit.  Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"
+
+And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger of
+missing something good.  The latter's feet had instantly begun to ache
+and burn.
+
+"No!"? he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."
+
+Crocker nodded.
+
+"She lives near here.  Well, then, I'll say good-bye.  I should like to
+do another ten miles to-night."
+
+"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."
+
+Crocker chuckled.
+
+"No," he said; "I want to get on.  See you in London.  Good-bye!" and,
+gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.
+
+Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock yourself
+up."
+
+But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round
+towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.
+
+Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the oily
+gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees.  He felt
+relieved, yet sorry.  His thoughts were random, curious, half mutinous,
+half sweet.  That afternoon five years ago, when he had walked back from
+the river with Antonia across the Christchurch meadows, was vivid to his
+mind; the scent of that afternoon had never died away from him-the aroma
+of his love.  Soon she would be his wife--his wife!  The faces of the
+dons sprang up before him.  They had wives, perhaps.  Fat, lean,
+satirical, and compromising--what was it that through diversity they had
+in common?  Cultured intolerance! .  .  .  Honour!  .  .  .  A queer
+subject to discuss.  Honour!  The honour that made a fuss, and claimed
+its rights!  And Shelton smiled. "As if man's honour suffered when he's
+injured!"  And slowly he walked along the echoing, empty street to his
+room at the Bishop's Head.  Next morning he received the following wire:
+
+     Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going
+     strong                         CROCKER
+
+He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of his
+probation, and the end seemed long in coming.  To be so near Antonia, and
+as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse than ever.  Each day
+he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to near Holm Oaks, on the
+chance of her being on the river; but the house was two miles off, and
+the chance but slender.  She never came. After spending the afternoons
+like this he would return, pulling hard against the stream, with a queer
+feeling of relief, dine heartily, and fall a-dreaming over his cigar.
+Each morning he awoke in an excited mood, devoured his letter if he had
+one, and sat down to write to her.  These letters of his were the most
+amazing portion of that fortnight.  They were remarkable for failing to
+express any single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of
+sentiments which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set
+himself to analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared,
+and shocked, and quite unable to write anything.  He made the discovery
+that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel,
+except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect Antonia's
+ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile.  All the world was too engaged in
+planning decency.
+
+Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of
+Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure of
+salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne.  In preparation for his visit to
+Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down from London.
+With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which ran as follows:
+
+IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL, FOLKESTONE,
+
+June 20.
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so
+bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time,
+I have some curious stories to tell you.  Once again I have
+encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps.  Being
+occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a
+heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after
+my things.  Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left
+me an empty box.  I am once again almost without clothes, and know
+not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of
+my duties.  You see, I am not lucky.  Since coming to your country,
+the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you.
+Excuse me for not writing more at this moment.  Hoping that you are
+in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
+          I am,
+               Always your devoted
+                         LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being
+exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote the
+following reply:
+
+BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL, OXFORD,
+
+June 25.
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes.  I was much hoping that you had
+made a better start.  I enclose you Post Office Orders for four pounds.
+Always glad to hear from you.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes off
+his responsibilities.
+
+Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents
+which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and
+reputation.
+
+The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar; a
+woman came sidling up and spoke to him.  He perceived her to be one of
+those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel sympathy with
+whom was sentimental.  Her face was flushed, her whisper hoarse; she had
+no attractions but the curves of a tawdry figure.  Shelton was repelled
+by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy face, and by the scent of
+patchouli.  Her touch on his arm startled him, sending a shiver through
+his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and walked the faster.  But her
+breathing as she followed sounded laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful
+that a woman should be panting after him like that.
+
+"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her."  He stopped, and,
+with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's impossible."
+
+In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she accepted
+the impossibility.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said.
+
+She muttered something.  Shelton shook his head.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said once more.  "Good.-night."
+
+The woman bit her lower lip.
+
+"Good-night," she answered dully.
+
+At the corner of the street he turned his head.  The woman was hurrying
+uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by the arm.
+
+His heart began to beat.  "Heavens!"  he thought, "what shall I do now?"
+His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it--to act,
+indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to be concerned in
+such affairs.
+
+He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from their
+figures.
+
+"Ask the gentleman!  He spoke to me," she was saying in her brassy voice,
+through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.
+
+"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."
+
+"You--police!"  cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my living,
+have n't I, the same as you?"
+
+Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened face,
+stepped forward.  The policeman turned, and at the sight of his pale,
+heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he felt both
+hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he despised and
+loathed, yet strangely dreaded.  The cold certainty of law and order
+upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the smug front of
+meanness that only the purest spirits may attack, seemed to be facing
+him.  And the odd thing was, this man was only carrying out his duty.
+Shelton moistened his lips.
+
+"You're not going to charge her?"
+
+"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.
+
+"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."
+
+The policeman took out his note-book.
+
+"Oh, I 'm making a mistake?  I 'll take your name and address, please; we
+have to report these things."
+
+"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it.  "I spoke to her first."
+
+"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat that,"
+replied the policeman, with incivility.
+
+Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.
+
+"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of
+uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.
+
+"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a threatening
+voice.
+
+Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"You had better be careful, constable."
+
+"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman.  "I'm only a policeman.
+You've got the riches, I've got the power."
+
+Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
+
+Shelton turned, and walked away.
+
+He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa.  His
+feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with the
+policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
+
+"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his
+rights."
+
+He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged up in
+him.
+
+"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they are.
+And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't want to; but
+we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to prowl about the
+streets, and then we run them in.  Ha! that's good--that's excellent!  We
+run them in!  And here we sit and carp.  But what do we do?  Nothing!
+Our system is the most highly moral known. We get the benefit without
+soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--the women are the only ones
+that suffer.  And why should n't they--inferior things?"
+
+He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.
+
+"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him that
+the case would get into the local papers.   The press would never miss so
+nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!" And he had a
+vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and conscientious magistrate,
+solemnly reading this.  Someone, at all events, was bound to see his name
+and make a point of mentioning it too good to be missed!  And suddenly he
+saw with horror that to help the woman he would have to assert again that
+he had spoken to her first.  "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking,
+as if to assure himself that he was not a coward.
+
+He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.
+
+"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be
+telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"
+
+He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles, but at
+the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to telling such
+a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it appeared to him,
+indeed, but obvious humanity.
+
+"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing.  It's neither
+reasonable nor just."
+
+He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of
+uncertainty.  Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's face,
+with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a nightmare, and
+forced him to an opposite conviction.  He fell asleep at last with the
+full determination to go and see what happened.
+
+He woke with a sense of odd disturbance.  "I can do no good by going," he
+thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're certain to believe
+the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for nothing;" and the combat
+began again within him, but with far less fury.  It was not what other
+people thought, not even the risk of perjury that mattered (all this he
+made quite clear)--it was Antonia. It was not fair to her to put himself
+in such a false position; in fact, not decent.
+
+He breakfasted.  In the room were some Americans, and the face of one
+young girl reminded him a little of Antonia.  Fainter and fainter grew
+the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.
+
+Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-time.
+He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a daily
+paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the power which
+a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of the police--how,
+since they are the sworn abettors of right and justice, their word is
+almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one and all they hang
+together, from mingled interest and esprit de corps.  Was it not, he
+said, reasonable to suppose that amongst thousands of human beings
+invested with such opportunities there would be found bullies who would
+take advantage of them, and rise to distinction in the service upon the
+helplessness of the unfortunate and the cowardice of people with anything
+to lose?  Those who had in their hands the sacred duties of selecting a
+practically irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom
+and humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and
+thoroughness .  .  .  .
+
+However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself at
+heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest bit of
+perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.
+
+He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of an
+unpalatable truth.
+
+In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow.  The
+strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an
+illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.
+There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of his
+chivalry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HOLM OAKS
+
+Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house, not
+set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and walled
+gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had Queen Anne
+windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams glinted.
+
+In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most
+established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the gravel
+drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all birds the
+most conventional.  A huge aspen--impressionable creature--shivered and
+shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such imperturbable
+surroundings.  It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came once a year to
+hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay; for boys threw
+stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its morals.
+
+The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of
+motor-cars.  About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled roofs
+the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now the odour
+of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness.  Beyond the dip, again, a
+square-towered church kept within grey walls the record of the village
+flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births of bastards, even
+the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a hand invisible above the
+heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of the manor-house.  Decent and
+discreet, the two roofs caught the eye to the exclusion of all meaner
+dwellings, seeming to have joined in a conspiracy to keep them out of
+sight.
+
+The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale was
+Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.
+
+"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who, old
+servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not yet
+twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a sacred
+distinction between the footmen and himself).
+
+"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and hairless
+face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which comes of
+living with good families--"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the village, sir;
+but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."
+
+Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side the
+lawn was visible, a vision of serenity.  He mounted six wide, shallow
+steps, and stopped.  From behind a closed door there came the sound of
+scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes mingling in his
+ears with the beating of his heart.  He softly turned the handle, a fixed
+smile on his lips.
+
+Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of her
+fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously moving
+feet.  She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-o'-shanter
+were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and creamy blouse,
+fitting collarless about her throat.  Her face was flushed, and wore a
+little frown; and as her fingers raced along the keys, her neck swayed,
+and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.
+
+Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair hair
+about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards the nose,
+the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath the ice-blue
+eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole remote, sweet,
+suntouched, glacial face.
+
+She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:
+
+"Dick!  What fun!"  She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face
+said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"
+
+"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.
+
+"Glad to see you!  You are funny, Dick!--as if you did n't know!  Why,
+you 've shaved your beard!  Mother and Sybil have gone into the village
+to see old Mrs. Hopkins.  Shall we go out?  Thea and the boys are playing
+tennis.  It's so jolly that you 've come!"  She caught up the
+tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair.  Almost as tall as Shelton,
+she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves quivering like
+wings to the movements of her fingers.  "We might have a game before
+lunch; you can have my other racquet."
+
+"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.
+
+Her calm glance ran over him.
+
+"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount.  I'll wait for
+you."  She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be quick!"  and
+vanished.
+
+Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men assuming
+other people's clothes.  She was in the hall when he descended, humming a
+tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed all her pearly upper
+teeth.  He caught hold of her sleeve and whispered:
+
+"Antonia!"
+
+The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her shoulder.
+
+"Come along, old Dick!"  she cried; and, flinging open the glass door,
+ran into the garden.
+
+Shelton followed.
+
+The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock.  A holm oak
+tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an unexpected
+depth to the green smoothness of the scene.  As Shelton and Antonia came
+up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped Shelton's hand.  From
+the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish skirt, tossed back her
+straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun, came strolling up to them.
+The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was lying on his stomach, squealing
+and tickling a collie.  Shelton bent and pulled his hair.
+
+"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"
+
+One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and pitiless
+inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something chaffing and
+distrustful, as though about him were some subtle poignant scent exciting
+curiosity and disapproval.
+
+When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock
+underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to hunt
+for the lost balls.
+
+"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're in
+for a wigging from the Mater."
+
+"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.
+
+"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems
+you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and
+again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.
+
+"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. "What d' you mean?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me.  The Mater thinks she's in a bad way--unsettled, or
+what d' you call at.  You've been telling her that things are not what
+they seem.  That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook his head.
+
+Shelton dropped his eyes.
+
+"Well, they are n't!" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's all right!  But don't bring your philosophy down here, old
+chap."
+
+"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.
+
+"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."
+
+"Sacred!  Nothing's sacred, except--"  But Shelton did not finish his
+remark. "I don't understand," he said.
+
+"Ideals, that sort of thing!  You've been diving down below the line of
+'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and, stooping
+suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!" Shelton saw
+Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second daughter, Sybil.
+
+By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed
+towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing
+there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener.  Her hands,
+cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the bearded
+gardener from the severe but ample lines of her useful-looking skirt.
+The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at their two faces, pricking
+his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how one of these two bipeds
+differed from the other.
+
+"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan.  Ah, Dick!  Charmin' to see you here, at
+last!"
+
+In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark the
+typical nature of her personality.  It always seemed to him that he had
+met so many other ladies like her.  He felt that her undoubtable quality
+had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for her class.  She thought
+that standing for herself was not the thing; yet she was full of
+character.  Tall, with nose a trifle beaked, long, sloping chin, and an
+assured, benevolent mouth, showing, perhaps, too many teeth--though thin,
+she was not unsubstantial.  Her accent in speaking showed her heritage;
+it was a kind of drawl which disregarded vulgar merits such as tone;
+leaned on some syllables, and despised the final 'g'--the peculiar
+accent, in fact, of aristocracy, adding its deliberate joys to life.
+
+Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle, from
+the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot of tea
+with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven o'clock at
+night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver candlestick, and with
+this in one hand, and in the other a new novel, or, better still, one of
+those charming volumes written by great people about the still greater
+people they have met, she said good-night to her children and her guests.
+No!  What with photography, the presidency of a local league, visiting
+the rich, superintending all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all
+her ideas so tidy that no foreign notions might stray in, she was never
+idle.  The information she collected from these sources was both vast and
+varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked sauce,
+and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her class, she
+dipped her fingers.
+
+He liked her.  No one could help liking her.  She was kind, and of such
+good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent, and useful
+china; and she was scented, too--not with verbena, violets, or those
+essences which women love, but with nothing, as if she had taken stand
+against all meretricity.  In her intercourse with persons not "quite the
+thing" (she excepted the vicar from this category, though his father had
+dealt in haberdashery), her refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with
+great practical good sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and
+you--well, are you, don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness
+about this attitude, for she was really not a common woman.  She simply
+could not help it; all her people had done this.  Their nurses breathed
+above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their systems,
+ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear breaths.  And her
+manner!  Ah! her manner--it concealed the inner woman so as to leave
+doubt of her existence!
+
+Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon the
+under-gardener.
+
+"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful
+just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'.  I 've done all I
+can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'.  And, my dear
+Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees!  I'm afraid he's goin' mad;
+I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"
+
+It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed him
+entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being a
+canonised and legal, sorrow.  But excesses!  O dear, no!
+
+"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed.  "He used to be
+such a splendid gardener!  That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to have
+a talk with you.  Shall we go in to lunch?"
+
+Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case of
+Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.
+
+It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging"; nor
+did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of Antonia, such
+a very serious affair.
+
+"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl, "I
+don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."
+
+"Ideas!"  murmured Shelton in confusion.
+
+"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always what
+they ought to be."
+
+Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table, addressing in
+her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a bishop.  There was not
+the faintest trace of awkwardness about her, yet Shelton could not help a
+certain sense of shock.  If she--she--did not think things were what they
+ought to be--in a bad way things must be indeed!
+
+"Things!"  he muttered.
+
+Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would
+remind him of a hare's.
+
+"She showed me some of your letters, you know.  Well, it 's not a bit of
+use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much lately."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled "things"
+as she handled under-gardeners--put them away when they showed signs of
+running to extremes.
+
+"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.
+
+"My dear boy! you'll never get on that way.  Now, I want you to promise
+me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."
+
+Shelton raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean!"
+
+He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things" would
+really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her thus below
+the surface!
+
+He therefore said, "Quite so!"
+
+To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar and pathetic flush of
+women past their prime, she drawled out:
+
+"About the poor--and criminals--and marriages--there was that wedding,
+don't you know?"
+
+Shelton bowed his head.  Motherhood had been too strong for her; in her
+maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so many
+words on "things."
+
+"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out of
+gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people living on
+together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres', or in
+worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the same time; or
+in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or in war; or in
+anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain amount of justice by
+recognising that this was natural, since her whole life had been passed
+in trying not to see the fun in all these things.
+
+But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway.  Brilliant and gay she looked,
+yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her. She sat down
+by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the youthful foreigner whom
+he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt whether she, too, saw the
+fun that lay in one human being patronising others.
+
+"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things he
+told you about were only--"
+
+"Good!"  he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word
+means."
+
+Her eyes clouded.  "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton stroked her sleeve.
+
+"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.
+
+"The lunatic!"  he said.
+
+"Lunatic!  Why, in your letters he was splendid."
+
+"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; "he's not a bit mad, really--that
+is, I only wish I were half as mad."
+
+"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn--"Tom Crocker?
+Ah, yes!  I knew his mother; she was a Springer."
+
+"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a
+kitten.
+
+"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.
+
+Thea shook back her hair.
+
+"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.
+
+Antonia frowned.
+
+"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured with a
+smile at Shelton.  "I wish that we could see him."
+
+But Shelton shook his head.
+
+"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as I
+could."
+
+Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.
+
+"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.
+
+A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of futility
+and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a flame were
+licking at his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ENGLISH
+
+Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr. Dennant
+coming from a ride.  Antonia's father was a spare man of medium height,
+with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical eyebrows, and some tiny
+crow's-feet.  In his old, short grey coat, with a little slit up the
+middle of the back, his drab cord breeches, ancient mahogany leggings,
+and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry, threadbare quality not without
+distinction.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see the
+pilgrim here, at last.  You're not off already?" and, laying his hand on
+Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him across the
+fields.
+
+This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and Shelton
+began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however bald, about it.
+He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and looked askance at Mr.
+Dennant.  That gentleman was walking stiffly, his cord breeches faintly
+squeaking.  He switched a yellow, jointed cane against his leggings, and
+after each blow looked at his legs satirically.  He himself was rather
+like that yellow cane-pale, and slim, and jointed, with features arching
+just a little, like the arching of its handle.
+
+"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.
+
+"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid.  We ought to
+hang some farmers--do a world of good.  Dear souls!  I've got some
+perfect strawberries."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a
+climate like this a man must grumble."
+
+"Quite so, quite so!  Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I
+couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched.  Did you ever see
+anything finer than this pasture?  And they want me to lower their
+rents!"
+
+And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and
+whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that alarmed
+him.  There was a pause.
+
+"Now for it!"  thought the younger man.
+
+Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.
+
+"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had nipped
+the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what can you
+expect?  They've no consideration, dear souls!"
+
+Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:
+
+"It's awfully hard, sir, to--"
+
+Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a fellow
+do?  One must have farmers.  Why, if it was n't for the farmers, there 'd
+be still a hare or two about the place!"
+
+Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future
+father-in-law.  What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening of
+his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth?  And his eye caught
+Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine, dry nose (one
+of the sort that reddens in a wind).
+
+"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.
+
+"Have n't you?  Lucky fellow!  The most--yes, quite the most trying
+portion of the human species--next to daughters."
+
+"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me--" began Shelton.
+
+"I don't--oh, I don't!  D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a
+ducking."
+
+A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were
+spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.
+
+Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on the
+part of Providence.  He would have to say something, but not now, later.
+
+"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain.  But you'd better get
+back, sir."
+
+"Dear me!  I've a tenant in this cottage," said Mr. Dennant in his,
+leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too.  Least we can do
+'s to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?" and smiling
+sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep dry, he rapped
+on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.
+
+It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.
+
+"Ah, Phoebe!  Your father in?"
+
+"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."
+
+"So sorry!  Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"
+
+The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying, left
+them in the parlour.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but she
+won't leave her father.  Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that fellow!"
+
+This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he was
+further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking.  He walked
+over to the window.  The rain was coming down with fury, though a golden
+line far down the sky promised the shower's quick end.  "For goodness'
+sake," he thought, "let me say something, however idiotic, and get it
+over!"  But he did not turn; a kind of paralysis had seized on him.
+
+"Tremendous heavy rain!"  he said at last; "coming down in waterspouts."
+
+It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to be
+the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make her
+happy!"  Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath required; but
+he couldn't say it!  He watched the rain stream and hiss against the
+leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with its insistent torrent;
+and he noticed with precision all the details of the process going on
+outside how the raindrops darted at the leaves like spears, and how the
+leaves shook themselves free a hundred times a minute, while little
+runnels of water, ice-clear, rolled over their edges, soft and quick.  He
+noticed, too, the mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at
+the hedge.
+
+Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain.  So
+disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned.  His future
+father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked
+boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the
+carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution.  It was not
+forbidding, stern, discouraging--not in the least; it had merely for the
+moment ceased to look satirical.  This was so startling that Shelton lost
+his chance of speaking.  There seemed a heart to Mr. Dennant's gravity;
+as though for once he were looking grave because he felt so.  But
+glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared at once.
+
+"What a day for ducks!"  he said; and again there was unmistakable alarm
+about the eye.  Was it possible that he, too, dreaded something?
+
+"I can't express--" began Shelton hurriedly.
+
+"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang--
+
+          "For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+          And jump out anywhere."
+
+"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh?  Capital!
+There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must get my
+wife to put you between them--"
+
+          "For it's my delight of a starry night--"
+
+"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in the
+court at least twice--"
+
+          "In the season of the year!"
+
+"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of Phoebe
+in the doorway.
+
+"No, thank you, Phoebe.  That girl ought to get married," went on Mr.
+Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew.  A flush showed queerly on his
+sallow cheeks.  "A shame to keep her tied like this to her father's
+apron-strings--selfish fellow, that!"  He looked up sharply, as if he had
+made a dangerous remark.
+
+          The keeper he was watching us,
+          For him we did n't care!
+
+Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as anxious
+to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as himself.
+And this was comforting.
+
+"You know, sir--" he began.
+
+But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his
+personality seemed to shrink together.
+
+"By Jove!"  he said, "it's stopped!  Now's our chance!  Come along, my
+dear fellow; delays are dangerous!"  and with his bantering courtesy he
+held the door for Shelton to pass out.  "I think we'll part here," he
+said--"I almost think so.  Good luck to you!"
+
+He held out his dry, yellow hand.  Shelton seized it, wrung it hard, and
+muttered the word:
+
+"Grateful!"
+
+Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he had
+been found out, and he disliked it.  The colour in his face had died
+away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened, narrow
+brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the crow's-feet
+hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by the queerest
+smile.
+
+"Gratitude!"  he said; "almost a vice, is n't it?  Good-night!"
+
+Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly as
+his senior, proceeded on his way.  He had been playing in a comedy that
+could only have been played in England.  He could afford to smile now at
+his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty unfulfilled.
+Everything had been said that was right and proper to be said, in the way
+that we such things should say.  No violence had been done; he could
+afford to smile--smile at himself, at Mr. Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at
+the sweet aroma of the earth, the shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain
+brings forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE COUNTRY HOUSE
+
+The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country
+houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful hour.
+The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height, and the
+clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the horses,
+neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary murmur; for the
+Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to hear remarks like these
+"Have you read that charmin' thing of Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the
+new edition of old Bablington: delightfully bound--so light."  And it was
+in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its
+best.  For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those
+poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom
+no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The
+Dennants themselves never went to London for the season.  It was their
+good pleasure not to.  A week or fortnight of it satisfied them.  They
+had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even after her
+presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning home,
+stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."
+
+When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day
+brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark,
+sweet-smelling bedrooms.  Individually, he liked his fellow-guests, but
+he found himself observing them.  He knew that, if a man judged people
+singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged in bulk
+were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined to pass on
+them.  He knew this just as he knew that the conventions, having been
+invented to prevent man following his natural desires, were merely the
+disapproving sums of innumerable individual approvals.
+
+It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing.  But with his
+amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a
+well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.
+
+In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests--those
+who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them with
+carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all accepted
+things without the semblance of a kick.  To show sign of private moral
+judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be a bit of an
+outsider.  He gathered this by intuition rather than from conversation;
+for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and was carried on in
+the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of good breeding.  Shelton
+had never been able to acquire this tone, and he could not help feeling
+that the inability made him more or less an object of suspicion.  The
+atmosphere struck him as it never had before, causing him to feel a doubt
+of his gentility.  Could a man suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or
+misgivings, and remain a gentleman?  It seemed improbable.  One of his
+fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a
+dark moustache and a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one
+day by remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
+seem to know his mind."  Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.
+
+Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and valued.
+For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and wives than
+women.  Those things or phases of life with which people had no personal
+acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and a certain
+disapproval.  The principles of the upper class, in fact, were strictly
+followed.
+
+He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for recording
+currents foreign to itself.  Things he had never before noticed now had
+profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men spoke of women--not
+precisely with hostility, nor exactly with contempt best, perhaps,
+described as cultured jeering; never, of course, when men spoke of their
+own wives, mothers, sisters, or immediate friends, but merely when they
+spoke of any other women.  He reflected upon this, and came to the
+conclusion that, among the upper classes, each man's own property was
+holy, while other women were created to supply him with gossip, jests,
+and spice.  Another thing that struck him was the way in which the war
+then going on was made into an affair of class.  In their view it was a
+baddish business, because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost
+their lives, and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.
+Humanity in general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor,
+incidentally, the country which belonged to them.  For there they were,
+all seated in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.
+
+Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
+Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into one
+of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle round the
+fendered hearth.  Fresh from his good-night parting with Antonia, he sat
+perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all the figures in their
+parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged, with glasses in their
+hands, and cigars between their teeth.
+
+The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with a
+tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender.  Through the mist of
+smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out, cigar
+protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar of his
+smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he looked a
+little like a gorgeous bird.
+
+"They do you awfully well," he said.
+
+A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,
+
+"They do you better at Verado's."
+
+"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for
+nothing!"  drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.
+
+The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing. And at
+once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world fell
+naturally into its three departments: that where they do you well; that
+where they do you better; and that where they give you Turkish baths for
+nothing.
+
+"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face, who
+had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and long feet
+jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you should go, you
+know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."
+
+Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as though
+they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.
+
+"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender.  "A Johnny I know
+tells me they 're nothing to Sofia."  His face was transfigured by the
+subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.
+
+"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a
+candle to Baghda-ad."
+
+Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once again
+the world fell into its three departments: that where they do you well;
+that where they do you better; and--Baghdad.
+
+Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better than
+Baghdad?"
+
+He felt so insignificant.  It seemed that he knew none of these
+delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men; though
+privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as ignorant as
+himself, and merely found it warming to recall such things as they had
+heard, with that peculiar gloating look.  Alas! his anecdotes would never
+earn for him that prize of persons in society, the label of a "good chap"
+and "sportsman."
+
+"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.
+
+The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his broad
+expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar.  The anecdote
+was humorous.
+
+With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies, for,
+following the well-known custom of the country house, men and women
+avoided each other as much as might be.  They met at meals, and
+occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed--almost
+Orientally--agreed that they were better kept apart.
+
+Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for
+Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he would
+have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious that he was
+merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he listened.
+
+The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie--the sixth
+since that she had been knitting at Hyeres--sat on the low window-seat
+close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers almost kissed her
+sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid aspiration on the lady
+who was speaking.  This was a square woman of medium height, with grey
+hair brushed from her low forehead, the expression of whose face was
+brisk and rather cross.  She was standing with a book, as if delivering a
+sermon.  Had she been a man she might have been described as a bright
+young man of business; for, though grey, she never could be old, nor ever
+lose the power of forming quick decisions.  Her features and her eyes
+were prompt and slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice
+of her judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which
+indicates the right to meddle.  Not red, not white, neither yellow nor
+quite blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these
+colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour
+sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.
+
+"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying--not offensively,
+though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in
+pleasing--"in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat them
+quite like children."
+
+A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth--indeed, her whole hard,
+handsome face--was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the
+Soho Bazaar.  She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff rustled.
+Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking, she answered
+in harsh tones:
+
+"I find the poor are most delightful persons."
+
+Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a barking
+terrier dog at Shelton.
+
+"Here's Dick," she said.  "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"
+
+Shelton looked around him, scared.  The elder ladies who had spoken had
+fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter
+insignificance.
+
+"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say.  "Expect a practical remark
+from him?  Now, come!"
+
+"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor?  I haven't any."
+
+The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her
+peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times, said:
+
+"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady Bonington?"
+
+Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.
+
+"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!"  cried Sybil.
+
+"Slumming must be splendid!  It's so deadly here--nothing but flannel
+petticoats."
+
+"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what you
+think them--"
+
+"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!"  broke in Aunt Charlotte
+close to the hydrangea.
+
+"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply.  "I find they do nothing but
+grumble."
+
+"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady
+Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.
+
+He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich,
+despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.
+
+"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.
+
+"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"
+
+She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but as to
+getting thanks--"
+
+Lady Bonington sardonically said,
+
+"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."
+
+"The little children!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing cheek
+and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."
+
+"Children indeed!"  said Mrs. Mattock.  "It puts me out of all patience
+to see the way that they neglect them.  People are so sentimental about
+the poor."
+
+Lady Bonington creaked again.  Her splendid shoulders were wedged into
+her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back upon her
+brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held the journal;
+she rocked her copper-slippered foot.  She did not appear to be too
+sentimental.
+
+"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if some
+one had injured her severely.  And Shelton saw, not without pity, that
+Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with wrinkles, whose tiny
+furrows were eloquent of good intentions frustrated by the unpractical
+and discontented poor.  "Do what you will, they are never satisfied; they
+only resent one's help, or else they take the help and never thank you
+for it!"
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."
+
+Shelton had been growing, more uneasy.  He said abruptly:
+
+"I should do the same if I were they."
+
+Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the Times;
+her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.
+
+"We ought to put ourselves in their places."
+
+Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the poor!
+
+"Oh!"  exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place. I
+quite understand their feelings.  But ingratitude is a repulsive
+quality."
+
+"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton; and
+in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.
+
+Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect
+second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture, each
+book, each lady present, had been made from patterns.  They were all
+widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some exhibitions)
+had the look of being after the designs of some original spirit.  The
+whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical, and comfortable;
+neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner, speech, appearance, nor
+in theory, could it give itself away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE STAINED-GLASS MAN
+
+Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room.  Thea
+Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking.  From the
+look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been born; he
+hastily withdrew.  Descending to the hall, he came on Mr. Dennant
+crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking papers.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  said he, "you look a little lost.  Is the shrine
+invisible?"
+
+Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking.  He was not fortunate.
+In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list of books.
+
+"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said.  "Everybody 's readin' this
+thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because she's got a
+title."
+
+"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because other
+people do them, and I sha'n't get it."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.
+
+"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care for
+him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house.  And there's
+Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's always
+so refined.  But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's?  They say
+that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you know"; and over
+the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like eyes.
+
+Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and slightly
+sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to her to trust
+her instincts.  It was quite pathetic.  Still, there was always the
+book's circulation to form her judgment by.
+
+"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you?  Were you lookin'
+for Antonia?  If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick, do say I
+want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance.  I can understand
+his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."
+
+Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went.  He took a
+despairing look into the billiard-room.  Antonia was not there. Instead,
+a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache, called Mabbey,
+was practising the spot-stroke.  He paused as Shelton entered, and,
+pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,
+
+"Play me a hundred up?"
+
+Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to go.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
+moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of some
+surprise,
+
+"What's your general game, then?"
+
+"I really don't know," said Shelton.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
+knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for the
+stroke.
+
+"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
+well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition.  "Curious dark
+horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when he
+was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-built
+man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache, and a faint
+bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a network of thin
+veins.  His face had something of the youthful, optimistic, stained-glass
+look peculiar to the refined English type. He walked elastically, yet
+with trim precision, as if he had a pleasant taste in furniture and
+churches, and held the Spectator in his hand.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!" he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such an
+easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to take the
+air?"
+
+Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but dogged
+chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
+stained-glass man.
+
+"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the
+latter said.
+
+Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
+people's business, smiled.
+
+"Do I look like it?" he asked.
+
+The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man.  It had never occurred to
+him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must look like it; he
+examined Shelton with some curiosity.
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not."  His eyes, so
+carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey, also
+seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.
+
+"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush.  "Yes," he said; "it
+suits me very well.  I get lots of time for my art work."
+
+"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was roving
+for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."
+
+"Never had a hobby!"  said the stained-glass man, brushing back his hair
+(he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"
+
+Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.
+
+"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always something
+going on, as far as I can see."
+
+The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his bright
+glance swept over his companion.
+
+"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he said.
+
+"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
+regarding life itself as interesting.
+
+"That's all very well, but you want something more than that.  Why don't
+you take up woodcarving?"
+
+"Wood-carving?"
+
+"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I take
+up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."
+
+"I have n't the enthusiasm."
+
+The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his moustache.
+
+"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
+old, then where 'll you be?"
+
+It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay," for
+he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern jewellery
+which really seems unconscious of its market value.
+
+"You've given up the Bar?  Don't you get awfully bored having nothing to
+do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient sundial.
+
+Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
+being in love was in itself enough to do.  To do nothing is unworthy of a
+man!  But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation. His
+silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.
+
+"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his chin;
+and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from the other
+side.  Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow on the turf;
+tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies clustered thick
+around its base; it had acquired a look of growing from the soil.  "I
+should like to get hold of that," the stained-glass man remarked; "I
+don't know when I 've seen a better specimen," and he walked round it
+once again.
+
+His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes were
+almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened just a
+little.  A person with a keener eye would have said his face looked
+greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read in the
+Spectator a confession of commercialism.
+
+"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all its
+charm."
+
+His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked wonderfully
+genuine.
+
+"Couldn't I?" he said.  "By Jove!  I thought so.  1690!  The best
+period."  He ran his forger round the sundial's edge.  "Splendid
+line-clean as the day they made it.  You don't seem to care much about
+that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to the
+indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.
+
+They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
+searching every patch of shade.  He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
+hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
+that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
+quite impossible.  "Feelings!"  that person seemed to say; "all very
+well, but you want more than that.  Why not take up wood-carving?
+ .   .  .  .  Feelings!  I was born in England, and have been at
+Cambridge."
+
+"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton.  "I go on to Halidome's
+to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there?  Good, chap, old Halidome!
+Collection of etchings very fine!"
+
+"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.
+
+"Ah!"  said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"
+
+Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a gooseberry,
+and muttered, "Yes."
+
+"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her.  I thought she was a
+particularly nice girl."
+
+Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave him
+the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light upon her.
+He grunted hastily,
+
+"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"
+
+"Really!"  said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
+iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--"really!  I didn't know.
+Congratulate you!"
+
+It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would go
+well in almost any drawing-room!"
+
+"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is.  If you'll excuse me, I want to
+speak to her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+PARADISE
+
+Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and
+poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself.  Shelton saw the
+stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her
+smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn, casting
+away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft tune.
+
+In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this
+inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he a
+part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his; together
+they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk of them, as
+one; and this would come about by standing half an hour together in a
+church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of their names.
+
+The sun was burnishing her hair--she wore no hat flushing her cheeks,
+sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through and
+through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the air,
+she was all motion, light, and colour.
+
+She turned and saw Shelton standing there.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these flowers
+in, there 's a good boy!"
+
+Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and cool as
+ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that corner; the
+sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth again.  The sight of
+those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining round the flower-stalks, her
+pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant, stole the reason out of Shelton.  He
+stood before her, weak about the knees.
+
+"Found you at last!"  he said.
+
+Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!"  and with a sweep of both
+her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.
+
+Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on his
+knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks, to hide
+the violence of his feelings.  Antonia went on picking flowers, and every
+time her hand was full she dropped them on his hat, his shoulder, or his
+arms, and went on plucking more; she smiled, and on her lips a little
+devil danced, that seemed to know what he was suffering.  And Shelton
+felt that she did know.
+
+"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted.  These are the
+bedroom-flowers--fourteen lots.  I can't think how people can live
+without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried her face
+in pinks.
+
+He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and
+forced himself to answer,
+
+"I think I can hold out."
+
+"Poor old Dick!"  She had stepped back.  The sun lit the clear-cut
+profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her blouse.
+"Poor old Dick!  Awfully hard luck, is n't it?"  Burdened with
+mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his shoulder,
+but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating heart, he went
+on sorting out the flowers.  The seeds of mignonette rained on his neck,
+and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume fanned his face.  "You
+need n't sort them out!" she said.
+
+Was she enticing him?  He stole a look; but she was gone again, swaying
+and sniffing at the flowers.
+
+"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!"  and as she spoke
+she flung a clove carnation at him.  "Does n't it smell good?"
+
+"Too good Oh, Antonia! why are you doing this?"
+
+"Why am I doing what?"
+
+"Don't you know what you are doing?"
+
+"Why, picking flowers!"  and once more she was back, bending and sniffing
+at the blossoms.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.
+
+"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."
+
+"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.
+
+Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was her
+face.
+
+"I'm not a bit like you," she said.  "What will you have for your room?"
+
+"Choose!"
+
+"Cornflowers and clove pinks.  Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks
+too--"
+
+"White," said Shelton.
+
+"And mignonette too hard and--"
+
+"Sweet.  Why cornflowers?"
+
+Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure was
+so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.
+
+"Because they're dark and deep."
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on her
+skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."
+
+"Ah!  And what flowers shall t give YOU?"
+
+She put her hands behind her.
+
+"There are all the other flowers for me."
+
+Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with
+straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard, sweet
+mignonette, and held it out to her.
+
+"There," he said, "that's you."  But Antonia did not move.
+
+"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed the
+petals of a blood-red poppy.  She shook her head, smiling a brilliant
+smile.  The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her, and kissed her
+on the lips.
+
+But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come to
+him.  She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had kissed
+a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.
+
+"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and anger.
+"What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his troubled watch
+upon her face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE RIDE
+
+"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they turned up
+High Street, Oxford City.  "I won't go back the same way, Dick!"
+
+"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice, and
+get home that way; but you 'll be tired."
+
+Antonia shook her head.  Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat threw a
+curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.
+
+A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly she
+was the same good comrade, cool and quick.  But as before a change one
+feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so Shelton was
+affected by the inner change in her.  He had made a blot upon her
+candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was left a mark, and
+it was ineffaceable.  Antonia belonged to the most civilised division of
+the race most civilised in all the world, whose creed is "Let us love and
+hate, let us work and marry, but let us never give ourselves away; to
+give ourselves away is to leave a mark, and that is past forgive ness.
+Let our lives be like our faces, free from every kind of wrinkle, even
+those of laughter; in this way alone can we be really civilised."
+
+He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort.  That he should give
+himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but that he
+should give her the feeling that she had given herself away was a very
+different thing.
+
+"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he said, as
+they passed the old hotel.
+
+A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard
+Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though the
+writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter.  It was
+dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as follows:
+
+                              IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
+                                        FOLKESTONE.
+MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,
+
+This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you, but,
+having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting better
+days.  Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I had not
+thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not even now if
+I should have found the necessary spirit.  'Les choses vont de mal en
+mal'.  From what I hear there has never been so bad a season here.
+Nothing going on.  All the same, I am tormented by a mob of little
+matters which bring me not sufficient to support my life.  I know not
+what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall I return here another
+year.  The patron of this hotel, my good employer, is one of those
+innumerable specimens who do not forge or steal because they have no
+need, and if they had would lack the courage; who observe the marriage
+laws because they have been brought up to believe in them, and know that
+breaking them brings risk and loss of reputation; who do not gamble
+because they dare not; do not drink because it disagrees with them; go to
+church because their neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the
+mid-day meal; commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other
+fashion, they are not obliged.  What is there to respect in persons of
+this sort?  Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of
+Society.  The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes, never
+use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs of life for
+fear they should get bitten.
+
+Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the
+inquiring look that he had come to dread.  In that chilly questioning she
+seemed to say: "I am waiting.  I am prepared to be told things--that is,
+useful things--things that help one to believe without the risk of too
+much thinking."
+
+"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to
+himself.
+
+I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'. I
+see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free
+thought."  Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas m'oter
+cela'!  I see no future for me here, and certainly should have departed
+long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told you, all
+that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'. 'Je me sens
+ecceuye'.  Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads; you know what a
+pessimist I am.  'Je ne perds pas courage'.
+
+Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I
+subscribe myself,
+
+                    Your very devoted
+
+                              LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious turmoil
+which Ferrand excited in his heart.  It was as though this foreign
+vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave forth moans of
+a mutiny.
+
+"What does he say?" Antonia asked.
+
+Should he show it to her?  If he might not, what should he do when they
+were married?
+
+"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly
+cheering."'
+
+"What is he like, Dick--I mean, to look at?  Like a gentleman, or what?"
+
+Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.
+
+"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a wine
+merchant."
+
+Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.
+
+"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything I
+ought not."
+
+But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite
+effect.  His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from whom
+the half of life must be excluded.
+
+"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."
+
+"Oh, all right!"  she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in front.
+"I hate dismal things."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.  It was not his fault that half the world was dark.
+He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always at a sign
+of her displeasure, was afraid.  He galloped after her on the scorched
+turf.
+
+"What is it?" he said.  "You 're angry with me!"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful.  We have eyes," he
+added, quoting from the letter.
+
+Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.
+
+"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't see
+why YOU should.  It's wicked to be discontented;" and she galloped off.
+
+It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men, a
+thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her experience!
+"What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs, "has our class
+to patronise?  We 're the only people who have n't an idea of what life
+really means."  Chips of dried turf and dust came flying back, stinging
+his face.  He gained on her, drew almost within reach, then, as though
+she had been playing with him, was left hopelessly behind.
+
+She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with
+dock-leaves:
+
+"Aha, Dick!  I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut
+mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards
+Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually darkening
+with sweat.
+
+"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and
+loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."
+
+"Don't be cross, Dick!"
+
+"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in condition.
+We'd better go home the way we came."
+
+Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.
+
+"There 's no fun in that," she said.  "Out and back again; I hate a dog's
+walk."
+
+"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!
+
+The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia lay
+disclosed in waves of wood and pasture.  Their way branched down a
+gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the
+mare's off-flank.
+
+Antonia's profile conjured up visions.  She was youth itself; her eyes so
+brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her brow
+unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked
+something resolute and mischievous.  Shelton put his hand out to the
+mare's mane.
+
+"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Well, what made you?"
+
+"I?" cried Shelton.
+
+She slipped her hand over his hand.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said.
+
+"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you.  Do you think I shall?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Of course!  The words seemed very much or very little.
+
+She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
+silver line.  "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
+might do."
+
+Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might understand
+each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the old
+time-honoured way?
+
+They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence, while
+the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens.  And all the beauty of the
+evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and lighted
+campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the witchery and
+shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling, and the splash
+of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted.  The flighting bats, the
+forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier perfume-she summed them all up
+in herself.  The fingermarks had deepened underneath her eyes, a languor
+came upon her; it made her the more sweet and youthful.  Her shoulders
+seemed to bear on them the very image of our land--grave and aspiring,
+eager yet contained--before there came upon that land the grin of greed,
+the folds of wealth, the simper of content.  Fair, unconscious, free!
+
+And he was silent, with a beating heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE
+
+That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his eyes
+fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he began to
+read it through a second time.  In the dark, oak-panelled bedroom, his
+four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its dainty sheets, was
+lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of hot water in the basin,
+the silver of his brushes, and the line of his well-polished boots all
+shone, and Shelton's face alone was gloomy, staring at the yellowish
+paper in his hand.
+
+"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought.  But why go on for
+ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case, incurable--one
+whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the community at large?
+Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him into charity that should
+have been bestowed on hospitals, or any charitable work but foreign
+missions.  To give a helping hand, a bit of himself, a nod of fellowship
+to any fellow-being irrespective of a claim, merely because he happened
+to be down, was sentimental nonsense!  The line must be drawn!  But in
+the muttering of this conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty.
+"Humbug!  You don't want to part with your money, that's all!"
+
+So, sitting down in shirt-sleeves at his writing table, he penned the
+following on paper stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest:
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am sorry you are having such a bad spell.  You seem to be dead out of
+luck.  I hope by the time you get this things will have changed for the
+better.  I should very much like to see you again and have a talk, but
+shall be away for some time longer, and doubt even when I get back
+whether I should be able to run down and look you up.  Keep me 'au
+courant' as to your movements.  I enclose a cheque.
+
+                    Yours sincerely,
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+Before he had written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the candle
+distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and put it out he
+had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed.  The letter, removed with
+his clothes before he was awake, was posted in an empty state.
+
+One morning a week later he was sitting in the smoking-room in the
+company of the gentleman called Mabbey, who was telling him how many
+grouse he had deprived of life on August 12 last year, and how many he
+intended to deprive of life on August 12 this year, when the door was
+opened, and the butler entered, carrying his head as though it held some
+fatal secret.
+
+"A young man is asking for you, sir," he said to Shelton, bending down
+discreetly; "I don't know if you would wish to see him, sir."
+
+"A young man!" repeated Shelton; "what sort of a young man?"
+
+"I should say a sort of foreigner, sir," apologetically replied the
+butler.  "He's wearing a frock-coat, but he looks as if he had been
+walking a good deal."
+
+Shelton rose with haste; the description sounded to him ominous.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir."
+
+"All right," said Shelton; "I 'll come and see him.  Now, what the
+deuce!" he thought, running down the stairs.
+
+It was with a queer commingling of pleasure and vexation that he entered
+the little chamber sacred to the birds, beasts, racquets, golf-clubs, and
+general young ladies' litter.  Ferrand was standing underneath the cage
+of a canary, his hands folded on his pinched-up hat, a nervous smile upon
+his lips.  He was dressed in Shelton's old frock-coat, tightly buttoned,
+and would have cut a stylish figure but far his look of travel.  He wore
+a pair of pince-nez, too, which somewhat veiled his cynical blue eyes,
+and clashed a little with the pagan look of him.  In the midst of the
+strange surroundings he still preserved that air of knowing, and being
+master of, his fate, which was his chief attraction.
+
+"I 'm glad to see you," said Shelton, holding out his hand.
+
+"Forgive this liberty," began Ferrand, "but I thought it due to you after
+all you've done for me not to throw up my efforts to get employment in
+England without letting you know first.  I'm entirely at the end of my
+resources."
+
+The phrase struck Shelton as one that he had heard before.
+
+"But I wrote to you," he said; "did n't you get my letter?"
+
+A flicker passed across the vagrant's face; he drew the letter from his
+pocket and held it out.
+
+"Here it is, monsieur."
+
+Shelton stared at it.
+
+"Surely," said he, "I sent a cheque?"
+
+Ferrand did not smile; there was a look about him as though Shelton by
+forgetting to enclose that cheque had done him a real injury.
+
+Shelton could not quite hide a glance of doubt.
+
+"Of course," he said, "I--I--meant to enclose a cheque."
+
+Too subtle to say anything, Ferrand curled his lip.  "I am capable of
+much, but not of that," he seemed to say; and at once Shelton felt the
+meanness of his doubt.
+
+"Stupid of me," he said.
+
+"I had no intention of intruding here," said Ferrand; "I hoped to see you
+in the neighbourhood, but I arrive exhausted with fatigue.  I've eaten
+nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty miles."  He shrugged
+his shoulders.  "You see, I had no time to lose before assuring myself
+whether you were here or not."
+
+"Of course--" began Shelton, but again he stopped.
+
+"I should very much like," the young foreigner went on, "for one of your
+good legislators to find himself in these country villages with a penny
+in his pocket.  In other countries bakers are obliged to sell you an
+equivalent of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as much as a
+crust under twopence.  You don't encourage poverty."
+
+"What is your idea now?" asked Shelton, trying to gain time.
+
+"As I told you," replied Ferrand, "there 's nothing to be done at
+Folkestone, though I should have stayed there if I had had the money to
+defray certain expenses"; and again he seemed to reproach his patron with
+the omission of that cheque.  "They say things will certainly be better
+at the end of the month.  Now that I know English well, I thought perhaps
+I could procure a situation for teaching languages."
+
+"I see," said Shelton.
+
+As a fact, however, he was far from seeing; he literally did not know
+what to do.  It seemed so brutal to give Ferrand money and ask him to
+clear out; besides, he chanced to have none in his pocket.
+
+"It needs philosophy to support what I 've gone through this week," said
+Ferrand, shrugging his shoulders.  "On Wednesday last, when I received
+your letter, I had just eighteen-pence, and at once I made a resolution
+to come and see you; on that sum I 've done the journey. My strength is
+nearly at an end."
+
+Shelton stroked his chin.
+
+"Well," he had just begun, "we must think it over," when by Ferrand's
+face he saw that some one had come in.  He turned, and saw Antonia in the
+doorway.  "Excuse me," he stammered, and, going to Antonia, drew her from
+the room.
+
+With a smile she said at once: "It's the young foreigner; I'm certain.
+Oh, what fun!"
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton slowly; "he's come to see me about getting some
+sort of tutorship or other.  Do you think your mother would mind if I
+took him up to have a wash?  He's had a longish walk.  And might he have
+some breakfast?  He must be hungry."
+
+"Of course!  I'll tell Dobson.  Shall I speak to mother?  He looks nice,
+Dick."
+
+He gave her a grateful, furtive look, and went back to his guest; an
+impulse had made him hide from her the true condition of affairs.
+
+Ferrand was standing where he had been left his face still clothed in
+mordant impassivity.
+
+"Come up to my room!"  said Shelton; and while his guest was washing,
+brushing, and otherwise embellishing his person, he stood reflecting that
+Ferrand was by no means unpresentable, and he felt quite grateful to him.
+
+He took an opportunity, when the young man's back was turned, of
+examining his counterfoils.  There was no record, naturally, of a cheque
+drawn in Ferrand's favour.  Shelton felt more mean than ever.
+
+A message came from Mrs. Dennant; so he took the traveller to the
+dining-room and left him there, while he himself went to the lady of the
+house.  He met Antonia coming down.
+
+"How many days did you say he went without food that time--you know?" she
+asked in passing.
+
+"Four."
+
+"He does n't look a bit common, Dick."
+
+Shelton gazed at her dubiously.
+
+"They're surely not going to make a show of him!" he thought.
+
+Mrs. Dennant was writing, in a dark-blue dress starred over with white
+spots, whose fine lawn collar was threaded with black velvet.
+
+"Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me back from Kidstone?  Is
+n't it charmin'?" and she bent her face towards this perfect rose. "They
+say unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if that's true. I've told
+Algy I really must have some."
+
+Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting downstairs; he wished
+that Mrs. Dennant would show in him the interest she had manifested in
+the rose.  But this was absurd of him, he knew, for the potent law of
+hobbies controlled the upper classes, forcing them to take more interest
+in birds, and roses, missionaries, or limited and highly-bound editions
+of old books (things, in a word, in treating which you knew exactly where
+you were) than in the manifestations of mere life that came before their
+eyes.
+
+"Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman.  Antonia says he wants a
+tutorship; now, can you really recommend him?  There's Mrs. Robinson at
+the Gateways wants someone to teach her boys languages; and, if he were
+quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a few lessons in French;
+he goes to Eton next half."
+
+Shelton stared at the rose; he had suddenly realised why it was that
+people take more interest in roses than in human beings--one could do it
+with a quiet heart.
+
+"He's not a Frenchman, you know," he said to gain a little time.
+
+"He's not a German, I hope," Mrs. Dennant answered, passing her forgers
+round a petal, to impress its fashion on her brain; "I don't like
+Germans.  Is n't he the one you wrote about--come down in the world?
+Such a pity with so young a fellow!  His father was a merchant, I think
+you told us.  Antonia says he 's quite refined to look at."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Shelton, feeling on safe ground; "he's refined enough to
+look at."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took the rose and put it to her nose.
+
+"Delicious perfume!  That was a very touchin' story about his goin'
+without food in Paris.  Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let; I should like
+to do her a good turn.  I'm afraid there's a hole in the ceilin', though.
+Or there's the room here in the left wing on the ground-floor where John
+the footman used to sleep.  It's quite nice; perhaps he could have that."
+
+"You 're awfully kind," said Shelton, "but--"
+
+"I should like to do something to restore his self-respect,", went on
+Mrs. Dennant, "if, as you say, he 's clever and all that.  Seein' a
+little refined life again might make a world of difference to him. It's
+so sad when a young man loses self-respect."
+
+Shelton was much struck by the practical way in which she looked at
+things.  Restore his self-respect!  It seemed quite a splendid notion!
+He smiled, and said,
+
+"You're too kind.  I think--"
+
+"I don't believe in doin' things by halves," said Mrs. Dennant; "he does
+n't drink, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Shelton.  "He's rather a tobacco maniac, of course."
+
+"Well, that's a mercy!  You would n't believe the trouble I 've had with
+drink, especially over cooks and coachmen.  And now Bunyan's taken to
+it."
+
+"Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand," returned Shelton; "you couldn't
+tell him from a gentleman as far as manners go."
+
+Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet and kindly smiles.
+
+"My dear Dick," she said, "there's not much comfort in that.  Look at
+poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver Semples and Victor Medallion; you
+could n't have better families.  But if you 're sure he does n't drink!
+Algy 'll laugh, of course; that does n't matter--he laughs at
+everything."
+
+Shelton felt guilty; being quite unprepared for so rapid an adoption of
+his client.
+
+"I really believe there's a lot of good in him," he stammered; "but, of
+course, I know very little, and from what he tells me he's had a very
+curious life.  I shouldn't like--"
+
+"Where was he educated?" inquired Mrs. Dennant.  "They have no public
+schools in France, so I 've been told; but, of course, he can't help
+that, poor young fellow!  Oh, and, Dick, there 's one thing--has he
+relations?  One has always to be so careful about that.  It 's one thing
+to help a young fellow, but quite another to help his family too.  One
+sees so many cases of that where men marry girls without money, don't you
+know."
+
+"He has told me," answered Shelton, "his only relations are some cousins,
+and they are rich."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bending above the rose,
+removed a tiny insect.
+
+"These green-fly get in everywhere," she said.
+
+"Very sad story; can't they do anything for him?" and she made researches
+in the rose's heart.
+
+"He's quarrelled with them, I believe," said Shelton; "I have n't liked
+to press him, about that."
+
+"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Dennant absently--she had found
+another green-fly "I always think it's painful when a young man seems so
+friendless."
+
+Shelton was silent; he was thinking deeply.  He had never before felt so
+distrustful of the youthful foreigner.
+
+"I think," he said at last, "the best thing would be for you to see him
+for yourself."
+
+"Very well," said Mrs. Dennant.  "I should be so glad if you would tell
+him to come up.  I must say I do think that was a most touchin' story
+about Paris.  I wonder whether this light's strong enough now for me to
+photograph this rose."
+
+Shelton withdrew and went down-stairs.  Ferrand was still at breakfast.
+Antonia stood at the sideboard carving beef for him, and in the window
+sat Thea with her Persian kitten.
+
+Both girls were following the traveller's movements with inscrutable blue
+eyes.  A shiver ran down Shelton's spine.  To speak truth, he cursed the
+young man's coming, as though it affected his relations with Antonia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+SUB ROSA
+
+From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching,
+between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite results
+accrued, the chief of which was the permission accorded the young
+wanderer to occupy the room which had formerly been tenanted by the
+footman John.  Shelton was lost in admiration of Ferrand's manner in this
+scene..  Its subtle combination of deference and dignity was almost
+paralysing; paralysing, too, the subterranean smile upon his lips.
+
+"Charmin' young man, Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, when Shelton lingered to
+say once more that he knew but very little of him; "I shall send a note
+round to Mrs. Robinson at once.  They're rather common, you know--the
+Robinsons.  I think they'll take anyone I recommend."
+
+"I 'm sure they will," said Shelton; "that's why I think you ought to
+know--"
+
+But Mrs. Dennant's eyes, fervent, hare-like, were fixed on something far
+away; turning, he saw the rose in a tall vase on a tall and spindly
+stool.  It seemed to nod towards them in the sunshine.  Mrs. Dennant
+dived her nose towards her camera.
+
+"The light's perfect now," she said, in a voice muffled by the cloth. "I
+feel sure that livin' with decent people will do wonders for him. Of
+course, he understands that his meals will be served to him apart."
+
+Shelton, doubly anxious, now that his efforts had lodged his client in a
+place of trust, fell, back on hoping for the best; his instinct told him
+that, vagabond as Ferrand was, he had a curious self-respect, that would
+save him from a mean ingratitude.
+
+In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means void of common-sense,
+foresaw, the arrangement worked all right.  Ferrand entered on his duties
+as French tutor to the little Robinsons.  In the Dennants' household he
+kept himself to his own room, which, day and night, he perfumed with
+tobacco, emerging at noon into the garden, or, if wet, into the study, to
+teach young Toddles French.  After a time it became customary for him to
+lunch with the house-party, partly through a mistake of Toddles, who
+seemed to think that it was natural, and partly through John Noble, one
+of Shelton's friends, who had come to stay, and discovered Ferrand to be
+a most awfully interesting person he was always, indeed, discovering the
+most awfully interesting persons.  In his grave and toneless voice,
+brushing his hair from off his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand with
+enthusiasm, to which was joined a kind of shocked amusement, as who
+should say, "Of course, I know it's very odd, but really he 's such an
+awfully interesting person."  For John Noble was a politician, belonging
+to one of those two Peculiar parties, which, thoroughly in earnest, of an
+honesty above suspicion, and always very busy, are constitutionally
+averse to anything peculiar for fear of finding they have overstepped the
+limit of what is practical in politics.  As such he inspired confidence,
+not caring for things unless he saw some immediate benefit to be had from
+them, having a perfect sense of decency, and a small imagination.  He
+discussed all sorts of things with Ferrand; on one occasion Shelton
+overheard them arguing on anarchism.
+
+"No Englishman approves of murder," Noble was saying, in the gloomy voice
+that contrasted with the optimistic cast of his fine head, "but the main
+principle is right.  Equalisation of property is bound to come.  I
+sympathise with then, not with their methods."
+
+"Forgive me," struck in Ferrand; "do you know any anarchists?"
+
+"No," returned Noble; "I certainly do not."
+
+"You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to
+action--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, "but with the heart, the
+lungs, the liver."  He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and seemed
+to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words: "What do
+you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all the prejudices
+of your class, know about us outcasts?  If you want to understand us you
+must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the game."
+
+This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's French
+lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the youthful
+foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the anarchists
+had much, in common.  He was returning to the house, when someone called
+his name from underneath the holm oak.  There, sitting Turkish fashion on
+the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a man who had arrived the
+night before, and impressed him by his friendly taciturnity.  His name
+was Whyddon, and he had just returned from Central Africa; a brown-faced,
+large-jawed man, with small but good and steady eyes, and strong, spare
+figure.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Shelton!" he said, "I wondered if you could tell me what tips I
+ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've forgotten all
+about that sort of thing."
+
+Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-legged
+attitude, which caused him much discomfort.
+
+"I was listening," said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap
+learning his French.  I've forgotten mine.  One feels a hopeless duffer
+knowing no, languages."
+
+"I suppose you speak Arabic?" said Shelton.
+
+"Oh, Arabic, and a dialect or two; they don't count.  That tutor has a
+curious face."
+
+"You think so?" said Shelton, interested.  "He's had a curious life."
+
+The traveller spread his hands, palms downwards, on the grass and looked
+at Shelton with, a smile.
+
+"I should say he was a rolling stone," he said.  "It 's odd, I' ve seen
+white men in Central Africa with a good deal of his look about them.
+
+"Your diagnosis is a good one," answered Shelton.
+
+"I 'm always sorry for those fellows.  There's generally some good in
+them.  They are their own enemies.  A bad business to be unable to take
+pride in anything one does!"  And there was a look of pity on his face.
+
+"That's exactly it," said Shelton.  "I 've often tried to put it into
+words.  Is it incurable?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Can you tell me why?"
+
+Whyddon pondered.
+
+"I rather think," he said at last, "it must be because they have too
+strong a faculty of criticism.  You can't teach a man to be proud of his
+own work; that lies in his blood "; folding his arms across his breast,
+he heaved a sigh.  Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the sunlight, he
+was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their spirits bright and
+wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard work.  "You can't
+think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how delightful it is to
+be at home!  You learn to love the old country when you're away from it."
+
+Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond, for
+he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle criticism
+which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most awfully
+interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person.
+
+An old school-fellow of Shelton's and his wife were staying in the house,
+who offered to the eye the picture of a perfect domesticity. Passionless
+and smiling, it was impossible to imagine they could ever have a
+difference.  Shelton, whose bedroom was next to theirs, could hear them
+in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they used at lunch, and
+laughing the same laughs.  Their life seemed to accord them perfect
+satisfaction; they were supplied with their convictions by Society just
+as, when at home, they were supplied with all the other necessaries of
+life by some co-operative stores.  Their fairly handsome faces, with the
+fairly kind expressions, quickly and carefully regulated by a sense of
+compromise, began to worry him so much that when in the same room he
+would even read to avoid the need of looking at them.  And yet they were
+kind--that is, fairly kind--and clean and quiet in the house, except when
+they laughed, which was often, and at things which made him want to howl
+as a dog howls at music.
+
+"Mr. Shelton," Ferrand said one day, "I 'm not an amateur of
+marriage--never had the chance, as you may well suppose; but, in any
+case, you have some people in the house who would make me mark time
+before I went committing it.  They seem the ideal young married
+people--don't quarrel, have perfect health, agree with everybody, go to
+church, have children--but I should like to hear what is beautiful in
+their life," and he grimaced.  "It seems to me so ugly that I can only
+gasp.  I would much rather they ill-treated each other, just to show they
+had the corner of a soul between them.  If that is marriage, 'Dieu m'en
+garde!'"
+
+But Shelton did not answer; he was thinking deeply.
+
+The saying of John Noble's, "He's really a most interesting person," grew
+more and more upon his nerves; it seemed to describe the Dennant attitude
+towards this stranger within their gates.  They treated him with a sort
+of wonder on the "don't touch" system, like an object in an exhibition.
+The restoration, however, of, his self-respect proceeded with success.
+For all the semblance of having grown too big for Shelton's clothes, for
+all his vividly burnt face, and the quick but guarded play of cynicism on
+his lips--he did much credit to his patrons.  He had subdued his terror
+of a razor, and looked well in a suit of Shelton's flannels.  For, after
+all, he had only been eight years exiled from middle-class gentility, and
+he had been a waiter half that time.  But Shelton wished him at the
+devil.  Not for his manners' sake--he was never tired of watching how
+subtly the vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts,
+while keeping up his critical detachment--but because that critical
+detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to
+analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry.
+This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced, he
+had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the journey up from Dover.
+
+There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a bird;
+admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it.  To himself, to
+people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury, not significant of
+sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in the heart, such as
+massage will setup in the legs.  "Everybody's kind," he thought; "the
+question is, What understanding is there, what real sympathy?"  This
+problem gave him food for thought.
+
+The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in
+Ferrand's conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a sign
+that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to green
+pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he himself
+would do the same.  He felt that the young foreigner was making a
+convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the sarcastic
+smile on the lips of Ferrand's heart.
+
+It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of the
+situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint uneasiness in
+the very breathing of the household.
+
+"Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton," Mr. Dennant said to
+him during a game of croquet; "he 'll never do any good for himself, I'm
+afraid."
+
+"In one sense I'm afraid not," admitted Shelton.
+
+"Do you know his story?  I will bet you sixpence"--and Mr.  Dennant
+paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy "that he's been in
+prison."
+
+"Prison!" ejaculated Shelton.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his next
+shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah! missed it!  Awkward these
+hoops!  One must draw the line somewhere."
+
+"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
+understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."
+
+"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which Shelton
+had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear Shelton, and by no
+means give him a hint; he interests me very much--a very clever, quiet
+young fellow."
+
+That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
+Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond.  Underlying the
+well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of his
+pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq.,
+J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he was being
+laughed at.  What more natural than that he should grope about to see how
+this could be?  A vagrant alien was making himself felt by an English
+Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to Ferrand's personality.
+The latter would sit silent through a meal, and yet make his effect.  He,
+the object of their kindness, education, patronage, inspired their fear.
+There was no longer any doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were
+afraid, but of what they did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties
+meandering in the brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of
+something bizarre popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided
+nose.
+
+But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered. At
+first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed never
+tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too had set
+her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they rested on
+the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her saying on the first
+day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's really good--I mean all
+these things you told me about were only...."
+
+Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
+starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about that
+incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with whom she
+had so strangely come in contact.  She watched Ferrand, and Shelton
+watched her.  If he had been told that he was watching her, he would have
+denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her, to find out with
+what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all the rebellious
+under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.
+
+"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
+Ferrand."
+
+"Do you want to talk of him?"
+
+"Don't you think that he's improved?"
+
+"He's fatter."
+
+Antonia looked grave.
+
+"No, but really?"
+
+"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."
+
+Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed him.
+
+"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become one
+again?"
+
+Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
+golden plums.  The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak, but
+a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-tree's
+heart.  It crowned the girl.  Her raiment, the dark leaves, the red wall,
+the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a block of pagan
+colour.  And her face above it, chaste, serene, was like the scentless
+summer evening.  A bird amongst the currant bushes kept a little chant
+vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and colour seemed alive.
+
+"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.
+
+Antonia swung her foot.
+
+"How can he help wanting to?"
+
+"He may have a different philosophy of life."
+
+Antonia was slow to answer.
+
+"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.
+
+Shelton answered coldly,
+
+"No two people have the same."
+
+With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree.  Chilled and
+harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm and
+impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree, with a
+grey light through its leaves.
+
+"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to be
+good."
+
+"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.
+
+Antonia stared.
+
+"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
+Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other people?
+If you were to load him with a character and give him money on condition
+that he acted as we all act, do you think he would accept it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"
+
+Antonia slid down from the wall.
+
+"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
+turned away.
+
+Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
+still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the wall,
+her hands turned back across her narrow hips.  She halted at the bend,
+looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.
+
+Antonia was slipping from him!
+
+A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it was
+he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of one
+watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE RIVER
+
+One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--the
+river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the reeds and
+poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and the white
+slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons, and the weirs
+are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies, the play of
+waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight faces of the
+twisted tree-roots, Pan lives once more.
+
+The reach which Shelton chose was innocent of launches, champagne bottles
+and loud laughter; it was uncivilised, and seldom troubled by these
+humanising influences.  He paddled slowly, silent and absorbed, watching
+Antonia.  An unaccustomed languor clung about her; her eyes had shadows,
+as though she had not slept; colour glowed softly in her cheeks, her
+frock seemed all alight with golden radiance.  She made Shelton pull into
+the reeds, and plucked two rounded lilies sailing like ships against
+slow-moving water.
+
+"Pull into the shade, please," she said; "it's too hot out here."
+
+The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face, but her head was
+drooping like a flower's head at noon.
+
+Shelton saw that the heat was really harming her, as too hot a day will
+dim the icy freshness of a northern plant.  He dipped his sculls, the
+ripples started out and swam in grave diminuendo till they touched the
+banks.
+
+He shot the boat into a cleft, and caught the branches of an overhanging
+tree.  The skiff rested, balancing with mutinous vibration, like a living
+thing.
+
+"I should hate to live in London," said Antonia suddenly; "the slums must
+be so awful.  What a pity, when there are places like this!  But it's no
+good thinking."
+
+"No," answered Shelton slowly!  "I suppose it is no good."
+
+"There are some bad cottages at the lower end of Cross Eaton.  I went
+them one day with Miss Truecote.  The people won't help themselves. It's
+so discouraging to help people who won't help themselves."
+
+She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with her chin resting on
+her hands, gazed up at Shelton.  All around them hung a tent of soft,
+thick leaves, and, below, the water was deep-dyed with green refraction.
+Willow boughs, swaying above the boat, caressed Antonia's arms and
+shoulders; her face and hair alone were free.
+
+"So discouraging," she said again.
+
+A silence fell....  Antonia seemed thinking deeply.
+
+"Doubts don't help you," she said suddenly; "how can you get any good
+from doubts?  The thing is to win victories."
+
+"Victories?" said Shelton.  "I 'd rather understand than conquer!"
+
+He had risen to his feet, and grasped stunted branch, canting the boat
+towards the bank.
+
+"How can you let things slide like that, Dick?  It's like Ferrand."
+
+"Have you such a bad opinion of him, then?" asked Shelton.  He felt on
+the verge of some, discovery.
+
+She buried her chin deeper in her hands.
+
+"I liked him at first," she said; "I thought that he was different. I
+thought he couldn't really be--"
+
+"Really be what?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.  "I can't explain.  I thought--"
+
+Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of the
+boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.
+
+"You thought--what?" he said.
+
+He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even timid.
+She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:
+
+"You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try.  I know I don't try half
+hard enough.  It does n't do any good to think; when you think,
+everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of. I do
+so hate to feel like that.  It is n't as if we didn't know what's right.
+Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good, only a waste of
+time, and you feel at the end as if you had been doing wrong."
+
+Shelton frowned.
+
+"What has n't been through fire's no good," he said; and, letting go the
+branch, sat down.  Freed from restraint, the boat edged out towards the
+current.  "But what about Ferrand?"
+
+"I lay awake last night wondering what makes you like him so.  He's so
+bitter; he makes me feel unhappy.  He never seems content with anything.
+And he despises"--her face hardened--"I mean, he hates us all!"
+
+"So should I if I were he," said Shelton.
+
+The boat was drifting on, and gleams of sunlight chased across their
+faces.  Antonia spoke again.
+
+"He seems to be always looking at dark things, or else he seems as if--as
+if he could--enjoy himself too much.  I thought--I thought at first," she
+stammered, "that we could do him good."
+
+"Do him good!  Ha, ha!"
+
+A startled rat went swimming for its life against the stream; and Shelton
+saw that he had done a dreadful thing: he had let Antonia with a jerk
+into a secret not hitherto admitted even by himself--the secret that her
+eyes were not his eyes, her way of seeing things not his nor ever would
+be.  He quickly muffled up his laughter.  Antonia had dropped her gaze;
+her face regained its languor, but the bosom of her dress was heaving.
+Shelton watched her, racking his brains to find excuses for that fatal
+laugh; none could he find.  It was a little piece of truth.  He paddled
+slowly on, close to the bank, in the long silence of the river.
+
+The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising; save for the lost music
+of the larks no birds were piping; alone, a single pigeon at brief
+intervals cooed from the neighbouring wood.
+
+They did not stay much longer in the boat.
+
+On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding a corner of the road,
+they came on Ferrand in his pince-nez, holding a cigarette between his
+fingers and talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the bank.  The young
+foreigner recognised them, and at once removed his hat.
+
+"There he is," said Shelton, returning the salute.
+
+Antonia bowed.
+
+"Oh!" she, cried, when they were out of hearing, "I wish he 'd go. I
+can't bear to see him; it's like looking at the dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ON THE WING
+
+That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for his
+unpleasant duty.  He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had better
+go.  He was still debating whether to write or go himself to the young
+foreigner, when there came a knock and Ferrand himself appeared.
+
+"I should be sorry," he said, breaking an awkward silence, "if you were
+to think me ungrateful, but I see no future for me here.  It would be
+better for me to go.  I should never be content to pass my life in
+teaching languages 'ce n'est guere dans mon caractre'."
+
+As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to find a way of saying
+had thus been said for him, Shelton experienced a sense of disapproval.
+
+"What do you expect to get that's better?" he said, avoiding Ferrand's
+eyes.
+
+"Thanks to your kindness," replied the latter, "I find myself restored.
+I feel that I ought to make some good efforts to dominate my social
+position."
+
+"I should think it well over, if I were you!" said Shelton.
+
+"I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my time.  For a man with any
+courage languages are no career; and, though I 've many defects, I still
+have courage."
+
+Shelton let his pipe go out, so pathetic seemed to him this young man's
+faith in his career; it was no pretended faith, but neither was it, he
+felt, his true motive for departure.  "He's tired," he thought; "that 's
+it.  Tired of one place."  And having the instinctive sense that nothing
+would keep Ferrand, he redoubled his advice.
+
+"I should have thought," he said, "that you would have done better to
+have held on here and saved a little before going off to God knows what."
+
+"To save," said Ferrand, "is impossible for me, but, thanks to you and
+your good friends, I 've enough to make front to first necessities.  I'm
+in correspondence with a friend; it's of great importance for me to reach
+Paris before all the world returns.  I 've a chance to get, a post in one
+of the West African companies.  One makes fortunes out there--if one
+survives, and, as you know, I don't set too much store by life."
+
+"We have a proverb," said Shelton, "'A bird in the hand is worth two
+birds in the bush!'"
+
+"That," returned Ferrand, "like all proverbs, is just half true. This is
+an affair of temperament.  It 's not in my character to dandle one when I
+see two waiting to be caught; 'voyager, apprendre, c'est plus fort que
+moi'."  He paused; then, with a nervous goggle of the eyes and an ironic
+smile he said: "Besides, 'mon cher monsieur', it is better that I go.  I
+have never been one to hug illusions, and I see pretty clearly that my
+presence is hardly acceptable in this house."
+
+"What makes you say that?" asked, Shelton, feeling that the murder was
+now out."
+
+"My dear sir, all the world has not your understanding and your lack of
+prejudice, and, though your friends have been extremely kind to me, I am
+in a false position; I cause them embarrassment, which is not
+extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and that they know my
+history."
+
+"Not through me," said Shelton quickly, "for I don't know it myself."
+
+"It's enough," the vagrant said, "that they feel I'm not a bird of their
+feather.  They cannot change, neither can I.  I have never wanted to
+remain where I 'm not welcome."
+
+Shelton turned to the window, and stared into the darkness; he would
+never quite understand this vagabond, so delicate, so cynical, and he
+wondered if Ferrand had been swallowing down the words, "Why, even you
+won't be sorry to see my back!"
+
+"Well," he said at last, "if you must go, you must.  When do you start?"
+
+"I 've arranged with a man to carry my things to the early train.  I
+think it better not to say good-bye.  I 've written a letter instead;
+here it is.  I left it open for you to read if you should wish,"
+
+"Then," said Shelton, with a curious mingling of relief, regret,
+good-will, "I sha'n't see you again?"
+
+Ferrand gave his hand a stealthy rub, and held it out.
+
+"I shall never forget what you have done for me," he said.
+
+"Mind you write," said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, yes"--the, vagrant's face was oddly twisted--"you don't know what a
+difference it makes to have a correspondent; it gives one courage.  I
+hope to remain a long time in correspondence with you."
+
+"I dare say you do," thought Shelton grimly, with a certain queer
+emotion.
+
+"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you for
+anything," said Ferrand.  "Thank you a thousand times. Good-bye!"
+
+He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out, left
+Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat.  "You will do me the justice
+to remember that I have never asked you for anything." The phrase seemed
+strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer acquaintanceship.  It
+was a fact: from the beginning to the end the youth had never really
+asked for anything.  Shelton sat down on his bed, and began to read the
+letter in his hand.  It was in French.
+
+DEAR MADAME (it ran),
+
+It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me for
+ungrateful.  Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me into
+the necessity of leaving your hospitality.  In all lives, as you are well
+aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I know that you
+will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an event which gives
+me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me subject to an imputation of
+ingratitude, which, believe me, dear Madame, by no means lies in my
+character.  I know well enough that it is a breach of politeness to leave
+you without in person conveying the expression of my profound
+reconnaissance, but if you consider how hard it is for me to be compelled
+to abandon all that is so distinguished in domestic life, you will
+forgive my weakness.  People like me, who have gone through existence
+with their eyes open, have remarked that those who are endowed with
+riches have a right to look down on such as are not by wealth and
+breeding fitted to occupy the same position.  I shall never dispute a
+right so natural and salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this
+superiority, which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart,
+the rest of the world would have no standard by which to rule their
+lives, no anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and
+of misfortune on which we others drive before the wind.  It is because of
+this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to have been
+able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called life, to sit
+beneath the tree of safety.  To have been able, if only for an hour, to
+sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the blistered feet and
+ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard within their hearts a
+certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the desert air which travellers
+will tell you fills men as with wine to be able thus to sit an hour, and
+with a smile to watch them pass, lame and blind, in all the rags of their
+deserved misfortunes, can you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be
+for such as I a comfort?  Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a
+position of security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a
+good sensation in the heart.
+
+In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of passing
+all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose, dear Madame,
+I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage to step beyond the
+boundaries of this fine tranquil state.  Yet, too, there have been times
+when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ from the wealthy--we
+others, birds of the fields, who have our own philosophy, grown from the
+pains of needing bread--we who see that the human heart is not always an
+affair of figures, or of those good maxims that one finds in
+copy-books--do we really differ?"  It is with shame that I confess to
+have asked myself a question so heretical.  But now, when for these four
+weeks I have had the fortune of this rest beneath your roof, I see how
+wrong I was to entertain such doubts.  It is a great happiness to have
+decided once for all this point, for it is not in my character to pass
+through life uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such
+as these. No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great
+difference, which in the future will be sacred for me.  For, believe me,
+Madame, it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should
+arise amongst them any understanding of all that side of life which--vast
+as the plains and bitter as the sea, black as the ashes of a corpse, and
+yet more free than any wings of birds who fly away--is so justly beyond
+the grasp of their philosophy.  Yes, believe me, dear Madame, there is no
+danger in the world so much to be avoided by all the members of that
+circle, most illustrious, most respectable, called high Society.
+
+From what I have said you may imagine how hard it is for me to take my
+flight.  I shall always keep for you the most distinguished sentiments.
+With the expression of my full regard for you and your good family, and
+of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly worded,
+
+                         Believe me, dear Madame,
+                                   Your devoted
+                                             LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton's first impulse was to tear the letter up, but this he reflected
+he had no right to do.  Remembering, too, that Mrs. Dennant's French was
+orthodox, he felt sure she would never understand the young foreigner's
+subtle innuendoes.  He closed the envelope and went to bed, haunted still
+by Ferrand's parting look.
+
+It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, however, that, having sent
+the letter to its destination by an early footman, he made his appearance
+at the breakfast-table.  Behind the Austrian coffee-urn, filled with
+French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had placed four eggs in a German
+egg-boiler, said "Good-morning," with a kindly smile.
+
+"Dick, an egg?" she asked him, holding up a fifth.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Shelton, greeting the table and fitting down.
+
+He was a little late; the buzz of conversation rose hilariously around.
+
+"My dear," continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking to his youngest
+daughter, "you'll have no chance whatever--not the least little bit of
+chance."
+
+"Father, what nonsense!  You know we shall beat your heads off!"
+
+"Before it 's too late, then, I will eat a muffin.  Shelton, pass the
+muffins!"  But in making this request, Mr. Dennant avoided looking in his
+face.
+
+Antonia, too, seemed to keep her eyes away from him.  She was talking to
+a Connoisseur on Art of supernatural appearances, and seemed in the
+highest spirits.  Shelton rose, and, going to the sideboard, helped
+himself to grouse.
+
+"Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the lawn?" he heard the
+Connoisseur remark.  "Struck me as having an--er--quite intelligent
+physiog."
+
+His own intelligent physiog, raised at a slight slant so that he might
+look the better through his nose-nippers, was the very pattern of
+approval.  "It's curious how one's always meeting with intelligence;" it
+seemed to say.  Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of adding cream, and
+Shelton scrutinised her face; it was hare-like, and superior as ever.
+Thank goodness she had smelt no rat!  He felt strangely disappointed.
+
+"You mean Monsieur Ferrand, teachin' Toddles French?  Dobson, the
+Professor's cup."
+
+"I hope I shall see him again," cooed the Connoisseur; "he was quite
+interesting on the subject of young German working men.  It seems they
+tramp from place to place to learn their trades.  What nationality was
+he, may I ask?"
+
+Mr. Dennant, of whom he asked this question, lifted his brows, and said,
+
+"Ask Shelton."
+
+"Half Dutch, half French."
+
+"Very interesting breed; I hope I shall see him again."
+
+"Well, you won't," said Thea suddenly; "he's gone."
+
+Shelton saw that their good breeding alone prevented all from adding,
+"And thank goodness, too!"
+
+"Gone?  Dear me, it's very--"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Dennant, "very sudden."
+
+"Now, Algie," murmured Mrs. Dennant, "it 's quite a charmin' letter. Must
+have taken the poor young man an hour to write."
+
+"Oh, mother!" cried Antonia.
+
+And Shelton felt his face go crimson.  He had suddenly remembered that
+her French was better than her mother's.
+
+"He seems to have had a singular experience," said the Connoisseur.
+
+"Yes," echoed Mr. Dennant; "he 's had some singular experience.  If you
+want to know the details, ask friend Shelton; it's quite romantic.  In
+the meantime, my dear; another cup?"
+
+The Connoisseur, never quite devoid of absent-minded malice, spurred his
+curiosity to a further effort; and, turning his well-defended eyes on
+Shelton, murmured,
+
+"Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems."
+
+"There is no history," said Shelton, without looking up.
+
+"Ah, that's very dull," remarked the Connoisseur.
+
+"My dear Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, "that was really a most touchin' story
+about his goin' without food in Paris."
+
+Shelton shot another look at Antonia; her face was frigid.  "I hate your
+d---d superiority!" he thought, staring at the Connoisseur.
+
+"There's nothing," said that gentleman, "more enthralling than
+starvation.  Come, Mr Shelton."
+
+"I can't tell stories," said Shelton; "never could."
+
+He cared not a straw for Ferrand, his coming, going, or his history; for,
+looking at Antonia, his heart was heavy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LADY FROM BEYOND
+
+The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy.  Antonia was at her music, and
+from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he could
+hear her practising her scales with a cold fury that cast an added gloom
+upon his spirit.  He did not see her until lunch, and then she again sat
+next the Connoisseur.  Her cheeks were pale, but there was something
+feverish in her chatter to her neighbour; she still refused to look at
+Shelton.  He felt very miserable.  After lunch, when most of them had
+left the table, the rest fell to discussing country neighbours.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Dennant, "there are the Foliots; but nobody calls
+on them."
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "the Foliots--the Foliots--the
+people--er--who--quite so!"
+
+"It's really distressin'; she looks so sweet ridin' about.  Many people
+with worse stories get called on," continued Mrs. Dennant, with that
+large frankness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which may be made by
+certain people in a certain way, "but, after all, one couldn't ask them
+to meet anybody."
+
+"No," the Connoisseur assented.  "I used to know Foliot.  Thousand
+pities.  They say she was a very pretty woman."
+
+"Oh, not pretty!"  said Mrs. Dennant! "more interestin than pretty, I
+should say."
+
+Shelton, who knew the lady slightly, noticed that they spoke of her as in
+the past.  He did not look towards Antonia; for, though a little troubled
+at her presence while such a subject was discussed, he hated his
+conviction that her face, was as unruffled as though the Foliots had been
+a separate species.  There was, in fact, a curiosity about her eyes, a
+faint impatience on her lips; she was rolling little crumbs of bread.
+Suddenly yawning, she muttered some remark, and rose.  Shelton stopped
+her at the door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+"May n't I come?".
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I 'm going to take Toddles."
+
+Shelton held the door open, and went back to the table.
+
+"Yes," the Connoisseur said, sipping at his sherry, "I 'm afraid it's all
+over with young Foliot."
+
+"Such a pity!" murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her kindly face looked quite
+disturbed.  "I've known him ever since he was a boy.  Of course, I think
+he made a great mistake to bring her down here.  Not even bein' able to
+get married makes it doubly awkward.  Oh, I think he made a great
+mistake!"
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "but d' you suppose that makes much
+difference?  Even if What 's--his-name gave her a divorce, I don't think,
+don't you know, that--"
+
+"Oh, it does!  So many people would be inclined to look over it in time.
+But as it is it's hopeless, quite.  So very awkward for people, too,
+meetin' them about.  The Telfords and the Butterwicks--by the way,
+they're comin' here to dine to-night--live near them, don't you know."
+
+"Did you ever meet her before-er-before the flood?" the Connoisseur
+inquired; and his lips parting and unexpectedly revealing teeth gave him
+a shadowy resemblance to a goat.
+
+"Yes; I did meet her once at the Branksomes'.  I thought her quite a
+charmin' person."
+
+"Poor fellow!"  said the Connoisseur; "they tell me he was going to take
+the hounds."
+
+"And there are his delightful coverts, too.  Algie often used to shoot
+there, and now they say he just has his brother down to shoot with him.
+It's really quite too melancholy!  Did you know him, Dick?"
+
+"Foliot?" replied Shelton absently.  "No; I never met him: I've seen her
+once or twice at Ascot."
+
+Through the window he could see Antonia in her scarlet Tam-o'-shanter,
+swinging her stick, and he got up feigning unconcern.  Just then Toddles
+came bounding up against his sister.  They went off arm in arm.  She had
+seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly glance; Shelton felt
+more miserable than ever.  He stepped out upon the drive.  There was a
+lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees drooped their heavy blackish
+green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-tree was gone, even the rooks were
+silent.  A store of force lay heavy on the heart of nature.  He started
+pacing slowly up and down, his pride forbidding him to follow her, and
+presently sat down on an old stone seat that faced the road.  He stayed a
+long time staring at the elms, asking himself what he had done and what
+he ought to do. And somehow he was frightened.  A sense of loneliness was
+on him, so real, so painful, that he shivered in the sweltering heat.  He
+was there, perhaps, an hour, alone, and saw nobody pass along the road.
+Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a
+motor-car approaching from the opposite direction.  The rider made
+appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head and
+tail.  She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the
+approaching car grew every moment louder.  Shelton rose; the car flashed
+by.  He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its rider up
+against the gatepost.
+
+He ran, but before he reached the gate the lady was on foot, holding the
+plunging horse's bridle.
+
+"Are you hurt?" cried Shelton breathlessly, and he, too, grabbed the
+bridle.  "Those beastly cars!"
+
+"I don't know," she said.  "Please don't; he won't let strangers touch
+him."
+
+Shelton let go, and watched her coax the horse.  She was rather tall,
+dressed in a grey habit, with a grey Russian cap upon her head, and he
+suddenly recognised the Mrs. Foliot whom they had been talking of at
+lunch.
+
+"He 'll be quiet now," she said, "if you would n't mind holding him a
+minute."
+
+She gave the reins to him, and leaned against the gate.  She was very
+pale.
+
+"I do hope he has n't hurt you," Shelton said.  He was quite close to
+her, well able to see her face--a curious face with high cheek-bones and
+a flatfish moulding, enigmatic, yet strangely passionate for all its
+listless pallor.  Her smiling, tightened lips were pallid; pallid, too,
+her grey and deep-set eyes with greenish tints; above all, pale the ashy
+mass of hair coiled under her grey cap.
+
+"Th-thanks!"  she said; "I shall be all right directly.  I'm sorry to
+have made a fuss."
+
+She bit her lips and smiled.
+
+"I 'm sure you're hurt; do let me go for--" stammered Shelton. "I can
+easily get help."
+
+"Help!"  she said, with a stony little laugh; "oh, no, thanks!"
+
+She left the gate, and crossed the road to where he held the horse.
+Shelton, to conceal embarrassment, looked at the horse's legs, and
+noticed that the grey was resting one of them.  He ran his hand down.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, "your horse has knocked his off knee; it's
+swelling."
+
+She smiled again.
+
+"Then we're both cripples."
+
+"He'll be lame when he gets cold.  Would n't you like to put him in the
+stable here?  I 'm sure you ought to drive home."
+
+"No, thanks; if I 'm able to ride him he can carry me.  Give me a hand
+up."
+
+Her voice sounded as though something had offended her.  Rising from
+inspection of the horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles standing
+by.  They had come through a wicketgate leading from the fields.
+
+The latter ran up to him at once.
+
+"We saw it," he whispered--"jolly smash-up.  Can't I help?"
+
+"Hold his bridle," answered Shelton, and he looked from one lady to the
+other.
+
+There are moments when the expression of a face fixes itself with painful
+clearness; to Shelton this was such a moment.  Those two faces close
+together, under their coverings of scarlet and of grey, showed a contrast
+almost cruelly vivid.  Antonia was flushed, her eyes had grown deep blue;
+her look of startled doubt had passed and left a question in her face.
+
+"Would you like to come in and wait?  We could send you home, in the
+brougham," she said.
+
+The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood, one arm across the crupper of her
+saddle, biting her lips and smiling still her enigmatic smile, and it was
+her face that stayed most vividly on Shelton's mind, its ashy hail, its
+pallor, and fixed, scornful eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, thanks!  You're very kind."
+
+Out of Antonia's face the timid, doubting friendliness had fled, and was
+replaced by enmity.  With a long, cold look at both of them she turned
+away.  Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and raised her foot for Shelton's
+help.  He heard a hiss of pain as he swung her up, but when he looked at
+her she smiled.
+
+"Anyway,"  he said impatiently, "let me come and see you don't break
+down."
+
+She shook her head.  "It 's only two miles.  I'm not made of sugar."
+
+"Then I shall simply have to follow."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, fixing her resolute eyes on him.
+
+"Would that boy like to come?" she asked.
+
+Toddles left the horse's head.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried.  "Would n't I just!"
+
+"Then," she said, "I think that will be best.  You 've been so kind."
+
+She bowed, smiled inscrutably once more, touched the Arab with her whip,
+and started, Toddles trotting at her side.
+
+Shelton was left with Antonia underneath the elms.  A sudden puff of
+tepid air blew in their faces, like a warning message from the heavy,
+purple heat clouds; low rumbling thunder travelled slowly from afar.
+
+"We're going to have a storm," he said.
+
+Antonia nodded.  She was pale now, and her face still wore its cold look
+of offence.
+
+"I 've got a headache," she said, "I shall go in and lie down."
+
+Shelton tried to speak, but something kept him silent--submission to what
+was coming, like the mute submission of the fields and birds to the
+menace of the storm.
+
+He watched her go, and went back to his seat.  And the silence seemed to
+grow; the flowers ceased to exude their fragrance, numbed by the weighty
+air.  All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted. No noise
+came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing of no bell;
+the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness.  And the silence added to
+the solitude within him.  What an unlucky chance, that woman's accident!
+Designed by Providence to put Antonia further from him than before!  Why
+was not the world composed of the immaculate alone?  He started pacing up
+and down, tortured by a dreadful heartache.
+
+"I must get rid of this," he thought.  "I 'll go for a good tramp, and
+chance the storm."
+
+Leaving the drive he ran on Toddles, returning in the highest spirits.
+
+"I saw her home," he crowed.  "I say, what a ripper, isn't she?  She 'll
+be as lame as a tree to-morrow; so will the gee.  Jolly hot!"
+
+This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an hour on the stone seat;
+he had thought it some ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed him.  It
+seemed to bring the import of his miserable fear right home to him.  He
+started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes fixed on the road, the
+perspiration streaming down his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE STORM
+
+It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few heat
+drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken. In
+brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple firmament.
+
+By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency. He
+felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement. He,
+bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the glass.  His
+fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream; how much worse
+off would he not have been, had it all been true?
+
+It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
+guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm.  Antonia was
+not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her entry.  Red
+faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-twisted hair were
+all around him.  Some one handed him a clove carnation, and, as he held
+it to his nose, Antonia came in, breathless, as though she had rushed
+down-stairs, Her cheeks were pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to
+her throat.  The flames of the coming storm seemed to have caught fire
+within her, to be scorching her in her white frock; she passed him close,
+and her fragrance whipped his senses.
+
+She had never seemed to him so lovely.
+
+Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
+without a strange emotion.  From where he sat at dinner he could not see
+Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass and
+silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought how he
+would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love. He drank the
+frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been water.
+
+The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick, soft
+shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned. There was
+not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the flowers; but two
+large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and wheeled between the
+lights over the diners' heads.  One fell scorched into a dish of fruit,
+and was removed; the other, eluding all the swish of napkins and the
+efforts of the footmen, continued to make soft, fluttering rushes till
+Shelton rose and caught it in his hand. He took it to the window and
+threw it out into the darkness, and he noticed that the air was thick and
+tepid to his face.  At a sign from Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were
+then drawn across the windows, and in gratitude, perhaps, for this
+protection, this filmy barrier between them and the muffled threats of
+Nature, everyone broke out in talk.  It was such a night as comes in
+summer after perfect weather, frightening in its heat, and silence, which
+was broken by the distant thunder travelling low along the ground like
+the muttering of all dark places on the earth--such a night as seems, by
+very breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to
+justify man's cowardice.
+
+The ladies rose at last.  The circle of the rosewood dining-table, which
+had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a likeness to some
+autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam under the sunset with
+red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of cigarettes was clinging,
+like a mist to water when the sun goes down. Shelton became involved in
+argument with his neighbour on the English character.
+
+"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said.  "Pleasure's a
+lost art.  We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to beauty,
+we've lost the eye for' it.  In exchange we have got money, but what 's
+the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?" Excited by his
+neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think so much of what our
+neighbours think that we never think at all.... Have you ever watched a
+foreigner when he's listening to an Englishman?  We 're in the habit of
+despising foreigners; the scorn we have for them is nothing to the scorn
+they have for us.  And they are right!  Look at our taste!  What is the
+good of owning riches if we don't know how to use them?"
+
+"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said.  "There may be something
+in it....  Did you see that case in the papers the other day of old
+Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a bottle?  When
+the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found eleven bottles out
+of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha!  Well, there's nothing wrong with
+this"; and he drained his glass.
+
+"No," answered Shelton.
+
+When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.
+
+At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat.  A heavy odour, sensual,
+sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous shrubs.
+He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils.  Putting his hand down, he
+felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with electricity.  Then he saw,
+pale and candescent in the blackness, three or four great lilies, the
+authors of that perfume.  The blossoms seemed to be rising at him through
+the darkness; as though putting up their faces to be kissed.  He
+straightened himself abruptly and went in.
+
+The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia slip
+through the drawing-room window.  He could follow the white glimmer of
+her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of the trees;
+casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he too slipped out.
+The blackness and the heat were stifling he took great breaths of it as
+if it were the purest mountain air, and, treading softly on the grass,
+stole on towards the holm oak.  His lips were dry, his heart beat
+painfully.  The mutter of the distant thunder had quite ceased; waves of
+hot air came wheeling in his face, and in their midst a sudden rush of
+cold.  He thought, "The storm is coming now!"  and stole on towards the
+tree.  She was lying in the hammock, her figure a white blur in, the
+heart of the tree's shadow, rocking gently to a little creaking of the
+branch.  Shelton held his breath; she had not heard him.  He crept up
+close behind the trunk till he stood in touch of her.  "I mustn't startle
+her," he thought. "Antonia!"
+
+There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer.  He stood over her,
+but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
+something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm and
+soft.  He whispered again, "Antonia!" but again there came no answer, and
+a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him.  He could no longer hear her
+breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased.  What was passing in that
+silent, living creature there so close?  And then he heard again the
+sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the fluttering of a bird; in a
+moment he was staring in the dark at an empty hammock.
+
+He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
+longer.  But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end by
+jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
+deafening crack the thunder broke.
+
+He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his own
+room, and threw himself down on the bed.  The thunder groaned and
+sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of things
+within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them all
+likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of utility, of
+their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons, abstractions, with
+indecency in their appearance, like the naked nerves and sinews of a leg
+preserved in, spirit.  The sound of the rain against the house stunned
+his power of thinking, he rose to shut his windows; then, returning to
+his bed, threw himself down again. He stayed there till the storm was
+over, in a kind of stupor; but when the boom of the retreating thunder
+grew every minute less distinct, he rose.  Then for the first time he saw
+something white close by the door.
+
+It was a note:
+
+I have made a mistake.  Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+WILDERNESS
+
+When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-links
+on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and laughed. But
+his lips soon stopped him laughing; he threw himself upon his bed and
+pressed his face into the pillows.  He lay there half-dressed throughout
+the night, and when he rose, soon after dawn, he had not made his mind up
+what to do.  The only thing he knew for certain was that he must not meet
+Antonia.
+
+At last he penned the following:
+
+I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and think it best to run up
+to the dentist at once.  If a tooth must come out, the sooner the better.
+
+He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his table.  After doing
+this he threw himself once more upon his bed, and this time fell into a
+doze.
+
+He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly out.  The likeness
+of his going to that of Ferrand struck him.  "Both outcasts now," he
+thought.
+
+He tramped on till noon without knowing or caring where he went; then,
+entering a field, threw himself down under the hedge, and fell asleep.
+
+He was awakened by a whirr.  A covey of partridges, with wings glistening
+in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field of mustard.
+They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges, and began to call
+upon each other.
+
+Some cattle had approached him in his sleep, and a beautiful bay cow,
+with her head turned sideways, was snuffing at him gently, exhaling her
+peculiar sweetness.  She was as fine in legs and coat as any race-horse.
+She dribbled at the corners of her black, moist lips; her eye was soft
+and cynical.  Breathing the vague sweetness of the mustard-field, rubbing
+dry grasp-stalks in his fingers, Shelton had a moment's happiness--the
+happiness of sun and sky, of the eternal quiet, and untold movements of
+the fields.  Why could not human beings let their troubles be as this cow
+left the flies that clung about her eyes?  He dozed again, and woke up
+with a laugh, for this was what he dreamed:
+
+He fancied he was in a room, at once the hall and drawing-room of some
+country house.  In the centre of this room a lady stood, who was looking
+in a hand-glass at her face.  Beyond a door or window could be seen a
+garden with a row of statues, and through this door people passed without
+apparent object.
+
+Suddenly Shelton saw his mother advancing to the lady with the
+hand-glass, whom now he recognised as Mrs. Foliot.  But, as he looked,
+his mother changed to Mrs. Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that
+was a sort of abstract of refinement.  "Je fais de la philosophic," it
+said; "I take the individual for what she's worth.  I do not condemn;
+above all, one must have spirit!"  The lady with the mirror continued
+looking in the glass; and, though he could not see her face, he could see
+its image-pale, with greenish eyes, and a smile like scorn itself.  Then,
+by a swift transition, he was walking in the garden talking to Mrs.
+Dennant.
+
+It was from this talk that he awoke with laughter.  "But," she had been
+saying, "Dick, I've always been accustomed to believe what I was told.
+It was so unkind of her to scorn me just because I happen to be
+second-hand."  And her voice awakened Shelton's pity; it was like a
+frightened child's.  "I don't know what I shall do if I have to form
+opinions for myself.  I was n't brought up to it.  I 've always had them
+nice and secondhand.  How am I to go to work?  One must believe what
+other people do; not that I think much of other people, but, you do know
+what it is--one feels so much more comfortable," and her skirts rustled.
+"But, Dick, whatever happens"--her voice entreated--"do let Antonia get
+her judgments secondhand.  Never mind for me--if I must form opinions for
+myself, I must--but don't let her; any old opinions so long as they are
+old.  It 's dreadful to have to think out new ones for oneself."  And he
+awoke.  His dream had had in it the element called Art, for, in its gross
+absurdity, Mrs. Dennant had said things that showed her soul more fully
+than anything she would have said in life.
+
+"No," said a voice quite close, behind the hedge, "not many Frenchmen,
+thank the Lord!  A few coveys of Hungarians over from the Duke's.  Sir
+James, some pie?"
+
+Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity--still half asleep--and
+applied his face to a gap in the high, thick osiers of the hedge. Four
+men were seated on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which was a pie
+and other things to eat.  A game-cart, well-adorned with birds and hares,
+stood at a short distance; the tails of some dogs were seen moving
+humbly, and a valet opening bottles.  Shelton had forgotten that it was
+"the first."  The host was a soldierly and freckled man; an older man sat
+next him, square-jawed, with an absent-looking eye and sharpened nose;
+next him, again, there was a bearded person whom they seemed to call the
+Commodore; in the fourth, to his alarm, Shelton recognised the gentleman
+called Mabbey.  It was really no matter for surprise to meet him miles
+from his own place, for he was one of those who wander with a valet and
+two guns from the twelfth of August to the end of January, and are then
+supposed to go to Monte Carlo or to sleep until the twelfth of August
+comes again.
+
+He was speaking.
+
+"Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth, Sir James?"
+
+"Ah! yes; what was that?  Have you sold your bay horse, Glennie?"
+
+Shelton had not decided whether or no to sneak away, when the Commodore's
+thick voice began:
+
+"My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot--haw--has lamed her Arab.  Does she
+mean to come out cubbing?"
+
+Shelton observed the smile that came on all their faces.  "Foliot 's
+paying for his good time now; what a donkey to get caught!" it seemed to
+say.  He turned his back and shut his eyes.
+
+"Cubbing?" replied Glennie; "hardly."
+
+"Never could shee anything wonderful in her looks," went on the
+Commodore; "so quiet, you never knew that she was in the room.  I
+remember sayin' to her once, 'Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like besht
+in all the world?' and what do you think she answered?  'Music!' Haw!"
+
+The voice of Mabbey said:
+
+"He was always a dark horse, Foliot: It 's always the dark horses that
+get let in for this kind of thing"; and there was a sound as though he
+licked his lips.
+
+"They say," said the voice of the host, "he never gives you back a
+greeting now.  Queer fish; they say that she's devoted to him."
+
+Coming so closely on his meeting with this lady, and on the dream from
+which he had awakened, this conversation mesmerised the listener behind
+the hedge.
+
+"If he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I don't see what the deuce
+he 'll do; he's resigned his clubs; as to his chance of Parliament--"
+said the voice of Mabbey.
+
+"Thousand pities," said Sir James; "still, he knew what to expect."
+
+"Very queer fellows, those Foliots," said the Commodore.  "There was his
+father: he 'd always rather talk to any scarecrow he came across than to
+you or me.  Wonder what he'll do with all his horses; I should like that
+chestnut of his."
+
+"You can't tell what a fellow 'll do," said the voice of Mabbey--"take to
+drink or writin' books.  Old Charlie Wayne came to gazin' at stars, and
+twice a week he used to go and paddle round in Whitechapel, teachin'
+pothooks--"
+
+"Glennie," said Sir James, "what 's become of Smollett, your old keeper?"
+
+"Obliged to get rid of him."  Shelton tried again to close his ears, but
+again he listened.  "Getting a bit too old; lost me a lot of eggs last
+season."
+
+"Ah!"  said the Commodore, "when they oncesh begin to lose eggsh--"
+
+"As a matter of fact, his son--you remember him, Sir James, he used to
+load for you?--got a girl into trouble; when her people gave her the
+chuck old Smollet took her in; beastly scandal it made, too.  The girl
+refused to marry Smollett, and old Smollett backed her up. Naturally, the
+parson and the village cut up rough; my wife offered to get her into one
+of those reformatory what-d' you-call-'ems, but the old fellow said she
+should n't go if she did n't want to.  Bad business altogether; put him
+quite off his stroke.  I only got five hundred pheasants last year
+instead of eight."
+
+There was a silence.  Shelton again peeped through the hedge.  All were
+eating pie.
+
+"In Warwickshire," said the Commodore, "they always marry--haw--and live
+reshpectable ever after."
+
+"Quite so," remarked the host; "it was a bit too thick, her refusing to
+marry him.  She said he took advantage of her."
+
+"She's sorry by this time," said Sir James; "lucky escape for young
+Smollett.  Queer, the obstinacy of some of these old fellows!"
+
+"What are we doing after lunch?" asked the Commodore.
+
+"The next field," said the host, "is pasture.  We line up along the
+hedge, and drive that mustard towards the roots; there ought to be a good
+few birds."
+
+"Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly to the gate:
+
+"On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties," followed the voice of Mabbey
+from the distance.
+
+Whether from his walk or from his sleepless night, Shelton seemed to ache
+in every limb; but he continued his tramp along the road.  He was no
+nearer to deciding what to do.  It was late in the afternoon when he
+reached Maidenhead, and, after breaking fast, got into a London train and
+went to sleep.  At ten o'clock that evening he walked into St. James's
+Park and there sat down.
+
+The lamplight dappled through the tired foliage on to these benches which
+have rested many vagrants.  Darkness has ceased to be the lawful cloak of
+the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft and moonless, and man had not
+despoiled her of her comfort, quite.
+
+Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the far end was sitting a
+young girl with a red, round, sullen face; and beyond, and further still,
+were dim benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though life's
+institutions had shot them out in an endless line of rubbish.
+
+"Ah!"  thought Shelton, in the dreamy way of tired people; "the
+institutions are all right; it's the spirit that's all--"
+
+"Wrong?"  said a voice behind him; "why, of course!  You've taken the
+wrong turn, old man."
+
+He saw a policeman, with a red face shining through the darkness, talking
+to a strange old figure like some aged and dishevelled bird.
+
+"Thank you, constable," the old man said, "as I've come wrong I'll take a
+rest."  Chewing his gums, he seemed to fear to take the liberty of
+sitting down.
+
+Shelton made room, and the old fellow took the vacant place.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure," he said in shaky tones, and snatching
+at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"--and lovingly he dwelt
+upon the word--"would n't disturb you for the world.  I'm not used to
+being out at night, and the seats do get so full.  Old age must lean on
+something; you'll excuse me, sir, I 'm sure."
+
+"Of course," said Shelton gently.
+
+"I'm a respectable old man, really," said his neighbour; "I never took a
+liberty in my life.  But at my age, sir, you get nervous; standin' about
+the streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in them
+doss-houses--Oh, they're dreadful rough places--a dreadful rough lot
+there!  Yes," the old man said again, as Shelton turned to look at him,
+struck by the real self-pity in his voice, "dreadful rough places!"
+
+A movement of his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that of
+an old fowl, had brought his face into the light.  It was long, and run
+to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips were
+twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth; and his
+eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into a thin rim
+round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the films over
+parrots' eyes.  He was, or should have been, clean-shaven. His hair--for
+he had taken off his hat was thick and lank, of dusty colour, as far as
+could be seen, without a  speck of grey, and parted very beautifully just
+about the middle.
+
+"I can put up with that," he said again.  "I never interferes with
+nobody, and nobody don't interfere with me; but what frightens me"--his
+voice grew steady, as if too terrified to shake, is never knowin' day to
+day what 's to become of yer.  Oh, that 'a dreadful, that is!"
+
+"It must be," answered Shelton.
+
+"Ah! it is," the old man said; "and the winter cumin' on.  I never was
+much used to open air, bein' in domestic service all my life; but I don't
+mind that so long as I can see my way to earn a livin'. Well, thank God!
+I've got a job at last"; and his voice grew cheerful suddenly.  "Sellin'
+papers is not what I been accustomed to; but the Westminister, they tell
+me that's one of the most respectable of the evenin' papers--in fact, I
+know it is.  So now I'm sure to get on; I try hard."
+
+"How did you get the job?" asked Shelton.
+
+"I 've got my character," the old fellow said, making a gesture with a
+skinny hand towards his chest, as if it were there he kept his character.
+
+"Thank God, nobody can't take that away!  I never parts from that"; and
+fumbling, he produced a packet, holding first one paper to the light, and
+then another, and he looked anxiously at Shelton.  "In that house where I
+been sleepin' they're not honest; they 've stolen a parcel of my
+things--a lovely shirt an' a pair of beautiful gloves a gentleman gave me
+for holdin' of his horse.  Now, would n't you prosecute 'em, sir?"
+
+"It depends on what you can prove."
+
+"I know they had 'em.  A man must stand up for his rights; that's only
+proper.  I can't afford to lose beautiful things like them.  I think I
+ought to prosecute, now, don't you, sir?"
+
+Shelton restrained a smile.
+
+"There!"  said the old man, smoothing out a piece of paper shakily,
+"that's Sir George!"  and his withered finger-tips trembled on the middle
+of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as butler, during
+which time I have found him all that a servant should be.'  And this
+'ere'--he fumbled with another--"this 'ere 's Lady Glengow: 'Joshua
+Creed--' I thought I'd like you to read 'em since you've been so kind."
+
+"Will you have a pipe?"
+
+"Thank  ye, sir," replied the aged butler, filling his clay from
+Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and his
+thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a sort of
+melancholy pride.
+
+"My teeth's a-comin' out," he said; "but I enjoys pretty good health for
+a man of my age."
+
+"How old is that?"
+
+"Seventy-two!  Barrin' my cough, and my rupture, and this 'ere
+affliction"--he passed his hand over his face--"I 've nothing to complain
+of; everybody has somethink, it seems.  I'm a wonder for my age, I
+think."
+
+Shelton, for all his pity, would have given much to laugh.
+
+"Seventy-two!" he said; "yes, a great age.  You remember the country when
+it was very different to what it is now?"
+
+"Ah!" said the old butler, "there was gentry then; I remember them
+drivin' down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own horses.
+There was n't so much o' these here middle classes then. There was more,
+too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness in people then--none
+o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin' his own little shop; not so
+eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as you might say.  And then look at
+the price of bread!  O dear! why, it is n't a quarter what it was!"
+
+"And are people happier now than they were then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The old butler sucked his pipe.
+
+"No," he answered, shaking his old head; "they've lost the contented
+spirit.  I see people runnin' here and runnin' there, readin' books,
+findin' things out; they ain't not so self-contented as they were."
+
+"Is that possible?" thought Shelton.
+
+"No," repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time
+blowing out a lot of smoke; "I don't see as much happiness about, not the
+same look on the faces.  'T isn't likely.  See these 'ere motorcars, too;
+they say 'orses is goin' out"; and, as if dumbfounded at his own
+conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the lighting and
+relighting of his pipe.
+
+The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down
+again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes.  The policeman
+had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces; his glance was
+jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and then was modified by
+curiosity.
+
+"There's good men in the police," the aged butler said, when the
+policeman had passed on--"there's good men in the police, as good men as
+you can see, and there 's them that treats you like the dirt--a dreadful
+low class of man.  Oh dear, yes! when they see you down in the world,
+they think they can speak to you as they like; I don't give them no
+chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak civil to all the
+world.  You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh dear! if they 're
+crossed--some of them--they 're a dreadful unscrup'lous lot of men!"
+
+"Are you going to spend the night here?"
+
+"It's nice and warm to-night," replied the aged butler.  "I said to the
+man at that low place I said: 'Don't you ever speak to me again,' I said,
+'don't you come near me!'  Straightforward and honest 's been my motto
+all my life; I don't want to have nothing to say to them low fellows"--he
+made an annihilating gesture--"after the way they treated me, takin' my
+things like that.  Tomorrow I shall get a room for three shillin's a
+week, don't you think so, sir?  Well, then I shall be all right.  I 'm
+not afraid now; the mind at rest.  So long as I ran keep myself, that's
+all I want.  I shall do first-rate, I think"; and he stared at Shelton,
+but the look in his eyes and the half-scared optimism of his voice
+convinced the latter that he lived in dread.  "So long as I can keep
+myself," he said again, "I sha'n't need no workhouse nor lose
+respectability."
+
+"No," thought Shelton; and for some time sat without a word.  "When you
+can;" he said at last, "come and see me; here's my card."
+
+The aged butler became conscious with a jerk, for he was nodding.
+
+"Thank ye, sir; I will," he said, with pitiful alacrity.  "Down by
+Belgravia?  Oh, I know it well; I lived down in them parts with a
+gentleman of the name of Bateson--perhaps you knew him; he 's dead
+now--the Honourable Bateson.  Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to come"; and,
+snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely secreted Shelton's card
+amongst his character.  A minute later he began again to nod.
+
+The policeman passed a second time; his gaze seemed to say, "Now, what's
+a toff doing on that seat with those two rotters?"  And Shelton caught
+his eye.
+
+"Ah!"  he thought; "exactly!  You don't know what to make of me--a man of
+my position sitting here!  Poor devil! to spend your days in spying on
+your fellow-creatures!  Poor devil!  But you don't know that you 're a
+poor devil, and so you 're not one."
+
+The man on the next bench sneezed--a shrill and disapproving sneeze.
+
+The policeman passed again, and, seeing that the lower creatures were
+both dozing, he spoke to Shelton:
+
+"Not very safe on these 'ere benches, sir," he said; "you never know who
+you may be sittin' next to.  If I were you, sir, I should be gettin'
+on--if you 're not goin' to spend the night here, that is"; and he
+laughed, as at an admirable joke.
+
+Shelton looked at him, and itched to say, "Why shouldn't I?" but it
+struck him that it would sound very odd.  "Besides," he thought, "I shall
+only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat, and went
+along towards his rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE END
+
+He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting to
+light up, he dropped into a chair.  The curtains and blinds had been
+removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's staring
+gaze.  Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as one lost man
+might fix his eyes upon another.
+
+An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
+whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
+perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation still
+clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his queer
+trance.  There was a decision to be made.  He rose to light a candle; the
+dust was thick on everything he touched.  "Ugh!"  he thought, "how
+wretched!"  and the loneliness that had seized him on the stone seat at
+Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful force.
+
+On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and circulars.
+He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random haste of men back
+from their holidays.  A single long envelope was placed apart.
+
+MY DEAR DICK [he read],
+
+I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement.
+It is now shipshape.  Return it before the end of the week, and I
+will have it engrossed for signature.  I go to Scotland next
+Wednesday for a month; shall be back in good time for your wedding.
+My love to your mother when you see her.
+               Your-affectionate uncle,
+                         EDMUND PARAMOR.
+
+Shelton smiled and took out the draft.
+
+"This Indenture made the___day of 190_, between Richard Paramor
+Shelton--"
+
+He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the foreign
+vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to preach
+philosophy.
+
+He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and, taking
+his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and gazing in the
+mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in its wretchedness.
+He went at last into the hall and opened the door, to go downstairs again
+into the street; but the sudden certainty that, in street or house, in
+town or country, he would have to take his trouble with him, made him
+shut it to.  He felt in the letterbox, drew forth a letter, and with this
+he went back to the sitting-room.
+
+It was from Antonia.  And such was his excitement that he was forced to
+take three turns between the window and the wall before he could read;
+then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the paper, he
+began:
+
+I was wrong to ask you to go away.  I see now that it was breaking my
+promise, and I did n't mean to do that.  I don't know why things have
+come to be so different.  You never think as I do about anything.
+
+I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to mother
+was impudent.  Of course you did n't know what was in it; but when
+Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt that you
+believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't understand it.
+And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse, it was all as
+if you were on her side.  How can you feel like that?
+
+I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to go
+away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I should
+feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me. I was awake
+all last night, and have a bad headache this morning.  I can't write any
+more.
+ANTONIA.
+
+His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in it
+an element of anger.  He was reprieved!  She would not break her promise;
+she considered herself bound!  In the midst of the exaltation of this
+thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.
+
+He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she had
+written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had led up to
+this.
+
+The vagrant's farewell document had done the business.  True to his fatal
+gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished without
+showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton those
+colours were made plain.  Antonia had felt her lover was a traitor.
+Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision, Shelton knew that
+this was true.
+
+"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-"  That woman! "It
+was as if you were on her side!"
+
+He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive perception of
+that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its instinct for
+self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those without that
+instinct.  And she had written these words considering herself bound to
+him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies, of untidiness of
+principle!  Here was the answer to the question he had asked all day:
+"How have things come to such a pass?" and he began to feel compassion
+for her.
+
+Poor child!  She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in the
+word!  Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented him and
+thrown him over.  No lady did these things!  They were impossible!  At
+the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious sympathy with, this
+impossibility.
+
+Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with fresh
+meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first sensation of
+relief detached itself and grew in force.  In that letter there was
+something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a separate point of
+view.  It was like a finger pointed at him as an unsound person.  In
+marrying her he would be marrying not only her, but her class--his class.
+She would be there always to make him look on her and on himself, and all
+the people that they knew and all the things they did, complacently; she
+would be there to make him feel himself superior to everyone whose life
+was cast in other moral moulds.  To feel himself superior, not blatantly,
+not consciously, but with subconscious righteousness.
+
+But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had made
+him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority," struck
+him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.  What was the good of being
+angry?  He was on the point of losing her!  And the anguish of that
+thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold. She was so
+certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her natural
+impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him. Of that fact,
+at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt.  It was beyond argument.
+She did not really love him; she wanted to be free of him!
+
+A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the hall
+door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady Bonington,
+Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were there; and on
+the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her, Antonia.  Her face
+in its youthfulness, more than all those others, expressed their point of
+view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a world of safety and tradition.
+"I am not as others are," they seemed to say.
+
+And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out; he
+could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar and
+uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still decisive, but
+a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:
+
+"He 's made a donkey of himself!"
+
+"Ah! it's too distressin'!"
+
+They, too, thought him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the
+situation they would be glad to keep him.  She did n't want him, but she
+refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their
+promises; I will not!"  He sat down at the table between the candles,
+covering his face.  His grief and anger grew and grew within him.  If she
+would not free herself, the duty was on him!  She was ready without love
+to marry him, as a sacrifice to her ideal of what she ought to be!
+
+But she had n't, after all, the monopoly of pride!
+
+As if she stood before him, he could see the shadows underneath her eyes
+that he had dreamed of kissing, the eager movements of her lips. For
+several minutes he remained, not moving hand or limb.  Then once more his
+anger blazed.  She was going to sacrifice herself and--him!  All his
+manhood scoffed at such a senseless sacrifice.  That was not exactly what
+he wanted!
+
+He went to the bureau, took a piece of paper and an envelope, and wrote
+as follows:
+
+There never was, is not, and never would have been any question of being
+bound between us.  I refuse to trade on any such thing.  You are
+absolutely free.  Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+He sealed it, and, sitting with his hands between his knees, he let his
+forehead droop lower and lower to the table, till it rested on his
+marriage settlement.  And he had a feeling of relief, like one who drops
+exhausted at his journey's end.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
+#10 in our series by John Galsworthy
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+Title: The Island Pharisees
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+August, 2001  [Etext #2771]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
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+
+
+
+THE ISLAND PHARISEES
+
+by JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+"But this is a worshipful society"
+KING JOHN
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go
+a journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road.  At
+first he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands
+reaching at nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space.
+As soon as he can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the
+love of life, straight along this road, looking neither to the right
+nor left, so pleased is he to walk.  And he is charmed with
+everything--with the nice flat road, all broad and white, with his
+own feet, and with the prospect he can see on either hand.  The sun
+shines, and he finds the road a little hot and dusty; the rain falls,
+and he splashes through the muddy puddles.  It makes no matter--all
+is pleasant; his fathers went this way before him; they made this
+road for him to tread, and, when they bred him, passed into his fibre
+the love of doing things as they themselves had done them.  So he
+walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights under the roofs that
+have been raised to shelter him, by those who went before.
+
+Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
+in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
+undiscovered.  After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge;
+one day, with a beating heart, he tries one.
+
+And this is where the fun begins.
+
+Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
+the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they
+say: "No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after
+that-ah! after that!  The way my fathers went is good enough for me,
+and it is obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and
+that poor silly tenth--I really pity him!"
+
+And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed,
+bed, he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had
+to spend the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think,
+occur to him that the broad road he treads all day was once a
+trackless heath itself.
+
+But the poor silly tenth is faring on.  It is a windy night that he
+is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
+nothing to help him but his courage.  Nine times out of ten that
+courage fails, and he goes down into the bog.  He has seen the
+undiscovered, and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has
+engulfed him; his spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that
+burned back to sleep in inns, was yet not tough enough.  The tenth
+time he wins across, and on the traces he has left others follow
+slowly, cautiously--a new road is opened to mankind!  A true saying
+goes: Whatever is, is right!  And if all men from the world's
+beginning had said that, the world would never have begun--at all.
+Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its journey;.
+there would have been no motive force to make it start.
+
+And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could
+set up business: Whatever is, is wrong!  But since the Cosmic Spirit
+found that matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that
+are, are wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that
+are, are right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a
+spiritual way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All
+things that are, are wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking
+"All things that are, are right."  The Cosmic Spirit, who was very
+much an artist, knew its work, and had previously devised a quality
+called courage, and divided it in three, naming the parts spiritual,
+moral, physical.  To all the male-bird spirits, but to no female
+(spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It gave courage that was
+spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It gave courage that
+was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave moral courage
+too.  But, because It knew that if all the male-bird spirits were
+complete, the proportion of male to female--one to ten--would be too
+great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only one in ten male-
+bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so that the
+other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in moral or
+in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.  And
+having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as
+best they might.
+
+Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
+proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
+course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with
+every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
+interesting question ought to be, "Am I that one?"  Ninety very soon
+find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others
+should discover, they say they are.  Nine of the other ten, blinded
+by their spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one
+they sink, still proclaiming their virility.  The hundredth Pharisee
+alone sits out the play.
+
+Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
+hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of
+the truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All
+things that are, are right."
+
+The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
+countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing
+of the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's
+frock.  Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in
+their fashion they are always thirty years at least behind the
+fashions of those spirits who are concerned with what shall take
+their place.  The conditions that dictate our education, the
+distribution of our property, our marriage laws, amusements, worship,
+prisons, and all other things, change imperceptibly from hour to
+hour; the moulds containing them, being inelastic, do not change, but
+hold on to the point of bursting, and then are hastily, often
+clumsily, enlarged.  The ninety desiring peace and comfort for their
+spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have it that the
+fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is ordered
+and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and worship in
+the way that they themselves are marrying, playing, worshipping.
+They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred those who
+speculate with thought.  This is the function they were made for.
+They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life which
+comes and works about in them.  The Yeasty Stuff--the other
+ten--chafed by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and
+moulds, hate in their turn the comfortable ninety.  Each party has
+invented for the other the hardest names that it can think of:
+Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
+Ne'er-do-weels.  So we go on!  And so, as each of us is born to go
+his journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the
+other, and joins the choruses of name-slingers.
+
+But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that
+thing which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them
+both, and positively smile to see the fun.
+
+When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
+Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--
+and so, no doubt, he is.  Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they
+felt, in fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of
+the ten.  Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their
+epithets upon Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called
+them Pharisees; as dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.
+
+One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
+the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons, of
+analysing human nature through the criticism that his work evokes--
+criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions, out of
+the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
+often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a
+fawn from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy.  And so, all
+authors love to be abused--as any man can see.
+
+In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
+whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
+Island.
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+January 1, 1908
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE TOWN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIETY
+
+A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a
+short, fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station.  He was
+about to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner
+of a third-class carriage.
+
+After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
+offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
+answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man
+and wife.  The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness
+of the station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people,
+air, and voices, all brought to him the sense of home.  Meanwhile he
+wavered between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he
+had read and would ,certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's
+French Revolution, which he had not read and was doubtful of
+enjoying; he felt that he ought to buy the latter, but he did not
+relish giving up the former.  While he hesitated thus, his carriage
+was beginning to fill up; so, quickly buying both, he took up a
+position from which he could defend his rights.  "Nothing," he
+thought, "shows people up like travelling."
+
+The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack,
+he took his seat.  At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a
+girl with a pale face, scrambled in.
+
+"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
+from behind his journal.
+
+They were seven.  A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
+pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
+with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their
+lives in the current of hard facts.  Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-
+shouldered man was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged
+person the condition of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes
+till it occurred to him how curious a look was in them--a watchful
+friendliness, an allied distrust--and that their voices, cheerful,
+even jovial, seemed to be cautious all the time.  His glance strayed
+off, and almost rebounded from the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and
+wholly self-complacent face of a stout lady in a black-and-white
+costume, who was reading the Strand Magazine, while her other, sleek,
+plump hand, freed from its black glove, and ornamented with a thick
+watch-bracelet, rested on her lap.  A younger, bright-cheeked, and
+self-conscious female was sitting next her, looking at the pale girl
+who had just got in.
+
+"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't
+like."  Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were
+of a foreign cut.  Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of
+eyes; these eyes, prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle
+roguery from above a thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted.
+They gave Shelton the impression that he was being judged, and
+mocked, enticed, initiated.  His own gaze did not fall; this sanguine
+face, with its two-day growth of reddish beard, long nose, full lips,
+and irony, puzzled him.  "A cynical face!" he thought, and then, "but
+sensitive!" and then, "too cynical," again.
+
+The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
+dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his
+yellow finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes.  A strange air
+of detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap
+of luggage filled the rack above his head.
+
+The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
+possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select
+him for her confidence.
+
+"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?
+
+"The young man shook his head.
+
+"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."
+
+The girl sighed.
+
+"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"
+
+The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
+Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on
+animals at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards
+the figures of the foreigners.
+
+
+"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
+evening--old Tom."
+
+"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."
+
+Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust.
+The plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved
+convulsively; and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating
+Shelton's heart.  It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be
+asked for something.
+
+"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
+unhappy; can you tell me what to do?  I had no money for a ticket."
+
+The foreign youth's face flickered.
+
+"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."
+
+"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.
+
+"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle."  The young man slid his eyes from
+left to right, and rested them on Shelton.  "Although I don't as yet
+see your way out."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none
+but Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly
+feeling in the carriage.
+
+"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately--
+--" he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to
+Shelton.
+
+The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.
+
+"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.
+
+"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest
+possible service by lending her the money for a ticket."
+
+Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took.  Passing it.
+to the girl, he said:
+
+"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"
+
+The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
+mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he
+stole covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to
+the girl in a language that he did not understand.  Though vagabond
+in essence, the fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and
+irony not found upon the face of normal man, and in turning from it
+to the other passengers Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt,
+and questioning, that he could not define.  Leaning back with half-
+closed eyes, he tried to diagnose this new sensation.  He found it
+disconcerting that the faces and behaviour of his neighbours lacked
+anything he could grasp and secretly abuse.  They continued to
+converse with admirable and slightly conscious phlegm, yet he knew,
+as well as if each one had whispered to him privately, that this
+shady incident had shaken them.  Something unsettling to their
+notions of propriety-something dangerous and destructive of
+complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.  Each had a
+different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or sly,
+of showing this resentment.  But by a flash of insight Shelton saw
+that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
+same.  Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them
+and with himself.  He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman
+with the Roman nose.  The insulation and complacency of its pale
+skin, the passive righteousness about its curve, the prim separation
+from the others of the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly
+unaccountable importance.  It embodied the verdict of his fellow-
+passengers, the verdict of Society; for he knew that, whether or no
+repugnant to the well-bred mind, each assemblage of eight persons,
+even in a third-class carriage, contains the kernel of Society.
+
+But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be
+immune from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental
+image of the cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant
+smile that now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination; he
+took out his fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the young
+foreigner addressing him in rapid French caused him to put it back
+abruptly.
+
+"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
+hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case.  I should have been
+only too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by
+which Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am
+not Rothschild.  She has been abandoned by the man who brought her
+over to Dover under promise of marriage.  Look"--and by a subtle
+flicker of his eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from
+the French girl "they take good care not to let their garments touch
+her.  They are virtuous women.  How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and
+finer to know you have it, especially when you are never likely to be
+tempted."
+
+Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face
+grew soft.
+
+"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those
+who by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce
+judgment are usually the first to judge?  The judgments of Society
+are always childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of
+individuals who have never smelt the fire.  And look at this: they
+who have money run too great a risk of parting with it if they don't
+accuse the penniless of being rogues and imbeciles."
+
+Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from
+an utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of
+his own private thoughts.  Stifling his sense of the unusual for the
+queer attraction this young man inspired, he said:
+
+"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"
+
+"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied
+the other.  "I count on doing some good there--it is time!"  A bitter
+and pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips.  "It won't be my
+fault if I fail.  You are English, Sir?"
+
+Shelton nodded.
+
+"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always
+noticed in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--
+cocksureness, coming from your nation's greatest quality."
+
+"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.
+
+"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.
+
+"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"
+
+"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a
+great people.  You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on
+the earth; you suffer a little from the fact.  If I were an English
+preacher my desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."
+
+Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
+
+"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're
+any cockier than other nations."
+
+The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
+
+"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease.  Look
+at these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the
+inmates of the carnage,--"very average persons!  What have they done
+to warrant their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as
+they do?  That old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at
+all--but look at those two occupied with their stupidities about the
+price of hops, the prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a
+thousand things all of that sort--look at their faces; I come of the
+bourgeoisie myself--have they ever shown proof of any quality that
+gives them the right to pat themselves upon the back?  No fear!
+Outside potatoes they know nothing, and what they do not understand
+they dread and they despise--there are millions of that breed.
+'Voila la Societe'!  The sole quality these people have shown they
+have is cowardice.  I was educated by the Jesuits," he concluded; "it
+has given me a way of thinking."
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-
+bred voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the
+Daily Telegraph.  In place of this, for some reason that he did not
+understand, he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
+
+"Why do you say all this to me?"
+
+The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--
+hesitated.
+
+"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
+truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you
+speak.  It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you
+must learn all that sort of thing to make face against life."
+
+Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but
+observe the complimentary nature of these words.  It was like saying
+"I'm not afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal
+just because I study human nature."
+
+"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"
+
+His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her.  She's going to a
+cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the
+means of getting there--it's all that you can do.  One knows too well
+what'll become of her."
+
+Shelton said gravely,
+
+"Oh!  that's horrible!  Could n't she be induced to go back home?  I
+should be glad--"
+
+The foreign vagrant shook his head.
+
+"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had
+occasion to know what the 'family' is like.  'The family' does not
+like damaged goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands
+have dipped into the till or daughters no longer to be married.  What
+the devil would they do with her?  Better put a stone about her neck
+and let her drown at once.  All the world is Christian, but Christian
+and good Samaritan are not quite the same."
+
+Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her
+hands crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of
+life arose within him.
+
+"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts,
+"what's called virtue is nearly always only luck."  He rolled his
+eyes as though to say: "Ah! La, Conventions?  Have them by all means
+--but don't look like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is
+but cowardice and luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"
+
+"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she
+wants to go back to her family she can write to me."
+
+"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."
+
+Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop
+of her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the
+young man's words were true came over him.
+
+"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing
+at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard
+Paramor Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."
+
+"You're very good, sir.  My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at
+present.  I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."
+
+Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read;
+the young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears.  He raised his
+eyes.  The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on
+her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white
+stitching.  Her frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he
+had outraged her sense of decency.
+
+"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced
+man, ending a talk on tax-gatherers.  The train whistled loudly, and
+Shelton reverted to his paper.  This time he crossed his legs,
+determined to enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself
+looking at the vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face.  "That fellow," he
+thought, "has seen and felt ten times as much as I, although he must
+be ten years younger."
+
+He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds,
+trim hedgerows, homely coverts.  But strange ideas would come, and he
+was discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the
+personality of this young foreigner, disturbed him.  It was all as
+though he had made a start in some fresh journey through the fields
+of thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ANTONIA
+
+Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
+afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer
+races.  He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these
+Olympian contests still attracted him.
+
+The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his
+arm came in contact with a soft young shoulder.  He saw close to him
+a young girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager
+with excitement.  The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
+gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed
+him vividly.
+
+"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.
+
+"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and
+he was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the
+warmer fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the
+dry hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a
+quizzical brown face.
+
+"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said
+the lady.  "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard!  He was your
+fag, was n't he?  How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the
+boats!"
+
+"Mother, they like it!" cried the girl.
+
+"Antonia ought to be rowing, herself," said her father, whose name
+was Dennant.
+
+Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
+through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
+life.  He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a
+feeling like that produced by a first glass of champagne.
+
+The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two
+days later he drove over and paid a call.  Amidst the avocations of
+reading for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a
+whiff of some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring
+Antonia's face before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank,
+distant eyes.  But two years passed before he again saw her.  Then,
+at an invitation from Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the
+Manor of Holm Oaks against a neighbouring house; in the evening there
+was dancing oh the lawn.  The fair hair was now turned up, but the
+eyes were quite unchanged.  Their steps went together, and they.
+outlasted every other couple on the slippery grass.  Thence, perhaps,
+sprang her respect for him; he was wiry, a little taller than
+herself, and seemed to talk of things that interested her.  He found
+out she was seventeen, and she found out that he was twenty-nine.
+The following two years Shelton went to Holm Oaks whenever he was
+asked; to him this was a period of enchanted games, of cub-hunting,
+theatricals, and distant sounds of practised music, and during it
+Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and more curious, and his own more
+shy, and schooled, more furtive and more ardent.  Then came his
+father's death, a voyage round the world, and that peculiar hour of
+mixed sensations when, one March morning, abandoning his steamer at
+Marseilles, he took train for Hyeres.
+
+He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines
+where the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian
+princesses, and Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to
+find her elsewhere, but he would have been surprised.  His sunburnt
+face and the new beard, on which he set some undefined value,
+apologetically displayed, were scanned by those blue eyes with rapid
+glances, at once more friendly and less friendly.  "Ah!" they seemed
+to say, "here you are; how glad I am!  But--what now?"
+
+He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy
+oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss
+Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with
+insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere.  A
+momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting
+there at lunch.  What was it gave them their look of strange
+detachment?  Mrs. Dennant was bending above a camera.
+
+"I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed," she said.
+
+"What a pity!  The kitten was rather nice!"  The maiden aunt, placing
+the knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
+well-bred gaze on Shelton.
+
+"Look, Auntie," said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, "there's the
+funny little man again!"
+
+"Oh," said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she
+looked for the funny little man (who was not English)--"he's rather
+nice!"
+
+Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
+barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny
+upward slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by
+a windy walk.  From that moment he became her slave.
+
+"Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic
+binoculars?" said Mrs. Dennant's voice; "they're splendid for
+buildin's, but buildin's are so disappointin'.  The thing is to get
+human interest, isn't it?" and her glance wandered absently past
+Shelton in search of human interest.
+
+"You haven't put down what you've taken, mother."
+
+>From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.
+
+"It's so easy to forget what they're about," she said, "that's so
+annoyin'."
+
+Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment;
+he accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite
+sublime about the way that they would leave the dining-room,
+unconscious that they themselves were funny to all the people they
+had found so funny while they had been sitting there, and he would
+follow them out unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.
+
+In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs.
+Dennant disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many
+drives; he played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings
+after dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs
+dragged as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed
+so very near her.  The community of isolation drew them closer.  In
+place of a companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she
+could confide all her home-sick aspirations.  So that, even when she
+was sitting silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending
+with an air of cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she
+would not show him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet
+freshness that clung about her, by her quick, offended glances at the
+strange persons round, she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way
+that he was necessary.  He was far from realising this; his
+intellectual and observant parts were hypnotised and fascinated even
+by her failings.  The faint freckling across her nose, the slim and
+virginal severeness of her figure, with its narrow hips and arms, the
+curve of her long neck-all were added charms.  She had the wind and
+rain look, a taste of home; and over the glaring roads, where the
+palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to pass like the very
+image of an English day.
+
+One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
+afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view.  Down the Toulon
+road gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an
+evening crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the
+sun's numbing, ran gladly in the veins.  On the right hand of the
+road was a Frenchman playing bowls.  Enormous, busy, pleased, and
+upright as a soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end
+to end, he delighted Shelton.  But Antonia threw a single look at the
+huge creature, and her face expressed disgust.  She began running up
+towards the ruined tower.
+
+Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone
+and throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind.  She stood at
+the top, and he looked up at her.  Over the world, gloriously spread
+below, she, like a statue, seemed to rule.  The colour was brilliant
+in her cheeks, her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the
+flowing droop of her long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the
+look of one who flies.  He pulled himself up and stood beside her;
+his heart choked him, all the colour had left his cheeks.
+
+"Antonia," he said, "I love you."
+
+She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his
+face must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes
+vanished.
+
+They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
+Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face.  Had
+he a chance then?  Was it possible?  That evening the instinct
+vouchsafed at times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack
+his bag and go to Cannes.  On returning, two days later, and
+approaching the group in the centre of the Winter Garden, the voice
+of the maiden aunt reading aloud an extract from the Morning Post
+reached him across the room.
+
+"Don't you think that's rather nice?" he heard her ask, and then:
+"Oh, here you aye!  It's very nice to see you back!"
+
+Shelton slipped into a wicker chair.  Antonia looked up quickly from
+her sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.
+
+He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom.
+With desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of
+inquiry, where had he been, what had he been doing?  Then once again
+the maiden aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.
+
+A touch on his sleeve startled him.  Antonia was leaning forward; her
+cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.
+
+"Would you like to see my sketches?"
+
+To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
+maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound
+that he had ever listened to.
+
+"My dear Dick," Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, "we would
+rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again
+until July.  Of course I know you count it an engagement and all
+that, and everybody's been writin' to congratulate you.  But Algie
+thinks you ought to give yourselves a chance.  Young people don't
+always know what they're about, you know; it's not long to wait."
+
+"Three months!"  gasped Shelton.
+
+He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command.
+There was no alternative.  Antonia had acquiesced in the condition
+with a queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.
+
+"It'll be something to look forward to, Dick," she said.
+
+He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the
+end of April that he left for England.  She came alone to see him
+off.  It was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape
+looked impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives.
+Desperately he clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her
+smile seemed heartless in its brilliancy.  He whispered "You will
+write?"
+
+"Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!"
+
+She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear "Good-bye!"
+sounded shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels.  He saw her
+raise her hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still
+amongst receding shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
+
+After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his
+luggage at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in
+spite of his desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing
+out but a shame-faced smile.  Her figure vanished, wavering into the
+hurly-burly; one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of
+her soon faded from his mind.  His cab, however, overtook the foreign
+vagrant marching along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy
+stride--an observant, disillusioned figure.
+
+The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands.
+July loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes
+beckoned him faintly, hopelessly.  She would not even be coming back
+to England for another month.
+
+. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
+her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected
+me.  Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good
+things in life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me
+yesterday; the poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for
+Parliament.  Why should I think myself fit to legislate for the
+unhappy wretches one sees about in the streets?  If people's faces
+are a fair test of their happiness, I' d rather not feel in any way
+responsible . . . .
+
+The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded
+him much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by;
+the utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-
+driven women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he
+saw everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the
+steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling choas of
+hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked
+hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging
+creatures in their broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!
+
+One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
+
+                                   3, BLANK ROW
+                                        WESTMINSTER.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
+kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
+was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you.  Having beaten the
+whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
+of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
+myself of your permission, knowing your good heart.  Since I saw you
+I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
+tell what door is left at which I have not knocked.  I presented
+myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
+being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
+Is this not very much in the English character?  They told me to
+write, and said they would forward the letter.  I put all my hopes in
+you.
+     Believe me, my dear sir,
+          (whatever you may decide)
+               Your devoted
+                    LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week
+ago.  The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking,
+sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and,
+oddly, the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly
+than ever his memories of Antonia.  It had been at the end of the
+journey from Hyeres to London that he had met him; that seemed to
+give the youth a claim.
+
+He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row.  Dismissing his cab at the
+corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in
+question.  It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in
+other words, a "doss-house."  By tapping on a sort of ticket-office
+with a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman
+with soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was
+looking for had gone without leaving his address.
+
+"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make
+inquiry?"
+
+"Yes; there's a Frenchman."  And opening an inner door she bellowed:
+"Frenchy!  Wanted!" and disappeared.
+
+A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
+moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
+sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular
+impression of some little creature in a cage.
+
+"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto.  What do you
+want with him, if I may ask?"  The little man's yellow cheeks were
+wrinkled with suspicion.
+
+Shelton produced the letter.
+
+"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
+crow's-feet--"he spoke of you.  'If I can only find him,' he used to
+say, 'I 'm saved.'  I liked that young man; he had ideas."
+
+"Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?"
+
+The Frenchman shook his head.
+
+"Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea."
+
+"Do you think he will come back here?  But by that time I suppose,
+you'll hardly be here yourself?"
+
+A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
+
+"I? Oh, yes, sir!  Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging;
+I no longer have illusions.  I shave these specimens for a living,
+and shall shave them till the day of judgment.  But leave a letter
+with me by all means; he will come back.  There's an overcoat of his
+here on which he borrowed money--it's worth more.  Oh, yes; he will
+come back--a youth of principle.  Leave a letter with me; I'm always
+here."
+
+Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, "I'm always here,"
+touched him in their simplicity.  Nothing more dreadful could be
+said.
+
+"Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?" he asked; "please keep the
+change for the trouble I am giving you."
+
+"Thank you," said the Frenchman simply; "he told me that your heart
+was good.  If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at
+your ease."
+
+Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen
+in company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to
+himself; and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention,
+suspecting that he was not sober.  Just as he was about to take his
+leave, however, the old fellow thus accosted him:
+
+"Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?" he said, working at a loose
+tooth with his shrivelled fingers.  "I went to a dentist once, who
+professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop
+my teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings?  No, my
+bhoy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I
+shimply ask you, d'you call that dentistry?"  Fixing his eyes on
+Shelton's collar, which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he
+resumed with drunken scorn: "Ut's the same all over this pharisaical
+counthry.  Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation!  The
+world was never at such low ebb!  Phwhat's all this morality?  Ut
+stinks of the shop.  Look at the condition of Art in this counthry!
+look at the fools you see upon th' stage! look at the pictures and
+books that sell!  I know what I'm talking about, though I am a
+sandwich man.  Phwhat's the secret of ut all?  Shop, my bhoy!  Ut
+don't pay to go below a certain depth!  Scratch the skin, but pierce
+ut--Oh! dear, no!  We hate to see the blood fly, eh?"
+
+Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply;
+but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
+
+"Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think
+blanks loike me ought to exist?  Whoy don't they kill us off?
+Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy?  Because they object to th'
+extreme course.  Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the
+world.  They won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam
+high! They blink the truth in this middle-class counthry.  My bhoy" -
+-and he whispered confidentially--"ut pays 'em.  Eh? you say, why
+shouldn't they, then?"  (But Shelton had not spoken.)  "Well, let'em!
+let 'em!.  But don't tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh
+civilisation!  What can you expect in a counthry where the crimson,
+emotions are never allowed to smell the air?  And what'sh the result?
+My bhoy, the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots,
+like a fungus or a Stilton cheese.  Go to the theatre, and see one of
+these things they call plays.  Tell me, are they food for men and
+women?  Why, they're pap for babes and shop-boys!  I was a blanky
+actor moyself!"
+
+Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till
+the old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the
+table.
+
+"You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?" he said suddenly--"too much of 'n
+Englishman, no doubt."
+
+"Very seldom," said Shelton.
+
+"Pity!  Think of the pleasures of oblivion!  Oi 'm dhrunk every
+night."
+
+"How long will you last at that rate?"
+
+"There speaks the Englishman!  Why should Oi give up me only pleasure
+to keep me wretched life in?  If you've anything left worth the
+keeping shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you
+are dhrunk the better--that stands to reason."
+
+In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came
+from.
+
+"Oh, and Englishman!  Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man.
+You are a drunken nation"--he made a motion with his hands "he no
+longer eats--no inside left.  It is unfortunate-a man of spirit.  If
+you have never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy
+to show you over it."
+
+Shelton took out his cigarette case.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a
+cigarette; "I'm accustomed to it.  But you're wise to fumigate the
+air; one is n't in a harem."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
+
+"This," said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, "is
+a specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the
+blood."  There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air
+of a showman, the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt.  "They go
+out in the mornings, earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off,
+and then begin again.  That's their life.  There are people who think
+they ought to be reformed.  'Mon cher monsieur', one must face
+reality a little, even in this country.  It would be a hundred times
+better for these people to spend their time reforming high Society.
+Your high Society makes all these creatures; there's no harvest
+without cutting stalks.  'Selon moi'," he continued, putting back the
+quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through his nose, "there's no
+grand difference between your high Society and these individuals
+here; both want pleasure, both think only of themselves, which is
+very natural.  One lot have had the luck, the other--well, you see."
+He shrugged.  "A common set!  I've been robbed here half a dozen
+times.  If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an overcoat, you
+want eyes in the back of your head.  And they are populated!  Change
+your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not sleeping alone.
+'V'la ma clientele'!  The half of them don't pay me!"  He, snapped
+his yellow sticks of fingers.  "A penny for a shave, twopence a cut!
+'Quelle vie'!  Here," he continued, standing by a bed, "is a
+gentleman who owes me fivepence.  Here's one who was a soldier; he's
+done for!  All brutalised; not one with any courage left!  But,
+believe me, monsieur," he went on, opening another door, "when you
+come down to houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as
+necessary as breath is to the lungs.  No matter what, you must have a
+vice to give you a little solace--'un peu de soulagement'.  Ah, yes!
+before you judge these swine, reflect on life!  I've been through it.
+Monsieur, it is not nice never to know where to get your next meal.
+Gentlemen who have food in their stomachs, money in their pockets,
+and know where to get more, they never think.  Why should they--'pas
+de danger'!  All these cages are the same.  Come down, and you shall
+see the pantry."  He took Shelton through the kitchen, which seemed
+the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an inner room
+furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.  Another
+fire was burning there.  "We always have hot water," said the
+Frenchman, "and three times a week they make a fire down there"--he
+pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin.  Oh, yes,
+we have all the luxuries."
+
+Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
+little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
+trying to adopt him as a patron:
+
+"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have
+your letter without fail.  My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I
+am always at your service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE PLAY
+
+Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare.  "That old
+actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman;
+still, there may be truth in what he said.  I am a Pharisee, like all
+the rest who are n't in the pit.  My respectability is only luck.
+What should I have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?"
+and he stared at a stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to
+pierce the mask of their serious, complacent faces.  If these ladies
+and gentlemen were put into that pit into which he had been looking,
+would a single one of them emerge again?  But the effort of picturing
+them there was too much for him; it was too far--too ridiculously
+far.
+
+One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst
+of all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and
+desperately jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence,
+had evidently bought some article which pleased them.  There was
+nothing offensive in their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at
+the passing of the other people.  The man had that fine solidity of
+shoulder and of waist, the glossy self-possession that belongs to
+those with horses, guns, and dressing-bags.  The wife, her chin
+comfortably settled in her fur, kept her grey eyes on the ground,
+and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled voice reached Shelton's
+ears above all the whirring of the traffic.  It was leisurely
+precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been exhausted, or
+passionate, or afraid.  Their talk, like that of many dozens of fine
+couples invading London from their country places, was of where to
+dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what they
+should buy.  And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even in
+their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation.  They
+were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
+accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his
+soul.  Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them.  They
+were the best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew
+everybody, had clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such
+conduct as seemed to them "impossible," all breaches of morality,
+such as mistakes of etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy
+(except with a canonised class of objects--the legitimate sufferings,
+for instance, of their own families and class).  How healthy they
+were!  The memory of the doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like
+poison.  He was conscious that in his own groomed figure, in the
+undemonstrative assurance of his walk, he bore resemblance to the
+couple he apostrophised.  "Ah!" he thought, "how vulgar our
+refinement is!"  But he hardly believed in his own outburst.  These
+people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so healthy, he
+could not really understand what irritated him.  What was the matter
+with them?  They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear
+consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
+lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
+animals which no longer had a need for using them.  Some rare
+national faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had
+destroyed their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
+
+The lady looked up at her husband.  The light of quiet, proprietary
+affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her
+features slightly reddened by the wind.  And the husband looked back
+at her, calm, practical, protecting.  They were very much alike.  So
+doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves
+for her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would
+look, standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon
+her bosom.  Calm, proprietary, kind!  He passed them and walked
+behind a second less distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual
+dislike as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled
+satisfaction of the first; this dislike was just as healthy, and
+produced in Shelton about the same sensation.  It was like knocking
+at a never-opened door, looking at a circle--couple after couple all
+the same.  No heads, toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere.
+In the sea of their environments they were drowned; no leg braved the
+air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving at the skies; shop-persons,
+aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were all respectable.  And he
+himself as respectable as any.
+
+He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
+distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen
+and poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
+
+. . . . Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the
+matter with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean
+as caterpillars.  To secure our own property and our own comfort, to
+dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really
+hurt us, is what we're all after.  There's something about human
+nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the
+more repulsive they seem to me to be . . . .
+
+He paused, biting his pen.  Had he one acquaintance who would not
+counsel him to see a doctor for writing in that style?  How would the
+world go round, how could Society exist, without common-sense,
+practical ability, and the lack of sympathy?
+
+He looked out of the open window.  Down in the street a footman was
+settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the
+decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible
+to him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
+
+He got up and walked up and down.  His rooms, in a narrow square
+skirting Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had
+made him a man of means.  Selected for their centrality, they were
+furnished in a very miscellaneous way.  They were not bare, but close
+inspection revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and
+there was absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in
+it.  His goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard
+acquisitions of a pressing need.  Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but
+everything was somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never
+rebuked a servant.  Above all, there was nothing that indicated
+hobbies.
+
+Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
+
+.  .  .  I don't think I understand what you mean by "the healthier
+people are, the more repulsive they seem to be"; one must be healthy
+to be perfect, must n't one?  I don't like unhealthy people.  I had
+to play on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me
+feel unhappy.  I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got
+the back-handed lifting stroke at last--hurrah!  .  .  .
+
+By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic
+writing:
+
+DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
+My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few
+days.  If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at
+seven, and go to the theatre.  It's ages since I saw you.
+               Yours as ever,
+                    B. M. HALIDOME.
+
+Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend
+Halidome's well-appointed dinners.  At seven, therefore, he went to
+Chester Square.  His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold
+by the light of an electric lamp.  The walls of the room were hung
+with costly etchings, arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from
+the carving of the mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the
+miraculously-coloured meerschaums to the chased fire-irons,
+everything displayed an unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish
+significant of life completely under rule of thumb.  Everything had
+been collected.  The collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure
+of a man, clean shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and
+the rather weighty dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance
+that one is in the right.
+
+Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
+where he examined him, smiling a slow smile.  "Glad to see you, old
+chap.  I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness;
+and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for
+forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable.  He
+made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of
+eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman,
+smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never
+apologised for anything, except with a jovial brusqueness that was
+worse than the offence.  The suave and reasonable weight of his
+dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to feel ironical and
+insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid, humane, and
+healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the fact that
+this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his mixed
+sensations.
+
+"By the way, I congratulate you, old chap," said Halidome, while
+driving to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his
+congratulations, no more than about himself.  "They're awfully nice
+people, the Dennants."
+
+A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
+
+"Where are you going to live?  You ought to come down and live near
+us; there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a
+ripping neighbourhood.  Have you chucked the Bar?  You ought to do
+something, you know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do.  I
+tell you what, Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council."
+
+But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
+energies were spent in sidling to their stalls.  He had time to pass
+his neighbours in review before the play began.  Seated next to him
+was a lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid
+liberality; beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-
+grey moustache and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had
+known at Eton.  One of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a
+weather-tanned complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed
+out above the lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful
+eyes, gave him a satirical and resolute expression.  "I've got hold
+of your tail, old fellow," he seemed to say, as though he were always
+busy with the catching of some kind of fox.  The other's goggling
+eyes rested on Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair,
+brushed with water and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and
+admirable waistcoat, suggested the sort of dandyism that despises
+women.  From his recognition of these old schoolfellows Shelton
+turned to look at Halidome, who, having cleared his throat, was
+staring straight before him at the curtain.  Antonia's words kept
+running in her lover's head, "I don't like unhealthy people."  Well,
+all these people, anyway, were healthy; they looked as if they had
+defied the elements to endow them with a spark of anything but
+health.  Just then the curtain rose.
+
+Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
+recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
+drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made
+for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play
+unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
+
+A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of
+the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a
+hundred reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were
+revealed to Shelton's eyes.  These reasons issued mainly from the
+mouth of a well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part
+of a sort of Moral Salesman.  He turned to Halidome and whispered:
+
+"Can you stand that old woman?"
+
+His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
+
+"What old woman?"
+
+"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"
+
+Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had
+been assailed in person.
+
+"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said.  "I think he's ripping."
+
+Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
+manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
+naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
+Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy
+people," and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play.  It
+was healthy!
+
+The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with
+a cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep
+upon the mat.
+
+The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking
+off neat whisky.  He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a
+match; then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped
+cigarette....
+
+Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer.  He shifted his elbows, for
+he felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was
+pitched into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat.  The husband
+poured more whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the
+door; then, turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret
+of some tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke.  He
+left the room, returned, and once more filled his glass.  A lady now
+entered, pale of face and dark of eye--his wife.  The husband crossed
+the stage, and stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the
+attitude which somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume.  He
+spoke:
+
+"Come in, and shut the door."
+
+Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
+dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
+hatred --the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-
+assorted creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had
+once witnessed in a restaurant.  He remembered with extreme
+minuteness how the woman and the man had sat facing each other across
+the narrow patch of white, emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades
+and a thin green vase with yellow flowers.  He remembered the curious
+scornful anger of their voices, subdued so that only a few words
+reached him.  He remembered the cold loathing in their eyes.  And,
+above all, he remembered his impression that this sort of scene
+happened between them every other day, and would continue so to
+happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid his bill he had asked
+himself, "Why in the name of decency do they go on living together?"
+And now he thought, as he listened to the two players wrangling on
+the stage: "What 's the good of all this talk?  There's something
+here past words."
+
+The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next
+him.  She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was
+healthy and offended.
+
+"I do dislike these unhealthy women," he was saying, but catching
+Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
+
+The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
+clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been
+listening to something that had displeased him not a little.  The
+goggle-eyed man was yawning.  Shelton turned to Halidome:
+
+"Can you stand this sort of thing?" said he.
+
+"No; I call that scene a bit too hot," replied his friend.
+
+Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
+
+"I'll bet you anything," he said, "I know what's going to happen now.
+You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
+champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife.  He'll show
+her how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her
+hand and say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but
+the good opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself
+for saying it; but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means
+it.  And then he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't
+her own but his version of them, and show her the only way of
+salvation is to kiss her husband"; and Shelton grinned.  "Anyway,
+I'll bet you anything he takes her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'"
+
+Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he
+said,
+
+"I think Pirbright 's ripping!"
+
+But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great
+applause.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GOOD CITIZEN
+
+Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their
+coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the
+doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false
+morals and emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants
+thrive and die, human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh,
+impartial skies.  The lights revealed innumerable solemn faces,
+gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of hats, then passed to
+whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to flare on horses, on
+the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that do not bear the
+light.
+
+"Shall we walk?" asked Halidome.
+
+"Has it ever struck you," answered Shelton, "that in a play nowadays
+there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have
+acquired the attitude of God?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in
+the sound.
+
+"You're so d---d fastidious," was his answer.
+
+"I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate," went on
+Shelton.  "That ending makes me sick."
+
+"Why?" replied Halidome.  "What other end is possible?  You don't
+want a play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth."
+
+"But this does."
+
+Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his
+walk, as in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be
+in front.
+
+"How do you mean?" he asked urbanely; "it's better than the woman
+making a fool of herself."
+
+"I'm thinking of the man."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"The husband."
+
+"What 's the matter with him?  He was a bit of a bounder, certainly."
+
+"I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't
+want him."
+
+Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment
+itself, caused his friend to reply with dignity:
+
+"There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing.  Women
+don't really care; it's only what's put into their heads."
+
+"That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really
+want anything; it's only what's put into your head!'  You are begging
+the question, my friend."
+
+But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he
+was "begging the question," for he prided himself on being strong in
+logic.
+
+"That be d---d," he said.
+
+"Not at all, old chap.  Here is a case where a woman wants her
+freedom, and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it."
+
+"Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court."
+
+Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance
+of his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that
+she was mad, and this struck him now as funny.  But then he thought:
+"Poor devil!  he was bound to call her mad!  If he didn't, it would
+be confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a
+man to consider himself that."  But a glance at his friend's eye
+warned him that he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
+
+"Surely," he said, "even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave
+like a gentleman."
+
+"Depends on whether she behaves like a lady."
+
+"Does it?  I don't see the connection."
+
+Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door;
+there was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
+
+"My dear chap," he said, "you're too sentimental altogether."
+
+The word "sentimental" nettled Shelton.  "A gentleman either is a
+gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
+behave?"
+
+Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his
+hall, where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn
+towards the blaze.
+
+"No, Bird," he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-
+tails in his hands; "it's all very well to talk, but wait until
+you're married.  A man must be master, and show it, too."
+
+An idea occurred to Shelton.
+
+"Look here, Hal," he said: "what should you do if your wife got tired
+of you?"
+
+The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
+contempt.
+
+"I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation
+to yourself."
+
+Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
+
+"I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind
+up.  She'd soon come round."
+
+"But suppose she really loathed you?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent.  How
+could anybody loathe him?  With great composure, however, regarding
+Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
+
+"There are a great many things to be taken into consideration."
+
+"It appears to me," said Shelton, "to be a question of common pride.
+How can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it.
+
+His friend's voice became judicial.
+
+"A man ought not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky,
+"because a woman gets hysteria.  You have to think of Society, your
+children, house, money arrangements, a thousand things.  It's all
+very well to talk.  How do you like this whisky?"
+
+"The part of the good citizen, in fact," said Shelton, "self-
+preservation!"
+
+"Common-sense," returned his friend; "I believe in justice before
+sentiment."  He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton.
+"Besides, there are many people with religious views about it."
+
+"It's always seemed to me," said Shelton, "to be quaint that people
+should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an
+eye,' and call themselves Christians.  Did you ever know anybody
+stand on their rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of
+their own comfort?  Let them call their reasons what they like, you
+know as well as I do that it's cant."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
+Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for
+the sake of Society as well as for your own.  If you want to do away
+with marriage, why don't you say so?"
+
+"But I don't," said Shelton:" is it likely?  Why, I'm going---"  He
+stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it
+suddenly occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and
+philosophic in the world.  "All I can say is," he went on soberly,
+"that you can't make a horse drink by driving him.  Generosity is the
+surest way of tightening the knot with people who've any sense of
+decency; as to the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their
+breeding."
+
+Halidome smiled.
+
+"You're a rum chap," he said.
+
+Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
+
+"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came
+to him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society;
+it's nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."
+
+But Halidome remained unruffled.
+
+"All right," he said, "call it that.  I don't see why I should go to
+the wall; it wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total
+of everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"
+
+Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
+
+"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"
+
+But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified
+posture of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead,
+the perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton
+as ridiculous.
+
+"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud
+you are!  I'll be off."
+
+"No, look here!"  said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had
+appeared upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite
+wrong---"
+
+"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"
+
+Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him.  It was
+Saturday, and he passed many silent couples.  In every little patch
+of shadow he could see two forms standing or sitting close together,
+and in their presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their
+tongues.  The wind rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as
+diamonds, vanished the next.  In the lower streets a large part of
+the world was under the influence of drink, but by this Shelton was
+far from being troubled.  It seemed better than Drama, than dressing-
+bagged men, unruffled women, and padded points of view, better than
+the immaculate solidity of his friend's possessions.
+
+"So," he reflected, "it's right for every reason, social, religious,
+and convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired.
+There are obviously advantages about the married state; charming to
+feel respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk
+of life would bring on you contempt.  If old Halidome showed that he
+was tired of me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of
+a cad; but if his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd
+still consider himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving
+her the burden of his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion
+into it--a religion that says, 'Do unto others!'"
+
+But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it
+was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him.  He reached
+his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the
+soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a
+moment before entering.
+
+"I wonder," thought he, "if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
+that chap in the play.  It's natural.  We all want our money's worth,
+our pound of -flesh!  Pity we use such fine words--'Society,
+Religion, Morality.'  Humbug!"
+
+He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long
+time, his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of
+the dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a
+reflective frown about his eyes.  A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a
+policeman, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were
+holding a palaver.
+
+"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say
+is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"
+
+They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose
+Antonia's face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and
+dignity; the forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair
+parted in the centre, and brushed across.  A light seemed to illumine
+the plane of their existence, as the electric lamp with the green
+shade had illumined the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before
+Shelton's vision lay that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes
+of any kind, autocratic; complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any
+Midland landscape.  Healthy, wealthy, wise!  No room but for
+perfection, self-preservation, the survival of the fittest!  "The
+part of the good citizen," he thought: "no, if we were all alike,
+this would n't be a world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
+
+My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be
+glad to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the
+question of your marriage settlement...."   At that hour accordingly
+Shelton made his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black
+letters the names "Paramor and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)"
+were written on the wall of a stone entrance.  He ascended the solid
+steps with nervousness, and by a small red-haired boy was introduced
+to a back room on the first floor.  Here, seated at a table in the
+very centre, as if he thereby better controlled his universe, a pug-
+featured gentleman, without a beard, was writing.  He paused.
+"Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see you, sir.  Take a chair.
+Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute"; and in the tone of
+his allusion to his employer was the satirical approval that comes
+with long and faithful service.  "He will do everything himself," he
+went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest eyes, "and he 's not a
+young man."
+
+Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the
+prosperity deepening upon his face.  In place of the look of
+harassment which on most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty,
+his old friend's countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation,
+had expanded--a little greasily, a little genially, a little
+coarsely--every time he met it.  A contemptuous tolerance for people
+who were not getting on was spreading beneath its surface; it left
+each time a deeper feeling that its owner could never be in the
+wrong.
+
+"I hope you're well, sir," he resumed: "most important for you to
+have your health now you're going-to"--and, feeling for the delicate
+way to put it, he involuntarily winked--"to become a family man.  We
+saw it in the paper.  My wife said to me the other morning at
+breakfast: 'Bob, here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be
+married.  Is that any relative of your Mr. Shelton?' ' My dear,' I
+said to her, ' it's the very man!'"
+
+It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass
+the whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the
+room, but that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before
+his eyes) he actually lived another life where someone called him
+"Bob."  Bob!  And this, too, was a revelation.  Bob!  Why, of course,
+it was the only name for him!  A bell rang.
+
+"That's your uncle"; and again the head clerk's voice sounded
+ironical.  "Good-bye, sir."
+
+He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
+Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an
+enormous room in the front where his uncle waited.
+
+Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose
+brown face was perfectly clean-shaven.  His grey, silky hair was
+brushed in a cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left
+side.  He stood before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had
+the springy abruptness of men who cannot fatten.  There was a certain
+youthfulness, too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had
+been through fire; and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising
+smiles.  The room was like the man--morally large, void of red-tape
+and almost void of furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the
+walls, no papers littered up the table; a single bookcase contained a
+complete edition of the law reports, and resting on the Law Directory
+was a single red rose in a glass of water.  It looked the room of one
+with a sober magnanimity, who went to the heart of things, despised
+haggling, and before whose smiles the more immediate kinds of humbug
+faded.
+
+"Well, Dick," said he, "how's your mother?"
+
+Shelton replied that his mother was all right.
+
+"Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
+this Brass thing.  You can say it's safe, from me."
+
+Shelton made a face.
+
+"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."
+
+His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance,
+and up went the corners of his mouth.
+
+"She's splendid," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."
+
+The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment
+in such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of
+questioning.
+
+"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr.
+Paramor walked up and down the room.  "Bring me the draft of Mr.
+Richard's marriage settlement."
+
+The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--"Now then,
+Dick," said Mr. Paramor.  "She 's not bringing anything into
+settlement, I understand; how 's that?"
+
+"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.
+
+Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
+pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read.  The latter,
+following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved
+when he paused suddenly.
+
+"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits
+her life interest--see?"
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."
+
+Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his
+mouth, and was decorously subdued.  It was Shelton's turn to walk
+about.
+
+"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.
+
+Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might
+have watched a fish he had just landed.
+
+"It's very usual," he remarked.
+
+Shelton took another turn.
+
+"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."
+
+When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she
+continued to belong to him.  Exactly!
+
+Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.
+
+"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"
+
+Exactly!  Why should she have his money if she married again?  She
+would forfeit it.  There was comfort in the thought.  Shelton came
+back and carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely
+business basis, and disguise the real significance of what was
+passing in his mind.
+
+"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."
+
+What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly
+have been devised?  His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely
+turning from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.
+
+"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.
+
+The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.
+
+"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.
+
+The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in
+a piece of sentiment.
+
+"Ye-es," he stammered.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Quite!"  The answer was a little sulky.
+
+Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the
+reading of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too
+much occupied in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused,
+and to do this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him.  Those
+features, just pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure;
+the hair neither straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the
+haunting look of his eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his
+clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his serviceable, fine hands;
+above all, the equability of the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the
+impression of a perfect balance between heart and head, sensibility
+and reason, theory and its opposite.
+
+"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you
+understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on
+taking?"
+
+If they didn't get on!  Shelton smiled.  Mr. Paramor did not smile,
+and again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against
+something poised but firm.  He remarked irritably:
+
+"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having
+it."
+
+This time his uncle smiled.  It was difficult for Shelton to feel
+angry at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too
+impersonal to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.
+
+"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
+settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned.  We 're bound to
+look at every case, you know, old boy."
+
+The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
+strong in Shelton.  He was not one of those who could not face the
+notion of transferred affections--at a safe distance.
+
+"All right, Uncle Ted," said he.  For one mad moment he was attacked
+by the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce.  Would it not be
+common chivalry to make her independent, able to change her
+affections if she wished, unhampered by monetary troubles?  You only
+needed to take out the words "during coverture."
+
+Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face.  There was no
+meanness there, but neither was there encouragement in that
+comprehensive brow with its wide sweep of hair.  "Quixotism," it
+seemed to say, "has merits, but--"  The room, too, with its wide
+horizon and tall windows, looking as if it dealt habitually in
+common-sense, discouraged him.  Innumerable men of breeding and the
+soundest principles must have bought their wives in here.  It was
+perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf.  The aroma of
+Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
+settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.
+
+"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going
+to be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.
+
+Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
+glass, and sniffed at it.  "Will you come with me as far as Pall
+Mall?  I 'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I
+suppose?"
+
+They walked into the Strand.
+
+"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
+passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.
+
+"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; " too d---d
+gloomy."
+
+Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head,
+his eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.
+
+"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"
+
+"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put
+in words?"
+
+"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, and the Russians;
+why should n't we?"
+
+Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.
+
+"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong
+for us.  When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false.
+I should like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him
+to your mother."  He went in and bought a salmon:
+
+"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that
+it's decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels?
+Is n't life bad enough already?"
+
+It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face
+had a look of crucifixion.  It was, perhaps, only the stronger
+sunlight in the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
+
+"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."
+
+"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
+Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button.  "Truth 's the very
+devil!"
+
+He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face;
+there seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle
+of tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness.
+Like the lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him
+look at her.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
+snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks.  You won't
+come to my club?  Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother
+when you see her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go
+on to his own club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle,
+but from the nation of which they were both members by birth and
+blood and education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CLUB
+
+He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage.
+The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had
+been these: "Dennant!  Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants ?  She was a
+Penguin."
+
+No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there
+had been an "Ah! that 's right; this is due to us" tone about the
+saying.
+
+Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: "Charles Penguin, fifth
+Baron Baltimore.  Issue: Alice, b.  184-, m. 186- Algernon Dennant,
+Esq., of Holm Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire."  He put down the
+Peerage and took up the 'Landed Gentry': "Dennant, Algernon Cuffe,
+eldest son of the late Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and
+Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble. Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow;
+ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P. for Oxfordshire.  Residence, Holm
+Oaks," etc., etc.  Dropping the 'Landed Gentry', he took up a volume
+of the 'Arabian Nights', which some member had left reposing on the
+book-rest of his chair, but instead of reading he kept looking round
+the room.  In almost every seat, reading or snoozing, were gentlemen
+who, in their own estimation, might have married Penguins.  For the
+first time it struck him with what majestic leisureliness they turned
+the pages of their books, trifled with their teacups, or lightly
+snored.  Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with dark moustache, thick
+hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with stooping shoulders;
+a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and large white
+waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose face was
+like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine creature
+fast asleep.  Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin, hairy
+or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was complete.
+They were all the creatures of good form.  Staring at them or reading
+the Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner.  He had not
+been long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection
+strolled up and took the next table.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!  Back?  Somebody told me you were goin' round the
+world."  He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass.  "Clear soup!
+.  .  .  Read Jellaby's speech?  Amusing the way he squashes all
+those fellows.  Best man in the House, he really is."
+
+Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in
+the habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why.  The red and
+shaven face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen by
+good humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed
+introspectively on the successful process of his eating.
+
+"Success!"  thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--"success is what
+we admire in Jellaby.  We all want success .  .  .  .  Yes," he
+admitted, "a successful beast."
+
+"Oh!" said his neighbour, "I forgot.  You're in the other camp?"
+
+"Not particularly.  Where did you get that idea?"
+
+His neighbour looked round negligently.
+
+"Oh," said he, "I somehow thought so"; and Shelton almost heard him
+adding, "There's something not quite sound about you."
+
+"Why do you admire Jellaby?" he asked.
+
+"Knows his own mind," replied his neighbour; "it 's more than the
+others do .  .  .  .  This whitebait is n't fit for cats!  Clever
+fellow, Jellaby!  No nonsense about him!  Have you ever heard him
+speak?  Awful good sport to watch him sittin' on the Opposition.  A
+poor lot they are!"  and he laughed, either from appreciation of
+Jellaby sitting on a small minority, or from appreciation of the
+champagne bubbles in his glass.
+
+"Minorities are always depressing," said Shelton dryly.
+
+"Eh?  what?"
+
+"I mean," said Shelton, "it's irritating to look at people who have
+n't a chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics,
+and all that."
+
+His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.
+
+"Er--yes, quite," said he; " don't you take mint sauce?  It's the
+best part of lamb, I always think."
+
+The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that
+every man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began
+to regain its influence on Shelton.  How many times had he not sat
+there, carefully nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table
+he was used to, a paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip
+with who was not a bounder; while the sensation of having drunk
+enough stole over him.  Happy!  That is, happy as a horse is happy
+who never leaves his stall.
+
+"Look at poor little Bing puffin' about," said his neighbour,
+pointing to a weazened, hunchy waiter.  "His asthma's awf'ly bad; you
+can hear him wheezin' from the street."
+
+He seemed amused.
+
+"There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?" said Shelton.
+
+His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.
+
+"Here, take this away; it's overdone;" said he.  "Bring me some
+lamb."
+
+Shelton pushed his table back.
+
+"Good-night," he said; "the Stilton's excellent!"
+
+His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
+plate.
+
+In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales
+and took his weight.  "Eleven stone!"  he thought; "gone up!" and,
+clipping a cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.
+
+After half an hour he dropped the book.  There seemed something
+rather fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot,
+and was full of well-connected people, it had apparently been
+contrived to throw no light on anything whatever.  He looked at the
+author's name; everyone was highly recommending it.  He began
+thinking, and staring at the fire .  .  .  .
+
+Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the
+Rifles, bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly
+just a little drunk.
+
+"Congratulate you, old chap!  I say, what made you grow that
+b-b-eastly beard?"
+
+Shelton grinned.
+
+"Pillbottle of the Duchess!"  read young Dennant, taking up the book.
+"You been reading that?  Rippin', is n't it?"
+
+"Oh, ripping!" replied Shelton.
+
+"Rippin' plot!  When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
+about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused."
+
+"Rather!"  murmured Shelton.
+
+"That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
+There's old Benjy!  Hallo, Benjy!"
+
+"Hallo, Bill, old man!"
+
+This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice
+and manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.
+
+In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery,
+a grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called
+Stroud, came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a
+moustache and a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be
+seen in the club any night of the year when there was no racing out
+of reach of London.
+
+"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the
+young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow.  Miss
+Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate."
+
+"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they
+would understand.
+
+"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best.  I tell you
+what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you
+won't get such another chance of practice.  Benjy 'll give you a
+card."
+
+"Delighted!"  murmured Benjy.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"St. Briabas; two-thirty.  Come and see how they do the trick.  I'll
+call for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he
+patted Benjy's knee.
+
+Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had
+made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose
+suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater
+interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage.  But
+Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really be
+the case; it was merely a question of "good form," the conceit of a
+superior breeding, the duty not to give oneself away.  And when in
+turn he marked the eyes of Stroud fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows,
+and the curious greedy glances of the racing man, he felt somehow
+sorry for him.
+
+"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"
+asked the racing man.
+
+And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in
+his hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.
+
+"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the
+Chinese--must have a grudge against them!  And now he 's got his leg
+he can't go there any more."
+
+"Chinese?  What does he do to them?"
+
+"Bibles or guns.  Don't ask me!  An adventurer."
+
+"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.
+
+Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once
+how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests,"
+and plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these
+people with untidy lives.  A minute later the man with the "game leg"
+passed close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how
+intelligible the resentment of his fellow-members was.  He had eyes
+which, not uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel
+bars; he seemed the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that
+were "bad form," a man who might even go as far as chivalry.  He
+looked straight at Shelton, and his uncompromising glance gave an
+impression of fierce loneliness; altogether, an improper person to
+belong to such.  a club.  Shelton remembered the words of an old
+friend of his father's: "Yes, Dick, all sorts of fellows belong here,
+and they come here for all sorts o' reasons, and a lot of em come
+because they've nowhere else to go, poor beggars"; and, glancing from
+the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it occurred to Shelton that
+even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor beggars.  One never
+knew!  A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored him.  Ah, the
+lucky devil!  He would not have to come here any more! and the
+thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long
+flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.
+
+"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!"  said young Bill Dennant.
+
+Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left
+once more to reverie.
+
+"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel.  They'll
+go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some
+such foolery."
+
+He crossed over to the window.  Rain had begun to fall; the streets
+looked wild and draughty.  The cabmen were putting on their coats.
+Two women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-
+clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly,
+desperate step.  Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way
+amongst his fellow-members.  A procession of old school and college
+friends came up before his eyes.  After all, what had there been in
+his own education, or theirs, to give them any other standard than
+this "good form"?  What had there been to teach them anything of
+life?  Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think of it.
+They had all the air of knowing everything, and really they knew
+nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the Emotions; nothing of the
+bonds that bind all men together.  Why, even such words were not
+"good form"; nothing outside their little circle was "good form."
+They had a fixed point of view over life because they came of certain
+schools, and colleges, and regiments!  And they were those in charge
+of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.  Well,
+it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
+healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!
+
+"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-
+leather boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with
+gold nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"
+
+Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
+originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
+solemn pleasure as he read.  In the white of his eye there was a
+torpid and composed abstraction.  There was nothing in that book to
+startle him or make him think.
+
+The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking
+of his recent visit to the south of France.  He had a scandalous
+anecdote or two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold
+nose-nippers; he was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly
+humour that it was impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave
+so perfect an impression of enjoying life, and doing himself well.
+"Well, good-night!"  he murmured--" An engagement!"--and the
+certainty he left behind that his engagement must be charming and
+illicit was pleasant to the soul.
+
+And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-
+being was upon him.  His superiority to these his fellow-members
+soothed him.  He saw through all the sham of this club life, the
+meanness of this worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved
+novelists, "good form," and the terrific decency of our education.
+It was soothing thus to see through things, soothing thus to be
+superior; and from the soft recesses of his chair he puffed out smoke
+and stretched his limbs toward the fire; and the fire burned back at
+him with a discreet and venerable glow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE WEDDING
+
+Puncutal to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.
+
+"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of
+their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
+unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
+pavement.
+
+The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by
+her side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs
+of ragged matrimony.  Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price
+of his tie was their board and lodging for a week.  He followed his
+future brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with
+intuitive perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the
+opposing parties to this contract had its serried battalion, the
+arrows of whose suspicion kept glancing across and across the central
+aisle.
+
+Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.
+
+"There's old Benjy!"  he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of
+the day.  A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered
+uniformity of his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he
+bent upon the guests had its wonted steely suavity.  About his dress
+and his neat figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the
+ruck of common bridegrooms.  There were no holes in his armour
+through which the impertinent might pry.
+
+"Good old Benjy!"  whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit
+short of class, those Casserols."
+
+Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled.  The sensuous
+sanctity all round had begun to influence him.  A perfume of flowers
+and dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle
+of whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the
+aisles, and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in
+front; without in the least desiring to make a speculation of this
+sort, he wondered whether her face was as charming as the lines of
+her back in their delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his
+glance wandered to the chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the
+grave, business faces of the presiding priests, till the organ began
+rolling out the wedding march.
+
+"They're off!"  whispered young Dermant.
+
+Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
+reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain.  The bride came
+slowly up the aisle.  "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and
+the church will be filled with people like this .  .  .  .  She'll be
+a show to them!"  The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct
+of common chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame
+to look at that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect
+raiment; the modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure
+yearnings; the stately head where no such thought as "How am I
+looking, this day of all days, before all London?" had ever entered;
+the proud head, which no such fear as "How am I carrying it off?"
+could surely be besmirching.
+
+He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and
+set his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a
+sacrifice.  The words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better,
+for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and
+opening the Prayer Book he found the Marriage Service, which he had
+not looked at since he was a boy, and as he read he had some very
+curious sensations.
+
+All this would soon be happening to himself!  He went on reading in a
+kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!"
+All around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure
+mount the pulpit and stand motionless.  Massive and high-featured,
+sunken of eye, he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole,
+above the blackness of his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for
+his beauty.  Shelton was still gazing at the stitching of his gloves,
+when once again the organ played the Wedding March.  All were
+smiling, and a few were weeping, craning their heads towards the
+bride.  "Carnival of second-hand emotions!"  thought Shelton; and he,
+too, craned his head and brushed his hat.  Then, smirking at his
+friends, he made his way towards the door.
+
+In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the
+presents with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale
+violet, who had been chief bridesmaid.
+
+"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying
+
+"Oh, awfully!"
+
+"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
+bride to come."
+
+"Yes," murmured Shelton.
+
+"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"
+
+Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.
+
+"That was my idea; I think it 's very chic.  They 've had fifteen
+tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?"
+
+"By Jove!"  Shelton hastened to remark.
+
+"Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
+course, you change them for those you do."
+
+The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this
+room; he looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by
+the shrewd acquisitiveness of her small eyes.
+
+"Is that your future brother-in-law?" she asked, pointing to Bill
+Dennant with a little movement of her chin; "I think he's such a
+bright boy.  I want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep
+things jolly.  It's so deadly after a wedding."
+
+And Shelton said they would.
+
+They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure.
+Her face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a
+furtive trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd
+sensation of having sinned against his manhood.  Jammed close to him
+was her old nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion,
+while tears rolled from her eyes.  She was trying to say something,
+but in the hubbub her farewell was lost.  There was a scamper to the
+carriage, a flurry of rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against
+the sharply drawn-up window.  Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a
+moment, bland and steely; the footman folded his arms, and with a
+solemn crunch the brougham wheels rolled away.  "How splendidly it
+went off!"  said a voice on Shelton's right.  "She looked a little
+pale," said a voice on Shelton's left.  He put his hand up to his
+forehead; behind him the old nurse sniffed.
+
+"Dick," said young Dennant in his ear, "this isn't good enough; I
+vote we bolt."
+
+Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
+whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon
+champagne or to the ceremony that had gone so well.
+
+"What's up with you?" asked Dennant; "you look as glum as any
+m-monkey."
+
+"Nothing," said Shelton; "I was only thinking what humbugs we all
+are!"
+
+Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
+future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.
+
+"Oh," said he, "if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DINNER
+
+The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's
+friends who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities.  Shelton
+found himself between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the
+same degree.  Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white
+waistcoat, black moustache, and hawk-like face.  This was, in fact,
+one of those interesting houses occupied by people of the upper
+middle class who have imbibed a taste for smart society.  Its
+inhabitants, by nature acquisitive and cautious, economical,
+tenacious, had learnt to worship the word "smart."  The result was a
+kind of heavy froth, an air of thoroughly domestic vice.  In addition
+to the conventionally fast, Shelton had met there one or two ladies,
+who, having been divorced, or having yet to be, still maintained
+their position in "society."  Divorced ladies who did not so maintain
+their place were never to be found, for the Casserols had a great
+respect for marriage.  He had also met there American ladies who were
+"too amusing"--never, of course, American men, Mesopotamians of the
+financial or the racing type, and several of those gentlemen who had
+been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction which might or
+again might not, "come off," and in conduct of an order which might,
+or again might not be spotted.  The line he knew, was always drawn at
+those in any category who were actually found out, for the value of
+these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity--nothing
+so sentimental--but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips,
+their "bridge parties," and their motors.
+
+In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
+sheltered those who were too "smart" to keep their heads for long
+above the water.
+
+His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
+trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
+down the table.  Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
+neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the
+incoherence of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art.  It was with
+surprise that he found Miss Casserol addressing him.
+
+"I always say that the great thing is to be jolly.  If you can't find
+anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to
+be amusin'.  Now don't you agree?"
+
+The philosophy seemed excellent.
+
+"We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly."
+
+Shelton hastened to look jolly.
+
+"I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the
+shutters and leave him.  What's the good of mopin' and lookin'
+miserable?  Are you going to the Four-in-Hand Meet?  We're making a
+party.  Such fun; all the smart people!"
+
+The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two
+hours out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but
+the frank shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of
+voice, were guarantees that she was part of the element at the table
+which was really quite respectable.  He had never realised before how
+"smart" she was, and with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of
+gaiety that would have killed a Frenchman.
+
+And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes
+when they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey.
+"What is it," their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say,
+"that makes you so really ' smart'?"  And while still seeking for the
+reason, he noticed his host pointing out the merits of his port to
+the hawk-like man, with a deferential air quite pitiful to see, for
+the hawk-like man was clearly a "bad hat."  What in the name of
+goodness did these staid bourgeois mean by making up to vice?  Was it
+a craving to be thought distinguished, a dread of being dull, or
+merely an effect of overfeeding?  Again he looked at his host, who
+had not yet enumerated all the virtues of his port, and again felt
+sorry for him.
+
+"So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?  said a voice on his
+right, with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste.  "Pretty
+girl!  They've a nice place, the, Dennants.  D' ye know, you're a
+lucky feller!"
+
+The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face,
+and peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly.
+He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the
+best people, as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every
+night.
+
+"You're a lucky feller," he repeated; "he's got some deuced good
+shootin', Dennant!  They come too high for me, though; never touched
+a feather last time I shot there.  She's a pretty girl.  You 're a
+lucky feller!"
+
+"I know that," said Shelton humbly.
+
+"Wish I were in your shoes.  Who was that sittin' on the other side
+of you?  I'm so dashed short-sighted.  Mrs. Carruther?  Oh, ay!"  An
+expression which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a
+leer, came on his lips.
+
+Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-
+book covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady.
+"The old ogre means," thought he, "that I'm lucky because his leaf is
+blank about Antonia."  But the old baronet had turned, with his
+smile, and his sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal
+on the other side.
+
+The two men to Shelton's left were talking.
+
+"What!  You don't collect anything?  How's that?  Everybody collects
+something.  I should be lost without my pictures."
+
+"No, I don't collect anything.  Given it up; I was too awfully had
+over my Walkers."
+
+Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
+Madeira in his glass.  That, had been "collected" by his host, and
+its price was going up!  You couldn't get it every day; worth two
+guineas a bottle!  How precious the idea that other people couldn't
+get it, made it seem!  Liquid delight; the price was going up!  Soon
+there would be none left; immense!  Absolutely no one, then, could
+drink it!
+
+"Wish I had some of this," said the old baronet, "but I have drunk
+all mine."
+
+"Poor old chap!"  thought Shelton; "after all, he's not a bad old
+boy.  I wish I had his pluck.  His liver must be splendid."
+
+The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with
+horses ridden by jockeys with the latest seat.  And Shelton was
+compelled to help in carrying on this sport till early in the
+morning.  At last he left, exhausted by his animation.
+
+He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine
+that he had drunk.  His mood of satisfaction fizzled out.  These
+people were incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most
+respectable; they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and
+to get the most that could be gotten for their money.
+
+Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
+thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was
+overtaken by the moment when the town is born again.  The first new
+air had stolen down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the
+trees were quivering faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing
+spoke except his heart.  Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and
+Shelton saw that he was not alone; an unconsidered trifle with
+inferior boots was asleep upon his doorstep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AN ALIEN
+
+The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
+knees.  No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed
+by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks.  Shelton
+endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.
+
+"Ah, it's you, monsieur!" he said "I received your letter this
+evening, and have lost no time."  He looked down at himself and
+tittered, as though to say, "But what a state I 'm in!"
+
+The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
+occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
+
+"You can well understand," stammered Ferrand, following his host,
+"that I did n't want to miss you this time.  When one is like this--"
+and a spasm gripped his face.
+
+"I 'm very glad you came," said Shelton doubtfully.
+
+His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan
+of his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit
+of, trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
+
+"Sit down-sit down," said Shelton; "you 're feeling ill!"
+
+Ferrand smiled.  "It's nothing," said he; "bad nourishment."
+
+Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him
+in some whisky.
+
+"Clothes," said Ferrand, when he had drunk, "are what I want.  These
+are really not good enough."
+
+The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
+bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home.  While the
+latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-
+denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
+portmanteaus.  This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
+
+The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent
+of boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying
+affluence.
+
+"This is a little different," he said.  "The boots, I fear"--and,
+pulling down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the
+size of half a crown.  "One does n't sow without reaping some harvest
+or another.  My stomach has shrunk," he added simply.  "To see things
+one must suffer.  'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'!"
+
+Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the
+human animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos,
+a suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
+
+
+"I have eaten my illusions," said the young foreigner, smoking a
+cigarette.  "When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
+'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur': It 's not
+always the intellectuals who succeed."
+
+"When you get a job," said Shelton, "you throw it away, I suppose."
+
+"You accuse me of restlessness?  Shall I explain what I think about
+that?  I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an
+independent position.  I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon
+as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go
+elsewhere.  'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to
+economise sixpence a day, and save enough after forty years to drag
+out the remains of an exhausted existence.  That's not in my
+character."  This ingenious paraphrase of the words "I soon get tired
+of things" he pronounced with an air of letting Shelton into a
+precious secret.
+
+"Yes; it must be hard," agreed the latter.
+
+Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's not all butter," he replied; "one is obliged to do things that
+are not too delicate.  There's nothing I pride myself on but
+frankness."
+
+Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could
+stand in a judicious way.  "Yes, yes," he seemed to say, "you'd like
+me to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality,
+no prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel
+yourself on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another,
+without any barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca
+c'est un peu trop fort'!  You're as good an imitation as I 've come
+across in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and
+I 'm grateful to you, but to tell you everything, as it passes
+through my mind would damage my prospects.  You can hardly expect
+that."
+
+In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air
+of natural, almost sensitive refinement.  The room looked as if it
+were accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of
+familiarity that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's
+soul.  It came as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond
+had taken such a place within his thoughts.  The pose of his limbs
+and head, irregular but not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the
+rings of smoke that issued from them--all signified rebellion, and
+the overthrow of law and order.  His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid
+glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were subtlety itself; he
+stood for discontent with the accepted.
+
+"How do I live when I am on the tramp?" he said.  "well, there are
+the consuls.  The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
+starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created
+for the purpose.  There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living
+entirely upon consuls."  He hesitated for the fraction of a second,
+and resumed: "Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can
+try six or seven consuls in a single town.  You must know a language
+or two; but most of these gentlemen are not too well up in the
+tongues of the country they represent.  Obtaining money under false
+pretences?  Well, it is.  But what's the difference at bottom between
+all this honourable crowd of directors, fashionable physicians,
+employers of labour, ferry-builders, military men, country priests,
+and consuls themselves perhaps, who take money and give no value for
+it, and poor devils who do the same at far greater risk?  Necessity
+makes the law.  If those gentlemen were in my position, do you think
+that they would hesitate?"
+
+Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: "You're
+right; they would, from fear, not principle.  One must be hard
+pressed before committing these indelicacies.  Look deep enough, and
+you will see what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable
+for not half so good a reason as the want of meals."
+
+Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from
+property for which he gave no value in labour.
+
+"I can give you an instance," said Ferrand, "of what can be done by
+resolution.  One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I
+decided to try the French consul.  Well, as you know, I am a Fleming,
+but something had to be screwed out somewhere.  He refused to see me;
+I sat down to wait.  After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't
+the brute gone?' and my consul appears.  'I 've nothing for fellows
+like you,' says he; 'clear out!'
+
+"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
+assistance.'
+
+"'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'
+
+"I don't budge.  Another hour passes, and back he comes again.
+
+"'Still here?' says he.  'Fetch a sergeant.'
+
+"The sergeant comes.
+
+"'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'
+
+"'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!'  Naturally, I had
+calculated upon that.  In Germany they're not too fond of those who
+undertake the business of the French.
+
+"'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'
+
+"'You refuse?'
+
+"'Absolutely.' And he went away.
+
+"'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.
+
+"'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.
+
+"'What will you go for?'
+
+"'Ten marks.'
+
+"'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
+thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls."
+
+His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his
+ironical lips flickered.  Shelton thought of his own ignorance of
+life.  He could not recollect ever having gone without a meal.
+
+"I suppose," he said feebly, "you've often starved."  For, having
+always been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.
+
+Ferrand smiled.
+
+"Four days is the longest," said he.  "You won't believe that story.
+.  .  .  It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course.
+There was some due from home which didn't come.  Four days and nights
+I lived on water.  My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery;
+but I never even thought of pawning them.  I suffered most from the
+notion that people might guess my state.  You don't recognise me
+now?"
+
+"How old were you then?" said Shelton.
+
+"Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age.
+
+By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with
+sensitive, smooth face, always on the move about the streets of
+Paris, for fear that people should observe the condition of his
+stomach.  The story was a valuable commentary.  His thoughts were
+brusquely interrupted; looking in Ferrand's face, he saw to his
+dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.
+
+"I 've suffered too much," he stammered; "what do I care now what
+becomes of me?"
+
+Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,
+but, being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.
+
+"Your turn 's coming," he said at last.
+
+"Ah! when you've lived my life," broke out his visitor, "nothing 's
+any good.  My heart's in rags.  Find me anything worth keeping, in
+this menagerie."
+
+Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
+instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that
+forbade him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the
+revelation of other people's.  He could stand it on the stage, he
+could stand it in a book, but in real life he could not stand it.
+When Ferrand had gone off with a portmanteau in each hand, he sat
+down and told Antonia:
+
+.  .  .  The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and
+instead of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone.  The more
+sympathetic I wanted to be, the gruffer I grew.  Is it fear of
+ridicule, independence, or consideration, for others that prevents
+one from showing one's feelings?
+
+He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than
+face a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it,
+the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before
+him--Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's
+face, a little creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's
+somewhat too thin-and they seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous,
+and the words "That's rather nice!" rang in his ears.  He went out to
+post the letter, and buying a five-shilling order enclosed it to the
+little barber, Carolan, as a reward for delivering his note to
+Ferrand.  He omitted to send his address with this donation, but
+whether from delicacy or from caution he could not have said.  Beyond
+doubt, however, on receiving through Ferrand the following reply, he
+felt ashamed and pleased
+
+3, BLANK Row,
+WESTMINSTER.
+
+>From every well-born soul humanity is owing.  A thousand thanks.  I
+received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
+will be placed beyond all praise.
+
+                                        J.  CAROLAN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE VISION
+
+A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him
+with excitement:
+
+.  .  .  Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we
+can go home-hurrah!  But she says that you and I must keep to our
+arrangement not to see each other till July.  There will be something
+fine in being so near and having the strength to keep apart .  .  .
+All the English are gone.  I feel it so empty out here; these people
+are so funny-all foreign and shallow.  Oh, Dick!  how splendid to
+have an ideal to look up to!  Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and
+tell me you think the same .  .  .  .  We arrive at Charing Cross on
+Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's for a couple of nights,
+and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.
+
+Always your
+
+ANTONIA.
+
+
+"To-morrow!"  he thought; "she's coming tomorrow!"  and, leaving his
+neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion.  His
+square ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the
+most distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd
+assembled round a dogfight.  One of the dogs was being mauled, but
+the day was muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a
+horror of making himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he
+looked for a policeman.  One was standing by, to see fair play, and
+Shelton made appeal to him.  The official suggested that he should
+not have brought out a fighting dog, and advised him to throw cold
+water over them.
+
+"It is n 't my dog," said Shelton.
+
+"Then I should let 'em be," remarked the policeman with evident
+surprise.
+
+Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders.  The lower orders,
+however, were afraid of being bitten.
+
+"I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you," said one.
+
+"Nasty breed o' dawg is that."
+
+He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his
+trousers and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud,
+and separate the dogs.  At the conclusion of the "job," the lower
+orders said to him in a rather shamefaced spanner:
+
+"Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir"; but, like all
+men of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.
+
+"D----n it!"  he said, "one can't let a dog be killed"; and he
+marched off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and
+looking scornfully at harmless passers-by.  Having satisfied for once
+the smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low
+opinion of these men in the street.  "The brutes," he thought, "won't
+stir a finger to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen---"
+But, growing cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by
+"honest toil" could not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten
+hand, and that even the policeman, though he had looked so like a
+demi-god, was absolutely made of flesh and blood.  He took the dog
+home, and, sending for a vet., had him sewn up.
+
+He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture
+to meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with
+the dog to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to
+go and see his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him
+to decide.  She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road,
+he was soon amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose
+structure architects have wrought the motto: " Keep what you have--
+wives, money, a good address, and all the blessings of a moral
+state!"
+
+Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
+respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them.  His blood
+was still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the
+loftiest philosophy.  He had been reading in his favourite review an
+article eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper
+middle class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to
+side he nodded his head ironically.  "Expansion and freedom," ran his
+thoughts: "Freedom and expansion!"
+
+Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
+three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured
+against the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity.
+"Conscious of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly
+what is necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the
+world.  The person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred
+and fifty-five pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax."
+Such seemed the legend of these houses.
+
+Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping,
+or to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance.  Hardly any men were
+seen, and they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned
+children were being wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses,
+accompanied by a great army of hairy or of hairless dogs.
+
+There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs.
+Shelton, a  tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly
+feet; fond as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy
+that has no insight.  She kissed her son at once with rapture, and,
+as usual, began to talk of his engagement.  For the first time a
+tremor of doubt ran through her son; his mother's view of it grated
+on him like the sight of a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy.  Her
+splendid optimism, damped him; it had too little traffic with the
+reasoning powers.
+
+"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain?  It seems
+to me a kind of blasphemy."
+
+"The dear!" she cooed.  "And she is coming back to-morrow?  Hurrah!
+how I long to see her!"
+
+"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."
+
+Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like
+a little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.
+
+"Dear old Dick!"  she said, "how happy you must be!"
+
+Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
+indifferent--beamed from her.
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at
+the station."
+
+"Cheer up!"  replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully
+depressed.
+
+That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
+through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
+flavour.
+
+"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right,
+really.  Cheer up!"  She stretched her little figure, canting her
+head still more.
+
+"Wonderful woman!"  Shelton thought.  She had, in fact, like many of
+her fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and,
+enjoying the benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept
+as young in heart as any girl of thirty.
+
+Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as
+when he entered it.  He spent a restless afternoon.
+
+The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday.  He had made Ferrand
+a promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching
+at any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it.  The
+preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an
+original method of distributing the funds that he obtained.  To male
+sheep he gave nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty
+female sheep the rest.  Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a
+foreigner.  The Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as
+guided by a purely abstract love of beauty.  His eloquence, at any
+rate, was unquestionable, and Shelton came out feeling sick.
+
+It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to
+kill the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of
+wine for his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a
+cigarette, compressed his lips.  There was a strange, sweet sinking
+in his heart.  His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his
+wine, crumbled his roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils,
+glancing caustically at the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors,
+the hot, red velvet, the chandeliers.  His juicy lips seemed to be
+murmuring, "Ah! if you only knew of the dirt behind these feathers!"
+Shelton watched him with disgust.  Though his clothes were now so
+nice, his nails were not quite clean, and his fingertips seemed
+yellow to the bone.  An anaemic waiter in a shirt some four days old,
+with grease-spots on his garments and a crumpled napkin on his arm,
+stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful fruits, and reading an
+Italian journal.  Resting his tired feet in turn, he looked like
+overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb accused the sordid
+smartness of the walls.  In the far corner sat a lady eating, and,
+mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round face, its coat
+of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of disgust.  His
+companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.
+
+"Excuse me, monsieur," he said at length.  "I think I know that
+lady!"  And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted
+her, and sat down.  With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from
+looking.  But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the
+restaurant; she had been crying.  The young foreigner was flushed,
+his face contorted; he did not touch his wine.
+
+"I was right," he said; "she is the wife of an old friend.  I used to
+know her well."
+
+He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
+might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
+savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced
+with tragic sauce, to set before his patron.
+
+"You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
+hinders these paragons of virtue"--he nodded at the stream of
+carriages--"from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her
+sort pass.  She came to London--just three years ago.  After a year
+one of her little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband
+caught it, and died.  There she was, left with two children and
+everything gone to pay the debts.  She tried to get work; no one
+helped her.  There was no money to pay anyone to stay with the
+children; all the work she could get in the house was not enough to
+keep them alive.  She's not a strong woman.  Well, she put the
+children out to nurse, and went to the streets.  The first week was
+frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to anything."
+
+"Can nothing be done?" asked Shelton, startled.
+
+"No," returned his companion.  "I know that sort; if they once take
+to it all's over.  They get used to luxury.  One does n't part with
+luxury, after tasting destitution.  She tells me she does very
+nicely; the children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them
+sometimes.  She was a girl of good family, too, who loved her
+husband, and gave up much for him.  What would you have?  Three
+quarters of your virtuous ladies placed in her position would do the
+same if they had the necessary looks."
+
+It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
+understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
+vagabond.
+
+"This is her beat," said the young foreigner, as they passed the
+illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and
+women fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to
+the station of Charing Cross.  There, as he stood waiting in the
+shadow, his heart was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he
+should have come to this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.
+
+Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia.  She was
+close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them
+were a maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags.
+Antonia's figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape,
+slender, tall, severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the
+bustle.  Her eyes, shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about,
+welcoming all she saw; a wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her
+cheeks glowed cold and rosy.  She caught sight of Shelton, and
+bending her neck, stag-like, stood looking at him; a brilliant smile
+parted her lips, and Shelton trembled.  Here was the embodiment of
+all he had desired for weeks.  He could not tell what was behind that
+smile of hers--passionate aching or only some ideal, some chaste and
+glacial intangibility.  It seemed to be shining past him into the
+gloomy station.  There was no trembling and uncertainty, no rage of
+possession in that brilliant smile; it had the gleam of fixedness,
+like the smiling of a star.  What did it matter?  She was there,
+beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was his, only
+divided from him by a space of time.  He took a step; her eyes fell
+at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by
+mother, footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away.
+It was over; she had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his
+delight lurked another feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face
+came up before him but the face of that lady in the restaurant--
+short, round, and powdered, with black-circled eyes.  What right had
+we to scorn them?  Had they mothers, footmen, porters, maids?  He
+shivered, but this time with physical disgust; the powdered face with
+dark-fringed eyes had vanished; the fair, remote figure of the
+railway-station came back again.
+
+He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after,
+smoking, dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams
+fumed in his brain.  The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the
+rays of clean wet light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the
+cab bell, the whirring wheels, the night air and the branches--it was
+all so good!  He threw back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the
+warm breeze.  The crowds on the pavement gave him strange delight;
+they were like shadows, in some great illusion, happy shadows,
+thronging, wheeling round the single figure of his world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ROTTEN ROW
+
+With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy,
+Shelton mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.
+
+In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the
+spring.  The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of
+light that came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds.
+The air was rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of
+tranquil carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their
+responsibility of the firmament.
+
+Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.
+
+Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
+Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
+reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up
+in lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings
+that it would have been noticeable anywhere.  It belonged to Ferrand,
+obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron.
+Shelton found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly
+on his horse, hidden behind a tree.
+
+It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
+ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the
+bird of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them
+cantering, trotting, wheeling up and down.
+
+Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats
+before a horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the
+same air, as though in the modish performance of this ancient rite
+they were satisfying some instinct very dear to them.
+
+Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight.
+"Many thanks, gentlemen," it seemed to say; "in that charming little
+action you have shown me all your souls."
+
+What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people of
+their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
+phylacteries!  Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
+Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.
+
+He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge
+a violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
+behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
+and--Antonia herself!
+
+They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she
+stood on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance
+different from the calm and conquering radiance of that other moment.
+To Shelton's delight they fell into line with him, and all three went
+galloping along the strip between the trees and rails.  The look she
+gave him seemed to say, "I don't care if it is forbidden!"  but she
+did not speak.  He could not take his eyes off her.  How lovely she
+looked, with the resolute curve of her figure, the glimpse of gold
+under her hat, the glorious colour in her cheeks, as if she had been
+kissed.
+
+"It 's so splendid to be at home!  Let 's go faster, faster!"  she
+cried out.
+
+"Take a pull.  We shall get run in," grumbled her brother, with a
+chuckle.
+
+They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
+side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn
+spoke only to Bill Dennant.  He was afraid to speak to her, for he
+knew that her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a
+way quite different from his own.
+
+Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing
+against the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered
+a shock when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure.  He was
+about to raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting
+his instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it.  They
+passed again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition;
+followed by unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called.
+But the feeling of idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated
+at this silence.  It tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant
+had lagged behind to chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were
+alone, walking their horses, without a word, not even looking at each
+other.  At one moment he thought of galloping ahead and leaving her,
+then of breaking the vow of muteness she seemed to be imposing on
+him, and he kept thinking: "It ought to be either one thing or the
+other.  I can't stand this."  Her calmness was getting on his nerves;
+she seemed to have determined just how far she meant to go, to have
+fixed cold-bloodedly a limit.  In her happy young beauty and radiant
+coolness she summed up that sane consistent something existing in
+nine out of ten of the people Shelton knew.  "I can't stand it long,"
+he thought, and all of a sudden spoke; but as he did so she frowned
+and cantered on.  When he caught her she was smiling, lifting her
+face to catch the raindrops which were falling fast.  She gave him
+just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to go; and when he
+would not, she frowned.  He saw Bill Dennant, posting after them,
+and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat, and
+galloped off.
+
+The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying
+for shelter.  He looked back from the bend, and could still make out
+Antonia riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the
+shower.  Why had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the
+sweets the gods had sent?  It seemed wicked to have wasted such a
+chance, and, ploughing back to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head
+to see if by any chance she had relented.
+
+His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed.  Was ever
+anything so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the
+rain?  She seemed to love the rain.  It suited her--suited her ever
+so much better than the sunshine of the South.  Yes, she was very
+English!  Puzzling and fretting, he reached his rooms.  Ferrand had
+not arrived, in fact did not turn up that day.  His non-appearance
+afforded Shelton another proof of the delicacy that went hand in hand
+with the young vagrant's cynicism.  In the afternoon he received a
+note.
+
+.  .  .  You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt
+too crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old
+London.  Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of
+things one can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry
+afterwards.  I told mother.  She said I was quite right, but I don't
+think she took it in.  Don't you feel that the only thing that really
+matters is to have an ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can
+always look forward and feel that you have been--I can't exactly
+express my meaning.
+
+Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned.  It seemed to him queer that she
+should set more store by an "ideal" than by the fact that they had
+met for the first and only time in many weeks.
+
+"I suppose she 's right," he thoughts--"I suppose she 's right.  I
+ought not to have tried to speak to her!"  As a matter of fact, he
+did not at all feel that she was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AN "AT HOME"
+
+On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance
+view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
+ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep
+him from actually entering the station and lurking about until she
+came.  With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed
+Street to the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her.
+He paid a round of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations;
+and, seeking out Aunt Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter
+in the Row.  But she found it "rather nice," and on his pressing her
+with his views, she murmured that it was "quite romantic, don't you
+know."
+
+"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.
+
+As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the
+"at home" of one of his own cousins.  Her husband was a composer, and
+he had a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer
+some quite unusually free kind of atmosphere.  After dining at the
+club, therefore, he set out for Chelsea.  The party was held in a
+large room on the ground-floor, which was already crowded with people
+when Shelton entered.  They stood or sat about in groups with smiles
+fixed on their lips, and the light from balloon-like lamps fell in
+patches on their heads and hands and shoulders.  Someone had just
+finished rendering on the piano a composition of his own.  An expert
+could at once have picked out from amongst the applauding company
+those who were musicians by profession, for their eyes sparkled, and
+a certain acidity pervaded their enthusiasm.  This freemasonry of
+professional intolerance flew from one to the other like a breath of
+unanimity, and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as harmonious as
+though one of the high windows had been opened suddenly, admitting a
+draught of chill May air.
+
+Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman
+in black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him,
+until her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings,
+obliged her to break off conversation just as it began to interest
+him.  He was passed on to another lady who was already talking to two
+gentlemen, and, their volubility being greater than his own, he fell
+into the position of observer.  Instead of the profound questions he
+had somehow expected to hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or
+searching the heart of such topics as where to go this summer, or how
+to get new servants.  Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their
+fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other
+night had dissected the fellow--"smart"; and the varnish on the
+floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected on all the faces
+around.  Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.
+
+A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm
+of one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in
+concert to his ingratiating voice.
+
+"War," he was saying, "is not necessary.  War is not necessary.  I
+hope I make myself clear.  War is not necessary; it depends on
+nationality, but nationality is not necessary."  He inclined his head
+to one side, "Why do we have nationality?  Let us do away with
+boundaries--let us have the warfare of commerce.  If I see France
+looking at Brighton"--he laid his head upon one side, and beamed at
+Shelton,--"what do I do?  Do I say 'Hands off'?  No.  'Take it,'
+I say--take it!'"  He archly smiled.  "But do you think they would?"
+
+And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.
+
+"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is
+necessarily on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--
+than the philanthropist.  His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys
+the compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
+persuasively.  "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do
+I talk about it?"  But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat,
+he put his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my
+brother has one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from
+him?"
+
+Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."
+
+"Come, come!  Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage
+laws are barbarous."
+
+For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
+comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of
+another group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned.
+Here an Irish sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously,
+"Bees are not bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!  "A Scotch painter, who
+listened with a curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this
+proposition, which appeared to have relation to the middle classes;
+and though agreeing with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his
+discharge of electricity.  Next to them two American ladies,
+assembled under the tent of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were
+discussing the emotions aroused in them by Wagner's operas.
+
+"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
+one.
+
+"They 're just divine," said the fatter.
+
+"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
+thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.
+
+Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of
+formality was haunting Shelton.  Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a
+Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours; so,
+assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an
+assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of
+exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of
+having no ideas to traffic in.  He could not help wondering whether,
+in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the
+inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run
+at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and
+what would be left when the steam had all escaped.  Somebody ceased
+playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics.
+Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts.
+He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes
+from ideas which haunt the soul.
+
+Again the violinist played.
+
+"Cock gracious!"  said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
+fiddle ceased: "Colossal!  'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"
+
+"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"
+
+"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing
+but a volcanic eruption would cure him."
+
+Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements.
+They were two men of letters talking of a third.
+
+"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.
+
+"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes
+gleamed with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed
+himself.  Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help
+recognising from those eyes what joy it was to say those words:
+"These fellows don't exist!"
+
+"Poor Besom!  You know what Moulter said .  .  ."
+
+Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair
+smelt of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned.  With
+the exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of
+English blood.  Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans,
+Scotch, and Russians.  He was not contemptuous of them for being
+foreigners; it was simply that God and the climate had made him
+different by a skin or so.
+
+But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes
+happen) by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who,
+with smooth hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes,
+seemed a little anxious at his own presence there.  Shelton took a
+liking to him, partly from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of
+the gentle smile with which he was looking at his wife.  Almost
+before he had said "How do you do?" he was plunged into a discussion
+on imperialism.
+
+"Admitting all that," said Shelton, " what I hate is the humbug with
+which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-
+called civilising methods."
+
+The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.
+
+"But is it humbug?"
+
+Shelton saw his argument in peril.  If we really thought it, was it
+humbug?  He replied, however:
+
+"Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume
+that our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race?  If
+it 's not humbug, it 's sheer stupidity."
+
+The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
+forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and
+just, re-replied:
+
+"Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation
+that we are."
+
+Shelton felt dazed.  The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the
+smiling prophet saying, "Altruism, altruism," and in his voice a
+something seemed to murmur, "Oh, I do so hope I make a good
+impression!"
+
+He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes,
+the tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he
+envied the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted
+hair.
+
+"I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen," he muttered;
+"I think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand
+illusions."
+
+"If you come to that," said the soldier, "the world lives by
+illusions.  I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the
+creation of illusions has always been her business, don't you know."
+
+This Shelton was unable to deny.
+
+"So," continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated
+man), "if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that
+have been properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in
+fact, they're what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's
+crescendo," he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it
+--"why do you want to destroy them?"
+
+Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded
+arms, replied:
+
+"The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be
+destroyed; but how about the future?  It 's surely time to let in
+air.  Cathedrals are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of
+incense; but when they 've been for centuries without ventilation you
+know what the atmosphere gets like."
+
+The soldier smiled.
+
+"By your own admission," he said, "you'll only be creating a fresh
+set of illusions."
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton, "but at all events they'll be the honest
+necessities of the present."
+
+The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
+conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:
+
+"I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us
+any good!"
+
+An " At Home"
+
+Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to
+the remark:
+
+"One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I
+believe in what I don't."
+
+A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and
+Shelton watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.
+
+"Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?" said his cousin's
+voice behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a
+fresh-cheeked youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying
+nervously:
+
+"How do you do?  Yes, I am very well, thank you!"
+
+He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
+youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
+smiles.  He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with
+life--as though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put
+questions to the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions.
+He looked diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was
+evidently English.
+
+"Are you good at argument?" said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:
+
+"Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough
+for argument.  You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to
+each remark.  It 's awfully interesting"; and, bending from the waist
+in a mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and
+started to explain.
+
+Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he
+gave his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he
+was intensely interested.  The youth broke off, looked at his watch,
+and, blushing brightly, said:
+
+"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."
+
+"I must be off, too," said Shelton.  Making their adieux together,
+they sought their hats and coats.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE NIGHT CLUB
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the
+chilly street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"
+
+His companion smilingly answered:
+
+"Oh, the night club.  We take it in turns.  Thursday is my night.
+Would you like to come?  You see a lot of types.  It's only round the
+corner."
+
+Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:
+
+"Yes, immensely."
+
+They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street,
+through the open door of which two men had just gone in.  Following,
+they ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large
+boarded room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes.
+It was furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables,
+some wooden forms, and a wooden bookcase.  Seated on these wooden
+chairs, or standing up, were youths, and older men of the working
+class, who seemed to Shelton to be peculiarly dejected.  One was
+reading, one against the wall was drinking coffee with a
+disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and a group of four made a
+ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.
+
+A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-
+set, black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with
+an anaemic smile.
+
+"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
+Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play
+chess?  There 's young Smith wants a game."
+
+A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown chess-
+board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white.  Shelton
+took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.
+
+The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
+attitude, and watched:
+
+"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd
+be able to give Banks a knight."  His eyes rested on Shelton,
+fanatical and dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal;
+he was continually sucking in his lips, as though determined to
+subdue 'the flesh.  "You should come here often," he said to Shelton,
+as the latter received checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice.
+We've several very fair players.  You're not as good as Jones or
+Bartholomew," he added to Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a
+duty to put the latter in his place.  "You ought to come here often,"
+he repeated to Shelton; "we have a lot of very good young fellows";
+and, with a touch of complacence, he glanced around the dismal room.
+"There are not so many here tonight as usual.  Where are Toombs and
+Body?"
+
+Shelton, too, looked anxiously around.  He could not help feeling
+sympathy with Toombs and Body.
+
+"They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man.
+"Our principle is to amuse everyone.  Excuse me a minute; I see that
+Carpenter is doing nothing."  He crossed over to the man who had been
+drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his
+opponent and try to think of a remark, before the little man was
+back.  "Do you know anything about astronomy?" he asked of Shelton.
+"We have several very interested in astronomy; if you could talk to
+them a little it would help."
+
+Shelton made a motion of alarm.
+
+"Please-no," said he; "I---"
+
+"I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
+talks, and a service afterwards.  We're always anxious to get new
+blood"; and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking
+face, as though trying to see how much blood there was in it.  "Young
+Curly says you 've just been around the world; you could describe
+your travels."
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, "how your club is made up?"
+
+Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the
+little man.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we take anybody, unless there 's anything against
+them.  The Day Society sees to that.  Of course, we shouldn't take
+anyone if they were to report against them.  You ought to come to our
+committee meetings; they're on Mondays at seven.  The women's side,
+too---"
+
+"Thank you," said Shelton; "you 're very kind---"
+
+"We should be pleased," said the little man; and his face seemed to
+suffer more than ever.  "They 're mostly young fellows here to-night,
+but we have married men, too.  Of course, we 're very careful about
+that," he added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
+prejudices--"that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know."
+
+"And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the little man; "if you were to come to our
+committee meetings you would see for yourself.  Everything is most
+carefully gone into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, "you find a great deal of chaff?"
+
+The little man smiled a suffering smile.  The twang of his toneless
+voice sounded a trifle shriller.
+
+"I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
+people, with three small children.  He was ill and out of work; but
+on inquiry we found that they were not man and wife."
+
+There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
+nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
+Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.
+
+"And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?"
+he said.
+
+The little man's eyes began to smoulder.
+
+"We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course.  Excuse me a
+minute; I see they've finished bagatelle."
+
+He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again.
+He himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after
+the balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden
+acquiescence seemed to fall.
+
+Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly.  He was sitting
+on a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.
+
+"Are you staying here much longer?" Shelton asked.
+
+Young Curly rose with nervous haste.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, " there 's nobody very interesting here to-
+night."
+
+"Oh, not at all!"  said Shelton; "on the contrary.  Only I 've had a
+rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here."
+
+His new acquaintance smiled.
+
+"Oh, really!  do you think--that is--"
+
+But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls
+ceased, and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying:
+"Anybody who wants a book will put his name down.  There will be the
+usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next.  Will you all go quietly?
+I am going to turn the lights out."
+
+One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly.  By its
+harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting.
+The figures of its occupants began filing through the door.  The
+little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes
+smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and
+finger raised to the turncock of the metre.
+
+"Do you know this part?" asked young Curly as they emerged into the
+street.  "It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it
+is really.  If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous
+place where the police never go."  He seemed so anxious for the
+honour that Shelton was loath to disappoint him.  "I come here pretty
+often," he went on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly
+between a wall and row of houses.
+
+"Why?" asked Shelton; "it does n't smell too nice."
+
+The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any
+new scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.
+
+"No, that's one of the reasons, you know," he said; "one must find
+out.  The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here.  Last
+week there was a murder; there 's always the chance of one."
+
+Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against
+this fresh-cheeked stripling.
+
+"There's a splendid drain just here," his guide resumed; "the people
+are dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses"; and under the
+first light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the
+houses.  "If we were in the East End, I could show you other places
+quite as good.  There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all
+the thieves in London; he 's a splendid type, but," he added, looking
+a little anxiously at Shelton, "it might n't be safe for you.  With
+me it's different; they 're beginning to know me.  I've nothing to
+take, you see."
+
+"I'm afraid it can't be to-night," said Shelton; " I must get back."
+
+"Do you mind if I walk with you?  It's so jolly now the stars are
+out."
+
+"Delighted," said Shelton; "do you often go to that club?"
+
+His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.
+
+"They 're rather too high-class for me," he said.  "I like to go
+where you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the
+country.  It does one good to see them eat.  They don't get enough,
+you see, as a rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and
+muscle.  There are some places in the winter where they give them
+bread and cocoa; I like to go to those."
+
+"I went once," said Shelton, " but I felt ashamed for putting my nose
+in."
+
+"Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know.
+You see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs .  .  .  .  It 's useful
+to me," he went on as they passed a police-station, "to walk about at
+night; one can take so much more notice.  I had a jolly night last
+week in Hyde Park; a chance to study human nature there."
+
+"And do you find it interesting?" asked Shelton.
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"Awfully," he replied; "I saw a fellow pick three pockets."
+
+" What did you do?"
+
+"I had a jolly talk with him."
+
+Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
+encouraging sin.
+
+"He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me
+his life.  Never had a chance, of course.  The most interesting part
+was telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into
+a cave, when you can't tell what 's inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny."
+
+"And what became of your friend?" asked Shelton.
+
+"Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead."
+
+They had reached Shelton's rooms.
+
+"Will you come in," said the latter, "and have a drink?"
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
+
+"No, thank you," he said; "I have to walk to Whitechapel.  I 'm
+living on porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone.  I generally
+live on porridge for a week at the end of every month.  It 's the
+best diet if you're hard up"; once more blushing and smiling, he was
+gone.
+
+Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed.  He felt a little
+miserable.  Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white
+tie, disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed
+wonderingly on him.  And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--
+just as that morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a
+passer-by stop suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him
+in a flash that that man had thoughts and feelings of his own.  He
+would never know what Antonia really felt and thought.  "Till I saw
+her at the station, I did n't know how much I loved her or how little
+I knew her"; and, sighing deeply, he hurried into bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+POLE TO POLE
+
+The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to
+Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to
+breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropolis.  On June first the
+latter presented himself rather later than was his custom, and
+announced that, through a friend, he had heard of a position as
+interpreter to an hotel at Folkestone.
+
+"If I had money to face the first necessities, he said, swiftly
+turning over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers,
+as if searching for his own identity, "I 'd leave today.  This London
+blackens my spirit."
+
+"Are you certain to get this place," asked Shelton.
+
+"I think so," the young foreigner replied; "I 've got some good
+enough recommendations."
+
+Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand.  A
+hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
+moustache.
+
+"You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft.  No, no; I
+shall never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities," said he,
+with pride and bitterness.  "That's not in my character. I never do
+harm to anyone.  This"--he touched the papers--"is not delicate, but
+it does harm to no one.  If you have no money you must have papers;
+they stand between you and starvation.  Society, has an excellent eye
+for the helpless--it never treads on people unless they 're really
+down."  He looked at Shelton.
+
+"You 've made me what I am, amongst you," he seemed to say;, "now put
+up with me!"
+
+"But there are always the workhouses," Shelton remarked at last.
+
+"Workhouses!" returned Ferrand; "certainly there are--regular
+palaces: I will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so
+discouraging as your workhouses; they take one's very heart out."
+
+"I always understood," said Shelton coldly; "that our system was
+better than that of other countries."
+
+Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
+attitude when particularly certain of his point.
+
+"Well he replied, "it 's always permissible to think well of your own
+country.  But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with
+little strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why."  His
+lips lost their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the
+result of his experience.  "You spend your money freely, you have
+fine buildings, self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of
+hospitality.  The reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy.
+You invite us--and when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if
+we were numbers, criminals, beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted
+a personal injury on you; and when we get out again, we are naturally
+degraded."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.
+
+"How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?"
+he asked.
+
+The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how
+far the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no
+money in their pockets.  He took the note that Shelton proffered him.
+
+"A thousand thanks," said he; " I shall never forget what you have
+done for me"; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true
+emotion behind his titter of farewell.
+
+He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again;
+then looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of
+things that had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless
+friends, the old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes.  Into him
+restlessness had passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's
+damp hand.  To wait about in London was unbearable.
+
+He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the
+river.  It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers
+before it.  During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank
+Street.  "I wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting
+on!"  he thought.  On a fine day he would probably have passed by on
+the other side; he now entered and tapped upon the wicket.
+
+No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
+dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry.  Yes, Carolan
+was always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go
+into the street!  To her call the little Frenchman made his
+appearance as punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer.
+His face was as yellow as a guinea.
+
+"Ah!  it's you, monsieur!"  he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton; "and how are you?"
+
+"It 's five days since I came out of hospital," muttered the little
+Frenchman, tapping on his chest; "a crisis of this bad atmosphere.
+I live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South.
+If there's anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me
+pleasure."
+
+"Nothing," replied Shelton, "I was just passing, and thought I should
+like to hear how you were getting on."
+
+"Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there.  'Brr!
+Il fait un froid etonnant'!"
+
+"What sort of customers have you just now?"  asked Shelton, as they
+passed into the kitchen.
+
+"Always the same clientele," replied the little man; "not so
+numerous, of course, it being summer."
+
+"Could n't you find anything better than this to do?"
+
+The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
+
+"When I first came to London," said he, "I secured an engagement at
+one of your public institutions.  I thought my fortune made.  _
+Imagine, monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the
+rate of ten a penny!  Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the
+time; but when I'm  paid, I 'm paid.  In this, climate, and being
+'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments.  I shall finish my days
+here.  Have you seen that young man who interested you?  There 's
+another!  He has spirit, as I had once--'il fait de la philosophie',
+as I do--and you will see, monsieur, it will finish him.  In this
+world what you want is to have no spirit.  Spirit ruins you."
+
+Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
+half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word "spirit" in his mouth
+struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it
+than any burst of tears.
+
+"Shall we 'sit down?" he said, offering a cigarette.
+
+"Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette.
+You remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad?  Well, he's
+dead.  I was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'.  He was
+another who had spirit.  And you wi11 see, monsieur, that young man
+in whom you take an interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some.
+hole or other, or even on the highroad; having closed his eyes once
+too often some cold night; and all because he has something in him
+which will not accept things as they are, believing always that they
+should be better.  'Il n'y a riens de plus tragique'!"
+
+"According to you, then," said Shelton--and the conversation seemed
+to him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--"rebellion of
+any sort is fatal."
+
+"Ah!"  replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal
+it is to sit under the awning of a caf‚ and talk life upside down,
+"you pose me a great problem there!  If one makes rebellion; it is
+always probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's
+self.  The law of the majority arranges that.  But I would draw your
+attention to this"--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to
+blow smoke through his nose--"if you rebel it is in all likelihood
+because you are forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the
+most certain things in life.  In any case, it is necessary to avoid
+falling between two stools--which is unpardonable," he ended with
+complacence.
+
+Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as
+if he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to
+feel that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action
+logically required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.
+
+"By nature," went on the little man, "I am an optimist; it is in
+consequence of this that I now make pessimism.  I have always had
+ideals; seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to
+complain, monsieur, is very sweet!"
+
+Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready;
+so he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
+Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
+
+"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow,
+"is to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you.
+At present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead.  Ah!
+there was a man who was rebellion incarnate!  He made rebellion as
+other men make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer
+capable of active revolution, he made it getting drunk.  At the last
+this was his only way of protesting against Society.  An interesting
+personality, 'je le regrette beaucoup'.  But, as you see, he died in
+great distress, without a soul to wave him farewell, because as you
+can well understand, monsieur, I don't count myself.  He died drunk.
+'C'etait un homme'!"
+
+Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber
+added hastily:
+
+"It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of
+weakness."
+
+"Yes," assented Shelton, "one has indeed."
+
+The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "it 's to the destitute that such things are
+important.  When one has money, all these matters---"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-
+feet; he waved his hand as though to end the subject.
+
+A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.
+
+"You think, then," said he, "that discontent is peculiar to the
+destitute?"
+
+"Monsieur," replied the little barber, "a plutocrat knows too well
+that if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets
+more lost than he."
+
+Shelton rose.
+
+"The rain is over.  I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll
+accept this in memory of that old actor," and he slipped a sovereign
+into the little Frenchman's hand.
+
+The latter bowed.
+
+"Whenever you are passing, monsieur," he said eagerly, "I shall be
+charmed to see you."
+
+And Shelton walked away.  "'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'"
+thought he; "now what did he mean by that?"
+
+Something of that "lost dog" feeling had gripped his spirit.  Another
+month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might
+even kill his love.  In the excitement of his senses and his nerves,
+caused by this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all
+was beyond life size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily
+use, are thus, unpopular with healthy people.  As will the, bones ;in
+a worn face, the spirit underlying things had reached the surface;
+the meanness and intolerable measure of hard facts, were too
+apparent.  Some craving for help, some instinct, drove him into
+Kensington, for he found himself before his, mother's house.
+Providence seemed bent on flinging him from pole to pole.
+
+Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
+warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour,
+was crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not
+rebellion.  She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round
+her eyes twinkled, with vitality.
+
+"Well, my dear boy," she said, "it's lovely to see you.  And how is
+that sweet girl?"
+
+"Very well, thank you," replied Shelton.
+
+"She must be such a dear!"
+
+"Mother," stammered Shelton, "I must give it up."
+
+"Give it up?  My dear Dick, give what up?  You look quite worried.
+Come and sit down, and have a cosy chat.  Cheer up!"  And Mrs.
+Shelton; with her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.
+
+Mother," said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never,
+since his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't
+go on waiting about like this."
+
+"My dear boy, what is the matter?";
+
+"Everything is wrong!
+
+"Wrong?" cried Mrs. Shelton.  "Come, tell me all, about it!"
+
+But Shelton, shook his head.
+
+"You surely have not had a quarrel----"
+
+Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have
+asked it of a groom.
+
+"No," said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.
+
+"You know, my dear old Dick," murmured his mother, "it seems a little
+mad."
+
+"I know it seems mad."
+
+"Come!" said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; "you
+never used to be like this."
+
+"No," said Shelton, with a laugh; "I never used to be like this."
+
+Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.
+
+"Oh," she said, with cheery sympathy, "I know exactly how you feel!"
+
+Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and
+bubbled like his mother's face.
+
+"But you're so fond of each other," she began again.  "Such a sweet
+girl!"
+
+"You don't understand," muttered Shelton gloomily; "it 's not her--
+it's nothing--it's--myself!"
+
+Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her
+soft, warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.
+
+"Oh!" she cried again; "I understand.  I know exactly what you 're
+feeling."  But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she
+had not an inkling.  To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to
+try to give her one.  Mrs. Shelton sighed.  "It would be so lovely if
+you could wake up
+to-morrow and think differently.  If I were you, my dear, I would
+have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
+write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how
+beautifully it'll all come straight"; and in the enthusiasm of advice
+Mrs. Shelton rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure,
+still so young, clasped her hands together.  "Now do, that 's a dear
+old Dick!  You 'll just see how lovely it'll be!"  Shelton smiled; he
+had not the heart to chase away this vision.  "And give her my
+warmest love, and tell her I 'm longing for the wedding.  Come, now,
+my dear boy, promise me that's what you 'll do."
+
+And Shelton said: " I'll think about it."
+
+Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in
+spite of her sciatica,.
+
+"Cheer up!"  she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
+sympathy.
+
+Wonderful woman!  The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
+good and ill had not descended to her son.
+
+>From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French
+barber, whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose
+little fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his
+own mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with
+sufficient glow, but who, until she died, would never stir a finger.
+When Shelton reached his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:
+
+I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford
+to start a walking tour.  I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay
+there till I may come to Holm Oaks.  I shall send you my address; do
+write as usual.
+
+He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken
+by Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-
+jacket.  There was one where she was standing just below her little
+brother, who was perched upon a wall.  In her half-closed eyes, round
+throat, and softly tilted chin, there was something cool and
+watchful, protecting the ragamuffin up above her head.  This he kept
+apart to be looked at daily, as a man says his prayers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE INDIAN CIVILIAN
+
+One morning then, a week later, Shelton found himself at the walls of
+Princetown Prison.
+
+He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before.  But the magic of his
+morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs
+of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building.  He
+left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning
+the walls with morbid fascination.
+
+This, then, was the system by which men enforced the will of the
+majority, and it was suddenly borne in on him that all the ideas and
+maxims which his Christian countrymen believed themselves to be
+fulfilling daily were stultified in every cellule of the social
+honeycomb.  Such teachings as "He that is without sin amongst you"
+had been pronounced unpractical by peers and judges, bishops,
+statesmen, merchants, husbands--in fact, by every truly Christian
+person in the country.
+
+"Yes," thought Shelton, as if he had found out something new, "the
+more Christian the nation, the less it has to do with the Christian
+spirit."
+
+Society was a charitable organisation, giving nothing for nothing,
+little for sixpence; and it was only fear that forced it to give at
+all!
+
+He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a warder who was slowly
+paring a last year's apple.  The expression of his face, the way he
+stood with his solid legs apart, his head poked forward and his lower
+jaw thrust out, all made him a perfect pillar of Society.  He was
+undisturbed by Shelton's scrutiny, watching the rind coil down below
+the apple; until in a springing spiral it fell on the path and
+collapsed like a toy snake.  He took a bite; his teeth were jagged;
+and his mouth immense.  It was obvious that he considered himself a
+most superior man.  Shelton frowned, got down slowly, from the wall,
+and proceeded on his way.
+
+A little further down the hill he stopped again to watch a group of
+convicts in a field.  They seemed to be dancing in a slow and sad
+cotillon, while behind the hedge on every side were warders armed
+with guns.  Just such a sight, substituting spears could have been
+seen in Roman times.
+
+While he thus stood looking, a man, walking, rapidly, stopped beside
+him, and asked how many miles it was to Exeter.  His round visage;
+and long, brown eyes, sliding about beneath their, brows, his cropped
+hair and short neck, seemed familiar.
+
+"Your name is Crocker, i5 n't it?" .
+
+"Why!  it's the Bird!"  exclaimed the traveller; putting out his
+hand.  "Have n't seen you since we both went down."
+
+Shelton returned his handgrip.  Crocker had lived above his head at
+college, and often kept him, sleepless half the night by playing on
+the hautboy.
+
+"Where have you sprung from?"
+
+"India.  Got my long leave.  I say, are you going this way?  Let's go
+together."
+
+They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.
+
+"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.
+
+"London."
+
+"Oh!  only as far as London?"
+
+"I 've set myself to do it in a week."
+
+"Are you in training?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You 'll kill yourself."
+
+Crocker answered with a chuckle.
+
+Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort
+of stubborn aspiration in it.  "Still an idealist!"  he thought;
+"poor fellow!"  "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you
+had in India?"
+
+"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Crocker smiled, and added:
+
+"Caught it on famine duty."
+
+"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine!  I suppose you fellows
+really think you 're doing good out there?"
+
+His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:
+
+"We get very good screws."
+
+"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.
+
+After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him,
+asked:
+
+"Don't you think we are doing good?"
+
+"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."
+
+Crocker seemed disconcerted.
+
+"Why?" he bluntly asked.
+
+Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.
+
+His friend repeated:
+
+"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"
+
+"Well," said Shelton gruffly, " how can progress be imposed on
+nations from outside?"
+
+The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and
+doubtful way, replied:
+
+"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."
+
+"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
+Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that
+matter, who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from
+within."
+
+Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."
+
+"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from
+our own, and stop their natural development by substituting a
+civilisation grown for our own use.  Suppose, looking at a tropical
+fern in a hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me;
+therefore it must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it
+outside in the fresh air.'"
+
+"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
+shrewdly.
+
+"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"
+
+Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see the point of view his friend
+was showing him.
+
+"Come, now!  Should we go on administering India if it were dead
+loss?  No.  Well, to talk about administering the country for the
+purpose of pocketing money is cynical, and there 's generally some
+truth in cynicism; but to talk about the administration of a country
+by which we profit, as if it were a great and good thing, is cant.
+I hit you in the wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of
+nature; but to say it does you good at the same time is beyond me."
+
+"No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me
+that we 're not doing good."
+
+"Wait a bit.  It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from
+too close.  Put the horizon further back.  You hit India in the wind,
+and say it's virtuous.  Well, now let's see what happens.  Either the
+wind never comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the
+wind does come back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to
+say your labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have
+spent where it would n't have been lost."
+
+"Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.
+
+"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're
+conferring upon other people."
+
+"Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?"
+
+"What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with
+India?"
+
+"If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be
+all adrift."
+
+"Quite so.  We always think our standards best for the whole world.
+It's a capital belief for us.  Read the speeches of our public men.
+Does n't it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the
+right?  It's so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same
+time, though, when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually
+another's poison.  Look at nature.  But in England we never look at
+nature--there's no necessity.  Our national point of view has filled
+our pockets, that's all that matters."
+
+"I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort
+of wondering sadness.
+
+"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat,
+and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon.
+I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape."
+Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason
+thought of Antonia--surely, she was not a Pharisee.
+
+His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of
+trouble on his face.
+
+"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing.  One
+has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them."
+
+"Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton.
+"I suppose not.  You always begin to act before you stop thinking,
+don't you?"
+
+Crocker grinned.
+
+"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
+Queer thing that!"
+
+After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled
+out:
+
+"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up
+India."
+
+Shelton smiled uneasily.
+
+"Why should n't we fill our pockets?  I only object to the humbug
+that we talk."
+
+The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.
+
+"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in
+India."
+
+And to this Shelton made no reply.
+
+The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic
+was stealing again upon the moor.  They were nearing the outskirt
+fields of cultivation.  It was past five when, dropping from the
+level of the tors, they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.
+
+"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this
+place occupies a position of unique isolation."
+
+The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an
+old lime-tree on the village green.  The smoke of their pipes, the
+sleepy air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made
+Shelton drowsy.
+
+"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to
+have with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?
+How is old Halidome?"
+
+"Married," replied Shelton.
+
+Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."
+
+Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he
+grunted.  Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him
+more; there was the spice of envy in them.
+
+"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian
+after a long pause.  His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows
+on the green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a
+little to one side.  An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.
+
+The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the
+ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy
+perfume.  From the converging lanes figures passed now and then,
+lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves,
+and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline.  A clock
+struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy
+insect commenced its booming rushes.  All was marvellously sane and
+slumbrous.  The soft air, the drawling voices, the shapes and
+murmurs, the rising smell of wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--
+were full of the spirit of security and of home.  The outside world
+was far indeed.  Typical of some island nation was this nest of
+refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened, and without fuss
+dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished, as
+sunflowers flourished in the sun.
+
+Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
+>From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a
+thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the
+struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his
+prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange
+peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!
+
+The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and
+boomed away.  Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face,
+jogged Shelton's arm.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A PARSON
+
+Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday
+night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of
+Dowdenhame.  All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with
+thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms.  Once or twice they
+had broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a
+canal, which, choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds,
+brooded sluggishly beside the fields.  Nature, in one of her ironic
+moods, had cast a grey and iron-hard cloak over all the country's
+bland luxuriance.  From dawn till darkness fell there had been no
+movement in the steely distant sky; a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-
+tops, and sent shivers through the branches of the elms.  The cattle,
+dappled, pied, or bay, or white, continued grazing with an air of
+grumbling at their birthright.  In a meadow close to the canal
+Shelton saw five magpies, and about five o'clock the rain began, a
+steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker, looking at the sky,
+declared was going to be over in a minute.  But it was not over in a
+minute; they were soon drenched.  Shelton was tired, and it annoyed
+him very much that his companion, who was also tired, should grow
+more cheerful.  His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This must be
+something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when
+you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed."  And
+sulkily he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the
+exasperating Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping
+horribly.  It suddenly came home to him that life for three quarters
+of the world meant physical exhaustion every day, without a
+possibility of alternative, and that as soon as, for some cause
+beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust themselves, they were
+reduced to beg or starve.  "And then we, who don't know the meaning
+of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'" he said aloud.
+
+It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame.  The street
+yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed
+the church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was
+certainly the parsonage.
+
+"Suppose," said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, "we ask
+him where to go"; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang
+the bell.
+
+The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man,
+whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle.
+Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile
+played on the curves of his thin lips.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.  "Inn? yes, there's the Blue
+Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut.  They 're early
+people, I 'm glad to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the
+proper fold for these damp sheep.  "Are you Oxford men, by any
+chance?" he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter.
+"Of Mary's?  Really!  I'm of Paul's myself.  Ladyman--Billington
+Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother.  I could give you a
+room here if you could manage without sheets.  My housekeeper has two
+days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the keys."
+
+Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's
+voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to
+patronise.
+
+"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp.  I'm very much afraid
+there 's--er--nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water;
+hot lemonade is better than nothing.
+
+Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on
+to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes,
+returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some
+blankets.  Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the
+travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he
+seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his
+sermon.
+
+"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
+good of you."
+
+"Not at all," the parson answered; I'm only grieved the house is
+empty."
+
+It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had
+been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless
+lips, although complacent, was pathetic.  It was peculiar, that voice
+of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what
+was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money,
+while all the time his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as
+speech they said, "Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound
+or two to spare just once a year, or so!"
+
+Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries
+were there, and necessaries not enough.  It was bleak and bare; the
+ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim,
+shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the
+surrounding barrenness.
+
+"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the
+house.  The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told.  You
+can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have
+come down so terribly in value!  He was a married man--large family!"
+
+Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
+nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round
+his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched
+towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather
+patchy air.  Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of
+fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he
+kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson,
+the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by
+seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers.  But there was
+something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something
+superior and academic, which defied all sympathy.  It was pure
+nervousness which made him say:
+
+"Ah! why do they have such families?"
+
+A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
+startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who
+feels bound to show that he is not asleep.
+
+"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many
+cases."
+
+Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
+unhappy Crocker snored.  Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
+
+"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's
+eyebrows rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."
+
+"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"
+
+Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of cases--
+clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who---"
+
+A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had
+tightened, and his chin receded slightly.  " Why, he 's like a mule!"
+thought Shelton.  His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more
+parroty.  Shelton no longer liked his face.
+
+"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each
+other on such matters."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed.
+
+"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson
+said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do
+you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"
+
+"I can only tell you what I personally feel."
+
+"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
+motherhood."
+
+"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
+repetition.  Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."
+
+"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still
+keeping on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated
+to populate the world."
+
+"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked.  "It always makes me
+feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."
+
+"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of
+his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are
+leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"
+
+"There are two ways of looking at that.  It depends on what you want
+your country to become."
+
+"I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his
+smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."
+
+The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more
+controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this
+subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.
+
+"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in
+which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open
+question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated
+as to be quite incapable of supporting itself."  -
+
+"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're
+not a Little Englander?"
+
+On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect.  Resisting an impulse
+to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
+
+" Of course I'm not!"
+
+The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the
+discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
+
+"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality.  It
+is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."
+
+But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied
+with heat:
+
+"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'?  Any opinion
+which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I
+believe."
+
+"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton
+to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant
+and unhealthy.  The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."
+
+Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
+
+"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a
+man of your standing panders to these notions."
+
+"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule
+of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."
+
+"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon."  He was in danger of
+forgetting the delicate position he was in.  "He wants to ram his
+notions down my throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the
+parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior,
+his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of
+great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance
+whatsoever.  That which, however, was important was the fact that in
+nothing could they ever have agreed.
+
+But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that
+a peculiar whistling arose instead.  Both Shelton and the parson
+looked at him, and the sight sobered them.
+
+"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.
+
+Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly
+pathetic, with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly
+reddened nose that comes from not imbibing quite enough.  A kind
+fellow, after all!
+
+The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed
+himself before the blackening fire.  Whole centuries of authority
+stood behind him.  It was an accident that the mantelpiece was
+chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed
+about the cuffs.
+
+"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that
+you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax
+views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."
+
+Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on
+her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in
+Shelton, and that word--"lax" seemed ridiculous.  And the women he
+was wont to see dragging about the streets of London with two or
+three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that
+they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn,
+anaemic-looking women, impecunious mothers in his own class, with
+twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of
+marriage, and again the word "lax" seemed to be ridiculous.
+
+"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"--muttered
+Shelton.
+
+"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.
+
+"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the
+country is more crowded now.  I can't see why we should n't decide it
+for ourselves."
+
+"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker
+with a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."
+
+Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
+
+"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are
+to bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if
+they don't fall in with our views."
+
+"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in
+the hands of God."
+
+Shelton was silent.
+
+"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always
+lain through God in the hands of men, not women.  We are the
+reasonable sex."
+
+Shelton stubbornly replied
+
+"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."
+
+"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.
+
+"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the
+same views as our grandmothers?  We men, by our commercial
+enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for
+the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were.
+It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort" --and in
+his heat the sarcasm of using the word "comfort" in that room was
+lost on him--"who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old
+morality."
+
+The parson quivered with impatient irony.
+
+"Old morality! new morality!" he said.  "These are strange words."
+
+"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality,
+I imagine.  There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true
+morality."
+
+The eyes of his host contracted.
+
+"I think," he said--and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in
+the endeavour to impress his listener--"that any well-educated man
+who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly--I say
+humbly--to claim morality."
+
+Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked
+himself.  "Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like
+an old woman."
+
+At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went
+towards the door.
+
+"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the
+wet."  He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms.  "They
+will get out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face,
+suffused by stooping.  And absently he stroked the dripping cat,
+while a drop of wet ran off his nose.  "Poor pussy, poor pussy!"  The
+sound of that "Poor pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked
+superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness
+itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ACADEMIC
+
+The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers
+entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men.  The
+spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its
+concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was
+from church dogmas.
+
+"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the
+club.
+
+But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
+suits were coming out.
+
+"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.
+
+Shelton shook his head.  Never before had he felt such love for this
+old city.  It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it
+seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble.
+Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition,
+radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the
+perfume of a woman's dress.  At the entrance of a college they
+glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of
+a window flowerbox--secluded, mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of
+the sacred past.  Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face
+and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the
+noticeboard.  The college porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-
+mouthed--stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude.
+An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous
+air to multitudes of pecadilloes.  His blue eyes rested on the
+travellers.  "I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak I
+shall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make," they
+seemed to say.
+
+Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
+handle.  A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
+snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain
+was fastened stayed immovable.  Through this narrow mouth, human
+metal had been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
+
+"Come along," said Shelton.
+
+They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
+where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
+youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass,
+thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there,
+serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter.  When they
+had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty
+from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked
+in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic
+--and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the
+forest college, of the forest country in the finest world.  The
+streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this
+after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college--spaciously
+majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe,
+the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow
+of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of
+rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety.  The
+garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty
+water-bottles, failed to rouse him.  Nor when they passed the
+staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate
+disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse.  High on that staircase were
+the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by
+which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the
+moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after.  His coach's
+face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off
+knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.
+
+They passed their tutor's staircase.
+
+"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should
+like to see him.  Shall we go and look him up?"
+
+"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.
+
+Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
+
+"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.
+
+A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
+pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.
+
+"Don't you know me, sir?"
+
+"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it?  I didn't recognise you with a
+beard."
+
+Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels,
+chuckled feebly.
+
+"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.
+
+"Shelton?  Oh yes!  How do you do, Shelton?  Sit down; take a cigar";
+and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them
+up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all
+you know, why come and wake me up like this?"
+
+Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
+"Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?  "And Shelton, who
+could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar.
+The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains;
+the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet;
+the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps;
+the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely
+comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his
+little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge
+meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon.  The door
+was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown,
+whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.
+
+"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air,
+"am I intruding, Turl?"
+
+The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
+
+"Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"
+
+The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with
+his fine eyes.
+
+Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the new-
+comer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
+
+"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the
+door opened to admit these gentlemen.  Of the same height, but
+different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly
+supercilious, as if they tolerated everything.  The one whose name
+was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his
+cheeks a bluish tint.  His lips were rather full, so that he had a
+likeness to a spider.  Washer, who was thin and pale, wore an
+intellectual smile.
+
+The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
+
+"Crocker, Shelton," he said.
+
+An awkward silence followed.  Shelton tried to rouse the cultured
+portion of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated
+seriously paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the
+glowing tip of his cigar.  It seemed to him unfair to have intruded
+on these gentlemen without its having been made quite clear to them
+beforehand who and what he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer
+had begun to speak.
+
+"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book
+on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
+boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame
+Bovary!"
+
+"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said
+Berryman.
+
+As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had
+galvanised him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down
+a book, opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way
+about the room.
+
+"Ha!  Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from
+Trimmer, who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with
+either hand a fistful of his gown--"the book's a classic!"
+
+"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes;
+"the fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such
+putridity!"
+
+A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at
+his little host, who, however, merely blinked.
+
+"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his
+smile, "that the author is n't one of his particular pets."
+
+"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!"  growled
+the little fat man suddenly.
+
+Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down.
+There was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-
+mindedness.
+
+"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at
+Eton!  What do we want to know about that sort of thing?  A writer
+should be a sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over
+his chin at Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the
+sentiment.
+
+"Don't you--" began the latter.
+
+But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
+
+"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she
+is going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."
+
+The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
+
+"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."
+
+He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
+gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales.  His lowering
+smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions.  "After
+all," he seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's
+not very much in anything.  This is the modern spirit; why not give
+it a look in?"
+
+"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
+book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little
+fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing
+pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."
+
+Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to
+dip into his volume and walk up and down.
+
+"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and
+looking down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being
+justified through Art.  I call a spade a spade."
+
+Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman
+was addressing him or society at large.  And Berryman went on:
+
+"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
+taste for vice?   Tell me the point of it.  No man who was in the
+habit of taking baths would choose such a subject."
+
+"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer
+genially buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back-
+"my dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."
+
+"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and
+taking down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian;
+for garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."
+
+There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn.  With the
+exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically,
+they wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider
+any subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were
+so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
+impertinent.  It may have been some glimmer in this glance of
+Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his
+compromising air.
+
+"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from
+ourselves in literature, just as they have a different standard in
+regard to honour.  All this is purely artificial."
+
+What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
+
+"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
+wives---"
+
+He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little
+fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it
+within two inches of his chin, murmured:
+
+"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."
+
+He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
+
+Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a
+fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
+dumb-bells.
+
+"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is
+profoundly---"
+
+Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in
+Shelton's estimate he did not know himself.  Fortunately Berryman
+broke in:
+
+"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
+punch his head!"
+
+"Come, come!"  said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
+
+Shelton had a gleam of inspiration.  "If your wife deceived you," he
+thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold
+it over her."
+
+Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never
+wavered; he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an
+epigram.
+
+The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level
+with his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of
+view.  His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical.
+Almost painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the
+student who was bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
+
+"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of
+thing, I don't believe in sentiment."
+
+The words were high-pitched and sarcastic.  Shelton looked hastily
+around.  All their faces were complacent.  He grew red, and suddenly
+remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
+
+"I see!"
+
+He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
+sort, and that he never would again.  The cold hostility flashing out
+all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
+satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men.  Crocker rose
+nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
+following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
+good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
+
+"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed
+behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN INCIDENT
+
+"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college.  "I
+don't feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"
+
+Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the
+dons to heed the soreness of his feet.  This, too, was the last day
+of his travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at
+Oxford till July.
+
+"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great
+building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to
+me as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."
+
+Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars,
+calculating possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.
+
+"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to
+strain our minds.  We know when it's time to stop.  We pile up news
+of Papias and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of
+oneself!  Real seekers after knowledge are a different sort.  They
+fight in the dark--no quarter given.  We don't grow that sort up
+here."
+
+"How jolly the limes smell!"  said Crocker.
+
+He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a
+button of his coat.  His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully.  It
+seemed as though he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.
+
+"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up
+here.  We learn that better through one incident that stirs our
+hearts than we learn it here in all the time we're up."
+
+"Hum!"  muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who
+seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts
+afterwards."
+
+"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up
+here.  I believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant;
+my "set" were nothing but---"
+
+Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to
+Shelton's "set."
+
+"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.
+
+Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes.  Images were
+thronging through his mind.  The faces of his old friends strangely
+mixed with those of people he had lately met--the girl in the train,
+Ferrand, the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little
+barber; others, too, and floating, mysterious,--connected with them
+all, Antonia's face.  The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with
+its magic sweetness.  From the street behind, the footsteps of the
+passers-by sounded muffled, yet exact, and on the breeze was borne
+the strain: "For he's a jolly good fellow!
+
+For he's a jolly good fellow!  For he's a jolly good fe-ellow!  And
+so say all of us!"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."
+
+"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too
+much side."
+
+And Shelton laughed.
+
+"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish
+business.  The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so
+beastly comfortable."
+
+Crocker shook his head.
+
+"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on
+Shelton's boots.  "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you--
+you ought to take care!"
+
+"Take care?  What of?"
+
+Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.
+
+"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow--to
+be--to be losing yourself."
+
+"Losing myself!  Finding myself, you mean!"
+
+Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed.  Of what exactly
+was he thinking?  In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in
+knowing that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of
+contempt, a sort of aching.  Crocker broke the silence.
+
+"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel
+very fit.  Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"
+
+And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger
+of missing something good.  The latter's feet had instantly begun to
+ache and burn.
+
+"No!"?  he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."
+
+Crocker nodded.
+
+"She lives near here.  Well, then, I'll say good-bye.  I should like
+to do another ten miles to-night."
+
+"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."
+
+Crocker chuckled.
+
+"No," he said; "I want to get on.  See you in London.  Good-bye!"
+and, gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.
+
+Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock
+yourself up."
+
+But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round
+towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.
+
+Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the
+oily gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees.  He felt
+relieved, yet sorry.  His thoughts were random, curious, half
+mutinous, half sweet.  That afternoon five years ago, when he had
+walked back from the river with Antonia across the Christchurch
+meadows, was vivid to his mind; the scent of that afternoon had never
+died away from him-the aroma of his love.  Soon she would be his
+wife--his wife!  The faces of the dons sprang up before him.  They
+had wives, perhaps.  Fat, lean, satirical, and compromising--what was
+it that through diversity they had in common?  Cultured intolerance!
+.  .  .  Honour!  .  .  .  A queer subject to discuss.  Honour!  The
+honour that made a fuss, and claimed its rights!  And Shelton smiled.
+"As if man's honour suffered when he's injured!"  And slowly he
+walked along the echoing, empty street to his room at the Bishop's
+Head.  Next morning he received the following wire:
+
+     Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going
+     strong                         CROCKER
+
+He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of
+his probation, and the end seemed long in coming.  To be so near
+Antonia, and as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse
+than ever.  Each day he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to
+near Holm Oaks, on the chance of her being on the river; but the
+house was two miles off, and the chance but slender.  She never came.
+After spending the afternoons like this he would return, pulling hard
+against the stream, with a queer feeling of relief, dine heartily,
+and fall adreaming over his cigar.  Each morning he awoke in an
+excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and sat down to
+write to her.  These letters of his were the most amazing portion of
+that fortnight.  They were remarkable for failing to express any
+single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of sentiments
+which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set himself to
+analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared, and
+shocked, and quite unable to write anything.  He made the discovery
+that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel,
+except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect
+Antonia's ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile.  All the world was too
+engaged in planning decency.
+
+Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of
+Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure
+of salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne.  In preparation for his
+visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down
+from London.  With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which
+ran as follows:
+
+
+IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
+FOLKESTONE,
+
+June 20.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so
+bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time,
+I have some curious stories to tell you.  Once again I have
+encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps.  Being
+occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a
+heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after
+my things.  Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left
+me an empty box.  I am once again almost without clothes, and know
+not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of
+my duties.  You see, I am not lucky.  Since coming to your country,
+the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you.
+Excuse me for not writing more at this moment.  Hoping that you are
+in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
+          I am,
+               Always your devoted
+                         LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+
+Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being
+exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote
+the following reply:
+
+BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL,
+OXFORD,
+
+June 25.
+
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes.  I was much hoping that you
+had made a better start.  I enclose you Post Office Orders for four
+pounds.  Always glad to hear from you.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes
+off his responsibilities.
+
+Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents
+which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and
+reputation.
+
+The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar;
+a woman came sidling up and spoke to him.  He perceived her to be one
+of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel
+sympathy with whom was sentimental.  Her face was flushed, her
+whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry
+figure.  Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy
+face, and by the scent of patchouli.  Her touch on his arm startled
+him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and
+walked the faster.  But her breathing as she followed sounded
+laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful that a woman should be panting
+after him like that.
+
+"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her."  He stopped,
+and, with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's
+impossible."
+
+In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she
+accepted the impossibility.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said.
+
+She muttered something.  Shelton shook his head.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said once more.  "Good.-night."
+
+The woman bit her lower lip.
+
+"Good-night," she answered dully.
+
+At the corner of the street he turned his head.  The woman was
+hurrying uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by
+the arm.
+
+His heart began to beat.  "Heavens!"  he thought, "what shall I do
+now?" His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it
+--to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to
+be concerned in such affairs.
+
+He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from
+their figures.
+
+"Ask the gentleman!  He spoke to me,"she was saying in her brassy
+voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.
+
+"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."
+
+"You--police!"  cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my
+living, have n't I, the same as you?"
+
+Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened
+face, stepped forward.  The policeman turned, and at the sight of his
+pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he
+felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he
+despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded.  The cold certainty of
+law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the
+smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack,
+seemed to be facing him.  And the odd thing was, this man was only
+carrying out his duty.  Shelton moistened his lips.
+
+"You're not going to charge her?"
+
+"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.
+
+"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."
+
+The policeman took out his note-book.
+
+"Oh, I 'm making a mistake?  I 'll take your name and address,
+please; we have to report these things."
+
+"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it.  "I spoke to her
+first."
+
+"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat
+that," replied the policeman, with incivility.
+
+Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.
+
+"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of
+uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.
+
+"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a
+threatening voice.
+
+Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"You had better be careful, constable."
+
+"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman.  "I'm only a policeman.
+You've got the riches, I've got the power."
+
+Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
+
+Shelton turned, and walked away.
+
+He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa.  His
+feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with
+the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
+
+"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his
+rights."
+
+He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged
+up in him.
+
+"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they
+are.  And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't
+want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to
+prowl about the streets, and then we run them in.  Ha! that's good--
+that's excellent!  We run them in!  And here we sit and carp.  But
+what do we do?  Nothing!  Our system is the most highly moral known.
+We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--
+the women are the only ones that suffer.  And why should n't they--
+inferior things?"
+
+He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.
+
+"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him
+that the case would get into the local papers.   The press would
+never miss so nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!"
+And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and
+conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this.  Someone, at all
+events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it
+too good to be missed!  And suddenly he saw with horror that to help
+the woman he would have to assert again that he had spoken to her
+first.  "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking, as if to assure
+himself that he was not a coward.
+
+He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.
+
+"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be
+telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"
+
+He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles,
+but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to
+telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it
+appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.
+
+"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing.  It's
+neither reasonable nor just."
+
+He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of
+uncertainty.  Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's
+face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a
+nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction.  He fell asleep
+at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.
+
+He woke with a sense of odd disturbance.  "I can do no good by
+going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're
+certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for
+nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less
+fury.  It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of
+perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)--it was Antonia.
+It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in
+fact, not decent.
+
+He breakfasted.  In the room were some Americans, and the face of one
+young girl reminded him a little of Antonia.  Fainter and fainter
+grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.
+
+Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-
+time.  He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a
+daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the
+power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of
+the police--how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and
+justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one
+and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de
+corps.  Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst
+thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there
+would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to
+distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate
+and the cowardice of people with anything to lose?  Those who had in
+their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically
+irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and
+humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and
+thoroughness .  .  .  .
+
+However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself
+at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest
+bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.
+
+He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of
+an unpalatable truth.
+
+In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow.  The
+strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an
+illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.
+There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of
+his chivalry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HOLM OAKS
+
+Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house,
+not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and
+walled gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had
+Queen Anne windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams
+glinted.
+
+In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most
+established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the
+gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all
+birds the most conventional.  A huge aspen--impressionable creature--
+shivered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such
+imperturbable surroundings.  It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came
+once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay;
+for boys threw stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its
+morals.
+
+The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of
+motor-cars.  About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled
+roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now
+the odour of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness.  Beyond the
+dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record
+of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births
+of bastards, even the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a
+hand invisible above the heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of
+the manor-house.  Decent and discreet, the two roofs caught the eye
+to the exclusion of all meaner dwellings, seeming to have joined in a
+conspiracy to keep them out of sight.
+
+The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale
+was Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.
+
+"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who,
+old servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not
+yet twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a
+sacred distinction between the footmen and himself).
+
+"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and
+hairless face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which
+comes of living with good families--"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the
+village, sir; but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."
+
+Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side
+the lawn was visible, a vision of serenity.  He mounted six wide,
+shallow steps, and stopped.  From behind a closed door there came the
+sound of scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes
+mingling in his ears with the beating of his heart.  He softly turned
+the handle, a fixed smile on his lips.
+
+Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of
+her fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously
+moving feet.  She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-
+o'-shanter were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and
+creamy blouse, fitting collarless about her throat.  Her face was
+flushed, and wore a little frown; and as her fingers raced along the
+keys, her neck swayed, and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.
+
+Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair
+hair about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards
+the nose, the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath
+the ice-blue eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole
+remote, sweet, suntouched, glacial face.
+
+She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:
+
+"Dick!  What fun!"  She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face
+said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"
+
+"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.
+
+"Glad to see you!  You are funny, Dick!--as if you did n't know!
+Why, you 've shaved your beard!  Mother and Sybil have gone into the
+village to see old Mrs. Hopkins.  Shall we go out?  Thea and the boys
+are playing tennis.  It's so jolly that you 've come!  "She caught up
+the tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair.  Almost as tall as
+Shelton, she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves
+quivering like wings to the movements of her fingers.  "We might have
+a game before lunch; you can have my other racquet."
+
+"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.
+
+Her calm glance ran over him.
+
+"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount.  I'll wait
+for you."  She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be
+quick!"  and vanished.
+
+Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men
+assuming other people's clothes.  She was in the hall when he
+descended, humming a tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed
+all her pearly upper teeth.  He caught hold of her sleeve and
+whispered:
+
+"Antonia!"
+
+The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her
+shoulder.
+
+"Come along, old Dick!"  she cried; and, flinging open the glass
+door, ran into the garden.
+
+Shelton followed.
+
+The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock.  A holm
+oak tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an
+unexpected depth to the green smoothness of the scene.  As Shelton
+and Antonia carne up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped
+Shelton's hand.  From the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish
+skirt, tossed back her straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun,
+came strolling up to them. The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was
+lying on his stomach, squealing and tickling a collie.  Shelton bent
+and pulled his hair.
+
+"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"
+
+One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and
+pitiless inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something
+chaffing and distrustful, as though about him were some subtle
+poignant scent exciting curiosity and disapproval.
+
+When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock
+underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to
+hunt for the lost balls.
+
+"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're
+in for a wigging from the Mater."
+
+"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.
+
+"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems
+you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and
+again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.
+
+"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. " What d' you mean?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me.  The Mater thinks she's in a bad way--unsettled,
+or what d' you call at.  You've been telling her that things are not
+what they seem.  That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook
+his head.
+
+Shelton dropped his eyes.
+
+"Well, they are n't!" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's all right!  But don't bring your philosophy down here,
+old chap."
+
+"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.
+
+"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."
+
+"Sacred!  Nothing's sacred, except--"  But Shelton did not finish his
+remark. "I don't understand," he said.
+
+"Ideals, that sort of thing!  You've been diving down below the line
+of 'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and,
+stooping suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!"
+Shelton saw Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second
+daughter, Sybil.
+
+By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed
+towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing
+there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener.  Her
+hands, cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the
+bearded gardener from the severe but ample lines of her
+useful-looking skirt.  The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at
+their two faces, pricking his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how
+one of these two bipeds differed from the other.
+
+"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan.  Ah, Dick!  Charmin' to see you
+here, at last!"
+
+In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark
+the typical nature of her personality.  It always seemed to him that
+he had met so many other ladies like her.  He felt that her
+undoubtable quality had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for
+her class.  She thought that standing for herself was not the thing;
+yet she was full of character.  Tall, with nose a trifle beaked,
+long, sloping chin, and an assured, benevolent mouth, showing,
+perhaps, too many teeth--though thin, she was not unsubstantial.  Her
+accent in speaking showed her heritage; it was a kind of drawl which
+disregarded vulgar merits such as tone; leaned on some syllables, and
+despised the final 'g'--the peculiar accent, in fact, of aristocracy,
+adding its deliberate joys to life.
+
+Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle,
+from the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot
+of tea with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven
+o'clock at night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver
+candlestick, and with this in one hand, and in the other a new novel,
+or, better still, one of those charming volumes written by great
+people about the still greater people they have met, she said good-
+night to her children and her guests.  No!  What with photography,
+the presidency of a local league, visiting the rich, superintending
+all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all her ideas so tidy that
+no foreign notions might stray in, she was never idle.  The
+information she collected from these sources was both vast and
+varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked
+sauce, and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her
+class, she dipped her fingers.
+
+He liked her.  No one could help liking her.  She was kind, and of
+such good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent,
+and useful china; and she was scented, too--not with verbena,
+violets, or those essences which women love, but with nothing, as if
+she had taken stand against all meretricity.  In her intercourse with
+persons not "quite the thing" (she excepted the vicar from this
+category, though his father had dealt in haberdashery), her
+refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with great practical good
+sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and you--well, are you,
+don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness about this
+attitude, for she was really not a common woman.  She simply could
+not help it; all her people had done this.  Their nurses breathed
+above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their
+systems, ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear
+breaths.  And her manner!  Ah! her manner--it concealed the inner
+woman so as to leave doubt of her existence!
+
+Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon
+the under-gardener.
+
+"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful
+just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'.  I 've done all
+I can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'.  And, my
+dear Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees!  I'm afraid he's
+goin' mad; I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"
+
+It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed
+him entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being
+a canonised and legal, sorrow.  But excesses!  O dear, no!
+
+"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed.  "He used to be
+such a splendid gardener!  That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to
+have a talk with you.  Shall we go in to lunch?"
+
+Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case
+of Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.
+
+It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging";
+nor did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of
+Antonia, such a very serious affair.
+
+"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl,
+"I don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."
+
+"Ideas!"  murmured Shelton in confusion.
+
+"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always
+what they ought to be."
+
+Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table,
+addressing in her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a
+bishop.  There was not the faintest trace of awkwardness about her,
+yet Shelton could not help a certain sense of shock.  If she--she--
+did not think things were what they ought to be--in a bad way things
+must be indeed!
+
+"Things!"  he muttered.
+
+Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would
+remind him of a hare's.
+
+"She showed me some of your letters, you know.  Well, it 's not a bit
+of use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much
+lately."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled
+"things" as she handled under-gardeners--put them away when they
+showed signs of running to extremes.
+
+"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.
+
+"My dear boy!  you'll never get on that way.  Now, I want you to
+promise me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."
+
+Shelton raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean!"
+
+He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things"
+would really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her
+thus below the surface!
+
+He therefore said, "Quite so!"
+
+To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar arid pathetic flush of
+women past their prime, she drawled out:
+
+"About the poor--and criminals--and marriages--there was that
+wedding, don't you know?"
+
+Shelton bowed his head.  Motherhood had been too strong for her; in
+her maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so
+many words on "things."
+
+"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out
+of gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people
+living on together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres',
+or in worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the
+same time; or in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or
+in war; or in anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain
+amount of justice by recognising that this was natural, since her
+whole life had been passed in trying not to see the fun in all these
+things.
+
+But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway.  Brilliant and gay she
+looked, yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her.
+She sat down by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the
+youthful foreigner whom he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt
+whether she, too, saw the fun that lay in one human being patronising
+others.
+
+"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things
+he told you about were only---"
+
+"Good!"  he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word
+means."
+
+Her eyes clouded.  "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton stroked her sleeve.
+
+"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.
+
+"The lunatic!"  he said.
+
+"Lunatic!  Why, in your letters he was splendid."
+
+"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; " he's not a bit mad, really
+--that is, I only wish I were half as mad."
+
+"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn--"Tom
+Crocker?  Ah, yes!  I knew his mother; she was a Springer."
+
+"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a
+kitten.
+
+"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.
+
+Thea shook back her hair.
+
+"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.
+
+Antonia frowned.
+
+"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured
+with a smile at Shelton.  "I wish that we could see him."
+
+But Shelton shook his head.
+
+"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as
+I could."
+
+Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.
+
+"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.
+
+A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of
+futility and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a
+flame were licking at his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ENGLISH
+
+Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr.
+Dennant coming from a ride.  Antonia's father was a spare man of
+medium height, with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical
+eyebrows, and some tiny crow's-feet.  In his old, short grey coat,
+with a little slit up the middle of the back, his drab cord breeches,
+ancient mahogany leggings, and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry,
+threadbare quality not without distinction.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see
+the pilgrim here, at last.  You're not off already?" and, laying his
+hand on Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him
+across the fields.
+
+This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and
+Shelton began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however
+bald, about it.  He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and
+looked askance at Mr. Dennant.  That gentleman was walking stiffly,
+his cord breeches faintly squeaking.  He switched a yellow, jointed
+cane against his leggings, and after each blow looked at his legs
+satirically.  He himself was rather like that yellow cane-pale, and
+slim, and jointed, with features arching just a little, like the
+arching of its handle.
+
+"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.
+
+"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid.  We ought
+to hang some farmers--do a world of good.  Dear souls!  I've got some
+perfect strawberries."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a
+climate like this a man must grumble."
+
+"Quite so, quite so!  Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I
+couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched.  Did you ever see
+anything finer than this pasture?  And they want me to lower their
+rents!"
+
+And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and
+whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that
+alarmed him.  There was a pause.
+
+"Now for it!"  thought the younger man.
+
+Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.
+
+"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had
+nipped the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what
+can you expect?  They've no consideration, dear souls!"
+
+Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:
+
+"It's awfully hard, sir, to---"
+
+Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a
+fellow do?  One must have farmers.  Why, if it was n't for the
+farmers, there 'd be still a hare or two about the place!"
+
+Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future
+father-in-law.  What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening
+of his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth?  And his eye
+caught Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine,
+dry nose (one of the sort that reddens in a wind).
+
+"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.
+
+"Have n't you?  Lucky fellow!  The most--yes, quite the most trying
+portion of the human species--next to daughters."
+
+"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me--" began Shelton.
+
+"I don't--oh, I don't!  D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a
+ducking."
+
+A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were
+spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.
+
+Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on
+the part of Providence.  He would have to say something, but not now,
+later.
+
+"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain.  But you'd better get
+back, sir."
+
+"Dear me!  I've 'a tenant in this cottage,' said Mr. Dennant in his,
+leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too.  Least we
+can do 's to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?  "and
+smiling sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep
+dry, he rapped on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.
+
+It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.
+
+"Ah, Phoebe!  Your father in?"
+
+"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."
+
+"So sorry!  Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"
+
+The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying,
+left them in the parlour.
+
+"What a pretty girl!  " said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but
+she won't leave her father.  Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that
+fellow!"
+
+This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he
+was further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking.  He
+walked over to the window.  The rain.  was coming down with fury,
+though a golden line far down the sky promised the shower's quick
+end.  "For goodness' sake," he thought, "let me say something,
+however idiotic, and get it over!"  But he did not turn; a kind of
+paralysis had seized on him.
+
+"Tremendous heavy rain!"  he said at last; "coming down in
+waterspouts."
+
+It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to
+be the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make
+her happy!"  Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath
+required; but he couldn't say it!  He watched the rain stream and
+hiss against the leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with
+its insistent torrent; and he noticed with precision all the details
+of the process going on outside how the raindrops darted at the
+leaves like spears, and how the leaves shook themselves free a
+hundred times a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear,
+rolled over their edges, soft and quick.  He noticed, too, the
+mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at the hedge.
+
+Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain.  So
+disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned.  His future
+father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked
+boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the
+carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution.  It was
+not forbidding, stern, discouraging--not in the least; it had merely
+for the moment ceased to look satirical.  This was so startling that
+Shelton lost his chance of speaking.  There seemed a heart to Mr.
+Dennant's gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because
+he felt so.  But glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared
+at once.
+
+"What a day for ducks!"  he said; and again there was unmistakable
+alarm about the eye.  Was it possible that he, too, dreaded
+something?
+
+"I can't express---" began Shelton hurriedly.
+
+"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang--
+
+          For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+          And jump out anywhere.
+
+"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh?  Capital!
+There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must
+get my wife to put you between them---"
+
+          For it's my delight of a starry night--
+
+"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in
+the court at least twice---'
+
+          In the season of the year!
+
+"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of
+Phoebe in the doorway.
+
+"No, thank you, Phoebe.  That girl ought to get married," went on Mr.
+Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew.  A flush showed queerly on
+his sallow cheeks.  "A shame to keep her tied like this to her
+father's apron-strings--selfish fellow, that!"  He looked up sharply,
+as if he had made a dangerous remark.
+
+          The keeper he was watching us,
+          For him we did n't care!
+
+Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as
+anxious to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as
+himself.  And this was comforting.
+
+"You know, sir---" he began.
+
+But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his
+personality seemed to shrink together.
+
+"By Jove!"  he said, "it's stopped!  Now's our chance!  Come along,
+my dear fellow; delays are dangerous!"  and with his bantering
+courtesy he held the door for Shelton to pass out.  "I think we'll
+part here," he said--"I almost think so.  Good luck to you!"
+
+He held out his dry, yellow hand.  Shelton seized it, wrung it hard,
+and muttered the word:
+
+"Grateful!"
+
+Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he
+had been found out, and he disliked it.  The colour in his face had
+died away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened,
+narrow brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the
+crow's-feet hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by
+the queerest smile.
+
+"Gratitude!"  he said; "almost a vice, is n't it?  Good-night!"
+
+Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly
+as his senior, proceeded on his way.  He had been playing in a comedy
+that could only have been played in England.  He could afford to
+smile now at his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty
+unfulfilled.  Everything had been said that was right and proper to
+be said, in the way that we such things should say.  No violence had
+been done; he could afford to smile--smile at himself, at Mr.
+Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at the sweet aroma of the earth, the
+shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain brings forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE COUNTRY HOUSE
+
+The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country
+houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful
+hour.  The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height,
+and the clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the
+horses, neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary
+murmur; for the Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to
+hear remarks like these "Have you read that charmin' thing of
+Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the new edition of old Bablington:
+delightfully bound--so light."  And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as
+a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best.  For in July it had
+become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from
+London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no
+seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday.
+The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season.  It was
+their good pleasure not to.  A week or fortnight of it satisfied
+them.  They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even
+after her presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning
+home, stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."
+
+When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day
+brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark,
+sweet-smelling bedrooms.  Individually, he liked his fellow-guests,
+but he found himself observing them.  He knew that, if a man judged
+people singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged
+in bulk were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined
+to pass on them.  He knew this just as he knew that the conventions,
+having been invented to prevent man following his natural desires,
+were merely the disapproving sums of innumerable individual
+approvals.
+
+It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing.  But with
+his amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a
+well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.
+
+In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests--
+those who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them
+with carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all
+accepted things without the semblance of a kick.  To show sign of
+private moral judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be
+a bit of an outsider.  He gathered this by intuition rather than from
+conversation; for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and
+was carried on in the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of
+good breeding.  Shelton had never been able to acquire this tone, and
+he could not help feeling that the inability made him more or less an
+object of suspicion.  The atmosphere struck him as it never had
+before, causing him to feel a doubt of his gentility.  Could a man
+suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or misgivings, and remain a
+gentleman?  It seemed improbable.  One of his fellow-guests, a man
+called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and
+a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one day by
+remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
+seem to know his mind."  Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.
+
+Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and
+valued.  For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and
+wives than women.  Those things or phases of life with which people
+had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and
+a certain disapproval.  The principles of the upper class, in fact,
+were strictly followed.
+
+He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for
+recording currents foreign to itself.  Things he had never before
+noticed now had profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men
+spoke of women--not precisely with hostility, nor exactly with
+contempt best, perhaps, described as cultured jeering; never, of
+course, when men spoke of their own wives, mothers, sisters, or
+immediate friends, but merely when they spoke of any other women.  He
+reflected upon this, and came to the conclusion that, among the upper
+classes, each man's own property was holy, while other women were
+created to supply him with gossip, jests, and spice.  Another thing
+that struck him was the way in which the war then going on was made
+into an affair of class.  In their view it was a baddish business,
+because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives,
+and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.  Humanity in
+general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally,
+the country which belonged to them.  For there they were, all seated
+in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.
+
+Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
+Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into
+one of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle
+round the fendered hearth.  Fresh from his good-night parting with
+Antonia, he sat perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all
+the figures in their parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged,
+with glasses in their hands, and cigars between their teeth.
+
+The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with
+a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender.  Through the
+mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out,
+cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar
+of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he
+looked a little like a gorgeous bird.
+
+"They do you awfully well," he said.
+
+A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,
+
+"They do you better at Verado's."
+
+"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for
+nothing!"  drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.
+
+The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing.
+And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world
+fell naturally into its three departments: that where they do you
+well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you
+Turkish baths for nothing.
+
+"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face,
+who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and
+long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you
+should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."
+
+Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as
+though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.
+
+"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender.  "A Johnny I
+know tells me they 're nothing to Sofia."  His face was transfigured
+by the subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.
+
+"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a
+candle to Baghda-ad."
+
+Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once
+again the world fell into its three departments: that where they do
+you well; that where they do you better; and--Baghdad.
+
+Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better
+than Baghdad?"
+
+He felt so insignificant.  It seemed that he knew none of these
+delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men;
+though privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as.
+ignorant as himself, and merely found it warming to recall such
+things as they had heard, with that peculiar gloating look.  Alas!
+his anecdotes would never earn for him that prize of persons in
+society, the label of a "good chap" and "sportsman."
+
+"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.
+
+The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his
+broad expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar.  The
+anecdote was humorous.
+
+With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies,
+for, following the well-known custom of the country house, men and
+women avoided each other as much as might be.  They met at meals, and
+occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed--
+almost Orientally--agreed that they were better kept apart.
+
+Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for
+Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he
+would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious
+that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he
+listened.
+
+The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie--the
+sixth since that she had been knitting at Hyeres--sat on the low
+window-seat close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers
+almost kissed her sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid
+aspiration on the lady who was speaking.  This was a square woman of
+medium height, with grey hair brushed from her low forehead, the
+expression of whose face was brisk and rather cross.  She was
+standing with a book, as if delivering a sermon.  Had she been a man
+she might have been described as a bright young man of business; for,
+though grey, she never could be old, nor ever lose the power of
+forming quick decisions.  Her features and her eyes were prompt and
+slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice of her
+judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which indicates
+the right to meddle.  Not red, not white, neither yellow nor quite
+blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these
+colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour
+sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.
+
+"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying--not offensively,
+though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in
+pleasing--" in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat
+them quite like children."
+
+A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth--indeed, her whole hard,
+handsome face--was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the
+Soho Bazaar.  She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff
+rustled.  Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking,
+she answered in harsh tones:
+
+"I find the poor are most delightful persons."
+
+Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a
+barking terrier dog at Shelton.
+
+"Here's Dick," she said.  "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"
+
+Shelton looked around him, scared.  The elder ladies who had spoken
+had fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter
+insignificance.
+
+"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say.  "Expect a practical remark
+from him?  Now, come!"
+
+"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor?  I haven't any."
+
+The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her
+peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times,
+said:
+
+"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady
+Bonington?"
+
+Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.
+
+"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!"  cried Sybil.
+
+"Slumming must be splendid!  It's so deadly here--nothing but flannel
+petticoats."
+
+"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what
+you think them---"
+
+"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!"  broke in Aunt
+Charlotte close to the hydrangea.
+
+"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply.  "I find they do nothing
+but grumble."
+
+"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady
+Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.
+
+He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that
+rich, despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.
+
+"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.
+
+"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"
+
+She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but
+as to getting thanks---"
+
+Lady Bonington sardonically said,
+
+"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."
+
+"The little children!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing
+cheek and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."
+
+"Children indeed!"  said Mrs. Mattock.  "It puts me out of all
+patience to see the way that they neglect them.  People are so
+sentimental about the poor."
+
+Lady Bonington creaked again.  Her splendid shoulders were wedged
+into her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back
+upon her brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held
+the journal; she rocked her copper-slippered foot.  She did not
+appear to be too sentimental.
+
+"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if
+some one had injured her severely.  And Shelton saw, not without
+pity, that Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with
+wrinkles, whose tiny furrows were eloquent of good intentions
+frustrated by the unpractical and discontented poor.  "Do what you
+will, they are never satisfied; they only resent one's help, or else
+they take the help and never thank you for it!"
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."
+
+Shelton had been growing, more uneasy.  He said abruptly:
+
+"I should do the same if I were they."
+
+Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the
+Times; her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.
+
+"We ought to put ourselves in their places."
+
+Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the
+poor!
+
+"Oh!"  exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place.
+I quite understand their feelings.  But ingratitude is a repulsive
+quality."
+
+"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton;
+and in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.
+
+Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect
+second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture,
+each book, each lady present, had been made from patterns.  They were
+all widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some
+exhibitions) had the look of being after the designs of some original
+spirit.  The whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical,
+and comfortable; neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner,
+speech, appearance, nor in theory, could it give itself away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE STAINED-GLASS MAN
+
+Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room.  Thea
+Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking.  From
+the look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been
+born; he hastily withdrew.  Descending to the hall, he came on Mr.
+Dennant crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking
+papers.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  said he, "you look a little lost.  Is the shrine
+invisible?"
+
+Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking.  He was not
+fortunate.  In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list
+of books.
+
+"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said.  "Everybody 's readin'
+this thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because
+she's got a title."
+
+"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because
+other people do them, and I sha'n't get it."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.
+
+"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care
+for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house.  And there's
+Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's
+always so refined.  But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's?
+They say that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you
+know"; and over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like
+eyes.
+
+Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and
+slightly sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to
+her to trust her instincts.  It was quite pathetic.  Still, there was
+always the book's circulation to form her judgment by.
+
+"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you?  Were you
+lookin' for Antonia?  If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick,
+do say I want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance.  I
+can understand his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."
+
+Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went.  He took
+a despairing look into the billiard-room.  Antonia was not there.
+Instead, a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache,
+called Mabbey, was practising the spot-stroke.  He paused as Shelton
+entered, and, pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,
+
+"Play me a hundred up?"
+
+Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to
+go.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
+moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of
+some surprise,
+
+"What's your general game, then?"
+
+"I really don't know," said Shelton.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
+knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for
+the stroke.
+
+"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
+well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition.  "Curious
+dark horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when
+he was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-
+built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache,
+and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a
+network of thin veins.  His face had something of the youthful,
+optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type.
+He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a
+pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in
+his hand.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!  "he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such
+an easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to
+take the air?"
+
+Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but
+dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
+stained-glass man.
+
+"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the
+latter said.
+
+Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
+people's business, smiled.
+
+"Do I look like it?" he asked.
+
+The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man.  It had never
+occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must
+look like it; he examined Shelton with some curiosity.
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not."  His eyes, so
+carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey,
+also seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.
+
+"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush.  "Yes," he said;
+"it suits me very well.  I get lots of time for my art work."
+
+"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was
+roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."
+
+"Never had a hobby!"  said the stained-glass man, brushing back his
+hair (he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"
+
+Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.
+
+"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always
+something going on, as far as I can see."
+
+The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his
+bright glance swept over his companion.
+
+"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he
+said.
+
+"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
+regarding life itself as interesting.
+
+"That's all very well, but you want something more than that.  Why
+don't you take up woodcarving?"
+
+"Wood-carving?"
+
+"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I
+take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."
+
+"I have n't the enthusiasm."
+
+The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his
+moustache.
+
+"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
+old, then where 'll you be?"
+
+It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay,"
+for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern
+jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.
+
+"You've given up the Bar?  Don't you get awfully bored having nothing
+to do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient
+sundial.
+
+Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
+being in love was in itself enough to do.  To do nothing is unworthy
+of a man!  But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation.
+His silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.
+
+"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his
+chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from
+the other side.  Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow
+on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies
+clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing
+from the soil.  "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-
+glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen,"
+and he walked round it once again.
+
+His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes
+were almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened
+just a little.  A person with a keener eye would have said his face
+looked greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read
+in the Spectator a confession of commercialism.
+
+"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all
+its charm."
+
+His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked
+wonderfully genuine.
+
+"Couldn't I?" he said.  "By Jove!  I thought so.  1690!  The best
+period."  He ran his forger round the sundial's edge.  "Splendid
+line-clean as the day they made it.  You don't seem to care much
+about that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to
+the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.
+
+They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
+searching every patch of shade.  He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
+hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
+that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
+quite impossible.  "Feelings!"  that person seemed to say; "all very
+well, but you want more than that.  Why not take up wood-carving?
+ .   .  .  .  Feelings!  I was born in England, and have been at
+Cambridge."
+
+"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton.  "I go on to Halidome's
+to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there?  Good, chap, old
+Halidome!  Collection of etchings very fine!"
+
+"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.
+
+"Ah!"  said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"
+
+Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a
+gooseberry, and muttered, "Yes."
+
+"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her.  I thought she
+was a particularly nice girl."
+
+Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave
+him the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light
+upon her.  He grunted hastily,
+
+"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"
+
+"Really!"  said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
+iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--"really!  I didn't know.
+Congratulate you!"
+
+It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would
+go well in almost any drawing-room!"
+
+"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is.  If you'll excuse me, I want
+to speak to her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+PARADISE
+
+Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and
+poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself.  Shelton saw the
+stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her
+smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn,
+casting away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft
+tune.
+
+In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this
+inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he
+a part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his;
+together they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk
+of them, as one; and this would come about by standing half an hour
+together in a church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of
+their names.
+
+The sun was burnishing her hair--she wore no hat flushing her cheeks,
+sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through
+and through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the
+air, she was all motion, light, and colour.
+
+She turned and saw Shelton standing there.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these
+flowers in, there 's a good boy!"
+
+Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and
+cool as ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that
+corner; the sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth
+again.  The sight of those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining
+round the flower-stalks, her pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant,
+stole the reason out of Shelton.  He stood before her, weak about the
+knees.
+
+"Found you at last!"  he said.
+
+Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!"  and with a sweep of
+both her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.
+
+Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on
+his knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks,
+to hide the violence of his feelings.  Antonia went on picking
+flowers, and every time her hand was full she dropped them on his
+hat, his shoulder, or his arms, and went on plucking more; she
+smiled, and on her lips a little devil danced, that seemed to know
+what he was suffering.  And Shelton felt that she did know.
+
+"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted.  These are
+the bedroom-flowers--fourteen lots.  I can't think how people can
+live without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried
+her face in pinks.
+
+He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and
+forced himself to answer,
+
+"I think I can hold out."
+
+"Poor old Dick!"  She had stepped back.  The sun lit the clear-cut
+profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her
+blouse.  "Poor old Dick!  Awfully hard luck, is n't it?"  Burdened
+with mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his
+shoulder, but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating
+heart, he went on sorting out the flowers.  The seeds of mignonette
+rained on his neck, and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume
+fanned his face.  "You need n't sort them out!" she said.
+
+Was she enticing him?  He stole a look; but she was gone again,
+swaying and sniffing at the flowers.
+
+"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!"  and as she
+spoke she flung a clove carnation at him.  "Does n't it smell good?"
+
+"Too good Oh, Antonia!  why are you doing this?"
+
+" Why am I doing what?"
+
+"Don't you know what you are doing?"
+
+"Why, picking flowers!"  and once more she was back, bending and
+sniffing at the blossoms.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.
+
+"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."
+
+"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.
+
+Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was
+her face.
+
+"I'm not a bit like you," she said.  "What will you have for your
+room?"
+
+"Choose!"
+
+"Cornflowers and clove pinks.  Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks
+too---"
+
+"White," said Shelton.
+
+"And mignonette too hard and---"
+
+"Sweet.  Why cornflowers?"
+
+Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure
+was so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.
+
+"Because they're dark and deep."
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on
+her skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."
+
+"Ah!  And what flowers shall t give YOU?"
+
+She put her hands behind her.
+
+"There are all the other flowers for me."
+
+Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with
+straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard,
+sweet mignonette, and held it out to her.
+
+"There," he said, "that's you."  But Antonia did not move.
+
+"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed
+the petals of a blood-red poppy.  She shook her head, smiling a
+brilliant smile.  The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her,
+and kissed her on the lips.
+
+But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come
+to him.  She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had
+kissed a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.
+
+"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and
+anger.  "What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his
+troubled watch upon her face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE RIDE
+
+"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they
+turned up High Street, Oxford City.  "I won't go back the same way,
+Dick!"
+
+"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice,
+and get home that way; but you 'll be tired."
+
+Antonia shook her head.  Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat
+threw a curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.
+
+A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly
+she was the same good comrade, cool and quick.  But as before a
+change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so
+Shelton was affected by the inner change in her.  He had made a blot
+upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was
+left a mark, and it was ineffaceable.  Antonia belonged to the most
+civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose
+creed is "Let us love and hate, let us work and marry, but let us
+never give ourselves away; to give ourselves away is to leave a mark,
+and that is past forgive ness.  Let our lives be like our faces, free
+from every kind of wrinkle, even those of laughter; in this way alone
+can we be really civilised."
+
+He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort.  That he should
+give himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but
+that he should give her the feeling that she had given herself away
+was a very different thing.
+
+"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he
+said, as they passed the old hotel.
+
+A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard
+Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though
+the writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter.  It
+was dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as
+follows:
+
+                              IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
+                                        FOLKESTONE.
+
+MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,
+
+This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you,
+but, having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting
+better days.  Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I
+had not thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not
+even now if I should have found the necessary spirit.  'Les choses
+vont de mal en mal'.  From what I hear there has never been so bad a
+season here.  Nothing going on.  All the same, I am tormented by a
+mob of little matters which bring me not sufficient to support my
+life.  I know not what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall
+I return here another year.  The patron of this hotel, my good
+employer, is one of those innumerable specimens who do not forge or
+steal because they have no need, and if they had would lack the
+courage; who observe the marriage laws because they have been brought
+up to believe in them, and know that breaking them brings risk and
+loss of reputation; who do not gamble because they dare not; do not
+drink because it disagrees with them; go to church because their
+neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the mid-day meal;
+commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other fashion,
+they are not obliged.  What is there to respect in persons of this
+sort?  Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of
+Society.  The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes,
+never use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs
+of life for fear they should get bitten.
+
+Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the
+inquiring look that he had come to dread.  In that chilly questioning
+she seemed to say: "I am waiting.  I am prepared to be told things--
+that is, useful things--things that help one to believe without the
+risk of too much thinking."
+
+"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to
+himself.
+
+I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'.
+I see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free
+thought."  Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas
+m'oter cela'!  I see no future for me here, and certainly should have
+departed long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told
+you, all that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'.
+'Je me sens ecceuye'.  Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads;
+you know what a pessimist I am.  'Je ne perds pas courage'.
+
+Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I
+subscribe myself,
+
+                    Your very devoted
+
+                              LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+
+He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious
+turmoil which Ferrand excited in his heart.  It was as though this
+foreign vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave
+forth moans of a mutiny.
+
+"What does he say?" Antonia asked.
+
+Should he show it to her?  If he might not, what should he do when
+they were married?
+
+"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly
+cheering."'
+
+"What is he like, Dick--I mean, to look at?  Like a gentleman, or
+what?"
+
+Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.
+
+"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a
+wine merchant."
+
+Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.
+
+"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything
+I ought not."
+
+But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite
+effect.  His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from
+whom the half of life must be excluded.
+
+"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."
+
+"Oh, all right!"  she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in
+front.  "I hate dismal things."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.  It was not his fault that half the world was
+dark.  He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always
+at a sign of her displeasure, was afraid.  He galloped after her on
+the scorched turf.
+
+" What is it?" he said.  "You 're angry with me!"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful.  We have eyes,"
+he added, quoting from the letter.
+
+Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.
+
+"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't
+see why YOU should.  It's wicked to be discontented"; and she
+galloped off.
+
+It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men,
+a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her
+experience!  "What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs,
+"has our class to patronise?  We 're the only people who have n't an
+idea of what life really means."  Chips of dried turf and dust came
+flying back, stinging his face.  He gained on her, drew almost within
+reach, then, as though she had been playing with him, was left
+hopelessly behind.
+
+She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with dock-
+leaves:
+
+"Aha, Dick!  I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut
+mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards
+Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually
+darkening with sweat.
+
+"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and
+loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."
+
+"Don't be cross, Dick!"
+
+"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in
+condition.  "We'd better go home the way we came."
+
+Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.
+
+"There 's no fun in that," she said.  "Out and back again; I hate a
+dog's walk."
+
+"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!
+
+The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia
+lay disclosed in waves of wood and pasture.  Their way branched down
+a gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the
+mare's off-flank.
+
+Antonia's profile conjured up visions.  She was youth itself; her
+eyes so brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her
+brow unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked
+something resolute and mischievous.  Shelton put his hand out to the
+mare's mane.
+
+"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Well, what made you?"
+
+"I?" cried Shelton.
+
+She slipped her hand over his hand.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said.
+
+"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you.  Do you think I
+shall?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Of course!  The words seemed very much or very little.
+
+She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
+silver line.  "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
+might do."
+
+Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might
+understand each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the
+old time-honoured way?
+
+They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence,
+while the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens.  And all the beauty
+of the evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and
+lighted campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the
+witchery and shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling,
+and the splash of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted.  The
+flighting bats, the forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier
+perfume-she summed them all up in herself.  The fingermarks had
+deepened underneath her eyes, a languor came upon her; it made her
+the more sweet and youthful.  Her shoulders seemed to bear on them
+the very image of our land--grave and aspiring, eager yet contained--
+before there came upon that land the grin of greed, the folds of
+wealth, the simper of content.  Fair, unconscious, free!
+
+And he was silent, with a beating heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE
+
+That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his
+eyes fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he
+began to read it through a second time.  In the dark, oak-panelled
+bedroom, his four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its
+dainty sheets, was lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of
+hot water in the basin, the silver of his brushes, and the line of
+his well-polished boots all shone, and Shelton's face alone was
+gloomy, staring at the yellowish paper in his hand.
+
+"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought.  But why go on
+for ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case,
+incurable--one whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the
+community at large?  Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him
+into charity that should have been bestowed on hospitals, or any
+charitable work but foreign missions.  To give a helping hand, a bit
+of himself, a nod of fellowship to any fellow-being irrespective of a
+claim, merely because he happened to be down, was sentimental
+nonsense!  The line must be drawn!  But in the muttering of this
+conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty.  "Humbug!  You don't
+want to part with your money, that's all!"
+
+So, sitting down in shirt-sleeves at his writing table, he penned the
+following on paper stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest:
+
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am sorry you are having such a bad spell.  You seem to be dead out
+of luck.  I hope by the time you get this things will have changed
+for the better.  I should very much like to see you again and have a
+talk, but shall be away for some time longer, and doubt even when I
+get back whether I should be able to run down and look you up.  Keep
+me 'au courant' as to your movements.  I enclose a cheque.
+
+                    Yours sincerely,
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+Before he had written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the
+candle distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and
+put it out he had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed.  The
+letter, removed with his clothes before he was awake, was posted in
+an empty state.
+
+One morning a week later he was sitting in the smoking-room in the
+company of the gentleman called Mabbey, who was telling him how many
+grouse he had deprived of life on August 12 last year, and how many
+he intended to deprive of life on August 12 this year, when the door
+was opened, and the butler entered, carrying his head as though it
+held some fatal secret.
+
+"A young man is asking for you, sir," he said to Shelton, bending
+down discreetly; "I don't know if you would wish to see him, sir."
+
+"A young man!  "repeated Shelton; "what sort of a young man?"
+
+"I should say a sort of foreigner, sir," apologetically replied the
+butler.  "He's wearing a frock-coat, but he looks as if he had been
+walking a good deal."
+
+Shelton rose with haste; the description sounded to him ominous.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir."
+
+"All right," said Shelton; "I 'll come and see him.  Now, what the
+deuce!"  he thought, running down the stairs.
+
+It was with a queer commingling of pleasure and vexation that he
+entered the little chamber sacred to the birds, beasts, racquets,
+golf-clubs, and general young ladies' litter.  Ferrand was standing
+underneath the cage of a canary, his hands folded on his pinched-up
+hat, a nervous smile upon his lips.  He was dressed in Shelton's old
+frock-coat, tightly buttoned, and would have cut a stylish figure but
+far his look of travel.  He wore a pair of pince-nez, too, which
+somewhat veiled his cynical blue eyes, and clashed a little with the
+pagan look of him.  In the midst of the strange surroundings he still
+preserved that air of knowing, and being master of, his fate, which
+was his chief attraction.
+
+"I 'm glad to see you," said Shelton, holding out his hand.
+
+"Forgive this liberty," began Ferrand, "but I thought it due to you
+after all you've done for me not to throw up my efforts to get
+employment in England without letting you know first.  I'm entirely
+at the end of my resources."
+
+The phrase struck Shelton as one that he had heard before.
+
+But I wrote to you," he said; "did n't you get my letter?"
+
+A flicker passed across the vagrant's face; he drew the letter from
+his pocket and held it out.
+
+"Here it is, monsieur."
+
+Shelton stared at it.
+
+"Surely," said he, "I sent a cheque?"
+
+Ferrand did not smile; there was a look about him as though Shelton
+by forgetting to enclose that cheque had done him a real injury.
+
+Shelton could not quite hide a glance of doubt.
+
+"Of course," he said, "I--I--meant to enclose a cheque."
+
+Too subtle to say anything, Ferrand curled his lip., "I am capable of
+much, but not of that," he seemed to say; and at once Shelton felt
+the meanness of his doubt.
+
+"Stupid of me," he said.
+
+"I had no intention of intruding here," said Ferrand; "I hoped to see
+you in the neighbourhood, but I arrive exhausted with fatigue.  I've
+eaten nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty miles."  He
+shrugged his shoulders.  "You see, I had no time to lose before
+assuring myself whether you were here or not."
+
+"Of course---" began Shelton, but again he stopped.
+
+"I should very much like," the young foreigner went on, "for one of
+your good legislators to find himself in these country villages with
+a penny in his pocket.  In other countries bakers are obliged to sell
+you an equivalent of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as
+much as a crust under twopence.  You don't encourage poverty."
+
+"What is your idea now?" asked Shelton, trying to gain time.
+
+"As I told you," replied Ferrand, "there 's nothing to be done at
+Folkestone, though I should have stayed there if I had had the money
+to defray certain expenses"; and again he seemed to reproach his
+patron with the omission of that cheque.  "They say things will
+certainly be better at the end of the month.  Now that I know English
+well, I thought perhaps I could procure a situation for teaching
+languages."
+
+"I see," said Shelton.
+
+As a fact, however, he was far from seeing; he literally did not know
+what to do.  It seemed so brutal to give Ferrand money and ask him to
+clear out; besides, he chanced to have none in his pocket.
+
+"It needs philosophy to support what I 've gone through this week,"
+said Ferrand, shrugging his shoulders.  "On Wednesday last, when I
+received your letter, I had just eighteen-pence, and at once I made a
+resolution to come and see you; on that sum I 've done the journey.
+My strength is nearly at an end."
+
+Shelton stroked his chin.
+
+"Well," he had just begun, "we must think it over," when by Ferrand's
+face he saw that some one had come in.  He turned, and saw Antonia in
+the doorway.  "Excuse me," he stammered, and, going to Antonia, drew
+her from the room.
+
+With a smile she said at once: "It's the young foreigner; I'm
+certain.  Oh, what fun!"
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton slowly; "he's come to see me about getting
+some sort of tutorship or other.  Do you think your mother would mind
+if I took him up to have a wash?  He's had a longish walk.  And might
+he have some breakfast?  He must be hungry."
+
+"Of course!  I'll tell Dobson.  Shall I speak to mother?  He looks
+nice, Dick."
+
+He gave her a grateful, furtive look, and went back to his guest; an
+impulse had made him hide from her the true condition of affairs.
+
+Ferrand was standing where he had been left his face still clothed in
+mordant impassivity.
+
+"Come up to my room!"  said Shelton; and while his guest was washing,
+brushing, and otherwise embellishing his person, he stood reflecting
+that Ferrand was by no means unpresentable, and he felt quite
+grateful to him.
+
+He took an opportunity, when the young man's back was turned, of
+examining his counterfoils.  There was no record, naturally, of a
+cheque drawn in Ferrand's favour.  Shelton felt more mean than ever.
+
+A message came from Mrs. Dennant; so he took the traveller to the
+dining-room and left him there, while he himself went to the lady of
+the house.  He met Antonia coming down.
+
+"How many days did you say he went without food that time--you know?"
+she asked in passing.
+
+"Four."
+
+"He does n't look a bit common, Dick."
+
+Shelton gazed at her dubiously.
+
+"They're surely not going to make a show of him!" he thought.
+
+Mrs. Dennant was writing, in a dark-blue dress starred over with
+white spots, whose fine lawn collar was threaded with black velvet.
+
+"Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me back from Kidstone?
+Is n't it charmin'?" and she bent her face towards this perfect rose.
+"They say unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if that's true.
+I've told Algy I really must have some."
+
+Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting downstairs; he
+wished that Mrs. Dennant would show in him the interest she had
+manifested in the rose.  But this was absurd of him, he knew, for the
+potent law of hobbies controlled the upper classes, forcing them to
+take more interest in birds, and roses, missionaries, or limited and
+highly-bound editions of old books (things, in a word, in treating
+which you knew exactly where you were) than in the manifestations of
+mere life that came before their eyes.
+
+"Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman.  Antonia says he wants a
+tutorship; now, can you really recommend him?  There's Mrs. Robinson
+at the Gateways wants someone to teach her boys languages; and, if he
+were quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a few lessons
+in French; he goes to Eton next half."
+
+Shelton stared at the rose; he had suddenly realised why it was that
+people take more interest in roses than in human beings--one could do
+it with a quiet heart.
+
+"He's not a Frenchman, you know," he said to gain a little time.
+
+"He's not a German, I hope," Mrs. Dennant answered, passing her
+forgers round a petal, to impress its fashion on her brain; "I don't
+like Germans.  Is n't he the one you wrote about--come down in the
+world?  Such a pity with so young a fellow!  His father was a
+merchant, I think you told us.  Antonia says he 's quite refined to
+look at."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Shelton, feeling on safe ground; "he's refined enough
+to look at."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took the rose and put it to her nose.
+
+"Delicious perfume!  That was a very touchin' story about his goin'
+without food in Paris.  Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let; I should
+like to do her a good turn.  I'm afraid there's a hole in the
+ceilin', though.  Or there's the room here in the left wing on the
+ground-floor where John the footman used to sleep.  It's quite nice;
+perhaps he could have that."
+
+"You 're awfully kind," said Shelton, " but---"
+
+"I should like to do something to restore his self-respect,", went on
+Mrs. Dennant, "if, as you say, he 's clever and all that.  Seein' a
+little refined life again might make a world of difference to him.
+It's so sad when a young man loses self-respect."
+
+Shelton was much struck by the practical way in which she looked at
+things.  Restore his self-respect!  It seemed quite a splendid
+notion!  He smiled, and said,
+
+"You're too kind.  I think---"
+
+"I don't believe in doin' things by halves," said Mrs. Dennant; "he
+does n't drink, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Shelton.  "He's rather a tobacco maniac, of course."
+
+"Well, that's a mercy!  You would n't believe the trouble I 've had
+with drink, especially over cooks and coachmen.  And now Bunyan's
+taken to it."
+
+"Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand," returned Shelton; " you
+couldn't tell him from a gentleman as far as manners go."
+
+Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet and kindly smiles.
+
+"My dear Dick," she said, "there's not much comfort in that.  Look at
+poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver Semples and Victor Medallion;
+you could n't have better families.  But if you 're sure he does n't
+drink!  Algy 'll laugh, of course; that does n't matter--he laughs at
+everything."
+
+Shelton felt guilty; being quite unprepared for so rapid an adoption
+of his client.
+
+"I really believe there's a lot of good in him," he stammered; "but,
+of course, I know very little, and from what he tells me he's had a
+very curious life.  I shouldn't like---"
+
+"Where was he educated?" inquired Mrs. Dennant.  "They have no public
+schools in France, so I 've been told; but, of course, he can't help
+that, poor young fellow!  Oh, and, Dick, there 's one thing--has he
+relations?  One has always to be so careful about that.  It 's one
+thing to help a young fellow, but quite another to help his family
+too.  One sees so many cases of that where men marry girls without
+money, don't you know."
+
+"He has told me," answered Shelton, "his only relations are some
+cousins, and they are rich."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bending above the rose,
+removed a tiny insect.
+
+"These green-fly get in everywhere," she said.
+
+"Very sad story; can't they do anything for him?" and she made
+researches in the rose's heart.
+
+"He's quarrelled with them, I believe," said Shelton; "I have n't
+liked to press him, about that."
+
+"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Dennant absently--she had found
+another green-fly "I always think it's painful when a young man seems
+so friendless."
+
+Shelton was silent; he was thinking deeply.  He had never before felt
+so distrustful of the youthful foreigner.
+
+"I think," he said at last, "the best thing would be for you to see
+him for yourself."
+
+"Very well," said Mrs. Dennant.  "I should be so glad if you would
+tell him to come up.  I must say I do think that was a most touchin'
+story about Paris.  I wonder whether this light's strong enough now
+for me to photograph this rose."
+
+Shelton withdrew and went down-stairs.  Ferrand was still at
+breakfast.  Antonia stood at the sideboard carving beef for him, and
+in the window sat Thea with her Persian kitten.
+
+Both girls were following the traveller's movements with inscrutable
+blue eyes.  A shiver ran down Shelton's spine.  To speak truth, he
+cursed the young man's coming, as though it affected his relations
+with Antonia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+SUB ROSA
+
+>From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching,
+between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite
+results accrued, the chief of which was the permission accorded the
+young wanderer to occupy the room which had formerly been tenanted by
+the footman John.  Shelton was lost in admiration of Ferrand's manner
+in this scene..  Its subtle combination of deference and dignity was
+almost paralysing; paralysing, too, the subterranean smile upon his
+lips.
+
+"Charmin' young man, Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, when Shelton lingered
+to say once more that he knew but very little of him; "I shall send a
+note round to Mrs. Robinson at once.  They're rather common, you
+know--the Robinsons.  I think they'll take anyone I recommend."
+
+"I 'm sure they will," said Shelton; "that's why I think you ought to
+know---"
+
+But Mrs. Dennant's eyes, fervent, hare-like, were fixed on something
+far away; turning, he saw the rose in a tall vase on a tall and
+spindly stool.  It seemed to nod towards them in the sunshine.  Mrs.
+Dennant dived her nose towards her camera.
+
+"The light's perfect now," she said, in a voice muffled by the cloth.
+"I feel sure that livin' with decent people will do wonders for him.
+Of course, he understands that his meals will be served to him
+apart."
+
+Shelton, doubly anxious, now that his efforts had lodged his client
+in a place of trust, fell, back on hoping for the best; his instinct
+told him that, vagabond as Ferrand was, he had a curious self-
+respect, that would save him from a mean ingratitude.
+
+In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means void of common-sense,
+foresaw, the arrangement worked all right.  Ferrand entered on his
+duties as French tutor to the little Robinsons.  In the Dennants'
+household he kept himself to his own room, which, day and night, he
+perfumed with tobacco, emerging at noon into the garden, or, if wet,
+into the study, to teach young Toddles French.  After a time it
+became customary for him to lunch with the house-party, partly
+through a mistake of Toddles, who seemed to think that it was
+natural, and partly through John Noble, one of Shelton's friends, who
+had come to stay, and discovered Ferrand to be a most awfully
+interesting person he was always, indeed, discovering the most
+awfully interesting persons.  In his grave and toneless voice,
+brushing his hair from off his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand with
+enthusiasm, to which was joined a kind of shocked amusement, as who
+should say, "Of course, I know it's very odd, but really he 's such
+an awfully interesting person."  For John Noble was a politician,
+belonging to one of those two Peculiar parties, which, thoroughly in
+earnest, of an honesty above suspicion, and always very busy, are
+constitutionally averse to anything peculiar for fear of finding they
+have overstepped the limit of what is practical in politics.  As such
+he inspired confidence, not caring for things unless he saw some
+immediate benefit to be had from them, having a perfect sense of
+decency, and a small imagination.  He discussed all sorts of things
+with Ferrand; on one occasion Shelton overheard them arguing on
+anarchism.
+
+"No Englishman approves of murder," Noble was saying, in the gloomy
+voice that contrasted with the optimistic cast of his fine head, "but
+the main principle is right.  Equalisation of property is bound to
+come.  I sympathise with then, not with their methods."
+
+"Forgive me," struck in Ferrand; "do you know any anarchists?"
+
+"No," returned Noble; "I certainly do not."
+
+"You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to
+action---"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, "but with the heart, the
+lungs, the liver."  He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and
+seemed to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words:
+"What do you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all
+the prejudices of your class, know about us outcasts?  If you want to
+understand us you must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the
+game."
+
+This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's
+French lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the
+youthful foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the
+anarchists had much, in common.  He was returning to the house, when
+someone called his name from underneath the holm oak.  There, sitting
+Turkish fashion on the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a
+man who had arrived the night before, and impressed him by his
+friendly taciturnity.  His name was Whyddon, and he had just returned
+from Central Africa; a brown-faced, large-jawed man, with small but
+good and steady eyes, and strong, spare figure.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Shelton!" he said, "I wondered if you could tell me what
+tips I ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've
+forgotten all about that sort of thing."
+
+Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-
+legged attitude, which caused him much discomfort.
+
+"I was listening," said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap
+learning his French.  I've forgotten mine.  One feels a hopeless
+duffer knowing no, languages."
+
+"I suppose you speak Arabic?" said Shelton.
+
+"Oh, Arabic, and a dialect or two; they don't count.  That tutor has
+a curious face."
+
+"You think so?" said Shelton, interested.  "He's had a curious life."
+
+The traveller spread his hands, palms downwards, on the grass and
+looked at Shelton with, a smile.
+
+"I should say he was a rolling stone," he said.  "It 's odd, I' ve
+seen white men in Central Africa with a good deal of his look about
+them.
+
+"Your diagnosis is a good one," answered Shelton.
+
+"I 'm always sorry for those fellows.  There's generally some good in
+them.  They are their own enemies.  A bad business to be unable to
+take pride in anything one does!"  And there was a look of pity on
+his face.
+
+"That's exactly it," said Shelton.  "I 've often tried to put it into
+words.  Is it incurable?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Can you tell me why?"
+
+Whyddon pondered.
+
+"I rather think," he said at last, "it must be because they have too
+strong a faculty of criticism.  You can't teach a man to be proud of
+his own work; that lies in his blood "; folding his arms across his
+breast, he heaved a sigh.  Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the
+sunlight, he was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their
+spirits bright and wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard
+work.  "You can't think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how
+delightful it is to be at home!  You learn to love the old country
+when you're away from it."
+
+Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond,
+for he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle
+criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most
+awfully interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person.
+
+An old school-fellow of Shelton's and his wife were staying in the
+house, who offered to the eye the picture of a perfect domesticity.
+Passionless and smiling, it was impossible to imagine they could ever
+have a difference.  Shelton, whose bedroom was next to theirs, could
+hear them in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they used at
+lunch, and laughing the same laughs.  Their life seemed to accord
+them perfect satisfaction; they were supplied with their convictions
+by Society just as, when at home, they were supplied with all the
+other necessaries of life by some co-operative stores.  Their fairly
+handsome faces, with the fairly kind expressions, quickly and
+carefully regulated by a sense of compromise, began to worry him so
+much that when in the same room he would even read to avoid the need
+of looking at them.  And yet they were kind--that is, fairly kind--
+and clean and quiet in the house, except when they laughed, which was
+often, and at things which made him want to howl as a dog howls at
+music.
+
+"Mr. Shelton," Ferrand said one day, "I 'm not an amateur of
+marriage--never had the chance, as you may well suppose; but, in any
+case, you have some people in the house who would make me mark time
+before I went committing it.  They seem the ideal young married
+people--don't quarrel, have perfect health, agree with everybody, go
+to church, have children--but I should like to hear what is beautiful
+in their life," and he grimaced.  "It seems to me so ugly that I can
+only gasp.  I would much rather they ill-treated each other, just to
+show they had the corner of a soul between them.  If that is
+marriage, 'Dieu m'en garde!'"
+
+But Shelton did not answer; he was thinking deeply.
+
+The saying of John Noble's, "He's really a most interesting person,"
+grew more and more upon his nerves; it seemed to describe the Dennant
+attitude towards this stranger within their gates.  They treated him
+with a sort of wonder on the "don't touch" system, like an object in
+an exhibition.  The restoration, however, of, his self-respect
+proceeded with success.  For all the semblance of having grown too
+big for Shelton's clothes, for all his vividly burnt face, and the
+quick but guarded play of cynicism on his lips--he did much credit to
+his patrons.  He had subdued his terror of a razor, and looked well
+in a suit of Shelton's flannels.  For, after all, he had only been
+eight years exiled from middle-class gentility, and he had been a
+waiter half that time.  But Shelton wished him at the devil.  Not for
+his manners' sake--he was never tired of watching how subtly the
+vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts, while
+keeping up his critical detachment--but because that critical
+detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to
+analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry.
+This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced,
+he had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the journey up from
+Dover.
+
+There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a
+bird; admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it.  To
+himself, to people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury,
+not significant of sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in
+the heart, such as massage will setup in the legs.  "Everybody's
+kind," he thought; "the question is, What understanding is there,
+what real sympathy?"  This problem gave him food for thought.
+
+The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in
+Ferrand's conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a
+sign that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to
+green pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he
+himself would do the same.  He felt that the young foreigner was
+making a convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the
+sarcastic smile on the lips of Ferrand's heart.
+
+It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of
+the situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint
+uneasiness in the very breathing of the household.
+
+"Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton," Mr. Dennant said
+to him during a game of croquet; " he 'll never do any good for
+himself, I'm afraid."
+
+"In one sense I'm afraid not," admitted Shelton.
+
+"Do you know his story?  I will bet you sixpence"--and Mr.  Dennant
+paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy "that he's been in
+prison."
+
+"Prison!" ejaculated Shelton.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his
+next shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah!  missed it!
+Awkward these hoops!  One must draw the line somewhere."
+
+"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
+understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."
+
+"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which
+Shelton had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear
+Shelton, and by no means give him a hint; he interests me very much--
+a very clever, quiet young fellow."
+
+That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
+Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond.  Underlying the
+well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of
+his pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant,
+Esq., J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he
+was being laughed at.  What more natural than that he should grope
+about to see how this could be?  A vagrant alien was making himself
+felt by an English Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to
+Ferrand's personality.  The latter would sit silent through a meal,
+and yet make his effect.  He, the object of their kindness,
+education, patronage, inspired their fear.  There was no longer any
+doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were afraid, but of what they
+did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties meandering in the
+brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of something bizarre
+popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided nose.
+
+But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered.
+At first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed
+never tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too
+had set her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they
+rested on the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her
+saying on the first day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's
+really good--I mean all these things you told me about were only...."
+
+Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
+starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about
+that incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with
+whom she had so strangely come in contact.  She watched Ferrand, and
+Shelton watched her.  If he had been told that he was watching her,
+he would have denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her,
+to find out with what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all
+the rebellious under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.
+
+"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
+Ferrand."
+
+"Do you want to talk of him?"
+
+"Don't you think that he's improved?"
+
+"He's fatter."
+
+Antonia looked grave.
+
+"No, but really?"
+
+"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."
+
+Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed
+him.
+
+"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become
+one again?"
+
+Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
+golden plums.  The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak,
+but a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-
+tree's heart.  It crowned the girl.  Her raiment, the dark leaves,
+the red wall, the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a
+block of pagan colour.  And her face above it, chaste, serene, was
+like the scentless summer evening.  A bird amongst the currant bushes
+kept a little chant vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and
+colour seemed alive.
+
+"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.
+
+Antonia swung her foot.
+
+"How can he help wanting to?"
+
+"He may have a different philosophy of life."
+
+Antonia was slow to answer.
+
+"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.
+
+Shelton answered coldly,
+
+"No two people have the same."
+
+With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree.  Chilled and
+harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm
+and impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree,
+with a grey light through its leaves.
+
+"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to
+be good."
+
+"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.
+
+Antonia stared.
+
+"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
+Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other
+people?  If you were to load him with a character and give him money
+on condition that he acted as we all act, do you think he would
+accept it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"
+
+Antonia slid down from the wall.
+
+"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
+turned away.
+
+Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
+still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the
+wall, her hands turned back across her narrow hips.  She halted at
+the bend, looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.
+
+Antonia was slipping from him!
+
+A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it
+was he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of
+one watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE RIVER
+
+One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--
+the river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the
+reeds and poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and
+the white slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons,
+and the weirs are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies,
+the play of waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight
+faces of the twisted tree-roots, Pan lives once more.
+
+The reach which Shelton chose was innocent of launches, champagne
+bottles and loud laughter; it was uncivilised, and seldom troubled by
+these humanising influences.  He paddled slowly, silent and absorbed,
+watching Antonia.  An unaccustomed languor clung about her; her eyes
+had shadows, as though she had not slept; colour glowed softly in her
+cheeks, her frock seemed all alight with golden radiance.  She made
+Shelton pull into the reeds, and plucked two rounded lilies sailing
+like ships against slow-moving water.
+
+"Pull into the shade, please," she said; it's too hot out here."
+
+The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face, but her head
+was drooping like a flower's head at noon.
+
+Shelton saw that the heat was really harming her, as too hot a day
+will dim the icy freshness of a northern plant.  He dipped his
+sculls, the ripples started out and swam in grave diminuendo till
+they touched the banks.
+
+He shot the boat into a cleft, and caught the branches of an
+overhanging tree.  The skiff rested, balancing with mutinous
+vibration, like a living thing.
+
+"I should hate to live in London," said Antonia suddenly;" the slums
+must be so awful.  What a pity, when there are places like this!  But
+it's no good thinking."
+
+"No," answered Shelton slowly!  "I suppose it is no good."
+
+"There are some bad cottages at the lower end of Cross Eaton.  I went
+them one day with Miss Truecote.  The people won't help themselves.
+It's so discouraging to help people who won't help themselves."
+
+She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with her chin resting
+on her hands, gazed up at Shelton.  All around them hung a tent of
+soft, thick leaves, and, below, the water was deep-dyed with green
+refraction.  Willow boughs, swaying above the boat, caressed
+Antonia's arms and shoulders; her face and hair alone were free.
+
+"So discouraging," she said again.
+
+A silence fell....  Antonia seemed thinking deeply.
+
+"Doubts don't help you," she said suddenly; "how can you get any good
+from doubts?  The thing is to win victories."
+
+"Victories?" said Shelton.  "I 'd rather understand than conquer!"
+
+He had risen to his feet, and grasped stunted branch, canting the
+boat towards the bank.
+
+"How can you let things slide like that, Dick?  It's like Ferrand."
+
+"Have you such a bad opinion of him, then?" asked Shelton.  He felt
+on the verge of some, discovery.
+
+She buried her chin deeper in her hands.
+
+"I liked him at first," she said; "I thought that he was different.
+I thought he couldn't really be---"
+
+"Really be what?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.  "I can't explain.  I thought---"
+
+Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of
+the boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.
+
+"You thought--what?" he said.
+
+He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even
+timid.  She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:
+
+"You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try.  I know I don't try half
+hard enough.  It does n't do any good to think; when you think,
+everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of.
+I do so hate to feel like that.  It is n't as if we didn't know
+what's right.  Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good,
+only a waste of time, and you feel at the end as if you had been
+doing wrong."
+
+Shelton frowned.
+
+"What has n't been through fire's no good," he said; and, letting go
+the branch, sat down.  Freed from restraint, the boat edged out
+towards the current.  "But what about Ferrand?"
+
+"I lay awake last night wondering what makes you like him so.  He's
+so bitter; he makes me feel unhappy.  He never seems content with
+anything.  And he despises"--her face hardened--"I mean, he hates us
+all!"
+
+"So should I if I were he," said Shelton.
+
+The boat was drifting on, and gleams of sunlight chased across their
+faces.  Antonia spoke again.
+
+"He seems to be always looking at dark things, or else he seems as
+if--as if he could--enjoy himself too much.  I thought--I thought at
+first," she stammered, "that we could do him good."
+
+"Do him good!  Ha, ha!"
+
+A startled rat went swimming for its life against the stream; and
+Shelton saw that he had done a dreadful thing: he had let Antonia
+with a jerk into a secret not hitherto admitted even by himself--the
+secret that her eyes were not his eyes, her way of seeing things not
+his nor ever would be.  He quickly muffled up his laughter.  Antonia
+had dropped her gaze; her face regained its languor, but the bosom of
+her dress was heaving.  Shelton watched her, racking his brains to
+find excuses for that fatal laugh; none could he find.  It was a
+little piece of truth.  He paddled slowly on, close to the bank, in
+the long silence of the river.
+
+The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising; save for the lost
+music of the larks no birds were piping; alone, a single pigeon at
+brief intervals cooed from the neighbouring wood.
+
+They did not stay much longer in the boat.
+
+On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding a corner of the
+road, they came on Ferrand in his pince-nez, holding a cigarette
+between his fingers and talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the
+bank.  The young foreigner recognised them, and at once removed his
+hat.
+
+"There he is," said Shelton, returning the salute.
+
+Antonia bowed.
+
+"Oh!" she, cried, when they were out of hearing, "I wish he 'd go.
+I can't bear to see him; it's like looking at the dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ON THE WING
+
+That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for
+his unpleasant duty.  He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had
+better go.  He was still debating whether to write or go himself to
+the young foreigner, when there came a knock and Ferrand himself
+appeared.
+
+"I should be sorry," he said, breaking an awkward silence, "if you
+were to think me ungrateful, but I see no future for me here.  It
+would be better for me to go.  I should never be content to pass my
+life in teaching languages 'ce n'est guere dans mon caractre'."
+
+As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to find a way of
+saying had thus been said for him, Shelton experienced a sense of
+disapproval.
+
+"What do you expect to get that's better?" he said, avoiding
+Ferrand's eyes.
+
+"Thanks to your kindness," replied the latter, "I find myself
+restored.  I feel that I ought to make some good efforts to dominate
+my social position."
+
+"I should think it well over, if I were you!" said Shelton.
+
+"I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my time.  For a man with
+any courage languages are no career; and, though I 've many defects,
+I still have courage."
+
+Shelton let his pipe go out, so pathetic seemed to him this young
+man's faith in his career; it was no pretended faith, but neither was
+it, he felt, his true motive for departure.  "He's tired," he
+thought; "that 's it.  Tired of one place."  And having the
+instinctive sense that nothing would keep Ferrand, he redoubled his
+advice.
+
+"I should have thought," he said, "that you would have done better to
+have held on here and saved a little before going off to God knows
+what."
+
+"To save," said Ferrand, "is impossible for me, but, thanks to you
+and your good friends, I 've enough to make front to first
+necessities.  I'm in correspondence with a friend; it's of great
+importance for me to reach Paris before all the world returns.  I 've
+a chance to get, a post in one of the West African companies.  One
+makes fortunes out there--if one survives, and, as you know, I don't
+set too much store by life."
+
+"We have a proverb," said Shelton, "'A bird in the hand is worth two
+birds in the bush!'"
+
+"That," returned Ferrand, "like all proverbs, is just half true.
+This is an affair of temperament.  It 's not in my character to
+dandle one when I see two waiting to be caught; 'voyager, apprendre,
+c'est plus fort que moi'."  He paused; then, with a nervous goggle of
+the eyes and an ironic smile he said: "Besides, 'mon cher monsieur',
+it is better that I go.  I have never been one to hug illusions, and
+I see pretty clearly that my presence is hardly acceptable in this
+house."
+
+"What makes you say that?" asked, Shelton, feeling that the murder
+was now out."
+
+"My dear sir, all the world has not your understanding and your lack
+of prejudice, and, though your friends have been extremely kind to
+me, I am in a false position; I cause them embarrassment, which is
+not extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and that they
+know my history."
+
+"Not through me," said Shelton quickly, "for I don't know it myself."
+
+"It's enough," the vagrant said, "that they feel I'm not a bird of
+their feather.  They cannot change, neither can I.  I have never
+wanted to remain where I 'm not welcome."
+
+Shelton turned to the window, and stared into the darkness; he would
+never quite understand this vagabond, so delicate, so cynical, and he
+wondered if Ferrand had been swallowing down the words, "Why, even
+you won't be sorry to see my back!"
+
+"Well," he said at last, "if you must go, you must.  When do you
+start?"
+
+"I 've arranged with a man to carry my things to the early train.  I
+think it better not to say good-bye.  I 've written a letter instead;
+here it is.  I left it open for you to read if you should wish,"
+
+"Then," said Shelton, with a curious mingling of relief, regret,
+good-will, "I sha'n't see you again?"
+
+Ferrand gave his hand a stealthy rub, and held it out.
+
+"I shall never forget what you have done for me," he said.
+
+"Mind you write," said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, yes"--the, vagrant's face was oddly twisted--"you don't know
+what a difference it makes to have a correspondent; it gives one
+courage.  I hope to remain a long time in correspondence with you."
+
+"I dare say you do," thought Shelton grimly, with a certain queer
+emotion.
+
+"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you
+for anything," said Ferrand.  "Thank you a thousand times.
+Good-bye!"
+
+He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out,
+left Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat.  "You will do me
+the justice to remember that I have never asked you for anything."
+The phrase seemed strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer
+acquaintanceship.  It was a fact: from the beginning to the end the
+youth had never really asked for anything.  Shelton sat down on his
+bed, and began to read the letter in his hand.  It was in French.
+
+DEAR MADAME (it ran),
+
+It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me
+for ungrateful.  Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me
+into the necessity of leaving your hospitality.  In all lives, as you
+are well aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I
+know that you will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an
+event which gives me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me
+subject to an imputation of ingratitude, which, believe me, dear
+Madame, by no means lies in my character.  I know well enough that it
+is a breach of politeness to leave you without in person conveying
+the expression of my profound reconnaissance, but if you consider how
+hard it is for me to be compelled to abandon all that is so
+distinguished in domestic life, you will forgive my weakness.  People
+like me, who have gone through existence with their eyes open, have
+remarked that those who are endowed with riches have a right to look
+down on such as are not by wealth and breeding fitted to occupy the
+same position.  I shall never dispute a right so natural and
+salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this superiority,
+which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart, the rest
+of the world would have no standard by which to rule their lives, no
+anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and of
+misfortune on which we others drive before the wind.  It is because
+of this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to
+have been able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called
+life, to sit beneath the tree of safety.  To have been able, if only
+for an hour, to sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the
+blistered feet and ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard
+within their hearts a certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the
+desert air which travellers will tell you fills men as with wine to
+be able thus to sit an hour, and with a smile to watch them pass,
+lame and blind, in all the rags of their deserved misfortunes, can
+you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be for such as I a
+comfort?  Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a position of
+security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a good
+sensation in the heart.
+
+In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of
+passing all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose,
+dear Madame, I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage
+to step beyond the boundaries of this fine tranquil state.  Yet, too,
+there have been times when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ
+from the wealthy--we others, birds of the fields, who have our own
+philosophy, grown from the pains of needing bread--we who see that
+the human heart is not always an affair of figures, or of those good
+maxims that one finds in copy-books--do we really differ?"  It is
+with shame that I confess to have asked myself a question so
+heretical.  But now, when for these four weeks I have had the fortune
+of this rest beneath your roof, I see how wrong I was to entertain
+such doubts.  It is a great happiness to have decided once for all
+this point, for it is not in my character to pass through life
+uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such as these.
+No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great difference,
+which in the future will be sacred for me.  For, believe me, Madame,
+it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should arise
+amongst them any understanding of all that side of life which--vast
+as the plains and bitter as the sea, black as the ashes of a corpse,
+and yet more free than any wings of birds who fly away--is so justly
+beyond the grasp of their philosophy.  Yes, believe me, dear Madame,
+there is no danger in the world so much to be avoided by all the
+members of that circle, most illustrious, most respectable, called
+high Society.
+
+>From what I have said you may imagine how hard it is for me to take
+my flight.  I shall always keep for you the most distinguished
+sentiments.  With the expression of my full regard for you and your
+good family, and of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly worded,
+
+                         Believe me, dear Madame,
+                                   Your devoted
+                                             LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton's first impulse was to tear the letter up, but this he
+reflected he had no right to do.  Remembering, too, that Mrs.
+Dennant's French was orthodox, he felt sure she would never
+understand the young foreigner's subtle innuendoes.  He closed the
+envelope and went to bed, haunted still by Ferrand's parting look.
+
+It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, however, that, having
+sent the letter to its destination by an early footman, he made his
+appearance at the breakfast-table.  Behind the Austrian coffee-urn,
+filled with French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had placed four eggs in
+a German egg-boiler, said "Good-morning," with a kindly smile.
+
+"Dick, an egg?" she asked him, holding up a fifth.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Shelton, greeting the table and fitting
+down.
+
+He was a little late; the buzz of conversation rose hilariously
+around.
+
+"My dear," continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking to his youngest
+daughter, "you'll have no chance whatever--not the least little bit
+of chance."
+
+"Father, what nonsense!  You know we shall beat your heads off!"
+
+"Before it 's too late, then, I will eat a muffin.  Shelton, pass the
+muffins!  "But in making this request, Mr. Dennant avoided looking in
+his face.
+
+Antonia, too, seemed to keep her eyes away from him.  She was talking
+to a Connoisseur on Art of supernatural appearances, and seemed in
+the highest spirits.  Shelton rose, and, going to the sideboard,
+helped himself to grouse.
+
+"Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the lawn?" he heard the
+Connoisseur remark.  "Struck me as having an--er--quite intelligent
+physiog."
+
+His own intelligent physiog, raised at a slight slant so that he
+might look the better through his nose-nippers, was the very pattern
+of approval.  "It's curious how one's always meeting with
+intelligence;" it seemed to say.  Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of
+adding cream, and Shelton scrutinised her face; it was hare-like, and
+superior as ever.  Thank goodness she had smelt no rat!  He felt
+strangely disappointed.
+
+"You mean Monsieur Ferrand, teachin' Toddles French?  Dobson, the
+Professor's cup."
+
+"I hope I shall see him again," cooed the Connoisseur; "he was quite
+interesting on the subject of young German working men.  It seems
+they tramp from place to place to learn their trades.  What
+nationality was he, may I ask?"
+
+Mr. Dennant, of whom he asked this question, lifted his brows, and
+said,
+
+"Ask Shelton."
+
+"Half Dutch, half French."
+
+"Very interesting breed; I hope I shall see him again."
+
+"Well, you won't," said Thea suddenly; "he's gone."
+
+Shelton saw that their good breeding alone prevented all from adding,
+"And thank goodness, too!"
+
+"Gone?  Dear me, it's very--"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Dennant, "very sudden."
+
+"Now, Algie," murmured Mrs. Dennant, "it 's quite a charmin' letter.
+Must have taken the poor young man an hour to write."
+
+"Oh, mother!" cried Antonia.
+
+And Shelton felt his face go crimson.  He had suddenly remembered
+that her French was better than her mother's.
+
+"He seems to have had a singular experience," said the Connoisseur.
+
+"Yes," echoed Mr. Dennant; "he 's had some singular experience.  If
+you want to know the details, ask friend Shelton; it's quite
+romantic.  In the meantime, my dear; another cup?"
+
+The Connoisseur, never quite devoid of absent-minded malice, spurred
+his curiosity to a further effort; and, turning his well-defended
+eyes on Shelton, murmured,
+
+"Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems."
+
+"There is no history," said Shelton, without looking up.
+
+"Ah, that's very dull," remarked the Connoisseur.
+
+"My dear Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, "that was really a most touchin'
+story about his goin' without food in Paris."
+
+Shelton shot another look at Antonia; her face was frigid.  "I hate
+your d---d superiority!" he thought, staring at the Connoisseur.
+
+"There's nothing," said that gentleman, "more enthralling than
+starvation.  Come, Mr Shelton."
+
+"I can't tell stories," said Shelton; "never could."
+
+He cared not a straw for Ferrand, his coming, going, or his history;
+for, looking at Antonia, his heart was heavy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE LADY FROM BEYOND
+
+The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy.  Antonia was at her music,
+and from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he
+could hear her practising her scales with a cold fury that cast an
+added gloom upon his spirit.  He did not see her until lunch, and
+then she again sat next the Connoisseur.  Her cheeks were pale, but
+there was something feverish in her chatter to her neighbour; she
+still refused to look at Shelton.  He felt very miserable.  After
+lunch, when most of them had left the table, the rest fell to
+discussing country neighbours.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Dennant, "there are the Foliots; but nobody
+calls on them."
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "the Foliots--the Foliots--the people--
+er--who--quite so!"
+
+"It's really distressin'; she looks so sweet ridin' about.  Many
+people with worse stories get called on," continued Mrs. Dennant,
+with that large frankness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which
+may be made by certain people in a certain way," but, after all, one
+couldn't ask them to meet anybody."
+
+"No," the Connoisseur assented.  "I used to know Foliot.  Thousand
+pities.  They say she was a very pretty woman."
+
+"Oh, not pretty!"  said Mrs. Dennant! "more interestin than pretty, I
+should say."
+
+Shelton, who knew the lady slightly, noticed that they spoke of her
+as in the past.  He did not look towards Antonia; for, though a
+little troubled at her presence while such a subject was discussed,
+he hated his conviction that her face, was as unruffled as though the
+Foliots had been a separate species.  There was, in fact, a curiosity
+about her eyes, a faint impatience on her lips; she was rolling
+little crumbs of bread.  Suddenly yawning, she muttered some remark,
+and rose.  Shelton stopped her at the door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+"May n't I come?".
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I 'm going to take Toddles."
+
+Shelton held the door open, and went back to the table.
+
+"Yes," the Connoisseur said, sipping at his sherry, "I 'm afraid it's
+all over with young Foliot."
+
+"Such a pity!" murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her kindly face looked
+quite disturbed.  "I've known him ever since he was a boy.  Of
+course, I think he made a great mistake to bring her down here.  Not
+even bein' able to get married makes it doubly awkward.  Oh, I think
+he made a great mistake!"
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "but d' you suppose that makes much
+difference?  Even if What 's--his-name gave her a divorce, I don't
+think, don't you know, that--"
+
+"Oh, it does!  So many people would be inclined to look over it in
+time.  But as it is it's hopeless, quite.  So very awkward for
+people, too, meetin' them about.  The Telfords and the Butterwicks--
+by the way, they're comin' here to dine to-night--live near them,
+don't you know."
+
+"Did you ever meet her before-er-before the flood?" the Connoisseur
+inquired; and his lips parting and unexpectedly revealing teeth gave
+him a shadowy resemblance to a goat.
+
+"Yes; I did meet her once at the Branksomes'.  I thought her quite a
+charmin' person."
+
+"Poor fellow!"  said the Connoisseur; "they tell me he was going to
+take the hounds."
+
+"And there are his delightful coverts, too.  Algie often used to
+shoot there, and now they say he just has his brother down to shoot
+with him.  It's really quite too melancholy!  Did you know him,
+Dick?"
+
+"Foliot?" replied Shelton absently.  "No; I never met him: I've seen
+her once or twice at Ascot."
+
+Through the window he could see Antonia in her scarlet Tam-o'-
+shanter, swinging her stick, and he got up feigning unconcern.  Just
+then Toddles came bounding up against his sister.  They went off arm
+in arm.  She had seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly
+glance; Shelton felt more miserable than ever.  He stepped out upon
+the drive.  There was a lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees
+drooped their heavy blackish green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-
+tree was gone, even the rooks were silent.  A store of force lay
+heavy on the heart of nature.  He started pacing slowly up and down,
+his pride forbidding him to follow her, and presently sat down on an
+old stone seat that faced the road.  He stayed a long time staring at
+the elms, asking himself what he had done and what he ought to do.
+And somehow he was frightened.  A sense of loneliness was on him, so
+real, so painful, that he shivered in the sweltering heat.  He was
+there, perhaps, an hour, alone, and saw nobody pass along the road.
+Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a
+motor-car approaching from the opposite direction.  The rider made
+appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head
+and tail.  She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the
+approaching car grew every moment louder.  Shelton rose; the car
+flashed by.  He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its
+rider up against the gatepost.
+
+He ran, but before he reached the gate the lady was on foot, holding
+the plunging horse's bridle.
+
+"Are you hurt?" cried Shelton breathlessly, and he, too, grabbed the
+bridle.  "Those beastly cars!"
+
+"I don't know," she said.  "Please don't; he won't let strangers
+touch him."
+
+Shelton let go, and watched her coax the horse.  She was rather tall,
+dressed in a grey habit, with a grey Russian cap upon her head, and
+he suddenly recognised the Mrs. Foliot whom they had been talking of
+at lunch.
+
+"He 'll be quiet now," she said, "if you would n't mind holding him a
+minute."
+
+She gave the reins to him, and leaned against the gate.  She was very
+pale.
+
+"I do hope he has n't hurt you," Shelton said.  He was quite close to
+her, well able to see her face--a curious face with high cheek-bones
+and a flatfish moulding, enigmatic, yet strangely passionate for all
+its listless pallor.  Her smiling, tightened lips were pallid;
+pallid, too, her grey and deep-set eyes with greenish tints; above
+all, pale the ashy mass of hair coiled under her grey cap.
+
+"Th-thanks!"  she said; "I shall be all right directly.  I'm sorry to
+have made a fuss."
+
+She bit her lips and smiled.
+
+"I 'm sure you're hurt; do let me go for---" stammered Shelton.
+"I can easily get help."
+
+"Help!"  she said, with a stony little laugh; "oh, no, thanks!"
+
+She left the gate, and crossed the road to where he held the horse.
+Shelton, to conceal embarrassment, looked at the horse's legs, and
+noticed that the grey was resting one of them.  He ran his hand down.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, "your horse has knocked his off knee; it's
+swelling."
+
+She smiled again.
+
+"Then we're both cripples."
+
+"He'll be lame when he gets cold.  Would n't you like to put him in
+the stable here?  I 'm sure you ought to drive home."
+
+"No, thanks; if I 'm able to ride him he can carry me.  Give me a
+hand up."
+
+Her voice sounded as though something had offended her.  Rising from
+inspection of the horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles
+standing by.  They had come through a wicketgate leading from the
+fields.
+
+The latter ran up to him at once.
+
+"We saw it," he whispered--"jolly smash-up.  Can't I help?"
+
+"Hold his bridle," answered Shelton, and he looked from one lady to
+the other.
+
+There are moments when the expression of a face fixes itself with
+painful clearness; to Shelton this was such a moment.  Those two
+faces close together, under their coverings of scarlet and of grey,
+showed a contrast almost cruelly vivid.  Antonia was flushed, her
+eyes had grown deep blue; her look of startled doubt had passed and
+left a question in her face.
+
+"Would you like to come in and wait?  We could send you home, in the
+brougham," she said.
+
+The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood, one arm across the crupper of her
+saddle, biting her lips and smiling still her enigmatic smile, and it
+was her face that stayed most vividly on Shelton's mind, its ashy
+hail, its pallor, and fixed, scornful eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, thanks!  You're very kind."
+
+Out of Antonia's face the timid, doubting friendliness had fled, and
+was replaced by enmity.  With a long, cold look at both of them she
+turned away.  Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and raised her foot
+for Shelton's help.  He heard a hiss of pain as he swung her up, but
+when he looked at her she smiled.
+
+"Anyway,"  he said impatiently, "let me come and see you don't break
+down.
+
+She shook her head.  "It 's only two miles.  I'm not made of sugar."
+
+"Then I shall simply have to follow."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, fixing her resolute eyes on him.
+
+"Would that boy like to come?" she asked.
+
+Toddles left the horse's head.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried.  "Would n't I just!"
+
+"Then," she said, "I think that will be best.  You 've been so kind."
+
+She bowed, smiled inscrutably once more, touched the Arab with her
+whip, and started, Toddles trotting at her side.
+
+Shelton was left with Antonia underneath the elms.  A sudden puff of
+tepid air blew in their faces, like a warning message from the heavy,
+purple heat clouds; low rumbling thunder travelled slowly from afar.
+
+"We're going to have a storm," he said.
+
+Antonia nodded.  She was pale now, and her face still wore its cold
+look of offence.
+
+"I 've got a headache," she said, "I shall go in and lie down."
+
+Shelton tried to speak, but something kept him silent--submission to
+what was coming, like the mute submission of the fields and birds to
+the menace of the storm.
+
+He watched her go, and went back to his seat.  And the silence seemed
+to grow; the flowers ceased to exude their fragrance, numbed by the
+weighty air.  All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted.
+No noise came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing
+of no bell; the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness.  And the
+silence added to the solitude within him.  What an unlucky chance,
+that woman's accident!  Designed by Providence to put Antonia further
+from him than before!  Why was not the world composed of the
+immaculate alone?  He started pacing up and down, tortured by a
+dreadful heartache.
+
+"I must get rid of this," he thought.  "I 'll go for a good tramp,
+and chance the storm."
+
+Leaving the drive he ran on Toddles, returning in the highest
+spirits.
+
+"I saw her home," he crowed.  "I say, what a ripper, isn't she?
+She 'll be as lame as a tree to-morrow; so will the gee.  Jolly hot!"
+
+This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an hour on the stone
+seat; he had thought it some ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed
+him.  It seemed to bring the import of his miserable fear right home
+to him.  He started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes fixed on
+the road, the perspiration streaming down his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE STORM
+
+It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few
+heat drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken.
+In brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple
+firmament.
+
+By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency.
+He felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement.
+He, bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the
+glass.  His fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream;
+how much worse off would he not have been, had it all been true?
+
+It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
+guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm.  Antonia
+was not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her
+entry.  Red faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-
+twisted hair were all around him.  Some one handed him a clove
+carnation, and, as he held it to his nose, Antonia came in,
+breathless, as though she had rushed down-stairs, Her cheeks were
+pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to her throat.  The flames of
+the coming storm seemed to have caught fire within her, to be
+scorching her in her white frock; she passed him close, and her
+fragrance whipped his senses.
+
+She had never seemed to him so lovely.
+
+Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
+without a strange emotion.  From where he sat at dinner he could not
+see Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass
+and silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought
+how he would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love.
+He drank the frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been
+water.
+
+The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick,
+soft shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned.
+There was not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the
+flowers; but two large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and
+wheeled between the lights over the diners' heads.  One fell scorched
+into a dish of fruit, and was removed; the other, eluding all the
+swish of napkins and the efforts of the footmen, continued to make
+soft, fluttering rushes till Shelton rose and caught it in his hand.
+He took it to the window and threw it out into the darkness, and he
+noticed that the air was thick and tepid to his face.  At a sign from
+Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were then drawn across the windows,
+and in gratitude, perhaps, for this protection, this filmy barrier
+between them and the muffled threats of Nature, everyone broke out in
+talk.  It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather,
+frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant
+thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all
+dark places on the earth--such a night as seems, by very
+breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to
+justify man's cowardice.
+
+The ladies rose at last.  The circle of the rosewood dining-table,
+which had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a
+likeness to some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam
+under the sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of
+cigarettes was clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down.
+Shelton became involved in argument with his neighbour on the English
+character.
+
+"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said.  "Pleasure's
+a lost art.  We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to
+beauty, we've lost the eye for' it.  In exchange we have got money,
+but what 's the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?"
+Excited by his neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think
+so much of what our neighbours think that we never think at all....
+Have you ever watched a foreigner when he's listening to an
+Englishman?  We 're in the habit of despising foreigners; the scorn
+we have for them is nothing to the scorn they have for us.  And they
+are right!  Look at our taste!  What is the good of owning riches if
+we don't know how to use them?"
+
+"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said.  "There may be
+something in it....  Did you see that case in the papers the other
+day of old Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a
+bottle?  When the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found
+eleven bottles out of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha!  Well,
+there's nothing wrong with this"; and he drained his glass.
+
+"No," answered Shelton.
+
+When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.
+
+At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat.  A heavy odour, sensual,
+sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous
+shrubs.  He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils.  Putting his
+hand down, he felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with
+electricity.  Then he saw, pale and candescent in the blackness,
+three or four great lilies, the authors of that perfume.  The
+blossoms seemed to be rising at him through the darkness; as though
+putting up their faces to be kissed.  He straightened himself
+abruptly and went in.
+
+The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia
+slip through the drawing-room window.  He could follow the white
+glimmer of her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of
+the trees; casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he
+too slipped out.  The blackness and the heat were stifling he took
+great breaths of it as if it were the purest mountain air, and,
+treading softly on the grass, stole on towards the holm oak.  His
+lips were dry,,his heart beat painfully.  The mutter of the distant
+thunder had quite ceased; waves of hot air came wheeling in his face,
+and in their midst a sudden rush of cold.  He thought, "The storm is
+coming now!"  and stole on towards the tree.  She was lying in the
+hammock, her figure a white blur in, the heart of the tree's shadow,
+rocking gently to a little creaking of the branch.  Shelton held his
+breath; she had not heard him.  He crept up close behind the trunk
+till he stood in touch of her.  "I mustn't startle her," he thought.
+"Antonia!"
+
+There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer.  He stood over
+her, but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
+something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm
+and soft.  He whispered again, "Antonia!" but again there came no
+answer, and a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him.  He could no
+longer hear her breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased.  What
+was passing in that silent, living creature there so close?  And then
+he heard again the sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the
+fluttering of a bird; in a moment he was staring in the dark at an
+empty hammock.
+
+He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
+longer.  But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end
+by jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
+deafening crack the thunder broke.
+
+He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his
+own room, and threw himself down on the bed.  The thunder groaned and
+sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of
+things within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them
+all likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of
+utility, of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons,
+abstractions, with indecency in their appearance, like the naked
+nerves and sinews of a leg preserved in, spirit.  The sound of the
+rain against the house stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut
+his windows; then, returning to his bed, threw himself down again.
+He stayed there till the storm was over, in a kind of stupor; but
+when the boom of the retreating thunder grew every minute less
+distinct, he rose.  Then for the first time he saw something white
+close by the door.
+
+It was a note:
+
+I have made a mistake.  Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+WILDERNESS
+
+When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-
+links on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and
+laughed. But his lips soon stopped him laughing; he threw himself
+upon his bed and pressed his face into the pillows.  He lay there
+half-dressed throughout the night, and when he rose, soon after dawn,
+he had not made his mind up what to do.  The only thing he knew for
+certain was that he must not meet Antonia.
+
+At last he penned the following:
+
+I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and think it best to run
+up to the dentist at once.  If a tooth must come out, the sooner the
+better.
+
+He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his table.  After
+doing this he threw himself once more upon his bed, and this time
+fell into a doze.
+
+He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly out.  The
+likeness of his going to that of Ferrand struck him.  "Both outcasts
+now," he thought.
+
+He tramped on till noon without knowing or caring where he went;
+then, entering a field, threw himself down under the hedge, and fell
+asleep.
+
+He was awakened by a whirr.  A covey of partridges, with wings
+glistening in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field
+of mustard.  They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges,
+and began to call upon each other.
+
+Some cattle had approached him in his sleep, and a beautiful bay cow,
+with her head turned sideways, was snuffing at him gently, exhaling
+her peculiar sweetness.  She was as fine in legs and coat as any
+race-horse.  She dribbled at the corners of her black, moist lips;
+her eye was soft and cynical.  Breathing the vague sweetness of the
+mustard-field, rubbing dry grasp-stalks in his fingers, Shelton had a
+moment's happiness--the happiness of sun and sky, of the eternal
+quiet, and untold movements of the fields.  Why could not human
+beings let their troubles be as this cow left the flies that clung
+about her eyes?  He dozed again, and woke up with a laugh, for this
+was what he dreamed:
+
+He fancied he was in a room, at once the hall and drawing-room of
+some country house.  In the centre of this room a lady stood, who was
+looking in a hand-glass at her face.  Beyond a door or window could
+be seen a garden with a row of statues, and through this door people
+passed without apparent object.
+
+Suddenly Shelton saw his mother advancing to the lady with the hand-
+glass, whom now he recognised as Mrs. Foliot.  But, as he looked, his
+mother changed to Mrs. Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that
+was a sort of abstract of refinement.  "Je fais de la philosophic,"
+it said; "I take the individual for what she's worth.  I do not
+condemn; above all, one must have spirit!"  The lady with the mirror
+continued looking in the glass; and, though he could not see her
+face, he could see its image-pale, with greenish eyes, and a smile
+like scorn itself.  Then, by a swift transition, he was walking in
+the garden talking to Mrs. Dennant.
+
+It was from this talk that he awoke with laughter.  "But," she had
+been saying, "Dick, I've always been accustomed to believe what I was
+told.  It was so unkind of her to scorn me just because I happen to
+be second-hand."  And her voice awakened Shelton's pity; it was like
+a frightened child's.  "I don't know what I shall do if I have to
+form opinions for myself.  I was n't brought up to it.  I 've always
+had them nice and secondhand.  How am I to go to work?  One must
+believe what other people do; not that I think much of other people,
+but, you do know what it is--one feels so much more comfortable," and
+her skirts rustled.  "But, Dick, whatever happens"--her voice
+entreated--"do let Antonia get her judgments secondhand.  Never mind
+for me--if I must form opinions for myself, I must--but don't let
+her; any old opinions so long as they are old.  It 's dreadful to
+have to think out new ones for oneself."  And he awoke.  His dream
+had had in it the element called Art, for, in its gross absurdity,
+Mrs. Dennant had said things that showed her soul more fully than
+anything she would have said in life.
+
+"No," said a voice quite close, behind the hedge, "not many
+Frenchmen, thank the Lord!  A few coveys of Hungarians over from the
+Duke's.  Sir James, some pie?"
+
+Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity--still half asleep--and
+applied his face to a gap in the high, thick osiers of the hedge.
+Four men were seated on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which
+was a pie and other things to eat.  A game-cart, well-adorned with
+birds and hares, stood at a short distance; the tails of some dogs
+were seen moving humbly, and a valet opening bottles.  Shelton had
+forgotten that it was "the first."  The host was a soldierly and
+freckled man; an older man sat next him, square-jawed, with an
+absent-looking eye and sharpened nose; next him, again, there was a
+bearded person whom they seemed to call the Commodore; in the fourth,
+to his alarm, Shelton recognised the gentleman called Mabbey.  It was
+really no matter for surprise to meet him miles from his own place,
+for he was one of those who wander with a valet and two guns from the
+twelfth of August to the end of January, and are then supposed to go
+to Monte Carlo or to sleep until the twelfth of August comes again.
+
+He was speaking.
+
+"Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth, Sir James?"
+
+"Ah! yes; what was that?  Have you sold your bay horse, Glennie?"
+
+Shelton had not decided whether or no to sneak away, when the
+Commodore's thick voice began:
+
+"My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot--haw--has lamed her Arab.  Does
+she mean to come out cubbing?"
+
+Shelton observed the smile that came on all their faces.  "Foliot 's
+paying for his good time now; what a donkey to get caught!" it seemed
+to say.  He turned his back and shut his eyes.
+
+"Cubbing?" replied Glennie; "hardly."
+
+"Never could shee anything wonderful in her looks," went on the
+Commodore; "so quiet, you never knew that she was in the room.  I
+remember sayin' to her once, "Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like
+besht in all the world? and what do you think she answered?  'Music!'
+Haw!"
+
+The voice of Mabbey said:
+
+"He was always a dark horse, Foliot: It 's always the dark horses
+that get let in for this kind of thing"; and there was a sound as
+though he licked his lips.
+
+"They say," said the voice of the host, "he never gives you back a
+greeting now.  Queer fish; they say that she's devoted to him."
+
+Coming so closely on his meeting with this lady, and on the dream
+from which he had awakened, this conversation mesmerised the listener
+behind the hedge.
+
+"If he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I don't see what the
+deuce he 'll do; he's resigned his clubs; as to his chance of
+Parliament---" said the voice of Mabbey.
+
+"Thousand pities," said Sir James; "still, he knew what to expect."
+
+"Very queer fellows, those Foliots," said the Commodore.  "There was
+his father: he 'd always rather talk to any scarecrow he came across
+than to you or me.  Wonder what he'll do with all his horses; I
+should like that chestnut of his."
+
+"You can't tell what a fellow 'll do," said the voice of Mabbey--
+"take to drink or writin' books.  Old Charlie Wayne came to gazin' at
+stars, and twice a week he used to go and paddle round in
+Whitechapel, teachin' pothooks--"
+
+"Glennie," said Sir James, "what 's become of Smollett, your old
+keeper?"
+
+"Obliged to get rid of him."  Shelton tried again to close his ears,
+but again he listened.  "Getting a bit too old; lost me a lot of eggs
+last season."
+
+"Ah!"  said the Commodore, "when they oncesh begin to lose eggsh "
+
+"As a matter of fact, his son--you remember him, Sir James, he used
+to load for you?--got a girl into trouble; when her people gave her
+the chuck old Smollet took her in; beastly scandal it made, too.  The
+girl refused to marry Smollett, and old Smollett backed her up.
+Naturally, the parson and the village cut up rough; my wife offered
+to get her into one of those reformatory what-d' you-call-'ems, but
+the old fellow said she should n't go if she did n't want to.  Bad
+business altogether; put him quite off his stroke.  I only got five
+hundred pheasants last year instead of eight."
+
+There was a silence.  Shelton again peeped through the hedge.  All
+were eating pie.
+
+"In Warwickshire," said the Commodore, "they always marry--haw--and
+live reshpectable ever after."
+
+"Quite so," remarked the host; "it was a bit too thick, her refusing
+to marry him.  She said he took advantage of her."
+
+"She's sorry by this time," said Sir James; "lucky escape for young
+Smollett.  Queer, the obstinacy of some of these old fellows!"
+
+"What are we doing after lunch?" asked the Commodore.
+
+"The next field," said the host, "is pasture.  We line up along the
+hedge, and drive that mustard towards the roots; there ought to be a
+good few birds."
+
+"Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly to the gate:
+
+"On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties," followed the voice of
+Mabbey from the distance.
+
+Whether from his walk or from his sleepless night, Shelton seemed to
+ache in every limb; but he continued his tramp along the road.  He
+was no nearer to deciding what to do.  It was late in the afternoon
+when he reached Maidenhead, and, after breaking fast, got into a
+London train and went to sleep.  At ten o'clock that evening he
+walked into St. James's Park and there sat down.
+
+The lamplight dappled through the tired foliage on to these benches
+which have rested many vagrants.  Darkness has ceased to be the
+lawful cloak of the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft and moonless,
+and man had not despoiled her of her comfort, quite.
+
+Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the far end was sitting a
+young girl with a red, round, sullen face; and beyond, and further
+still, were dim benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though
+life's institutions had shot them out in an endless line of rubbish.
+
+"Ah!"  thought Shelton, in the dreamy way of tired people; "the
+institutions are all right; it's the spirit that's all---"
+
+"Wrong?"  said a voice behind him; "why, of course!  You've taken the
+wrong turn, old man."
+
+He saw a policeman, with a red face shining through the darkness,
+talking to a strange old figure like some aged and dishevelled bird.
+
+"Thank you, constable," the old man said, "as I've come wrong I'll
+take a rest."  Chewing his gums, he seemed to fear to take the
+liberty of sitting down.
+
+Shelton made room, and the old fellow took the vacant place.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure," he said in shaky tones, and
+snatching at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"--and
+lovingly he dwelt upon the word--"would n't disturb you for the
+world.  I'm not used to being out at night, and the seats do get so
+full.  Old age must lean on something; you'll excuse me, sir, I 'm
+sure."
+
+"Of course," said Shelton gently.
+
+"I'm a respectable old man, really," said his neighbour; "I never
+took a liberty in my life.  But at my age, sir, you get nervous;
+standin' about the streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in
+them doss-houses--Oh, they're dreadful rough places--a dreadful rough
+lot there!  Yes," the old man said again, as Shelton turned to look
+at him, struck by the real self-pity in his voice, "dreadful rough
+places!"
+
+A movement of his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that
+of an old fowl, had brought his face into the light.  It was long,
+and run to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips
+were twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth;
+and his eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into
+a thin rim round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the
+films over parrots' eyes.  He was, or should have been, clean-shaven.
+His hair--for he had taken off his hat was thick and lank, of dusty
+colour, as far as could be seen, without a  speck of grey, and parted
+very beautifully just about the middle.
+
+"I can put up with that," he said again.  "I never interferes with
+nobody, and nobody don't interfere with me; but what frightens me"--
+his voice grew steady, as if too terrified to shake, is never knowin'
+day to day what 's to become of yer.  Oh, that 'a dreadful, that is!"
+
+"It must be," answered Shelton.
+
+"Ah! it is," the old man said; "and the winter cumin' on.  I never
+was much used to open air, bein' in domestic service all my life; but
+I don't mind that so long as I can see my way to earn a livin'.
+Well, thank God!  I've got a job at last"; and his voice grew
+cheerful suddenly.  "Sellin' papers is not what I been accustomed to;
+but the Westminister, they tell me that's one of the most respectable
+of the evenin' papers--in fact, I know it is.  So now I'm sure to get
+on; I try hard."
+
+"How did you get the job?" asked Shelton.
+
+"I 've got my character," the old fellow said, making a gesture with
+a skinny hand towards his chest, as if it were there he kept his
+character.
+
+"Thank God, nobody can't take that away!  I never parts from that";
+and fumbling, he produced a packet, holding first one paper to the
+light, and then another, and he looked anxiously at Shelton.  "In
+that house where I been sleepin' they're not honest; they 've stolen
+a parcel of my things--a lovely shirt an' a pair of beautiful gloves
+a gentleman gave me for holdin' of his horse.  Now, would n't you
+prosecute 'em, sir?"
+
+"It depends on what you can prove."
+
+"I know they had 'em.  A man must stand up for his rights; that's
+only proper.  I can't afford to lose beautiful things like them.  I
+think I ought to prosecute, now, don't you, sir?"
+
+Shelton restrained a smile.
+
+"There!"  said the old man, smoothing out a piece of paper shakily,
+"that's Sir George!"  and his withered finger-tips trembled on the
+middle of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as
+butler, during which time I have found him all that a servant should
+be.'  And this 'ere'--he fumbled with another--"this 'ere 's Lady
+Glengow : 'Joshua Creed--' I thought I'd like you to read 'em since
+you've been so kind."
+
+"Will you have a pipe?"
+
+"Thank  ye, sir," replied the aged butler, filling his clay from
+Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and
+his thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a
+sort of melancholy pride.
+
+"My teeth's a-comin' out," he said; "but I enjoys pretty good health
+for a man of my age."
+
+"How old is that?"
+
+"Seventy-two!  Barrin' my cough, and my rupture, and this 'ere
+affliction"--he passed his hand over his face--" I 've nothing to
+complain of; everybody has somethink, it seems.  I'm a wonder for my
+age, I think."
+
+Shelton, for all his pity, would have given much to laugh.
+
+"Seventy-two!" he said; "yes, a great age.  You remember the country
+when it was very different to what it is now?"
+
+"Ah!" said the old butler, "there was gentry then; I remember them
+drivin' down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own
+horses.  There was n't so much o' these here middle classes then.
+There was more, too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness
+in people then--none o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin'
+his own little shop; not so eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as
+you might say.  And then look at the price of bread!  O dear!  why,
+it is n't a quarter what it was!"
+
+"And are people happier now than they were then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The old butler sucked his pipe.
+
+"No," he answered, shaking his old head; "they've lost the contented
+spirit.  I see people runnin' here and runnin' there, readin' books,
+findin' things out; they ain't not so self-contented as they were."
+
+"Is that possible?" thought Shelton.
+
+"No," repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time
+blowing out a lot of smoke; "I don't see as much happiness about, not
+the same look on the faces.  'T isn't likely.  See these 'ere motor-
+cars, too; they say 'orses is goin' out"; and, as if dumbfounded at
+his own conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the
+lighting and relighting of his pipe.
+
+The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down
+again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes.  The
+policeman had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces;
+his glance was jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and
+then was modified by curiosity.
+
+"There's good men in the police," the aged butler said, when the
+policeman had passed on--" there's good men in the police, as good
+men as you can see, and there 's them that treats you like the dirt--
+a dreadful low class of man.  Oh dear, yes!  when they see you down
+in the world, they think they can speak to you as they like; I don't
+give them no chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak
+civil to all the world.  You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh
+dear! if they 're crossed--some of them--they 're a dreadful
+unscrup'lous lot of men!"
+
+"Are you going to spend the night here?"
+
+"It's nice and warm to-night," replied the aged butler.  "I said to
+the man at that low place I said: 'Don't you ever speak to me again,'
+I said, 'don't you come near me!'  Straightforward and honest 's been
+my motto all my life; I don't want to have nothing to say to them low
+fellows"--he made an annihilating gesture--"after the way they
+treated me, takin' my things like that.  Tomorrow I shall get a room
+for three shillin's a week, don't you think so, sir?  Well, then I
+shall be all right.  I 'm not afraid now; the mind at rest.  So long
+as I ran keep myself, that's all I want.  I shall do first-rate, I
+think"; and he stared at Shelton, but the look in his eyes and the
+half-scared optimism of his voice convinced the latter that he lived
+in dread.  "So long as I can keep myself," he said again, "I sha'n't
+need no workhouse nor lose respectability."
+
+"No," thought Shelton; and for some time sat without a word.  "When
+you can;" he said at last, "come and see me; here's my card."
+
+The aged butler became conscious with a jerk, for he was nodding.
+
+"Thank ye, sir; I will," he said, with pitiful alacrity.  "Down by
+Belgravia?  Oh, I know it well; I lived down in them parts with a
+gentleman of the name of Bateson--perhaps you knew him; he 's dead
+now--the Honourable Bateson.  Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to come";
+and, snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely secreted Shelton's
+card amongst his character.  A minute later he began again to nod.
+
+The policeman passed a second time; his gaze seemed to say, "Now,
+what's a toff doing on that seat with those two rotters?"  And
+Shelton caught his eye.
+
+"Ah!"  he thought; "exactly!  You don't know what to make of me--a
+man of my position sitting here!  Poor devil! to spend your days in
+spying on your fellow-creatures!  Poor devil!  But you don't know
+that you 're a poor devil, and so you 're not one."
+
+The man on the next bench sneezed--a shrill and disapproving sneeze.
+
+The policeman passed again, and, seeing that the lower creatures were
+both dozing, he spoke to Shelton:
+
+"Not very safe on these 'ere benches, sir," he said; "you never know
+who you may be sittin' next to.  If I were you, sir, I should be
+gettin' on--if you 're not goin' to spend the night here, that is";
+and he laughed, as at an admirable joke.
+
+Shelton looked at him, and itched to say, "Why shouldn't I?" but it
+struck him that it would sound very odd.  "Besides," he thought, "I
+shall only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat,
+and went along towards his rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE END
+
+He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting
+to light up, he dropped into a chair.  The curtains and blinds had
+been removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's
+staring gaze.  Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as
+one lost man might fix his eyes upon another.
+
+An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
+whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
+perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation
+still clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his.
+queer trance.  There was a decision to be made.  He rose to light a
+candle; the dust was thick on everything he touched.  "Ugh!"  he
+thought, "how wretched!"  and the loneliness that had seized him on
+the stone seat at Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful
+force.
+
+On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and
+circulars.  He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random
+haste of men back from their holidays.  A single long envelope was
+placed apart.
+
+MY DEAR DICK [he read],
+
+I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement.
+It is now shipshape.  Return it before the end of the week, and I
+will have it engrossed for signature.  I go to Scotland next
+Wednesday for a month; shall be back in good time for your wedding.
+My love to your mother when you see her.
+               Your-affectionate uncle,
+                         EDMUND PARAMOR.
+
+
+Shelton smiled and took out the draft.
+
+"This Indenture made the____day of 190_, between Richard Paramor
+Shelton---"
+
+He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the
+foreign vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to
+preach philosophy.
+
+He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and,
+taking his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and
+gazing in the mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in
+its wretchedness.  He went at last into the hall and opened the door,
+to go downstairs again into the street; but the sudden certainty
+that, in street or house, in town or country, he would have to take
+his trouble with him, made him shut it to.  He felt in the letter-
+box, drew forth a letter, and with this he went back to the sitting-
+room.
+
+It was from Antonia.  And such was his excitement that he was forced
+to take three turns between the window and the wall before he could
+read; then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the
+paper, he began:
+
+I was wrong to ask you to go away.  I see now that it was breaking my
+promise, and I did n't mean to do that.  I don't know why things have
+come to be so different.  You never think as I do about anything.
+
+I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to
+mother was impudent.  Of course you did n't know what was in it; but
+when Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt
+that you believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't
+understand it.  And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her
+horse, it was all as if you were on her side.  How can you feel like
+that?
+
+I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to
+go away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I
+should feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me.
+I was awake all last night, and have a bad headache this morning.  I
+can't write any more.
+
+ANTONIA.
+
+
+His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in
+it an element of anger.  He was reprieved!  She would not break her
+promise; she considered herself bound!  In the midst of the
+exaltation of this thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.
+
+He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she
+had written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had
+led up to this.
+
+The vagrant's farewell document had done the business.  True to his
+fatal gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished
+without showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton
+those colours were made plain.  Antonia had felt her lover was a
+traitor.  Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision,
+Shelton knew that this was true.
+
+"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-"  That woman!
+"It was as if you were on her side!"
+
+He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive
+perception of that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its
+instinct for self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those
+without that instinct.  And she had written these words considering
+herself bound to him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies,
+of untidiness of principle!  Here was the answer to the question he
+had asked all day: "How have things come to such a pass?" and he
+began to feel compassion for her.
+
+Poor child!  She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in
+the word!  Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented
+him and thrown him over.  No lady did these things!  They were
+impossible!  At the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious
+sympathy with, this impossibility.
+
+Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with
+fresh meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first
+sensation of relief detached itself and grew in force.  In that
+letter there was something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a
+separate point of view.  It was like a finger pointed at him as an
+unsound person.  In marrying her he would be marrying not only her,
+but her class--his class.  She would be there always to make him look
+on her and on himself, and all the people that they knew and all the
+things they did, complacently; she would be there to make him feel
+himself superior to everyone whose life was cast in other moral
+moulds.  To feel himself superior, not blatantly, not consciously,
+but with subconscious righteousness.
+
+But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had
+made him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority,"
+struck him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.  What was the good
+of being angry?  He was on the point of losing her!  And the anguish
+of that thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold.
+She was so certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her
+natural impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him.
+Of that fact, at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt.  It was
+beyond argument.  She did not really love him; she wanted to be free
+of him!
+
+A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the
+hall door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady
+Bonington, Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were
+there; and on the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her,
+Antonia.  Her face in its youthfulness, more than all those others,
+expressed their point of view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a
+world of safety and tradition.  "I am not as others are," they seemed
+to say.
+
+And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out;
+he could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar
+and uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still
+decisive, but a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:
+
+"He 's made a donkey of himself!"
+
+"Ah!  it's too distressin'!"
+
+They, too, thought him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the
+situation they would be glad to keep him.  She did n't want him, but
+she refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their
+promises; I will not!"  He sat down at the table between the candles,
+covering his face.  His grief and anger grew and grew within him.  If
+she would not free herself, the duty was on him!  She was ready
+without love to marry him, as a sacrifice to her ideal of what she
+ought to be!
+
+But she had n't, after all, the monopoly of pride!
+
+As if she stood before him, he could see the shadows underneath her
+eyes that he had dreamed of kissing, the eager movements of her lips.
+For several minutes he remained, not moving hand or limb.  Then once
+more his anger blazed.  She was going to sacrifice herself and--him!
+All his manhood scoffed at such a senseless sacrifice.  That was not
+exactly what he wanted!
+
+He went to the bureau, took a piece of paper and an envelope, and
+wrote as follows:
+
+There never was, is not, and never would have been any question of
+being bound between us.  I refuse to trade on any such thing.  You
+are absolutely free.  Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+He sealed it, and, sitting with his hands between his knees, he let
+his forehead droop lower and lower to the table, till it rested on
+his marriage settlement.  And he had a feeling of relief, like one
+who drops exhausted at his journey's end.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
+#10 in our series by John Galsworthy
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+Title: The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: August, 2001 [Etext #2771]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[Most recently updated: December 9, 2001]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Island Pharisees, by Galsworthy
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+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
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+
+
+
+THE ISLAND PHARISEES
+
+By John Galsworthy
+
+
+
+
+             "But this is a worshipful society"
+                                  KING JOHN
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Each man born into the world is born like Shelton in this book--to go
+a journey, and for the most part he is born on the high road.  At
+first he sits there in the dust, with his little chubby hands
+reaching at nothing, and his little solemn eyes staring into space.
+As soon as he can toddle, he moves, by the queer instinct we call the
+love of life, straight along this road, looking neither to the right
+nor left, so pleased is he to walk.  And he is charmed with
+everything--with the nice flat road, all broad and white, with his
+own feet, and with the prospect he can see on either hand.  The sun
+shines, and he finds the road a little hot and dusty; the rain falls,
+and he splashes through the muddy puddles.  It makes no matter--all
+is pleasant; his fathers went this way before him; they made this
+road for him to tread, and, when they bred him, passed into his fibre
+the love of doing things as they themselves had done them.  So he
+walks on and on, resting comfortably at nights under the roofs that
+have been raised to shelter him, by those who went before.
+
+Suddenly one day, without intending to, he notices a path or opening
+in the hedge, leading to right or left, and he stands, looking at the
+undiscovered.  After that he stops at all the openings in the hedge;
+one day, with a beating heart, he tries one.
+
+And this is where the fun begins.
+
+Out of ten of him that try the narrow path, nine of him come back to
+the broad road, and, when they pass the next gap in the hedge, they
+say: "No, no, my friend, I found you pleasant for a while, but after
+that-ah! after that!  The way my fathers went is good enough for me,
+and it is obviously the proper one; for nine of me came back, and
+that poor silly tenth--I really pity him!"
+
+And when he comes to the next inn, and snuggles in his well-warmed,
+bed, he thinks of the wild waste of heather where he might have had
+to spend the night alone beneath the stars; nor does it, I think,
+occur to him that the broad road he treads all day was once a
+trackless heath itself.
+
+But the poor silly tenth is faring on.  It is a windy night that he
+is travelling through a windy night, with all things new around, and
+nothing to help him but his courage.  Nine times out of ten that
+courage fails, and he goes down into the bog.  He has seen the
+undiscovered, and--like Ferrand in this book--the undiscovered has
+engulfed him; his spirit, tougher than the spirit of the nine that
+burned back to sleep in inns, was yet not tough enough.  The tenth
+time he wins across, and on the traces he has left others follow
+slowly, cautiously--a new road is opened to mankind!  A true saying
+goes: Whatever is, is right!  And if all men from the world's
+beginning had said that, the world would never have begun--at all.
+Not even the protoplasmic jelly could have commenced its journey;
+there would have been no motive force to make it start.
+
+And so, that other saying had to be devised before the world could
+set up business: Whatever is, is wrong!  But since the Cosmic Spirit
+found that matters moved too fast if those that felt "All things that
+are, are wrong" equalled in number those that felt "All things that
+are, are right," It solemnly devised polygamy (all, be it said, in a
+spiritual way of speaking); and to each male spirit crowing "All
+things that are, are wrong" It decreed nine female spirits clucking
+"All things that are, are right."  The Cosmic Spirit, who was very
+much an artist, knew its work, and had previously devised a quality
+called courage, and divided it in three, naming the parts spiritual,
+moral, physical.  To all the male-bird spirits, but to no female
+(spiritually, not corporeally speaking), It gave courage that was
+spiritual; to nearly all, both male and female, It gave courage that
+was physical; to very many hen-bird spirits It gave moral courage
+too.  But, because It knew that if all the male-bird spirits were
+complete, the proportion of male to female--one to ten--would be too
+great, and cause upheavals, It so arranged that only one in ten male-
+bird spirits should have all three kinds of courage; so that the
+other nine, having spiritual courage, but lacking either in moral or
+in physical, should fail in their extensions of the poultry-run.  And
+having started them upon these lines, it left them to get along as
+best they might.
+
+Thus, in the subdivision of the poultry-run that we call England, the
+proportion of the others to the complete male-bird spirit, who, of
+course, is not infrequently a woman, is ninety-nine to one; and with
+every Island Pharisee, when he or she starts out in life, the
+interesting question ought to be, "Am I that one?"  Ninety very soon
+find out that they are not, and, having found it out, lest others
+should discover, they say they are.  Nine of the other ten, blinded
+by their spiritual courage, are harder to convince; but one by one
+they sink, still proclaiming their virility.  The hundredth Pharisee
+alone sits out the play.
+
+Now, the journey of this young man Shelton, who is surely not the
+hundredth Pharisee, is but a ragged effort to present the working of
+the truth "All things that are, are wrong," upon the truth "All
+things that are, are right."
+
+The Institutions of this country, like the Institutions of all other
+countries, are but half-truths; they are the working daily clothing
+of the nation; no more the body's permanent dress than is a baby's
+frock.  Slowly but surely they wear out, or are outgrown; and in
+their fashion they are always thirty years at least behind the
+fashions of those spirits who are concerned with what shall take
+their place.  The conditions that dictate our education, the
+distribution of our property, our marriage laws, amusements, worship,
+prisons, and all other things, change imperceptibly from hour to
+hour; the moulds containing them, being inelastic, do not change, but
+hold on to the point of bursting, and then are hastily, often
+clumsily, enlarged.  The ninety desiring peace and comfort for their
+spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have it that the
+fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is ordered
+and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and worship in
+the way that they themselves are marrying, playing, worshipping.
+They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred those who
+speculate with thought.  This is the function they were made for.
+They are the dough, and they dislike that yeasty stuff of life which
+comes and works about in them.  The Yeasty Stuff--the other
+ten--chafed by all things that are, desirous ever of new forms and
+moulds, hate in their turn the comfortable ninety.  Each party has
+invented for the other the hardest names that it can think of:
+Philistines, Bourgeois, Mrs. Grundy, Rebels, Anarchists, and
+Ne'er-do-weels.  So we go on!  And so, as each of us is born to go
+his journey, he finds himself in time ranged on one side or on the
+other, and joins the choruses of name-slingers.
+
+But now and then--ah! very seldom--we find ourselves so near that
+thing which has no breadth, the middle line, that we can watch them
+both, and positively smile to see the fun.
+
+When this book was published first, many of its critics found that
+Shelton was the only Pharisee, and a most unsatisfactory young man--
+and so, no doubt, he is.  Belonging to the comfortable ninety, they
+felt, in fact, the need of slinging names at one who obviously was of
+the ten.  Others of its critics, belonging to the ten, wielded their
+epithets upon Antonia, and the serried ranks behind her, and called
+them Pharisees; as dull as ditch-water--and so, I fear, they are.
+
+One of the greatest charms of authorship is the privilege it gives
+the author of studying the secret springs of many unseen persons, of
+analysing human nature through the criticism that his work evokes--
+criticism welling out of the instinctive likings or aversions, out of
+the very fibre of the human being who delivers it; criticism that
+often seems to leap out against the critic's will, startled like a
+fawn from some deep bed, of sympathy or of antipathy.  And so, all
+authors love to be abused--as any man can see.
+
+In the little matter of the title of this book, we are all Pharisees,
+whether of the ninety or the ten, and we certainly do live upon an
+Island.
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+January 1, 1908
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+THE TOWN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOCIETY
+
+A quiet, well-dressed man named Shelton, with a brown face and a
+short, fair beard, stood by the bookstall at Dover Station.  He was
+about to journey up to London, and had placed his bag in the corner
+of a third-class carriage.
+
+After his long travel, the flat-vowelled voice of the bookstall clerk
+offering the latest novel sounded pleasant--pleasant the independent
+answers of a bearded guard, and the stodgy farewell sayings of a man
+and wife.  The limber porters trundling their barrows, the greyness
+of the station and the good stolid humour clinging to the people,
+air, and voices, all brought to him the sense of home.  Meanwhile he
+wavered between purchasing a book called Market Hayborough, which he
+had read and would certainly enjoy a second time, and Carlyle's
+French Revolution, which he had not read and was doubtful of
+enjoying; he felt that he ought to buy the latter, but he did not
+relish giving up the former.  While he hesitated thus, his carriage
+was beginning to fill up; so, quickly buying both, he took up a
+position from which he could defend his rights.  "Nothing," he
+thought, "shows people up like travelling."
+
+The carriage was almost full, and, putting his bag, up in the rack,
+he took his seat.  At the moment of starting yet another passenger, a
+girl with a pale face, scrambled in.
+
+"I was a fool to go third," thought Shelton, taking in his neighbours
+from behind his journal.
+
+They were seven.  A grizzled rustic sat in the far corner; his empty
+pipe, bowl downwards, jutted like a handle from his face, all bleared
+with the smear of nothingness that grows on those who pass their
+lives in the current of hard facts.  Next to him, a ruddy, heavy-
+shouldered man was discussing with a grey-haired, hatchet-visaged
+person the condition of their gardens; and Shelton watched their eyes
+till it occurred to him how curious a look was in them--a watchful
+friendliness, an allied distrust--and that their voices, cheerful,
+even jovial, seemed to be cautious all the time.  His glance strayed
+off, and almost rebounded from the semi-Roman, slightly cross, and
+wholly self-complacent face of a stout lady in a black-and-white
+costume, who was reading the Strand Magazine, while her other, sleek,
+plump hand, freed from its black glove, and ornamented with a thick
+watch-bracelet, rested on her lap.  A younger, bright-cheeked, and
+self-conscious female was sitting next her, looking at the pale girl
+who had just got in.
+
+"There's something about that girl," thought Shelton, "they don't
+like."  Her brown eyes certainly looked frightened, her clothes were
+of a foreign cut.  Suddenly he met the glance of another pair of
+eyes; these eyes, prominent and blue, stared with a sort of subtle
+roguery from above a thin, lopsided nose, and were at once averted.
+They gave Shelton the impression that he was being judged, and
+mocked, enticed, initiated.  His own gaze did not fall; this sanguine
+face, with its two-day growth of reddish beard, long nose, full lips,
+and irony, puzzled him.  "A cynical face!" he thought, and then, "but
+sensitive!" and then, "too cynical," again.
+
+The young man who owned it sat with his legs parted at the knees, his
+dusty trouser-ends and boots slanting back beneath the seat, his
+yellow finger-tips crisped as if rolling cigarettes.  A strange air
+of detachment was about that youthful, shabby figure, and not a scrap
+of luggage filled the rack above his head.
+
+The frightened girl was sitting next this pagan personality; it was
+possibly the lack of fashion in his looks that caused, her to select
+him for her confidence.
+
+"Monsieur," she asked, "do you speak French?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then can you tell me where they take the tickets?
+
+"The young man shook his head.
+
+"No," said he, "I am a foreigner."
+
+The girl sighed.
+
+"But what is the matter, ma'moiselle?"
+
+The girl did not reply, twisting her hands on an old bag in her lap.
+Silence had stolen on the carriage--a silence such as steals on
+animals at the first approach of danger; all eyes were turned towards
+the figures of the foreigners.
+
+
+"Yes," broke out the red-faced man, "he was a bit squiffy that
+evening--old Tom."
+
+"Ah!" replied his neighbour, "he would be."
+
+Something seemed to have destroyed their look of mutual distrust.
+The plump, sleek hand of the lady with the Roman nose curved
+convulsively; and this movement corresponded to the feeling agitating
+Shelton's heart.  It was almost as if hand and heart feared to be
+asked for something.
+
+"Monsieur," said the girl, with a tremble in her voice, "I am very
+unhappy; can you tell me what to do?  I had no money for a ticket."
+
+The foreign youth's face flickered.
+
+"Yes?" he said; "that might happen to anyone, of course."
+
+"What will they do to me?" sighed the girl.
+
+"Don't lose courage, ma'moiselle."  The young man slid his eyes from
+left to right, and rested them on Shelton.  "Although I don't as yet
+see your way out."
+
+"Oh, monsieur!" sighed the girl, and, though it was clear that none
+but Shelton understood what they were saying, there was a chilly
+feeling in the carriage.
+
+"I wish I could assist you," said the foreign youth; "unfortunately--
+--" he shrugged his shoulders, and again his eyes returned to
+Shelton.
+
+The latter thrust his hand into his pocket.
+
+"Can I be of any use?" he asked in English.
+
+"Certainly, sir; you could render this young lady the greatest
+possible service by lending her the money for a ticket."
+
+Shelton produced a sovereign, which the young man took.  Passing it.
+to the girl, he said:
+
+"A thousand thanks--'voila une belle action'!"
+
+The misgivings which attend on casual charity crowded up in Shelton's
+mind; he was ashamed of having them and of not having them, and he
+stole covert looks at this young foreigner, who was now talking to
+the girl in a language that he did not understand.  Though vagabond
+in essence, the fellow's face showed subtle spirit, a fortitude and
+irony not found upon the face of normal man, and in turning from it
+to the other passengers Shelton was conscious of revolt, contempt,
+and questioning, that he could not define.  Leaning back with half-
+closed eyes, he tried to diagnose this new sensation.  He found it
+disconcerting that the faces and behaviour of his neighbours lacked
+anything he could grasp and secretly abuse.  They continued to
+converse with admirable and slightly conscious phlegm, yet he knew,
+as well as if each one had whispered to him privately, that this
+shady incident had shaken them.  Something unsettling to their
+notions of propriety-something dangerous and destructive of
+complacency--had occurred, and this was unforgivable.  Each had a
+different way, humorous or philosophic, contemptuous, sour, or sly,
+of showing this resentment.  But by a flash of insight Shelton saw
+that at the bottom of their minds and of his own the feeling was the
+same.  Because he shared in their resentment he was enraged with them
+and with himself.  He looked at the plump, sleek hand of the woman
+with the Roman nose.  The insulation and complacency of its pale
+skin, the passive righteousness about its curve, the prim separation
+from the others of the fat little finger, had acquired a wholly
+unaccountable importance.  It embodied the verdict of his fellow-
+passengers, the verdict of Society; for he knew that, whether or no
+repugnant to the well-bred mind, each assemblage of eight persons,
+even in a third-class carriage, contains the kernel of Society.
+
+But being in love, and recently engaged, Shelton had a right to be
+immune from discontent of any kind, and he reverted to his mental
+image of the cool, fair face, quick movements, and the brilliant
+smile that now in his probationary exile haunted his imagination; he
+took out his fiancee's last letter, but the voice of the young
+foreigner addressing him in rapid French caused him to put it back
+abruptly.
+
+"From what she tells me, sir," he said, bending forward to be out of
+hearing of the girl, "hers is an unhappy case.  I should have been
+only too glad to help her, but, as you see"--and he made a gesture by
+which Shelton observed that he had parted from his waistcoat--"I am
+not Rothschild.  She has been abandoned by the man who brought her
+over to Dover under promise of marriage.  Look"--and by a subtle
+flicker of his eyes he marked how the two ladies had edged away from
+the French girl "they take good care not to let their garments touch
+her.  They are virtuous women.  How fine a thing is virtue, sir! and
+finer to know you have it, especially when you are never likely to be
+tempted."
+
+Shelton was unable to repress a smile; and when he smiled his face
+grew soft.
+
+"Haven't you observed," went on the youthful foreigner, "that those
+who by temperament and circumstance are worst fitted to pronounce
+judgment are usually the first to judge?  The judgments of Society
+are always childish, seeing that it's composed for the most part of
+individuals who have never smelt the fire.  And look at this: they
+who have money run too great a risk of parting with it if they don't
+accuse the penniless of being rogues and imbeciles."
+
+Shelton was startled, and not only by an outburst of philosophy from
+an utter stranger in poor clothes, but at this singular wording of
+his own private thoughts.  Stifling his sense of the unusual for the
+queer attraction this young man inspired, he said:
+
+"I suppose you're a stranger over here?"
+
+"I've been in England seven months, but not yet in London," replied
+the other.  "I count on doing some good there--it is time!"  A bitter
+and pathetic smile showed for a second on his lips.  "It won't be my
+fault if I fail.  You are English, Sir?"
+
+Shelton nodded.
+
+"Forgive my asking; your voice lacks something I've nearly always
+noticed in the English a kind of--'comment cela s'appelle'--
+cocksureness, coming from your nation's greatest quality."
+
+"And what is that?" asked Shelton with a smile.
+
+"Complacency," replied the youthful foreigner.
+
+"Complacency!" repeated Shelton; "do you call that a great quality?"
+
+"I should rather say, monsieur, a great defect in what is always a
+great people.  You are certainly the most highly-civilised nation on
+the earth; you suffer a little from the fact.  If I were an English
+preacher my desire would be to prick the heart of your complacency."
+
+Shelton, leaning back, considered this impertinent suggestion.
+
+"Hum!" he said at last, "you'd be unpopular; I don't know that we're
+any cockier than other nations."
+
+The young foreigner made a sign as though confirming this opinion.
+
+"In effect," said he, "it is a sufficiently widespread disease.  Look
+at these people here"--and with a rapid glance he pointed to the
+inmates of the carnage,--"very average persons!  What have they done
+to warrant their making a virtuous nose at those who do not walk as
+they do?  That old rustic, perhaps, is different--he never thinks at
+all--but look at those two occupied with their stupidities about the
+price of hops, the prospects of potatoes, what George is doing, a
+thousand things all of that sort--look at their faces; I come of the
+bourgeoisie myself--have they ever shown proof of any quality that
+gives them the right to pat themselves upon the back?  No fear!
+Outside potatoes they know nothing, and what they do not understand
+they dread and they despise--there are millions of that breed.
+'Voila la Societe'!  The sole quality these people have shown they
+have is cowardice.  I was educated by the Jesuits," he concluded; "it
+has given me a way of thinking."
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Shelton would have murmured in a well-
+bred voice, "Ah! quite so," and taken refuge in the columns of the
+Daily Telegraph.  In place of this, for some reason that he did not
+understand, he looked at the young foreigner, and asked,
+
+"Why do you say all this to me?"
+
+The tramp--for by his boots he could hardly have been better--
+hesitated.
+
+"When you've travelled like me," he said, as if resolved to speak the
+truth, "you acquire an instinct in choosing to whom and how you
+speak.  It is necessity that makes the law; if you want to live you
+must learn all that sort of thing to make face against life."
+
+Shelton, who himself possessed a certain subtlety, could not but
+observe the complimentary nature of these words.  It was like saying
+"I'm not afraid of you misunderstanding me, and thinking me a rascal
+just because I study human nature."
+
+"But is there nothing to be done for that poor girl?"
+
+His new acquaintance shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"A broken jug," said he; "--you'll never mend her.  She's going to a
+cousin in London to see if she can get help; you've given her the
+means of getting there--it's all that you can do.  One knows too well
+what'll become of her."
+
+Shelton said gravely,
+
+"Oh!  that's horrible!  Could n't she be induced to go back home?  I
+should be glad--"
+
+The foreign vagrant shook his head.
+
+"Mon cher monsieur," he said, "you evidently have not yet had
+occasion to know what the 'family' is like.  'The family' does not
+like damaged goods; it will have nothing to say to sons whose hands
+have dipped into the till or daughters no longer to be married.  What
+the devil would they do with her?  Better put a stone about her neck
+and let her drown at once.  All the world is Christian, but Christian
+and good Samaritan are not quite the same."
+
+Shelton looked at the girl, who was sitting motionless, with her
+hands crossed on her bag, and a revolt against the unfair ways of
+life arose within him.
+
+"Yes," said the young foreigner, as if reading all his thoughts,
+"what's called virtue is nearly always only luck."  He rolled his
+eyes as though to say: "Ah! La, Conventions?  Have them by all means
+--but don't look like peacocks because you are preserving them; it is
+but cowardice and luck, my friends--but cowardice and luck!"
+
+"Look here," said Shelton, "I'll give her my address, and if she
+wants to go back to her family she can write to me."
+
+"She'll never go back; she won't have the courage."
+
+Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop
+of her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the
+young man's words were true came over him.
+
+"I had better not give them my private address," he thought, glancing
+at the faces opposite; and he wrote down the following: "Richard
+Paramor Shelton, c/o Paramor and Herring, Lincoln's Inn Fields."
+
+"You're very good, sir.  My name is Louis Ferrand; no address at
+present.  I'll make her understand; she's half stupefied just now."
+
+Shelton returned to the perusal of his paper, too disturbed to read;
+the young vagrant's words kept sounding in his ears.  He raised his
+eyes.  The plump hand of the lady with the Roman nose still rested on
+her lap; it had been recased in its black glove with large white
+stitching.  Her frowning gaze was fixed on him suspiciously, as if he
+had outraged her sense of decency.
+
+"He did n't get anything from me," said the voice of the red-faced
+man, ending a talk on tax-gatherers.  The train whistled loudly, and
+Shelton reverted to his paper.  This time he crossed his legs,
+determined to enjoy the latest murder; once more he found himself
+looking at the vagrant's long-nosed, mocking face.  "That fellow," he
+thought, "has seen and felt ten times as much as I, although he must
+be ten years younger."
+
+He turned for distraction to the landscape, with its April clouds,
+trim hedgerows, homely coverts.  But strange ideas would come, and he
+was discontented with himself; the conversation he had had, the
+personality of this young foreigner, disturbed him.  It was all as
+though he had made a start in some fresh journey through the fields
+of thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ANTONIA
+
+Five years before the journey just described Shelton had stood one
+afternoon on the barge of his old college at the end of the summer
+races.  He had been "down" from Oxford for some years, but these
+Olympian contests still attracted him.
+
+The boats were passing, and in the usual rush to the barge side his
+arm came in contact with a soft young shoulder.  He saw close to him
+a young girl with fair hair knotted in a ribbon, whose face was eager
+with excitement.  The pointed chin, long neck, the fluffy hair, quick
+gestures, and the calm strenuousness of her grey-blue eyes, impressed
+him vividly.
+
+"Oh, we must bump them!" he heard her sigh.
+
+"Do you know my people, Shelton?" said a voice behind his back; and
+he was granted a touch from the girl's shy, impatient hand, the
+warmer fingers of a lady with kindly eyes resembling a hare's, the
+dry hand-clasp of a gentleman with a thin, arched nose, and a
+quizzical brown face.
+
+"Are you the Mr. Shelton who used to play the 'bones' at Eton?" said
+the lady.  "Oh; we so often heard of you from Bernard!  He was your
+fag, was n't he?  How distressin' it is to see these poor boys in the
+boats!"
+
+"Mother, they like it!" cried the girl.
+
+"Antonia ought to be rowing, herself," said her father, whose name
+was Dennant.
+
+Shelton went back with them to their hotel, walking beside Antonia
+through the Christchurch meadows, telling her details of his college
+life.  He dined with them that evening, and, when he left, had a
+feeling like that produced by a first glass of champagne.
+
+The Dennants lived at Holm Oaks, within six miles of Oxford, and two
+days later he drove over and paid a call.  Amidst the avocations of
+reading for the Bar, of cricket, racing, shooting, it but required a
+whiff of some fresh scent--hay, honeysuckle, clover--to bring
+Antonia's face before him, with its uncertain colour and its frank,
+distant eyes.  But two years passed before he again saw her.  Then,
+at an invitation from Bernard Dennant, he played cricket for the
+Manor of Holm Oaks against a neighbouring house; in the evening there
+was dancing oh the lawn.  The fair hair was now turned up, but the
+eyes were quite unchanged.  Their steps went together, and they.
+outlasted every other couple on the slippery grass.  Thence, perhaps,
+sprang her respect for him; he was wiry, a little taller than
+herself, and seemed to talk of things that interested her.  He found
+out she was seventeen, and she found out that he was twenty-nine.
+The following two years Shelton went to Holm Oaks whenever he was
+asked; to him this was a period of enchanted games, of cub-hunting,
+theatricals, and distant sounds of practised music, and during it
+Antonia's eyes grew more friendly and more curious, and his own more
+shy, and schooled, more furtive and more ardent.  Then came his
+father's death, a voyage round the world, and that peculiar hour of
+mixed sensations when, one March morning, abandoning his steamer at
+Marseilles, he took train for Hyeres.
+
+He found her at one of those exclusive hostelries amongst the pines
+where the best English go, in common with Americans, Russian
+princesses, and Jewish families; he would not have been shocked to
+find her elsewhere, but he would have been surprised.  His sunburnt
+face and the new beard, on which he set some undefined value,
+apologetically displayed, were scanned by those blue eyes with rapid
+glances, at once more friendly and less friendly.  "Ah!" they seemed
+to say, "here you are; how glad I am!  But--what now?"
+
+He was admitted to their sacred table at the table d'hote, a snowy
+oblong in an airy alcove, where the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, Miss
+Dennant, and the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, a maiden aunt with
+insufficient lungs, sat twice a day in their own atmosphere.  A
+momentary weakness came on Shelton the first time he saw them sitting
+there at lunch.  What was it gave them their look of strange
+detachment?  Mrs. Dennant was bending above a camera.
+
+"I'm afraid, d' you know, it's under-exposed," she said.
+
+"What a pity!  The kitten was rather nice!"  The maiden aunt, placing
+the knitting of a red silk tie beside her plate, turned her aspiring,
+well-bred gaze on Shelton.
+
+"Look, Auntie," said Antonia in her clear, quick voice, "there's the
+funny little man again!"
+
+"Oh," said the maiden aunt--a smile revealed her upper teeth; she
+looked for the funny little man (who was not English)--"he's rather
+nice!"
+
+Shelton did not look for the funny little man; he stole a glance that
+barely reached Antonia's brow, where her eyebrows took their tiny
+upward slant at the outer corners, and her hair was still ruffled by
+a windy walk.  From that moment he became her slave.
+
+"Mr. Shelton, do you know anything about these periscopic
+binoculars?" said Mrs. Dennant's voice; "they're splendid for
+buildin's, but buildin's are so disappointin'.  The thing is to get
+human interest, isn't it?" and her glance wandered absently past
+Shelton in search of human interest.
+
+"You haven't put down what you've taken, mother."
+
+>From a little leather bag Mrs. Dennant took a little leather book.
+
+"It's so easy to forget what they're about," she said, "that's so
+annoyin'."
+
+Shelton was not again visited by his uneasiness at their detachment;
+he accepted them and all their works, for there was something quite
+sublime about the way that they would leave the dining-room,
+unconscious that they themselves were funny to all the people they
+had found so funny while they had been sitting there, and he would
+follow them out unnecessarily upright and feeling like a fool.
+
+In the ensuing fortnight, chaperoned by the maiden aunt, for Mrs.
+Dennant disliked driving, he sat opposite to Antonia during many
+drives; he played sets of tennis with her; but it was in the evenings
+after dinner--those long evenings on a parquet floor in wicker chairs
+dragged as far as might be from the heating apparatus--that he seemed
+so very near her.  The community of isolation drew them closer.  In
+place of a companion he had assumed the part of friend, to whom she
+could confide all her home-sick aspirations.  So that, even when she
+was sitting silent, a slim, long foot stretched out in front, bending
+with an air of cool absorption over some pencil sketches which she
+would not show him--even then, by her very attitude, by the sweet
+freshness that clung about her, by her quick, offended glances at the
+strange persons round, she seemed to acknowledge in some secret way
+that he was necessary.  He was far from realising this; his
+intellectual and observant parts were hypnotised and fascinated even
+by her failings.  The faint freckling across her nose, the slim and
+virginal severeness of her figure, with its narrow hips and arms, the
+curve of her long neck-all were added charms.  She had the wind and
+rain look, a taste of home; and over the glaring roads, where the
+palm-tree shadows lay so black, she seemed to pass like the very
+image of an English day.
+
+One afternoon he had taken her to play tennis with some friends, and
+afterwards they strolled on to her favourite view.  Down the Toulon
+road gardens and hills were bathed in the colour of ripe apricot; an
+evening crispness had stolen on the air; the blood, released from the
+sun's numbing, ran gladly in the veins.  On the right hand of the
+road was a Frenchman playing bowls.  Enormous, busy, pleased, and
+upright as a soldier, pathetically trotting his vast carcass from end
+to end, he delighted Shelton.  But Antonia threw a single look at the
+huge creature, and her face expressed disgust.  She began running up
+towards the ruined tower.
+
+Shelton let her keep in front, watching her leap from stone to stone
+and throw back defiant glances when he pressed behind.  She stood at
+the top, and he looked up at her.  Over the world, gloriously spread
+below, she, like a statue, seemed to rule.  The colour was brilliant
+in her cheeks, her young bosom heaved, her eyes shone, and the
+flowing droop of her long, full sleeves gave to her poised figure the
+look of one who flies.  He pulled himself up and stood beside her;
+his heart choked him, all the colour had left his cheeks.
+
+"Antonia," he said, "I love you."
+
+She started, as if his whisper had intruded on her thoughts; but his
+face must have expressed his hunger, for the resentment in her eyes
+vanished.
+
+They stood for several minutes without speaking, and then went home.
+Shelton painfully revolved the riddle of the colour in her face.  Had
+he a chance then?  Was it possible?  That evening the instinct
+vouchsafed at times to lovers in place of reason caused him to pack
+his bag and go to Cannes.  On returning, two days later, and
+approaching the group in the centre of the Winter Garden, the voice
+of the maiden aunt reading aloud an extract from the Morning Post
+reached him across the room.
+
+"Don't you think that's rather nice?" he heard her ask, and then:
+"Oh, here you aye!  It's very nice to see you back!"
+
+Shelton slipped into a wicker chair.  Antonia looked up quickly from
+her sketch-book, put out a hand, but did not speak.
+
+He watched her bending head, and his eagerness was changed to gloom.
+With desperate vivacity he sustained the five intolerable minutes of
+inquiry, where had he been, what had he been doing?  Then once again
+the maiden aunt commenced her extracts from the Morning Post.
+
+A touch on his sleeve startled him.  Antonia was leaning forward; her
+cheeks were crimson above the pallor of her neck.
+
+"Would you like to see my sketches?"
+
+To Shelton, bending above those sketches, that drawl of the well-bred
+maiden aunt intoning the well-bred paper was the most pleasant sound
+that he had ever listened to.
+
+"My dear Dick," Mrs. Dennant said to him a fortnight later, "we would
+rather, after you leave here, that you don't see each other again
+until July.  Of course I know you count it an engagement and all
+that, and everybody's been writin' to congratulate you.  But Algie
+thinks you ought to give yourselves a chance.  Young people don't
+always know what they're about, you know; it's not long to wait."
+
+"Three months!"  gasped Shelton.
+
+He had to swallow down this pill with what grace he could command.
+There was no alternative.  Antonia had acquiesced in the condition
+with a queer, grave pleasure, as if she expected it to do her good.
+
+"It'll be something to look forward to, Dick," she said.
+
+He postponed departure as long as possible, and it was not until the
+end of April that he left for England.  She came alone to see him
+off.  It was drizzling, but her tall, slight figure in the golf cape
+looked impervious to cold and rain amongst the shivering natives.
+Desperately he clutched her hand, warm through the wet glove; her
+smile seemed heartless in its brilliancy.  He whispered "You will
+write?"
+
+"Of course; don't be so stupid, you old Dick!"
+
+She ran forward as the train began to move; her clear "Good-bye!"
+sounded shrill and hard above the rumble of the wheels.  He saw her
+raise her hand, an umbrella waving, and last of all, vivid still
+amongst receding shapes, the red spot of her scarlet tam-o'-shanter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN
+
+After his journey up from Dover, Shelton was still fathering his
+luggage at Charing Cross, when the foreign girl passed him, and, in
+spite of his desire to say something cheering, he could get nothing
+out but a shame-faced smile.  Her figure vanished, wavering into the
+hurly-burly; one of his bags had gone astray, and so all thought of
+her soon faded from his mind.  His cab, however, overtook the foreign
+vagrant marching along towards Pall Mall with a curious, lengthy
+stride--an observant, disillusioned figure.
+
+The first bustle of installation over, time hung heavy on his hands.
+July loomed distant, as in some future century; Antonia's eyes
+beckoned him faintly, hopelessly.  She would not even be coming back
+to England for another month.
+
+. . . I met a young foreigner in the train from Dover [he wrote to
+her]--a curious sort of person altogether, who seems to have infected
+me.  Everything here has gone flat and unprofitable; the only good
+things in life are your letters . . . . John Noble dined with me
+yesterday; the poor fellow tried to persuade me to stand for
+Parliament.  Why should I think myself fit to legislate for the
+unhappy wretches one sees about in the streets?  If people's faces
+are a fair test of their happiness, I' d rather not feel in any way
+responsible . . . .
+
+The streets, in fact, after his long absence in the East, afforded
+him much food for thought: the curious smugness of the passers-by;
+the utterly unending bustle; the fearful medley of miserable, over-
+driven women, and full-fed men, with leering, bull-beef eyes, whom he
+saw everywhere--in club windows, on their beats, on box seats, on the
+steps of hotels, discharging dilatory duties; the appalling choas of
+hard-eyed, capable dames with defiant clothes, and white-cheeked
+hunted-looking men; of splendid creatures in their cabs, and cadging
+creatures in their broken hats--the callousness and the monotony!
+
+One afternoon in May he received this letter couched in French:
+
+                                   3, BLANK ROW
+                                        WESTMINSTER.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Excuse me for recalling to your memory the offer of assistance you so
+kindly made me during the journey from Dover to London, in which I
+was so fortunate as to travel with a man like you.  Having beaten the
+whole town, ignorant of what wood to make arrows, nearly at the end
+of my resources, my spirit profoundly discouraged, I venture to avail
+myself of your permission, knowing your good heart.  Since I saw you
+I have run through all the misfortunes of the calendar, and cannot
+tell what door is left at which I have not knocked.  I presented
+myself at the business firm with whose name you supplied me, but
+being unfortunately in rags, they refused to give me your address.
+Is this not very much in the English character?  They told me to
+write, and said they would forward the letter.  I put all my hopes in
+you.
+     Believe me, my dear sir,
+          (whatever you may decide)
+               Your devoted
+                    LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton looked at the envelope, and saw, that it, bore date a week
+ago.  The face of the young vagrant rose before him, vital, mocking,
+sensitive; the sound of his quick French buzzed in his ears, and,
+oddly, the whole whiff of him had a power of raising more vividly
+than ever his memories of Antonia.  It had been at the end of the
+journey from Hyeres to London that he had met him; that seemed to
+give the youth a claim.
+
+He took his hat and hurried, to Blank Row.  Dismissing his cab at the
+corner of Victoria Street he with difficulty found the house in
+question.  It was a doorless place, with stone-flagged corridor--in
+other words, a "doss-house."  By tapping on a sort of ticket-office
+with a sliding window, he attracted the attention of a blowsy woman
+with soap-suds on her arms, who informed him that the person he was
+looking for had gone without leaving his address.
+
+"But isn't there anybody," asked Shelton, "of whom I can make
+inquiry?"
+
+"Yes; there's a Frenchman."  And opening an inner door she bellowed:
+"Frenchy!  Wanted!" and disappeared.
+
+A dried-up, yellow little man, cynical and weary in the face, as if a
+moral steam-roller had passed over it, answered this call, and stood,
+sniffing, as it were, at Shelton, on whom he made the singular
+impression of some little creature in a cage.
+
+"He left here ten days ago, in the company of a mulatto.  What do you
+want with him, if I may ask?"  The little man's yellow cheeks were
+wrinkled with suspicion.
+
+Shelton produced the letter.
+
+"Ah! now I know you"--a pale smile broke through the Frenchman's
+crow's-feet--"he spoke of you.  'If I can only find him,' he used to
+say, 'I 'm saved.'  I liked that young man; he had ideas."
+
+"Is there no way of getting at him through his consul?"
+
+The Frenchman shook his head.
+
+"Might as well look for diamonds at the bottom of the sea."
+
+"Do you think he will come back here?  But by that time I suppose,
+you'll hardly be here yourself?"
+
+A gleam of amusement played about the Frenchman's teeth:
+
+"I? Oh, yes, sir!  Once upon a time I cherished the hope of emerging;
+I no longer have illusions.  I shave these specimens for a living,
+and shall shave them till the day of judgment.  But leave a letter
+with me by all means; he will come back.  There's an overcoat of his
+here on which he borrowed money--it's worth more.  Oh, yes; he will
+come back--a youth of principle.  Leave a letter with me; I'm always
+here."
+
+Shelton hesitated, but those last three words, "I'm always here,"
+touched him in their simplicity.  Nothing more dreadful could be
+said.
+
+"Can you find me a sheet of paper, then?" he asked; "please keep the
+change for the trouble I am giving you."
+
+"Thank you," said the Frenchman simply; "he told me that your heart
+was good.  If you don't mind the kitchen, you could write there at
+your ease."
+
+Shelton wrote his letter at the table of this stone-flagged kitchen
+in company with an aged, dried-up gentleman; who was muttering to
+himself; and Shelton tried to avoid attracting his attention,
+suspecting that he was not sober.  Just as he was about to take his
+leave, however, the old fellow thus accosted him:
+
+"Did you ever go to the dentist, mister?" he said, working at a loose
+tooth with his shrivelled fingers.  "I went to a dentist once, who
+professed to stop teeth without giving pain, and the beggar did stop
+my teeth without pain; but did they stay in, those stoppings?  No, my
+bhoy; they came out before you could say Jack Robinson. Now, I
+shimply ask you, d'you call that dentistry?"  Fixing his eyes on
+Shelton's collar, which had the misfortune to be high and clean, he
+resumed with drunken scorn: "Ut's the same all over this pharisaical
+counthry.  Talk of high morality and Anglo-Shaxon civilisation!  The
+world was never at such low ebb!  Phwhat's all this morality?  Ut
+stinks of the shop.  Look at the condition of Art in this counthry!
+look at the fools you see upon th' stage! look at the pictures and
+books that sell!  I know what I'm talking about, though I am a
+sandwich man.  Phwhat's the secret of ut all?  Shop, my bhoy!  Ut
+don't pay to go below a certain depth!  Scratch the skin, but pierce
+ut--Oh! dear, no!  We hate to see the blood fly, eh?"
+
+Shelton stood disconcerted, not knowing if he were expected to reply;
+but the old gentleman, pursing up his lips, went on:
+
+"Sir, there are no extremes in this fog-smitten land. Do ye think
+blanks loike me ought to exist?  Whoy don't they kill us off?
+Palliatives--palliatives--and whoy?  Because they object to th'
+extreme course.  Look at women: the streets here are a scandal to the
+world.  They won't recognise that they exist--their noses are so dam
+high! They blink the truth in this middle-class counthry.  My bhoy"--
+and he whispered confidentially--"ut pays 'em.  Eh? you say, why
+shouldn't they, then?"  (But Shelton had not spoken.)  "Well, let'em!
+let 'em!.  But don't tell me that'sh morality, don't tell me that'sh
+civilisation!  What can you expect in a counthry where the crimson,
+emotions are never allowed to smell the air?  And what'sh the result?
+My bhoy, the result is sentiment, a yellow thing with blue spots,
+like a fungus or a Stilton cheese.  Go to the theatre, and see one of
+these things they call plays.  Tell me, are they food for men and
+women?  Why, they're pap for babes and shop-boys!  I was a blanky
+actor moyself!"
+
+Shelton listened with mingled feelings of amusement and dismay, till
+the old actor, having finished, resumed his crouching posture at the
+table.
+
+"You don't get dhrunk, I suppose?" he said suddenly--"too much of 'n
+Englishman, no doubt."
+
+"Very seldom," said Shelton.
+
+"Pity!  Think of the pleasures of oblivion!  Oi 'm dhrunk every
+night."
+
+"How long will you last at that rate?"
+
+"There speaks the Englishman!  Why should Oi give up me only pleasure
+to keep me wretched life in?  If you've anything left worth the
+keeping shober for, keep shober by all means; if not, the sooner you
+are dhrunk the better--that stands to reason."
+
+In the corridor Shelton asked the Frenchman where the old man came
+from.
+
+"Oh, and Englishman!  Yes, yes, from Belfast very drunken old man.
+You are a drunken nation"--he made a motion with his hands "he no
+longer eats--no inside left.  It is unfortunate-a man of spirit.  If
+you have never seen one of these palaces, monsieur, I shall be happy
+to show you over it."
+
+Shelton took out his cigarette case.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Frenchman, making a wry nose and taking a
+cigarette; "I'm accustomed to it.  But you're wise to fumigate the
+air; one is n't in a harem."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
+
+"This," said the guide, leading him up-stairs and opening a door, "is
+a specimen of the apartments reserved for these princes of the
+blood."  There were four empty beds on iron legs, and, with the air
+of a showman, the Frenchman twitched away a dingy quilt.  "They go
+out in the mornings, earn enough to make them drunk, sleep it off,
+and then begin again.  That's their life.  There are people who think
+they ought to be reformed.  'Mon cher monsieur', one must face
+reality a little, even in this country.  It would be a hundred times
+better for these people to spend their time reforming high Society.
+Your high Society makes all these creatures; there's no harvest
+without cutting stalks.  'Selon moi'," he continued, putting back the
+quilt, and dribbling cigarette smoke through his nose, "there's no
+grand difference between your high Society and these individuals
+here; both want pleasure, both think only of themselves, which is
+very natural.  One lot have had the luck, the other--well, you see."
+He shrugged.  "A common set!  I've been robbed here half a dozen
+times.  If you have new shoes, a good waistcoat, an overcoat, you
+want eyes in the back of your head.  And they are populated!  Change
+your bed, and you'll run all the dangers of not sleeping alone.
+'V'la ma clientele'!  The half of them don't pay me!"  He, snapped
+his yellow sticks of fingers.  "A penny for a shave, twopence a cut!
+'Quelle vie'!  Here," he continued, standing by a bed, "is a
+gentleman who owes me fivepence.  Here's one who was a soldier; he's
+done for!  All brutalised; not one with any courage left!  But,
+believe me, monsieur," he went on, opening another door, "when you
+come down to houses of this sort you must have a vice; it's as
+necessary as breath is to the lungs.  No matter what, you must have a
+vice to give you a little solace--'un peu de soulagement'.  Ah, yes!
+before you judge these swine, reflect on life!  I've been through it.
+Monsieur, it is not nice never to know where to get your next meal.
+Gentlemen who have food in their stomachs, money in their pockets,
+and know where to get more, they never think.  Why should they--'pas
+de danger'!  All these cages are the same.  Come down, and you shall
+see the pantry."  He took Shelton through the kitchen, which seemed
+the only sitting-room of the establishment, to an inner room
+furnished with dirty cups and saucers, plates, and knives.  Another
+fire was burning there.  "We always have hot water," said the
+Frenchman, "and three times a week they make a fire down there"--he
+pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin.  Oh, yes,
+we have all the luxuries."
+
+Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
+little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
+trying to adopt him as a patron:
+
+"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have
+your letter without fail.  My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I
+am always at your service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE PLAY
+
+Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare.  "That old
+actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman;
+still, there may be truth in what he said.  I am a Pharisee, like all
+the rest who are n't in the pit.  My respectability is only luck.
+What should I have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?"
+and he stared at a stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to
+pierce the mask of their serious, complacent faces.  If these ladies
+and gentlemen were put into that pit into which he had been looking,
+would a single one of them emerge again?  But the effort of picturing
+them there was too much for him; it was too far--too ridiculously
+far.
+
+One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst
+of all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and
+desperately jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence,
+had evidently bought some article which pleased them.  There was
+nothing offensive in their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at
+the passing of the other people.  The man had that fine solidity of
+shoulder and of waist, the glossy self-possession that belongs to
+those with horses, guns, and dressing-bags.  The wife, her chin
+comfortably settled in her fur, kept her grey eyes on the ground,
+and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled voice reached Shelton's
+ears above all the whirring of the traffic.  It was leisurely
+precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been exhausted, or
+passionate, or afraid.  Their talk, like that of many dozens of fine
+couples invading London from their country places, was of where to
+dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what they
+should buy.  And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even in
+their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation.  They
+were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
+accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of his
+soul.  Antonia's home, for instance, had been full of them.  They
+were the best-bred people of the sort who supported charities, knew
+everybody, had clear, calm judgment, and intolerance of all such
+conduct as seemed to them "impossible," all breaches of morality,
+such as mistakes of etiquette, such as dishonesty, passion, sympathy
+(except with a canonised class of objects--the legitimate sufferings,
+for instance, of their own families and class).  How healthy they
+were!  The memory of the doss-house worked in Shelton's mind like
+poison.  He was conscious that in his own groomed figure, in the
+undemonstrative assurance of his walk, he bore resemblance to the
+couple he apostrophised.  "Ah!" he thought, "how vulgar our
+refinement is!"  But he hardly believed in his own outburst.  These
+people were so well mannered, so well conducted, and so healthy, he
+could not really understand what irritated him.  What was the matter
+with them?  They fulfilled their duties, had good appetites, clear
+consciences, all the furniture of perfect citizens; they merely
+lacked-feelers, a loss that, he had read, was suffered by plants and
+animals which no longer had a need for using them.  Some rare
+national faculty of seeing only the obvious and materially useful had
+destroyed their power of catching gleams or scents to right or left.
+
+The lady looked up at her husband.  The light of quiet, proprietary
+affection shone in her calm grey eyes, decorously illumining her
+features slightly reddened by the wind.  And the husband looked back
+at her, calm, practical, protecting.  They were very much alike.  So
+doubtless he looked when he presented himself in snowy shirt-sleeves
+for her to straighten the bow of his white tie; so nightly she would
+look, standing before the full-length mirror, fixing his gifts upon
+her bosom.  Calm, proprietary, kind!  He passed them and walked
+behind a second less distinguished couple, who manifested a mutual
+dislike as matter-of-fact and free from nonsense as the unruffled
+satisfaction of the first; this dislike was just as healthy, and
+produced in Shelton about the same sensation.  It was like knocking
+at a never-opened door, looking at a circle--couple after couple all
+the same.  No heads, toes, angles of their souls stuck out anywhere.
+In the sea of their environments they were drowned; no leg braved the
+air, no arm emerged wet and naked waving at the skies; shop-persons,
+aristocrats, workmen, officials, they were all respectable.  And he
+himself as respectable as any.
+
+He returned, thus moody, to his rooms and, with the impetuosity which
+distinguished him when about to do an unwise thing, he seized a pen
+and poured out before Antonia some of his impressions:
+
+. . . . Mean is the word, darling; we are mean, that's what 's the
+matter with us, dukes and dustmen, the whole human species--as mean
+as caterpillars.  To secure our own property and our own comfort, to
+dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really
+hurt us, is what we're all after.  There's something about human
+nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the
+more repulsive they seem to me to be . . . .
+
+He paused, biting his pen.  Had he one acquaintance who would not
+counsel him to see a doctor for writing in that style?  How would the
+world go round, how could Society exist, without common-sense,
+practical ability, and the lack of sympathy?
+
+He looked out of the open window.  Down in the street a footman was
+settling the rug over the knees of a lady in a carriage, and the
+decorous immovability of both their faces, which were clearly visible
+to him, was like a portion of some well-oiled engine.
+
+He got up and walked up and down.  His rooms, in a narrow square
+skirting Belgravia, were unchanged since the death of his father had
+made him a man of means.  Selected for their centrality, they were
+furnished in a very miscellaneous way.  They were not bare, but close
+inspection revealed that everything was damaged, more or less, and
+there was absolutely nothing that seemed to have an interest taken in
+it.  His goods were accidents, presents, or the haphazard
+acquisitions of a pressing need.  Nothing, of course, was frowsy, but
+everything was somewhat dusty, as if belonging to a man who never
+rebuked a servant.  Above all, there was nothing that indicated
+hobbies.
+
+Three days later he had her answer to his letter:
+
+.  .  .  I don't think I understand what you mean by "the healthier
+people are, the more repulsive they seem to be"; one must be healthy
+to be perfect, must n't one?  I don't like unhealthy people.  I had
+to play on that wretched piano after reading your letter; it made me
+feel unhappy.  I've been having a splendid lot of tennis lately, got
+the back-handed lifting stroke at last--hurrah!  .  .  .
+
+By the same post, too, came the following note in an autocratic
+writing:
+
+DEAR BIRD [for this was Shelton's college nickname],
+My wife has gone down to her people, so I'm 'en garcon' for a few
+days.  If you've nothing better to do, come and dine to-night at
+seven, and go to the theatre.  It's ages since I saw you.
+               Yours as ever,
+                    B. M. HALIDOME.
+
+Shelton had nothing better to do, for pleasant were his friend
+Halidome's well-appointed dinners.  At seven, therefore, he went to
+Chester Square.  His friend was in his study, reading Matthew Arnold
+by the light of an electric lamp.  The walls of the room were hung
+with costly etchings, arranged with solid and unfailing taste; from
+the carving of the mantel-piece to the binding of the books, from the
+miraculously-coloured meerschaums to the chased fire-irons,
+everything displayed an unpretentious luxury, an order and a finish
+significant of life completely under rule of thumb.  Everything had
+been collected.  The collector rose as Shelton entered, a fine figure
+of a man, clean shaven,--with dark hair, a Roman nose, good eyes, and
+the rather weighty dignity of attitude which comes from the assurance
+that one is in the right.
+
+Taking Shelton by the lapel, he drew him into the radius of the lamp,
+where he examined him, smiling a slow smile.  "Glad to see you, old
+chap.  I rather like your beard," he said with genial brusqueness;
+and nothing, perhaps, could better have summed up his faculty for
+forming independent judgments which Shelton found so admirable.  He
+made no apology for the smallness of the dinner, which, consisting of
+eight courses and three wines, served by a butler and one footman,
+smacked of the same perfection as the furniture; in fact, he never
+apologised for anything, except with a jovial brusqueness that was
+worse than the offence.  The suave and reasonable weight of his
+dislikes and his approvals stirred Shelton up to feel ironical and
+insignificant; but whether from a sense of the solid, humane, and
+healthy quality of his friend's egoism, or merely from the fact that
+this friendship had been long in bottle, he did not resent his mixed
+sensations.
+
+"By the way, I congratulate you, old chap," said Halidome, while
+driving to the theatre; there was no vulgar hurry about his
+congratulations, no more than about himself.  "They're awfully nice
+people, the Dennants."
+
+A sense of having had a seal put on his choice came over Shelton.
+
+"Where are you going to live?  You ought to come down and live near
+us; there are some ripping houses to be had down there; it's really a
+ripping neighbourhood.  Have you chucked the Bar?  You ought to do
+something, you know; it'll be fatal for you to have nothing to do.  I
+tell you what, Bird: you ought to stand for the County Council."
+
+But before Shelton had replied they reached the theatre, and their
+energies were spent in sidling to their stalls.  He had time to pass
+his neighbours in review before the play began.  Seated next to him
+was a lady with large healthy shoulders, displayed with splendid
+liberality; beyond her a husband, red-cheeked, with drooping, yellow-
+grey moustache and a bald head; beyond him again two men whom he had
+known at Eton.  One of them had a clean-shaved face, dark hair, and a
+weather-tanned complexion; his small mouth with its upper lip pushed
+out above the lower, his eyelids a little drooped over his watchful
+eyes, gave him a satirical and resolute expression.  "I've got hold
+of your tail, old fellow," he seemed to say, as though he were always
+busy with the catching of some kind of fox.  The other's goggling
+eyes rested on Shelton with a chaffing smile; his thick, sleek hair,
+brushed with water and parted in the middle, his neat moustache and
+admirable waistcoat, suggested the sort of dandyism that despises
+women.  From his recognition of these old schoolfellows Shelton
+turned to look at Halidome, who, having cleared his throat, was
+staring straight before him at the curtain.  Antonia's words kept
+running in her lover's head, "I don't like unhealthy people."  Well,
+all these people, anyway, were healthy; they looked as if they had
+defied the elements to endow them with a spark of anything but
+health.  Just then the curtain rose.
+
+Slowly, unwillingly, for he was of a trustful disposition, Shelton
+recognised that this play was one of those masterpieces of the modern
+drama whose characters were drawn on the principle that men were made
+for morals rather than morals made by men, and he watched the play
+unfold with all its careful sandwiching of grave and gay.
+
+A married woman anxious to be ridded of her husband was the pivot of
+the story, and a number of scenes, ingeniously contrived, with a
+hundred reasons why this desire was wrong and inexpedient, were
+revealed to Shelton's eyes.  These reasons issued mainly from the
+mouth of a well-preserved old gentleman who seemed to play the part
+of a sort of Moral Salesman.  He turned to Halidome and whispered:
+
+"Can you stand that old woman?"
+
+His friend fixed his fine eyes on him wonderingly.
+
+"What old woman?"
+
+"Why, the old ass with the platitudes!"
+
+Halidome's countenance grew cold, a little shocked, as though he had
+been assailed in person.
+
+"Do you mean Pirbright?" he said.  "I think he's ripping."
+
+Shelton turned to the play rebuffed; he felt guilty of a breach of
+manners, sitting as he was in one of his friend's stalls, and he
+naturally set to work to watch the play more critically than ever.
+Antonia's words again recurred to him, "I don't like unhealthy
+people," and they seemed to throw a sudden light upon this play.  It
+was healthy!
+
+The scene was a drawing-room, softly lighted by electric lamps, with
+a cat (Shelton could not decide whether she was real or not) asleep
+upon the mat.
+
+The husband, a thick-set, healthy man in evening dress, was drinking
+off neat whisky.  He put down his tumbler, and deliberately struck a
+match; then with even greater deliberation he lit a gold-tipped
+cigarette....
+
+Shelton was no inexperienced play-goer.  He shifted his elbows, for
+he felt that something was about to happen; and when the match was
+pitched into the fire, he leaned forward in his seat.  The husband
+poured more whisky out, drank it at a draught, and walked towards the
+door; then, turning to the audience as if to admit them to the secret
+of some tremendous resolution, he puffed at them a puff of smoke.  He
+left the room, returned, and once more filled his glass.  A lady now
+entered, pale of face and dark of eye--his wife.  The husband crossed
+the stage, and stood before the fire, his legs astride, in the
+attitude which somehow Shelton had felt sure he would assume.  He
+spoke:
+
+"Come in, and shut the door."
+
+Shelton suddenly perceived that he was face to face with one of those
+dumb moments in which two people declare their inextinguishable
+hatred--the hatred underlying the sexual intimacy of two ill-
+assorted creatures--and he was suddenly reminded of a scene he had
+once witnessed in a restaurant.  He remembered with extreme
+minuteness how the woman and the man had sat facing each other across
+the narrow patch of white, emblazoned by a candle with cheap shades
+and a thin green vase with yellow flowers.  He remembered the curious
+scornful anger of their voices, subdued so that only a few words
+reached him.  He remembered the cold loathing in their eyes.  And,
+above all, he remembered his impression that this sort of scene
+happened between them every other day, and would continue so to
+happen; and as he put on his overcoat and paid his bill he had asked
+himself, "Why in the name of decency do they go on living together?"
+And now he thought, as he listened to the two players wrangling on
+the stage: "What 's the good of all this talk?  There's something
+here past words."
+
+The curtain came down upon the act, and he looked at the lady next
+him.  She was shrugging her shoulders at her husband, whose face was
+healthy and offended.
+
+"I do dislike these unhealthy women," he was saying, but catching
+Shelton's eye he turned square in his seat and sniffed ironically.
+
+The face of Shelton's friend beyond, composed, satirical as ever, was
+clothed with a mask of scornful curiosity, as if he had been
+listening to something that had displeased him not a little.  The
+goggle-eyed man was yawning.  Shelton turned to Halidome:
+
+"Can you stand this sort of thing?" said he.
+
+"No; I call that scene a bit too hot," replied his friend.
+
+Shelton wriggled; he had meant to say it was not hot enough.
+
+"I'll bet you anything," he said, "I know what's going to happen now.
+You'll have that old ass--what's his name?--lunching off cutlets and
+champagne to fortify himself--for a lecture to the wife.  He'll show
+her how unhealthy her feelings are--I know him--and he'll take her
+hand and say, 'Dear lady, is there anything in this poor world but
+the good opinion of Society?' and he'll pretend to laugh at himself
+for saying it; but you'll see perfectly well that the old woman means
+it.  And then he'll put her into a set of circumstances that are n't
+her own but his version of them, and show her the only way of
+salvation is to kiss her husband"; and Shelton grinned.  "Anyway,
+I'll bet you anything he takes her hand and says, 'Dear lady.'"
+
+Halidome turned on him the disapproval of his eyes, and again he
+said,
+
+"I think Pirbright 's ripping!"
+
+But as Shelton had predicted, so it turned out, amidst great
+applause.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GOOD CITIZEN
+
+Leaving the theatre, they paused a moment in the hall to don their
+coats; a stream of people with spotless bosoms eddied round the
+doors, as if in momentary dread of leaving this hothouse of false
+morals and emotions for the wet, gusty streets, where human plants
+thrive and die, human weeds flourish and fade under the fresh,
+impartial skies.  The lights revealed innumerable solemn faces,
+gleamed innumerably on jewels, on the silk of hats, then passed to
+whiten a pavement wet with newly-fallen rain, to flare on horses, on
+the visages of cabmen, and stray, queer objects that do not bear the
+light.
+
+"Shall we walk?" asked Halidome.
+
+"Has it ever struck you," answered Shelton, "that in a play nowadays
+there's always a 'Chorus of Scandalmongers' which seems to have
+acquired the attitude of God?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat, and there was something portentous in
+the sound.
+
+"You're so d---d fastidious," was his answer.
+
+"I've a prejudice for keeping the two things separate," went on
+Shelton.  "That ending makes me sick."
+
+"Why?" replied Halidome.  "What other end is possible?  You don't
+want a play to leave you with a bad taste in your mouth."
+
+"But this does."
+
+Halidome increased his stride, already much too long; for in his
+walk, as in all other phases of his life, he found it necessary to be
+in front.
+
+"How do you mean?" he asked urbanely; "it's better than the woman
+making a fool of herself."
+
+"I'm thinking of the man."
+
+"What man?"
+
+"The husband."
+
+"What 's the matter with him?  He was a bit of a bounder, certainly."
+
+"I can't understand any man wanting to live with a woman who doesn't
+want him."
+
+Some note of battle in Shelton's voice, rather than the sentiment
+itself, caused his friend to reply with dignity:
+
+"There's a lot of nonsense talked about that sort of thing.  Women
+don't really care; it's only what's put into their heads."
+
+"That's much the same as saying to a starving man: 'You don't really
+want anything; it's only what's put into your head!'  You are begging
+the question, my friend."
+
+But nothing was more calculated to annoy Halidome than to tell him he
+was "begging the question," for he prided himself on being strong in
+logic.
+
+"That be d---d," he said.
+
+"Not at all, old chap.  Here is a case where a woman wants her
+freedom, and you merely answer that she dogs n't want it."
+
+"Women like that are impossible; better leave them out of court."
+
+Shelton pondered this and smiled; he had recollected an acquaintance
+of his own, who, when his wife had left him, invented the theory that
+she was mad, and this struck him now as funny.  But then he thought:
+"Poor devil!  he was bound to call her mad!  If he didn't, it would
+be confessing himself distasteful; however true, you can't expect a
+man to consider himself that."  But a glance at his friend's eye
+warned him that he, too, might think his wife mad in such a case.
+
+"Surely," he said, "even if she's his wife, a man's bound to behave
+like a gentleman."
+
+"Depends on whether she behaves like a lady."
+
+"Does it?  I don't see the connection."
+
+Halidome paused in the act of turning the latch-key in his door;
+there was a rather angry smile in his fine eyes.
+
+"My dear chap," he said, "you're too sentimental altogether."
+
+The word "sentimental" nettled Shelton.  "A gentleman either is a
+gentleman or he is n't; what has it to do with the way other people
+behave?"
+
+Halidome turned the key in the lock and opened the door into his
+hall, where the firelight fell on the decanters and huge chairs drawn
+towards the blaze.
+
+"No, Bird," he said, resuming his urbanity, and gathering his coat-
+tails in his hands; "it's all very well to talk, but wait until
+you're married.  A man must be master, and show it, too."
+
+An idea occurred to Shelton.
+
+"Look here, Hal," he said: "what should you do if your wife got tired
+of you?"
+
+The expression on Halidome's face was a mixture of amusement and
+contempt.
+
+"I don't mean anything personal, of course, but apply the situation
+to yourself."
+
+Halidome took out a toothpick, used it brusquely, and responded:
+
+"I shouldn't stand any humbug--take her travelling; shake her mind
+up.  She'd soon come round."
+
+"But suppose she really loathed you?"
+
+Halidome cleared his throat; the idea was so obviously indecent.  How
+could anybody loathe him?  With great composure, however, regarding
+Shelton as if he were a forward but amusing child, he answered:
+
+"There are a great many things to be taken into consideration."
+
+"It appears to me," said Shelton, "to be a question of common pride.
+How can you, ask anything of a woman who doesn't want to give it."
+
+His friend's voice became judicial.
+
+"A man ought not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky,
+"because a woman gets hysteria.  You have to think of Society, your
+children, house, money arrangements, a thousand things.  It's all
+very well to talk.  How do you like this whisky?"
+
+"The part of the good citizen, in fact," said Shelton, "self-
+preservation!"
+
+"Common-sense," returned his friend; "I believe in justice before
+sentiment."  He drank, and callously blew smoke at Shelton.
+"Besides, there are many people with religious views about it."
+
+"It's always seemed to me," said Shelton, "to be quaint that people
+should assert that marriage gives them the right to 'an eye for an
+eye,' and call themselves Christians.  Did you ever know anybody
+stand on their rights except out of wounded pride or for the sake of
+their own comfort?  Let them call their reasons what they like, you
+know as well as I do that it's cant."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Halidome, more and more superior as
+Shelton grew more warm; "when you stand on your rights, you do it for
+the sake of Society as well as for your own.  If you want to do away
+with marriage, why don't you say so?"
+
+"But I don't," said Shelton:" is it likely?  Why, I'm going---"  He
+stopped without adding the words "to be married myself," for it
+suddenly occurred to him that the reason was not the most lofty and
+philosophic in the world.  "All I can say is," he went on soberly,
+"that you can't make a horse drink by driving him.  Generosity is the
+surest way of tightening the knot with people who've any sense of
+decency; as to the rest, the chief thing is to prevent their
+breeding."
+
+Halidome smiled.
+
+"You're a rum chap," he said.
+
+Shelton jerked his cigarette into the fire.
+
+"I tell you what"--for late at night a certain power of vision came
+to him--"it's humbug to talk of doing things for the sake of Society;
+it's nothing but the instinct to keep our own heads above the water."
+
+But Halidome remained unruffled.
+
+"All right," he said, "call it that.  I don't see why I should go to
+the wall; it wouldn't do any good."
+
+"You admit, then," said Shelton, "that our morality is the sum total
+of everybody's private instinct of self-preservation?"
+
+Halidome stretched his splendid frame and yawned.
+
+"I don't know," he began, "that I should quite call it that--"
+
+But the compelling complacency of his fine eyes, the dignified
+posture of his healthy body, the lofty slope of his narrow forehead,
+the perfectly humane look of his cultivated brutality, struck Shelton
+as ridiculous.
+
+"Hang it, Hall" he cried, jumping from his chair, "what an old fraud
+you are!  I'll be off."
+
+"No, look here!"  said Halidome; the faintest shade of doubt had
+appeared upon his face; he took Shelton by a lapel: "You're quite
+wrong---"
+
+"Very likely; good-night, old chap!"
+
+Shelton walked home, letting the spring wind into him.  It was
+Saturday, and he passed many silent couples.  In every little patch
+of shadow he could see two forms standing or sitting close together,
+and in their presence Words the Impostors seemed to hold their
+tongues.  The wind rustled the buds; the stars, one moment bright as
+diamonds, vanished the next.  In the lower streets a large part of
+the world was under the influence of drink, but by this Shelton was
+far from being troubled.  It seemed better than Drama, than dressing-
+bagged men, unruffled women, and padded points of view, better than
+the immaculate solidity of his friend's possessions.
+
+"So," he reflected, "it's right for every reason, social, religious,
+and convenient, to inflict one's society where it's not desired.
+There are obviously advantages about the married state; charming to
+feel respectable while you're acting in a way that in any other walk
+of life would bring on you contempt.  If old Halidome showed that he
+was tired of me, and I continued to visit him, he'd think me a bit of
+a cad; but if his wife were to tell him she couldn't stand him, he'd
+still consider himself a perfect gentleman if he persisted in giving
+her the burden of his society; and he has the cheek to bring religion
+into it--a religion that says, 'Do unto others!'"
+
+But in this he was unjust to Halidome, forgetting how impossible it
+was for him to believe that a woman could not stand him.  He reached
+his rooms, and, the more freely to enjoy the clear lamplight, the
+soft, gusty breeze, and waning turmoil of the streets, waited a
+moment before entering.
+
+"I wonder," thought he, "if I shall turn out a cad when I marry, like
+that chap in the play.  It's natural.  We all want our money's worth,
+our pound of flesh!  Pity we use such fine words--'Society,
+Religion, Morality.'  Humbug!"
+
+He went in, and, throwing his window open, remained there a long
+time, his figure outlined against the lighted room for the benefit of
+the dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a
+reflective frown about his eyes.  A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a
+policeman, and a man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were
+holding a palaver.
+
+"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say
+is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"
+
+They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose
+Antonia's face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and
+dignity; the forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair
+parted in the centre, and brushed across.  A light seemed to illumine
+the plane of their existence, as the electric lamp with the green
+shade had illumined the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before
+Shelton's vision lay that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes
+of any kind, autocratic; complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any
+Midland landscape.  Healthy, wealthy, wise!  No room but for
+perfection, self-preservation, the survival of the fittest!  "The
+part of the good citizen," he thought: "no, if we were all alike,
+this would n't be a world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT
+
+"My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be
+glad to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the
+question of your marriage settlement...."   At that hour accordingly
+Shelton made his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black
+letters the names "Paramor and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)"
+were written on the wall of a stone entrance.  He ascended the solid
+steps with nervousness, and by a small red-haired boy was introduced
+to a back room on the first floor.  Here, seated at a table in the
+very centre, as if he thereby better controlled his universe, a pug-
+featured gentleman, without a beard, was writing.  He paused.
+"Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see you, sir.  Take a chair.
+Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute"; and in the tone of
+his allusion to his employer was the satirical approval that comes
+with long and faithful service.  "He will do everything himself," he
+went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest eyes, "and he 's not a
+young man."
+
+Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the
+prosperity deepening upon his face.  In place of the look of
+harassment which on most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty,
+his old friend's countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation,
+had expanded--a little greasily, a little genially, a little
+coarsely--every time he met it.  A contemptuous tolerance for people
+who were not getting on was spreading beneath its surface; it left
+each time a deeper feeling that its owner could never be in the
+wrong.
+
+"I hope you're well, sir," he resumed: "most important for you to
+have your health now you're going-to"--and, feeling for the delicate
+way to put it, he involuntarily winked--"to become a family man.  We
+saw it in the paper.  My wife said to me the other morning at
+breakfast: 'Bob, here's a Mr. Richard Paramor Shelton goin' to be
+married.  Is that any relative of your Mr. Shelton?'  'My dear,' I
+said to her, 'it's the very man!'"
+
+It disquieted Shelton to perceive that his old friend did not pass
+the whole of his life at that table writing in the centre of the
+room, but that somewhere (vistas of little grey houses rose before
+his eyes) he actually lived another life where someone called him
+"Bob."  Bob!  And this, too, was a revelation.  Bob!  Why, of course,
+it was the only name for him!  A bell rang.
+
+"That's your uncle"; and again the head clerk's voice sounded
+ironical.  "Good-bye, sir."
+
+He seemed to clip off intercourse as one clips off electric light.
+Shelton left him writing, and preceded the red-haired boy to an
+enormous room in the front where his uncle waited.
+
+Edmund Paramor was a medium-sized and upright man of seventy, whose
+brown face was perfectly clean-shaven.  His grey, silky hair was
+brushed in a cock's comb from his fine forehead, bald on the left
+side.  He stood before the hearth facing the room, and his figure had
+the springy abruptness of men who cannot fatten.  There was a certain
+youthfulness, too, in his eyes, yet they had a look as though he had
+been through fire; and his mouth curled at the corners in surprising
+smiles.  The room was like the man--morally large, void of red-tape
+and almost void of furniture; no tin boxes were ranged against the
+walls, no papers littered up the table; a single bookcase contained a
+complete edition of the law reports, and resting on the Law Directory
+was a single red rose in a glass of water.  It looked the room of one
+with a sober magnanimity, who went to the heart of things, despised
+haggling, and before whose smiles the more immediate kinds of humbug
+faded.
+
+"Well, Dick," said he, "how's your mother?"
+
+Shelton replied that his mother was all right.
+
+"Tell her that I'm going to sell her Easterns after all, and put into
+this Brass thing.  You can say it's safe, from me."
+
+Shelton made a face.
+
+"Mother," said he, "always believes things are safe."
+
+His uncle looked through him with his keen, half-suffering glance,
+and up went the corners of his mouth.
+
+"She's splendid," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton, "splendid."
+
+The transaction, however, did not interest him; his uncle's judgment
+in such matters had a breezy soundness he would never dream of
+questioning.
+
+"Well, about your settlement"; and, touching a bell three times, Mr.
+Paramor walked up and down the room.  "Bring me the draft of Mr.
+Richard's marriage settlement."
+
+The stalwart commissionaire reappearing with a document--"Now then,
+Dick," said Mr. Paramor.  "She 's not bringing anything into
+settlement, I understand; how 's that?"
+
+"I did n't want it," replied Shelton, unaccountably ashamed.
+
+Mr. Paramor's lips quivered; he drew the draft closer, took up a blue
+pencil, and, squeezing Shelton's arm, began to read.  The latter,
+following his uncle's rapid exposition of the clauses, was relieved
+when he paused suddenly.
+
+"If you die and she marries again," said Mr. Paramor, "she forfeits
+her life interest--see?"
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton; "wait a minute, Uncle Ted."
+
+Mr. Paramor waited, biting his pencil; a smile flickered on his
+mouth, and was decorously subdued.  It was Shelton's turn to walk
+about.
+
+"If she marries again," he repeated to himself.
+
+Mr. Paramor was a keen fisherman; he watched his nephew as he might
+have watched a fish he had just landed.
+
+"It's very usual," he remarked.
+
+Shelton took another turn.
+
+"She forfeits," thought he; "exactly."
+
+When he was dead, he would have no other way of seeing that she
+continued to belong to him.  Exactly!
+
+Mr. Paramor's haunting eyes were fastened on his nephew's face.
+
+"Well, my dear," they seemed to say, "what 's the matter?"
+
+Exactly!  Why should she have his money if she married again?  She
+would forfeit it.  There was comfort in the thought.  Shelton came
+back and carefully reread the clause, to put the thing on a purely
+business basis, and disguise the real significance of what was
+passing in his mind.
+
+"If I die and she marries again," he repeated aloud, "she forfeits."
+
+What wiser provision for a man passionately in love could possibly
+have been devised?  His uncle's eye travelled beyond him, humanely
+turning from the last despairing wriggles of his fish.
+
+"I don't want to tie her," said Shelton suddenly.
+
+The corners of Mr. Paramour's mouth flew up.
+
+"You want the forfeiture out?" he asked.
+
+The blood rushed into Shelton's face; he felt he had been detected in
+a piece of sentiment.
+
+"Ye-es," he stammered.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+"Quite!"  The answer was a little sulky.
+
+Her uncle's pencil descended on the clause, and he resumed the
+reading of the draft, but Shelton could not follow it; he was too
+much occupied in considering exactly why Mr. Paramor had been amused,
+and to do this he was obliged to keep his eyes upon him.  Those
+features, just pleasantly rugged; the springy poise of the figure;
+the hair neither straight nor curly, neither short nor long; the
+haunting look of his eyes and the humorous look of his mouth; his
+clothes neither shabby nor dandified; his serviceable, fine hands;
+above all, the equability of the hovering blue pencil, conveyed the
+impression of a perfect balance between heart and head, sensibility
+and reason, theory and its opposite.
+
+"'During coverture,'" quoted Mr. Paramor, pausing again, "you
+understand, of course, if you don't get on, and separate, she goes on
+taking?"
+
+If they didn't get on!  Shelton smiled.  Mr. Paramor did not smile,
+and again Shelton had the sense of having knocked up against
+something poised but firm.  He remarked irritably:
+
+"If we 're not living together, all the more reason for her having
+it."
+
+This time his uncle smiled.  It was difficult for Shelton to feel
+angry at that ironic merriment, with its sudden ending; it was too
+impersonal to irritate: it was too concerned with human nature.
+
+"If--hum--it came to the other thing," said Mr. Paramor, "the
+settlement's at an end as far as she 's concerned.  We 're bound to
+look at every case, you know, old boy."
+
+The memory of the play and his conversation with Halidome was still
+strong in Shelton.  He was not one of those who could not face the
+notion of transferred affections--at a safe distance.
+
+"All right, Uncle Ted," said he.  For one mad moment he was attacked
+by the desire to "throw in" the case of divorce.  Would it not be
+common chivalry to make her independent, able to change her
+affections if she wished, unhampered by monetary troubles?  You only
+needed to take out the words "during coverture."
+
+Almost anxiously he looked into his uncle's face.  There was no
+meanness there, but neither was there encouragement in that
+comprehensive brow with its wide sweep of hair.  "Quixotism," it
+seemed to say, "has merits, but--"  The room, too, with its wide
+horizon and tall windows, looking as if it dealt habitually in
+common-sense, discouraged him.  Innumerable men of breeding and the
+soundest principles must have bought their wives in here.  It was
+perfumed with the atmosphere of wisdom and law-calf.  The aroma of
+Precedent was strong; Shelton swerved his lance, and once more
+settled down to complete the purchase of his wife.
+
+"I can't conceive what you're--in such a hurry for; you 're not going
+to be married till the autumn," said Mr. Paramor, finishing at last.
+
+Replacing the blue pencil in the rack, he took the red rose from the
+glass, and sniffed at it.  "Will you come with me as far as Pall
+Mall?  I 'm going to take an afternoon off; too cold for Lord's, I
+suppose?"
+
+They walked into the Strand.
+
+"Have you seen this new play of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
+passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.
+
+"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d
+gloomy."
+
+Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head,
+his eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.
+
+"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"
+
+"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put
+in words?"
+
+"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians;
+why should n't we?"
+
+Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.
+
+"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong
+for us.  When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false.
+I should like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him
+to your mother."  He went in and bought a salmon:
+
+"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that
+it's decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels?
+Is n't life bad enough already?"
+
+It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face
+had a look of crucifixion.  It was, perhaps, only the stronger
+sunlight in the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.
+
+"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."
+
+"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
+Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button.  "Truth 's the very
+devil!"
+
+He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face;
+there seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle
+of tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness.
+Like the lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him
+look at her.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
+snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks.  You won't
+come to my club?  Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother
+when you see her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go
+on to his own club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle,
+but from the nation of which they were both members by birth and
+blood and education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CLUB
+
+He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage.
+The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had
+been these: "Dennant!  Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants?  She was a
+Penguin."
+
+No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there
+had been an "Ah! that 's right; this is due to us" tone about the
+saying.
+
+Shelton hunted for the name of Baltimore: "Charles Penguin, fifth
+Baron Baltimore.  Issue: Alice, b.  184-, m. 186- Algernon Dennant,
+Esq., of Holm Oaks, Cross Eaton, Oxfordshire."  He put down the
+Peerage and took up the 'Landed Gentry': "Dennant, Algernon Cuffe,
+eldest son of the late Algernon Cuffe Dennant, Esq., J. P., and
+Irene, 2nd daur. of the Honble. Philip and Lady Lillian March Mallow;
+ed. Eton and Ch. Ch., Oxford, J. P. for Oxfordshire.  Residence, Holm
+Oaks," etc., etc.  Dropping the 'Landed Gentry', he took up a volume
+of the 'Arabian Nights', which some member had left reposing on the
+book-rest of his chair, but instead of reading he kept looking round
+the room.  In almost every seat, reading or snoozing, were gentlemen
+who, in their own estimation, might have married Penguins.  For the
+first time it struck him with what majestic leisureliness they turned
+the pages of their books, trifled with their teacups, or lightly
+snored.  Yet no two were alike--a tall man-with dark moustache, thick
+hair, and red, smooth cheeks; another, bald, with stooping shoulders;
+a tremendous old buck, with a grey, pointed beard and large white
+waistcoat; a clean-shaven dapper man past middle age, whose face was
+like a bird's; a long, sallow, misanthrope; and a sanguine creature
+fast asleep.  Asleep or awake, reading or snoring, fat or thin, hairy
+or bald, the insulation of their red or pale faces was complete.
+They were all the creatures of good form.  Staring at them or reading
+the Arabian Nights Shelton spent the time before dinner.  He had not
+been long seated in the dining-room when a distant connection
+strolled up and took the next table.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!  Back?  Somebody told me you were goin' round the
+world."  He scrutinised the menu through his eyeglass.  "Clear soup!
+.  .  .  Read Jellaby's speech?  Amusing the way he squashes all
+those fellows.  Best man in the House, he really is."
+
+Shelton paused in the assimilation of asparagus; he, too, had been in
+the habit of admiring Jellaby, but now he wondered why.  The red and
+shaven face beside him above a broad, pure shirt-front was swollen by
+good humour; his small, very usual, and hard eyes were fixed
+introspectively on the successful process of his eating.
+
+"Success!"  thought Shelton, suddenly enlightened--"success is what
+we admire in Jellaby.  We all want success .  .  .  .  Yes," he
+admitted, "a successful beast."
+
+"Oh!" said his neighbour, "I forgot.  You're in the other camp?"
+
+"Not particularly.  Where did you get that idea?"
+
+His neighbour looked round negligently.
+
+"Oh," said he, "I somehow thought so"; and Shelton almost heard him
+adding, "There's something not quite sound about you."
+
+"Why do you admire Jellaby?" he asked.
+
+"Knows his own mind," replied his neighbour; "it 's more than the
+others do .  .  .  .  This whitebait is n't fit for cats!  Clever
+fellow, Jellaby!  No nonsense about him!  Have you ever heard him
+speak?  Awful good sport to watch him sittin' on the Opposition.  A
+poor lot they are!"  and he laughed, either from appreciation of
+Jellaby sitting on a small minority, or from appreciation of the
+champagne bubbles in his glass.
+
+"Minorities are always depressing," said Shelton dryly.
+
+"Eh?  what?"
+
+"I mean," said Shelton, "it's irritating to look at people who have
+n't a chance of success--fellows who make a mess of things, fanatics,
+and all that."
+
+His neighbour turned his eyes inquisitively.
+
+"Er--yes, quite," said he; "don't you take mint sauce?  It's the
+best part of lamb, I always think."
+
+The great room with its countless little tables, arranged so that
+every man might have the support of the gold walls to his back, began
+to regain its influence on Shelton.  How many times had he not sat
+there, carefully nodding to acquaintances, happy if he got the table
+he was used to, a paper with the latest racing, and someone to gossip
+with who was not a bounder; while the sensation of having drunk
+enough stole over him.  Happy!  That is, happy as a horse is happy
+who never leaves his stall.
+
+"Look at poor little Bing puffin' about," said his neighbour,
+pointing to a weazened, hunchy waiter.  "His asthma's awf'ly bad; you
+can hear him wheezin' from the street."
+
+He seemed amused.
+
+"There 's no such thing as moral asthma, I suppose?" said Shelton.
+
+His neighbour dropped his eyeglass.
+
+"Here, take this away; it's overdone;" said he.  "Bring me some
+lamb."
+
+Shelton pushed his table back.
+
+"Good-night," he said; "the Stilton's excellent!"
+
+His neighbour raised his brows, and dropped his eyes again upon his
+plate.
+
+In the hall Shelton went from force of habit to the weighing-scales
+and took his weight.  "Eleven stone!"  he thought; "gone up!" and,
+clipping a cigar, he sat down in the smoking-room with a novel.
+
+After half an hour he dropped the book.  There seemed something
+rather fatuous about this story, for though it had a thrilling plot,
+and was full of well-connected people, it had apparently been
+contrived to throw no light on anything whatever.  He looked at the
+author's name; everyone was highly recommending it.  He began
+thinking, and staring at the fire .  .  .  .
+
+Looking up, he saw Antonia's second brother, a young man in the
+Rifles, bending over him with sunny cheeks and lazy smile, clearly
+just a little drunk.
+
+"Congratulate you, old chap!  I say, what made you grow that
+b-b-eastly beard?"
+
+Shelton grinned.
+
+"Pillbottle of the Duchess!"  read young Dennant, taking up the book.
+"You been reading that?  Rippin', is n't it?"
+
+"Oh, ripping!" replied Shelton.
+
+"Rippin' plot!  When you get hold of a novel you don't want any rot
+about--what d'you call it?--psychology, you want to be amused."
+
+"Rather!"  murmured Shelton.
+
+"That's an awfully good bit where the President steals her diamonds
+There's old Benjy!  Hallo, Benjy!"
+
+"Hallo, Bill, old man!"
+
+This Benjy was a young, clean-shaven creature, whose face and voice
+and manner were a perfect blend of steel and geniality.
+
+In addition to this young man who was so smooth and hard and cheery,
+a grey, short-bearded gentleman, with misanthropic eyes, called
+Stroud, came up; together with another man of Shelton's age, with a
+moustache and a bald patch the size of a crown-piece, who might be
+seen in the club any night of the year when there was no racing out
+of reach of London.
+
+"You know," began young Dennant, "that this bounder"--he slapped the
+young man Benjy on the knee--"is going to be spliced to-morrow.  Miss
+Casserol--you know the Casserols--Muncaster Gate."
+
+"By Jove!" said Shelton, delighted to be able to say something they
+would understand.
+
+"Young Champion's the best man, and I 'm the second best.  I tell you
+what, old chap, you 'd better come with me and get your eye in; you
+won't get such another chance of practice.  Benjy 'll give you a
+card."
+
+"Delighted!"  murmured Benjy.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"St. Briabas; two-thirty.  Come and see how they do the trick.  I'll
+call for you at one; we'll have some lunch and go together"; again he
+patted Benjy's knee.
+
+Shelton nodded his assent; the piquant callousness of the affair had
+made him shiver, and furtively he eyed the steely Benjy, whose
+suavity had never wavered, and who appeared to take a greater
+interest in some approaching race than in his coming marriage.  But
+Shelton knew from his own sensations that this could not really be
+the case; it was merely a question of "good form," the conceit of a
+superior breeding, the duty not to give oneself away.  And when in
+turn he marked the eyes of Stroud fixed on Benjy, under shaggy brows,
+and the curious greedy glances of the racing man, he felt somehow
+sorry for him.
+
+"Who 's that fellow with the game leg--I'm always seeing him about?"
+asked the racing man.
+
+And Shelton saw a sallow man, conspicuous for a want of parting in
+his hair and a certain restlessness of attitude.
+
+"His name is Bayes," said Stroud; "spends half his time among the
+Chinese--must have a grudge against them!  And now he 's got his leg
+he can't go there any more."
+
+"Chinese?  What does he do to them?"
+
+"Bibles or guns.  Don't ask me!  An adventurer."
+
+"Looks a bit of a bounder," said the racing man.
+
+Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once
+how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the "Woods and Forests,"
+and plenty of time for "bridge" and gossip at his club, to see these
+people with untidy lives.  A minute later the man with the "game leg"
+passed close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how
+intelligible the resentment of his fellow-members was.  He had eyes
+which, not uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel
+bars; he seemed the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that
+were "bad form," a man who might even go as far as chivalry.  He
+looked straight at Shelton, and his uncompromising glance gave an
+impression of fierce loneliness; altogether, an improper person to
+belong to such.  a club.  Shelton remembered the words of an old
+friend of his father's: "Yes, Dick, all sorts of fellows belong here,
+and they come here for all sorts o' reasons, and a lot of em come
+because they've nowhere else to go, poor beggars"; and, glancing from
+the man with the "game leg" to Stroud, it occurred to Shelton that
+even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor beggars.  One never
+knew!  A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored him.  Ah, the
+lucky devil!  He would not have to come here any more! and the
+thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long
+flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.
+
+"Benjy, I'll play you a hundred up!"  said young Bill Dennant.
+
+Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left
+once more to reverie.
+
+"Good form!" thought he; "that fellow must be made of steel.  They'll
+go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some
+such foolery."
+
+He crossed over to the window.  Rain had begun to fall; the streets
+looked wild and draughty.  The cabmen were putting on their coats.
+Two women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-
+clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly,
+desperate step.  Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way
+amongst his fellow-members.  A procession of old school and college
+friends came up before his eyes.  After all, what had there been in
+his own education, or theirs, to give them any other standard than
+this "good form"?  What had there been to teach them anything of
+life?  Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think of it.
+They had all the air of knowing everything, and really they knew
+nothing--nothing of Nature, Art, or the Emotions; nothing of the
+bonds that bind all men together.  Why, even such words were not
+"good form"; nothing outside their little circle was "good form."
+They had a fixed point of view over life because they came of certain
+schools, and colleges, and regiments!  And they were those in charge
+of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.  Well,
+it was their system--the system not to start too young, to form
+healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!
+
+"Successful!" he thought, nearly stumbling over a pair of patent-
+leather boots belonging to a moon-faced, genial-looking member with
+gold nose-nippers; "oh, it 's successful!"
+
+Somebody came and picked up from the table the very volume which had
+originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his
+solemn pleasure as he read.  In the white of his eye there was a
+torpid and composed abstraction.  There was nothing in that book to
+startle him or make him think.
+
+The moon-faced member with the patent boots came up and began talking
+of his recent visit to the south of France.  He had a scandalous
+anecdote or two to tell, and his broad face beamed behind his gold
+nose-nippers; he was a large man with such a store of easy, worldly
+humour that it was impossible not to appreciate his gossip, he gave
+so perfect an impression of enjoying life, and doing himself well.
+"Well, good-night!"  he murmured--" An engagement!"--and the
+certainty he left behind that his engagement must be charming and
+illicit was pleasant to the soul.
+
+And, slowly taking up his glass, Shelton drank; the sense of well-
+being was upon him.  His superiority to these his fellow-members
+soothed him.  He saw through all the sham of this club life, the
+meanness of this worship of success, the sham of kid-gloved
+novelists, "good form," and the terrific decency of our education.
+It was soothing thus to see through things, soothing thus to be
+superior; and from the soft recesses of his chair he puffed out smoke
+and stretched his limbs toward the fire; and the fire burned back at
+him with a discreet and venerable glow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE WEDDING
+
+Puncutal to his word, Bill Dennant called for Shelton at one o'clock.
+
+"I bet old Benjy's feeling a bit cheap," said he, as they got out of
+their cab at the church door and passed between the crowded files of
+unelect, whose eyes, so curious and pitiful, devoured them from the
+pavement.
+
+The ashen face of a woman, with a baby in her arms and two more by
+her side, looked as eager as if she had never experienced the pangs
+of ragged matrimony.  Shelton went in inexplicably uneasy; the price
+of his tie was their board and lodging for a week.  He followed his
+future brother-in-law to a pew on the bridegroom's side, for, with
+intuitive perception of the sexes' endless warfare, each of the
+opposing parties to this contract had its serried battalion, the
+arrows of whose suspicion kept glancing across and across the central
+aisle.
+
+Bill Dennant's eyes began to twinkle.
+
+"There's old Benjy!"  he whispered; and Shelton looked at the hero of
+the day.  A subdued pallor was traceable under the weathered
+uniformity of his shaven face; but the well-bred, artificial smile he
+bent upon the guests had its wonted steely suavity.  About his dress
+and his neat figure was that studied ease which lifts men from the
+ruck of common bridegrooms.  There were no holes in his armour
+through which the impertinent might pry.
+
+"Good old Benjy!"  whispered young Dennant; "I say, they look a bit
+short of class, those Casserols."
+
+Shelton, who was acquainted with this family, smiled.  The sensuous
+sanctity all round had begun to influence him.  A perfume of flowers
+and dresses fought with the natural odour of the church; the rustle
+of whisperings and skirts struck through the native silence of the
+aisles, and Shelton idly fixed his eyes on a lady in the pew in
+front; without in the least desiring to make a speculation of this
+sort, he wondered whether her face was as charming as the lines of
+her back in their delicate, skin-tight setting of pearl grey; his
+glance wandered to the chancel with its stacks of flowers, to the
+grave, business faces of the presiding priests, till the organ began
+rolling out the wedding march.
+
+"They're off!"  whispered young Dermant.
+
+Shelton was conscious of a shiver running through the audience which
+reminded him of a bullfight he had seen in Spain.  The bride came
+slowly up the aisle.  "Antonia will look like that," he thought, "and
+the church will be filled with people like this .  .  .  .  She'll be
+a show to them!"  The bride was opposite him now, and by an instinct
+of common chivalry he turned away his eyes; it seemed to him a shame
+to look at that downcast head above the silver mystery of her perfect
+raiment; the modest head full, doubtless, of devotion and pure
+yearnings; the stately head where no such thought as "How am I
+looking, this day of all days, before all London?" had ever entered;
+the proud head, which no such fear as "How am I carrying it off?"
+could surely be besmirching.
+
+He saw below the surface of this drama played before his eyes, and
+set his face, as a man might who found himself assisting at a
+sacrifice.  The words fell, unrelenting, on his ears: "For better,
+for worse, for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health--" and
+opening the Prayer Book he found the Marriage Service, which he had
+not looked at since he was a boy, and as he read he had some very
+curious sensations.
+
+All this would soon be happening to himself!  He went on reading in a
+kind of stupor, until aroused by his companion whispering, "No luck!"
+All around there rose a rustling of skirts; he saw a tall figure
+mount the pulpit and stand motionless.  Massive and high-featured,
+sunken of eye, he towered, in snowy cambric and a crimson stole,
+above the blackness of his rostrum; it seemed he had been chosen for
+his beauty.  Shelton was still gazing at the stitching of his gloves,
+when once again the organ played the Wedding March.  All were
+smiling, and a few were weeping, craning their heads towards the
+bride.  "Carnival of second-hand emotions!"  thought Shelton; and he,
+too, craned his head and brushed his hat.  Then, smirking at his
+friends, he made his way towards the door.
+
+In the Casserols' house he found himself at last going round the
+presents with the eldest Casserol surviving, a tall girl in pale
+violet, who had been chief bridesmaid.
+
+"Did n't it go off well, Mr. Shelton?" she was saying
+
+"Oh, awfully!"
+
+"I always think it's so awkward for the man waiting up there for the
+bride to come."
+
+"Yes," murmured Shelton.
+
+"Don't you think it's smart, the bridesmaids having no hats?"
+
+Shelton had not noticed this improvement, but he agreed.
+
+"That was my idea; I think it 's very chic.  They 've had fifteen
+tea-sets-so dull, is n't it?"
+
+"By Jove!"  Shelton hastened to remark.
+
+"Oh, its fearfully useful to have a lot of things you don't want; of
+course, you change them for those you do."
+
+The whole of London seemed to have disgorged its shops into this
+room; he looked at Miss Casserol's face, and was greatly struck by
+the shrewd acquisitiveness of her small eyes.
+
+"Is that your future brother-in-law?" she asked, pointing to Bill
+Dennant with a little movement of her chin; "I think he's such a
+bright boy.  I want you both to come to dinner, and help to keep
+things jolly.  It's so deadly after a wedding."
+
+And Shelton said they would.
+
+They adjourned to the hall now, to wait for the bride's departure.
+Her face as she came down the stairs was impassive, gay, with a
+furtive trouble in the eyes, and once more Shelton had the odd
+sensation of having sinned against his manhood.  Jammed close to him
+was her old nurse, whose puffy, yellow face was pouting with emotion,
+while tears rolled from her eyes.  She was trying to say something,
+but in the hubbub her farewell was lost.  There was a scamper to the
+carriage, a flurry of rice and flowers; the shoe was flung against
+the sharply drawn-up window.  Then Benjy's shaven face was seen a
+moment, bland and steely; the footman folded his arms, and with a
+solemn crunch the brougham wheels rolled away.  "How splendidly it
+went off!"  said a voice on Shelton's right.  "She looked a little
+pale," said a voice on Shelton's left.  He put his hand up to his
+forehead; behind him the old nurse sniffed.
+
+"Dick," said young Dennant in his ear, "this isn't good enough; I
+vote we bolt."
+
+Shelton assenting, they walked towards the Park; nor could he tell
+whether the slight nausea he experienced was due to afternoon
+champagne or to the ceremony that had gone so well.
+
+"What's up with you?" asked Dennant; "you look as glum as any
+m-monkey."
+
+"Nothing," said Shelton; "I was only thinking what humbugs we all
+are!"
+
+Bill Dennant stopped in the middle of the crossing, and clapped his
+future brother-in-law upon the shoulder.
+
+"Oh," said he, "if you're going to talk shop, I 'm off."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE DINNER
+
+The dinner at the Casserols' was given to those of the bride's
+friends who had been conspicuous in the day's festivities.  Shelton
+found himself between Miss Casserol and a lady undressed to much the
+same degree.  Opposite sat a man with a single diamond stud, a white
+waistcoat, black moustache, and hawk-like face.  This was, in fact,
+one of those interesting houses occupied by people of the upper
+middle class who have imbibed a taste for smart society.  Its
+inhabitants, by nature acquisitive and cautious, economical,
+tenacious, had learnt to worship the word "smart."  The result was a
+kind of heavy froth, an air of thoroughly domestic vice.  In addition
+to the conventionally fast, Shelton had met there one or two ladies,
+who, having been divorced, or having yet to be, still maintained
+their position in "society."  Divorced ladies who did not so maintain
+their place were never to be found, for the Casserols had a great
+respect for marriage.  He had also met there American ladies who were
+"too amusing"--never, of course, American men, Mesopotamians of the
+financial or the racing type, and several of those gentlemen who had
+been, or were about to be, engaged in a transaction which might or
+again might not, "come off," and in conduct of an order which might,
+or again might not be spotted.  The line he knew, was always drawn at
+those in any category who were actually found out, for the value of
+these ladies and these gentlemen was not their claim to pity--nothing
+so sentimental--but their "smartness," clothes, jokes, racing tips,
+their "bridge parties," and their motors.
+
+In sum, the house was one whose fundamental domesticity attracted and
+sheltered those who were too "smart" to keep their heads for long
+above the water.
+
+His host, a grey, clean-shaven city man, with a long upper lip, was
+trying to understand a lady the audacity of whose speech came ringing
+down the table.  Shelton himself had given up the effort with his
+neighbours, and made love to his dinner, which, surviving the
+incoherence of the atmosphere, emerged as a work of art.  It was with
+surprise that he found Miss Casserol addressing him.
+
+"I always say that the great thing is to be jolly.  If you can't find
+anything to make you laugh, pretend you do; it's so much 'smarter to
+be amusin'.  Now don't you agree?"
+
+The philosophy seemed excellent.
+
+"We can't all be geniuses, but we can all look jolly."
+
+Shelton hastened to look jolly.
+
+"I tell the governor, when he 's glum, that I shall put up the
+shutters and leave him.  What's the good of mopin' and lookin'
+miserable?  Are you going to the Four-in-Hand Meet?  We're making a
+party.  Such fun; all the smart people!"
+
+The splendour of her shoulders, her frizzy hair (clearly not two
+hours out of the barber's hands), might have made him doubtful; but
+the frank shrewdness in her eyes, and her carefully clipped tone of
+voice, were guarantees that she was part of the element at the table
+which was really quite respectable.  He had never realised before how
+"smart" she was, and with an effort abandoned himself to a sort of
+gaiety that would have killed a Frenchman.
+
+And when she left him, he reflected upon the expression of her eyes
+when they rested on a lady opposite, who was a true bird-of-prey.
+"What is it," their envious, inquisitive glance had seemed to say,
+"that makes you so really 'smart'?"  And while still seeking for the
+reason, he noticed his host pointing out the merits of his port to
+the hawk-like man, with a deferential air quite pitiful to see, for
+the hawk-like man was clearly a "bad hat."  What in the name of
+goodness did these staid bourgeois mean by making up to vice?  Was it
+a craving to be thought distinguished, a dread of being dull, or
+merely an effect of overfeeding?  Again he looked at his host, who
+had not yet enumerated all the virtues of his port, and again felt
+sorry for him.
+
+"So you're going to marry Antonia Dennant?"  said a voice on his
+right, with that easy coarseness which is a mark of caste.  "Pretty
+girl!  They've a nice place, the, Dennants.  D' ye know, you're a
+lucky feller!"
+
+The speaker was an old baronet, with small eyes, a dusky, ruddy face,
+and peculiar hail-fellow-well-met expression, at once morose and sly.
+He was always hard up, but being a man of enterprise knew all the
+best people, as well as all the worst, so that he dined out every
+night.
+
+"You're a lucky feller," he repeated; "he's got some deuced good
+shootin', Dennant!  They come too high for me, though; never touched
+a feather last time I shot there.  She's a pretty girl.  You 're a
+lucky feller!"
+
+"I know that," said Shelton humbly.
+
+"Wish I were in your shoes.  Who was that sittin' on the other side
+of you?  I'm so dashed short-sighted.  Mrs. Carruther?  Oh, ay!"  An
+expression which, if he had not been a baronet, would have been a
+leer, came on his lips.
+
+Shelton felt that he was referring to the leaf in his mental pocket-
+book covered with the anecdotes, figures, and facts about that lady.
+"The old ogre means," thought he, "that I'm lucky because his leaf is
+blank about Antonia."  But the old baronet had turned, with his
+smile, and his sardonic, well-bred air, to listen to a bit of scandal
+on the other side.
+
+The two men to Shelton's left were talking.
+
+"What!  You don't collect anything?  How's that?  Everybody collects
+something.  I should be lost without my pictures."
+
+"No, I don't collect anything.  Given it up; I was too awfully had
+over my Walkers."
+
+Shelton had expected a more lofty reason; he applied himself to the
+Madeira in his glass.  That, had been "collected" by his host, and
+its price was going up!  You couldn't get it every day; worth two
+guineas a bottle!  How precious the idea that other people couldn't
+get it, made it seem!  Liquid delight; the price was going up!  Soon
+there would be none left; immense!  Absolutely no one, then, could
+drink it!
+
+"Wish I had some of this," said the old baronet, "but I have drunk
+all mine."
+
+"Poor old chap!"  thought Shelton; "after all, he's not a bad old
+boy.  I wish I had his pluck.  His liver must be splendid."
+
+The drawing-room was full of people playing a game concerned with
+horses ridden by jockeys with the latest seat.  And Shelton was
+compelled to help in carrying on this sport till early in the
+morning.  At last he left, exhausted by his animation.
+
+He thought of the wedding; he thought over his dinner and the wine
+that he had drunk.  His mood of satisfaction fizzled out.  These
+people were incapable of being real, even the smartest, even the most
+respectable; they seemed to weigh their pleasures in the scales and
+to get the most that could be gotten for their money.
+
+Between the dark, safe houses stretching for miles and miles, his
+thoughts were of Antonia; and as he reached his rooms he was
+overtaken by the moment when the town is born again.  The first new
+air had stolen down; the sky was living, but not yet alight; the
+trees were quivering faintly; no living creature stirred, and nothing
+spoke except his heart.  Suddenly the city seemed to breathe, and
+Shelton saw that he was not alone; an unconsidered trifle with
+inferior boots was asleep upon his doorstep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AN ALIEN
+
+The individual on the doorstep had fallen into slumber over his own
+knees.  No greater air of prosperity clung about him than is conveyed
+by a rusty overcoat and wisps of cloth in place of socks.  Shelton
+endeavoured to pass unseen, but the sleeper woke.
+
+"Ah, it's you, monsieur!" he said "I received your letter this
+evening, and have lost no time."  He looked down at himself and
+tittered, as though to say, "But what a state I 'm in!"
+
+The young foreigner's condition was indeed more desperate than on the
+occasion of their first meeting, and Shelton invited him upstairs.
+
+"You can well understand," stammered Ferrand, following his host,
+"that I did n't want to miss you this time.  When one is like this--"
+and a spasm gripped his face.
+
+"I 'm very glad you came," said Shelton doubtfully.
+
+His visitor's face had a week's growth of reddish beard; the deep tan
+of his cheeks gave him a robust appearance at variance with the fit
+of, trembling which had seized on him as soon as he had entered.
+
+"Sit down-sit down," said Shelton; "you 're feeling ill!"
+
+Ferrand smiled.  "It's nothing," said he; "bad nourishment."
+
+Shelton left him seated on the edge of an armchair, and brought him
+in some whisky.
+
+"Clothes," said Ferrand, when he had drunk, "are what I want.  These
+are really not good enough."
+
+The statement was correct, and Shelton, placing some garments in the
+bath-room, invited his visitor to make himself at home.  While the
+latter, then, was doing this, Shelton enjoyed the luxuries of self-
+denial, hunting up things he did not want, and laying them in two
+portmanteaus.  This done, he waited for his visitor's return.
+
+The young foreigner at length emerged, unshaved indeed, and innocent
+of boots, but having in other respects an air of gratifying
+affluence.
+
+"This is a little different," he said.  "The boots, I fear"--and,
+pulling down his, or rather Shelton's, socks he exhibited sores the
+size of half a crown.  "One does n't sow without reaping some harvest
+or another.  My stomach has shrunk," he added simply.  "To see things
+one must suffer.  'Voyager, c'est plus fort que moi'!"
+
+Shelton failed to perceive that this was one way of disguising the
+human animal's natural dislike of work--there was a touch of pathos,
+a suggestion of God-knows-what-might-have-been, about this fellow.
+
+
+"I have eaten my illusions," said the young foreigner, smoking a
+cigarette.  "When you've starved a few times, your eyes are opened.
+'Savoir, c'est mon metier; mais remarquez ceci, monsieur': It 's not
+always the intellectuals who succeed."
+
+"When you get a job," said Shelton, "you throw it away, I suppose."
+
+"You accuse me of restlessness?  Shall I explain what I think about
+that?  I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an
+independent position.  I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon
+as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go
+elsewhere.  'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to
+economise sixpence a day, and save enough after forty years to drag
+out the remains of an exhausted existence.  That's not in my
+character."  This ingenious paraphrase of the words "I soon get tired
+of things" he pronounced with an air of letting Shelton into a
+precious secret.
+
+"Yes; it must be hard," agreed the latter.
+
+Ferrand shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's not all butter," he replied; "one is obliged to do things that
+are not too delicate.  There's nothing I pride myself on but
+frankness."
+
+Like a good chemist, however, he administered what Shelton could
+stand in a judicious way.  "Yes, yes," he seemed to say, "you'd like
+me to think that you have a perfect knowledge of life: no morality,
+no prejudices, no illusions; you'd like me to think that you feel
+yourself on an equality with me, one human animal talking to another,
+without any barriers of position, money, clothes, or the rest--'ca
+c'est un peu trop fort'!  You're as good an imitation as I 've come
+across in your class, notwithstanding your unfortunate education, and
+I 'm grateful to you, but to tell you everything, as it passes
+through my mind would damage my prospects.  You can hardly expect
+that."
+
+In one of Shelton's old frock-coats he was impressive, with his air
+of natural, almost sensitive refinement.  The room looked as if it
+were accustomed to him, and more amazing still was the sense of
+familiarity that he inspired, as, though he were a part of Shelton's
+soul.  It came as a shock to realise that this young foreign vagabond
+had taken such a place within his thoughts.  The pose of his limbs
+and head, irregular but not ungraceful; his disillusioned lips; the
+rings of smoke that issued from them--all signified rebellion, and
+the overthrow of law and order.  His thin, lopsided nose, the rapid
+glances of his goggling, prominent eyes, were subtlety itself; he
+stood for discontent with the accepted.
+
+"How do I live when I am on the tramp?" he said.  "well, there are
+the consuls.  The system is not delicate, but when it's a question of
+starving, much is permissible; besides, these gentlemen were created
+for the purpose.  There's a coterie of German Jews in Paris living
+entirely upon consuls."  He hesitated for the fraction of a second,
+and resumed: "Yes, monsieur; if you have papers that fit you, you can
+try six or seven consuls in a single town.  You must know a language
+or two; but most of these gentlemen are not too well up in the
+tongues of the country they represent.  Obtaining money under false
+pretences?  Well, it is.  But what's the difference at bottom between
+all this honourable crowd of directors, fashionable physicians,
+employers of labour, ferry-builders, military men, country priests,
+and consuls themselves perhaps, who take money and give no value for
+it, and poor devils who do the same at far greater risk?  Necessity
+makes the law.  If those gentlemen were in my position, do you think
+that they would hesitate?"
+
+Shelton's face remaining doubtful, Ferrand went on instantly: "You're
+right; they would, from fear, not principle.  One must be hard
+pressed before committing these indelicacies.  Look deep enough, and
+you will see what indelicate things are daily done by the respectable
+for not half so good a reason as the want of meals."
+
+Shelton also took a cigarette--his own income was derived from
+property for which he gave no value in labour.
+
+"I can give you an instance," said Ferrand, "of what can be done by
+resolution.  One day in a German town, 'etant dans la misere', I
+decided to try the French consul.  Well, as you know, I am a Fleming,
+but something had to be screwed out somewhere.  He refused to see me;
+I sat down to wait.  After about two hours a voice bellowed: 'Has n't
+the brute gone?' and my consul appears.  'I 've nothing for fellows
+like you,' says he; 'clear out!'
+
+"'Monsieur,' I answered, 'I am skin and bone; I really must have
+assistance.'
+
+"'Clear out,' he says, 'or the police shall throw you out!'
+
+"I don't budge.  Another hour passes, and back he comes again.
+
+"'Still here?' says he.  'Fetch a sergeant.'
+
+"The sergeant comes.
+
+"'Sergeant,' says the consul, 'turn this creature out.'
+
+"'Sergeant,' I say, 'this house is France!'  Naturally, I had
+calculated upon that.  In Germany they're not too fond of those who
+undertake the business of the French.
+
+"'He is right,' says the sergeant; 'I can do nothing.'
+
+"'You refuse?'
+
+"'Absolutely.' And he went away.
+
+"'What do you think you'll get by staying?' says my consul.
+
+"'I have nothing to eat or drink, and nowhere to sleep,' says I.
+
+"'What will you go for?'
+
+"'Ten marks.'
+
+"'Here, then, get out!' I can tell you, monsieur, one must n't have a
+thin skin if one wants to exploit consuls."
+
+His yellow fingers slowly rolled the stump of his cigarette, his
+ironical lips flickered.  Shelton thought of his own ignorance of
+life.  He could not recollect ever having gone without a meal.
+
+"I suppose," he said feebly, "you've often starved."  For, having
+always been so well fed, the idea of starvation was attractive.
+
+Ferrand smiled.
+
+"Four days is the longest," said he.  "You won't believe that story.
+.  .  .  It was in Paris, and I had lost my money on the race-course.
+There was some due from home which didn't come.  Four days and nights
+I lived on water.  My clothes were excellent, and I had jewellery;
+but I never even thought of pawning them.  I suffered most from the
+notion that people might guess my state.  You don't recognise me
+now?"
+
+"How old were you then?" said Shelton.
+
+"Seventeen; it's curious what one's like at that age."
+
+By a flash of insight Shelton saw the well-dressed boy, with
+sensitive, smooth face, always on the move about the streets of
+Paris, for fear that people should observe the condition of his
+stomach.  The story was a valuable commentary.  His thoughts were
+brusquely interrupted; looking in Ferrand's face, he saw to his
+dismay tears rolling down his cheeks.
+
+"I 've suffered too much," he stammered; "what do I care now what
+becomes of me?"
+
+Shelton was disconcerted; he wished 'to say something sympathetic,'
+but, being an Englishman, could only turn away his eyes.
+
+"Your turn 's coming," he said at last.
+
+"Ah! when you've lived my life," broke out his visitor, "nothing 's
+any good.  My heart's in rags.  Find me anything worth keeping, in
+this menagerie."
+
+Moved though he was, Shelton wriggled in his chair, a prey to racial
+instinct, to an ingrained over-tenderness, perhaps, of soul that
+forbade him from exposing his emotions, and recoiled from the
+revelation of other people's.  He could stand it on the stage, he
+could stand it in a book, but in real life he could not stand it.
+When Ferrand had gone off with a portmanteau in each hand, he sat
+down and told Antonia:
+
+.  .  .  The poor chap broke down and sat crying like a child; and
+instead of making me feel sorry, it turned me into stone.  The more
+sympathetic I wanted to be, the gruffer I grew.  Is it fear of
+ridicule, independence, or consideration, for others that prevents
+one from showing one's feelings?
+
+He went on to tell her of Ferrand's starving four days sooner than
+face a pawnbroker; and, reading the letter over before addressing it,
+the faces of the three ladies round their snowy cloth arose before
+him--Antonia's face, so fair and calm and wind-fresh; her mother's
+face, a little creased by time and weather; the maiden aunt's
+somewhat too thin-and they seemed to lean at him, alert and decorous,
+and the words "That's rather nice!" rang in his ears.  He went out to
+post the letter, and buying a five-shilling order enclosed it to the
+little barber, Carolan, as a reward for delivering his note to
+Ferrand.  He omitted to send his address with this donation, but
+whether from delicacy or from caution he could not have said.  Beyond
+doubt, however, on receiving through Ferrand the following reply, he
+felt ashamed and pleased
+
+3, BLANK Row,
+WESTMINSTER.
+
+>From every well-born soul humanity is owing.  A thousand thanks.  I
+received this morning your postal order; your heart henceforth for me
+will be placed beyond all praise.
+
+                                        J.  CAROLAN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE VISION
+
+A few days later he received a letter from Antonia which filled him
+with excitement:
+
+.  .  .  Aunt Charlotte is ever so much better, so mother thinks we
+can go home-hurrah!  But she says that you and I must keep to our
+arrangement not to see each other till July.  There will be something
+fine in being so near and having the strength to keep apart .  .  .
+All the English are gone.  I feel it so empty out here; these people
+are so funny-all foreign and shallow.  Oh, Dick!  how splendid to
+have an ideal to look up to!  Write at once to Brewer's Hotel and
+tell me you think the same .  .  .  .  We arrive at Charing Cross on
+Sunday at half-past seven, stay at Brewer's for a couple of nights,
+and go down on Tuesday to Holm Oaks.
+
+Always your
+
+ANTONIA.
+
+
+"To-morrow!"  he thought; "she's coming tomorrow!"  and, leaving his
+neglected breakfast, he started out to walk off his emotion.  His
+square ran into one of those slums that still rub shoulders with the
+most distinguished situations, and in it he came upon a little crowd
+assembled round a dogfight.  One of the dogs was being mauled, but
+the day was muddy, and Shelton, like any well-bred Englishman, had a
+horror of making himself conspicuous even in a decent cause; he
+looked for a policeman.  One was standing by, to see fair play, and
+Shelton made appeal to him.  The official suggested that he should
+not have brought out a fighting dog, and advised him to throw cold
+water over them.
+
+"It is n 't my dog," said Shelton.
+
+"Then I should let 'em be," remarked the policeman with evident
+surprise.
+
+Shelton appealed indefinitely to the lower orders.  The lower orders,
+however, were afraid of being bitten.
+
+"I would n't meddle with that there job if I was you," said one.
+
+"Nasty breed o' dawg is that."
+
+He was therefore obliged to cast away respectability, spoil his
+trousers and his gloves, break his umbrella, drop his hat in the mud,
+and separate the dogs.  At the conclusion of the "job," the lower
+orders said to him in a rather shamefaced spanner:
+
+"Well, I never thought you'd have managed that, sir"; but, like all
+men of inaction, Shelton after action was more dangerous.
+
+"D----n it!"  he said, "one can't let a dog be killed"; and he
+marched off, towing the injured dog with his pocket-handkerchief, and
+looking scornfully at harmless passers-by.  Having satisfied for once
+the smouldering fires within him, he felt entitled to hold a low
+opinion of these men in the street.  "The brutes," he thought, "won't
+stir a finger to save a poor dumb creature, and as for policemen---"
+But, growing cooler, he began to see that people weighted down by
+"honest toil" could not afford to tear their trousers or get a bitten
+hand, and that even the policeman, though he had looked so like a
+demi-god, was absolutely made of flesh and blood.  He took the dog
+home, and, sending for a vet., had him sewn up.
+
+He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture
+to meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with
+the dog to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to
+go and see his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him
+to decide.  She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road,
+he was soon amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose
+structure architects have wrought the motto: "Keep what you have--
+wives, money, a good address, and all the blessings of a moral
+state!"
+
+Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense
+respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them.  His blood
+was still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the
+loftiest philosophy.  He had been reading in his favourite review an
+article eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper
+middle class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to
+side he nodded his head ironically.  "Expansion and freedom," ran his
+thoughts: "Freedom and expansion!"
+
+Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from
+three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured
+against the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity.
+"Conscious of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly
+what is necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the
+world.  The person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred
+and fifty-five pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax."
+Such seemed the legend of these houses.
+
+Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping,
+or to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance.  Hardly any men were
+seen, and they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned
+children were being wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses,
+accompanied by a great army of hairy or of hairless dogs.
+
+There was something of her brother's large liberality about Mrs.
+Shelton, a  tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly
+feet; fond as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy
+that has no insight.  She kissed her son at once with rapture, and,
+as usual, began to talk of his engagement.  For the first time a
+tremor of doubt ran through her son; his mother's view of it grated
+on him like the sight of a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy.  Her
+splendid optimism, damped him; it had too little traffic with the
+reasoning powers.
+
+"What right," he asked himself, "has she to be so certain?  It seems
+to me a kind of blasphemy."
+
+"The dear!" she cooed.  "And she is coming back to-morrow?  Hurrah!
+how I long to see her!"
+
+"But you know, mother, we've agreed not to meet again until July."
+
+Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like
+a little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.
+
+"Dear old Dick!"  she said, "how happy you must be!"
+
+Half a century of sympathy with weddings of all sorts--good, bad,
+indifferent--beamed from her.
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton gloomily, "I ought not to go and see her at
+the station."
+
+"Cheer up!"  replied the mother, and her son felt dreadfully
+depressed.
+
+That "Cheer-up!"--the panacea which had carried her blind and bright
+through every evil--was as void of meaning to him as wine without a
+flavour.
+
+"And how is your sciatica?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, pretty bad," returned his mother; "I expect it's all right,
+really.  Cheer up!"  She stretched her little figure, canting her
+head still more.
+
+"Wonderful woman!"  Shelton thought.  She had, in fact, like many of
+her fellow-countrymen, mislaid the darker side of things, and,
+enjoying the benefits of orthodoxy with an easy conscience, had kept
+as young in heart as any girl of thirty.
+
+Shelton left her house as doubtful whether he might meet Antonia as
+when he entered it.  He spent a restless afternoon.
+
+The next day--that of her arrival--was a Sunday.  He had made Ferrand
+a promise to go with him to hear a sermon in the slums, and, catching
+at any diversion which might allay excitement, he fulfilled it.  The
+preacher in question--an amateur, so Ferrand told him--had an
+original method of distributing the funds that he obtained.  To male
+sheep he gave nothing, to ugly female sheep a very little, to pretty
+female sheep the rest.  Ferrand hazarded an inference, but he was a
+foreigner.  The Englishman preferred to look upon the preacher as
+guided by a purely abstract love of beauty.  His eloquence, at any
+rate, was unquestionable, and Shelton came out feeling sick.
+
+It was not yet seven o'clock, so, entering an Italian restaurant to
+kill the half-hour before Antonia's arrival, he ordered a bottle of
+wine for his companion, a cup of coffee for himself, and, lighting a
+cigarette, compressed his lips.  There was a strange, sweet sinking
+in his heart.  His companion, ignorant of this emotion, drank his
+wine, crumbled his roll, and blew smoke through his nostrils,
+glancing caustically at the rows of little tables, the cheap mirrors,
+the hot, red velvet, the chandeliers.  His juicy lips seemed to be
+murmuring, "Ah! if you only knew of the dirt behind these feathers!"
+Shelton watched him with disgust.  Though his clothes were now so
+nice, his nails were not quite clean, and his fingertips seemed
+yellow to the bone.  An anaemic waiter in a shirt some four days old,
+with grease-spots on his garments and a crumpled napkin on his arm,
+stood leaning an elbow amongst doubtful fruits, and reading an
+Italian journal.  Resting his tired feet in turn, he looked like
+overwork personified, and when he moved, each limb accused the sordid
+smartness of the walls.  In the far corner sat a lady eating, and,
+mirrored opposite, her feathered hat, her short, round face, its coat
+of powder, and dark eyes, gave Shelton a shiver of disgust.  His
+companion's gaze rested long and subtly on her.
+
+"Excuse me, monsieur," he said at length.  "I think I know that
+lady!"  And, leaving his host, he crossed the room, bowed, accosted
+her, and sat down.  With Pharisaic delicacy, Shelton refrained from
+looking.  But presently Ferrand came back; the lady rose and left the
+restaurant; she had been crying.  The young foreigner was flushed,
+his face contorted; he did not touch his wine.
+
+"I was right," he said; "she is the wife of an old friend.  I used to
+know her well."
+
+He was suffering from emotion, but someone less absorbed than Shelton
+might have noticed a kind of relish in his voice, as though he were
+savouring life's dishes, and glad to have something new, and spiced
+with tragic sauce, to set before his patron.
+
+"You can find her story by the hundred in your streets, but nothing
+hinders these paragons of virtue"--he nodded at the stream of
+carriages--"from turning up their eyes when they see ladies of her
+sort pass.  She came to London--just three years ago.  After a year
+one of her little boys took fever--the shop was avoided--her husband
+caught it, and died.  There she was, left with two children and
+everything gone to pay the debts.  She tried to get work; no one
+helped her.  There was no money to pay anyone to stay with the
+children; all the work she could get in the house was not enough to
+keep them alive.  She's not a strong woman.  Well, she put the
+children out to nurse, and went to the streets.  The first week was
+frightful, but now she's used to it--one gets used to anything."
+
+"Can nothing be done?" asked Shelton, startled.
+
+"No," returned his companion.  "I know that sort; if they once take
+to it all's over.  They get used to luxury.  One does n't part with
+luxury, after tasting destitution.  She tells me she does very
+nicely; the children are happy; she's able to pay well and see them
+sometimes.  She was a girl of good family, too, who loved her
+husband, and gave up much for him.  What would you have?  Three
+quarters of your virtuous ladies placed in her position would do the
+same if they had the necessary looks."
+
+It was evident that he felt the shock of this discovery, and Shelton
+understood that personal acquaintance makes a difference, even in a
+vagabond.
+
+"This is her beat," said the young foreigner, as they passed the
+illuminated crescent, where nightly the shadows of hypocrites and
+women fall; and Shelton went from these comments on Christianity to
+the station of Charing Cross.  There, as he stood waiting in the
+shadow, his heart was in his mouth; and it struck him as odd that he
+should have come to this meeting fresh from a vagabond's society.
+
+Presently, amongst the stream of travellers, he saw Antonia.  She was
+close to her mother, who was parleying with a footman; behind them
+were a maid carrying a bandbox and a porter with the travelling-bags.
+Antonia's figure, with its throat settled in the collar of her cape,
+slender, tall, severe, looked impatient and remote amongst the
+bustle.  Her eyes, shadowed by the journey, glanced eagerly about,
+welcoming all she saw; a wisp of hair was loose above her ear, her
+cheeks glowed cold and rosy.  She caught sight of Shelton, and
+bending her neck, stag-like, stood looking at him; a brilliant smile
+parted her lips, and Shelton trembled.  Here was the embodiment of
+all he had desired for weeks.  He could not tell what was behind that
+smile of hers--passionate aching or only some ideal, some chaste and
+glacial intangibility.  It seemed to be shining past him into the
+gloomy station.  There was no trembling and uncertainty, no rage of
+possession in that brilliant smile; it had the gleam of fixedness,
+like the smiling of a star.  What did it matter?  She was there,
+beautiful as a young day, and smiling at him; and she was his, only
+divided from him by a space of time.  He took a step; her eyes fell
+at once, her face regained aloofness; he saw her, encircled by
+mother, footman, maid, and porter, take her seat and drive away.
+It was over; she had seen him, she had smiled, but alongside his
+delight lurked another feeling, and, by a bitter freak, not her face
+came up before him but the face of that lady in the restaurant--
+short, round, and powdered, with black-circled eyes.  What right had
+we to scorn them?  Had they mothers, footmen, porters, maids?  He
+shivered, but this time with physical disgust; the powdered face with
+dark-fringed eyes had vanished; the fair, remote figure of the
+railway-station came back again.
+
+He sat long over dinner, drinking, dreaming; he sat long after,
+smoking, dreaming, and when at length he drove away, wine and dreams
+fumed in his brain.  The dance of lamps, the cream-cheese moon, the
+rays of clean wet light on his horse's harness, the jingling of the
+cab bell, the whirring wheels, the night air and the branches--it was
+all so good!  He threw back the hansom doors to feel the touch of the
+warm breeze.  The crowds on the pavement gave him strange delight;
+they were like shadows, in some great illusion, happy shadows,
+thronging, wheeling round the single figure of his world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ROTTEN ROW
+
+With a headache and a sense of restlessness, hopeful and unhappy,
+Shelton mounted his hack next morning for a gallop in the Park.
+
+In the sky was mingled all the languor and the violence of the
+spring.  The trees and flowers wore an awakened look in the gleams of
+light that came stealing down from behind the purple of the clouds.
+The air was rain-washed, and the passers by seemed to wear an air of
+tranquil carelessness, as if anxiety were paralysed by their
+responsibility of the firmament.
+
+Thronged by riders, the Row was all astir.
+
+Near to Hyde Park Corner a figure by the rails caught Shelton's eye.
+Straight and thin, one shoulder humped a little, as if its owner were
+reflecting, clothed in a frock-coat and a brown felt hat pinched up
+in lawless fashion, this figure was so detached from its surroundings
+that it would have been noticeable anywhere.  It belonged to Ferrand,
+obviously waiting till it was time to breakfast with his patron.
+Shelton found pleasure in thus observing him unseen, and sat quietly
+on his horse, hidden behind a tree.
+
+It was just at that spot where riders, unable to get further, are for
+ever wheeling their horses for another turn; and there Ferrand, the
+bird of passage, with his head a little to one side, watched them
+cantering, trotting, wheeling up and down.
+
+Three men walking along the rails were snatching off their hats
+before a horsewoman at exactly the same angle and with precisely the
+same air, as though in the modish performance of this ancient rite
+they were satisfying some instinct very dear to them.
+
+Shelton noted the curl of Ferrand's lip as he watched this sight.
+"Many thanks, gentlemen," it seemed to say; "in that charming little
+action you have shown me all your souls."
+
+What a singular gift the fellow had of divesting things and people of
+their garments, of tearing away their veil of shams, and their
+phylacteries!  Shelton turned and cantered on; his thoughts were with
+Antonia, and he did not want the glamour stripped away.
+
+He was glancing at the sky, that every moment threatened to discharge
+a violent shower of rain, when suddenly he heard his name called from
+behind, and who should ride up to him on either side but Bill Dennant
+and--Antonia herself!
+
+They had been galloping; and she was flushed--flushed as when she
+stood on the old tower at Hyeres, but with a joyful radiance
+different from the calm and conquering radiance of that other moment.
+To Shelton's delight they fell into line with him, and all three went
+galloping along the strip between the trees and rails.  The look she
+gave him seemed to say, "I don't care if it is forbidden!"  but she
+did not speak.  He could not take his eyes off her.  How lovely she
+looked, with the resolute curve of her figure, the glimpse of gold
+under her hat, the glorious colour in her cheeks, as if she had been
+kissed.
+
+"It 's so splendid to be at home!  Let 's go faster, faster!"  she
+cried out.
+
+"Take a pull.  We shall get run in," grumbled her brother, with a
+chuckle.
+
+They reined in round the bend and jogged more soberly down on the far
+side; still not a word from her to Shelton, and Shelton in his turn
+spoke only to Bill Dennant.  He was afraid to speak to her, for he
+knew that her mind was dwelling on this chance forbidden meeting in a
+way quite different from his own.
+
+Approaching Hyde Park Corner, where Ferrand was still standing
+against the rails, Shelton, who had forgotten his existence, suffered
+a shock when his eyes fell suddenly on that impassive figure.  He was
+about to raise his hand, when he saw that the young foreigner, noting
+his instinctive feeling, had at once adapted himself to it.  They
+passed again without a greeting, unless that swift inquisition;
+followed by unconsciousness in Ferrand's eyes, could so be called.
+But the feeling of idiotic happiness left Shelton; he grew irritated
+at this silence.  It tantalised him more and more, for Bill Dennant
+had lagged behind to chatter to a friend; Shelton and Antonia were
+alone, walking their horses, without a word, not even looking at each
+other.  At one moment he thought of galloping ahead and leaving her,
+then of breaking the vow of muteness she seemed to be imposing on
+him, and he kept thinking: "It ought to be either one thing or the
+other.  I can't stand this."  Her calmness was getting on his nerves;
+she seemed to have determined just how far she meant to go, to have
+fixed cold-bloodedly a limit.  In her happy young beauty and radiant
+coolness she summed up that sane consistent something existing in
+nine out of ten of the people Shelton knew.  "I can't stand it long,"
+he thought, and all of a sudden spoke; but as he did so she frowned
+and cantered on.  When he caught her she was smiling, lifting her
+face to catch the raindrops which were falling fast.  She gave him
+just a nod, and waved her hand as a sign for him to go; and when he
+would not, she frowned.  He saw Bill Dennant, posting after them,
+and, seized by a sense of the ridiculous, lifted his hat, and
+galloped off.
+
+The rain was coming down in torrents now, and every one was scurrying
+for shelter.  He looked back from the bend, and could still make out
+Antonia riding leisurely, her face upturned, and revelling in the
+shower.  Why had n't she either cut him altogether or taken the
+sweets the gods had sent?  It seemed wicked to have wasted such a
+chance, and, ploughing back to Hyde Park Corner, he turned his head
+to see if by any chance she had relented.
+
+His irritation was soon gone, but his longing stayed.  Was ever
+anything so beautiful as she had looked with her face turned to the
+rain?  She seemed to love the rain.  It suited her--suited her ever
+so much better than the sunshine of the South.  Yes, she was very
+English!  Puzzling and fretting, he reached his rooms.  Ferrand had
+not arrived, in fact did not turn up that day.  His non-appearance
+afforded Shelton another proof of the delicacy that went hand in hand
+with the young vagrant's cynicism.  In the afternoon he received a
+note.
+
+.  .  .  You see, Dick [he read], I ought to have cut you; but I felt
+too crazy--everything seems so jolly at home, even this stuffy old
+London.  Of course, I wanted to talk to you badly--there are heaps of
+things one can't say by letter--but I should have been sorry
+afterwards.  I told mother.  She said I was quite right, but I don't
+think she took it in.  Don't you feel that the only thing that really
+matters is to have an ideal, and to keep it so safe that you can
+always look forward and feel that you have been--I can't exactly
+express my meaning.
+
+Shelton lit a cigarette and frowned.  It seemed to him queer that she
+should set more store by an "ideal" than by the fact that they had
+met for the first and only time in many weeks.
+
+"I suppose she 's right," he thoughts--"I suppose she 's right.  I
+ought not to have tried to speak to her!"  As a matter of fact, he
+did not at all feel that she was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AN "AT HOME"
+
+On Tuesday morning he wandered off to Paddington, hoping for a chance
+view of her on her way down to Holm Oaks; but the sense of the
+ridiculous, on which he had been nurtured, was strong enough to keep
+him from actually entering the station and lurking about until she
+came.  With a pang of disappointment he retraced his steps from Praed
+Street to the Park, and once there tried no further to waylay her.
+He paid a round of calls in the afternoon, mostly on her relations;
+and, seeking out Aunt Charlotte, he dolorously related his encounter
+in the Row.  But she found it "rather nice," and on his pressing her
+with his views, she murmured that it was "quite romantic, don't you
+know."
+
+"Still, it's very hard," said Shelton; and he went away disconsolate.
+
+As he was dressing for dinner his eye fell on a card announcing the
+"at home" of one of his own cousins.  Her husband was a composer, and
+he had a vague idea that he would find at the house of a composer
+some quite unusually free kind of atmosphere.  After dining at the
+club, therefore, he set out for Chelsea.  The party was held in a
+large room on the ground-floor, which was already crowded with people
+when Shelton entered.  They stood or sat about in groups with smiles
+fixed on their lips, and the light from balloon-like lamps fell in
+patches on their heads and hands and shoulders.  Someone had just
+finished rendering on the piano a composition of his own.  An expert
+could at once have picked out from amongst the applauding company
+those who were musicians by profession, for their eyes sparkled, and
+a certain acidity pervaded their enthusiasm.  This freemasonry of
+professional intolerance flew from one to the other like a breath of
+unanimity, and the faint shrugging of shoulders was as harmonious as
+though one of the high windows had been opened suddenly, admitting a
+draught of chill May air.
+
+Shelton made his way up to his cousin--a fragile, grey-haired woman
+in black velvet and Venetian lace, whose starry eyes beamed at him,
+until her duties, after the custom of these social gatherings,
+obliged her to break off conversation just as it began to interest
+him.  He was passed on to another lady who was already talking to two
+gentlemen, and, their volubility being greater than his own, he fell
+into the position of observer.  Instead of the profound questions he
+had somehow expected to hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or
+searching the heart of such topics as where to go this summer, or how
+to get new servants.  Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their
+fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other
+night had dissected the fellow--"smart"; and the varnish on the
+floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected on all the faces
+around.  Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.
+
+A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm
+of one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in
+concert to his ingratiating voice.
+
+"War," he was saying, "is not necessary.  War is not necessary.  I
+hope I make myself clear.  War is not necessary; it depends on
+nationality, but nationality is not necessary."  He inclined his head
+to one side, "Why do we have nationality?  Let us do away with
+boundaries--let us have the warfare of commerce.  If I see France
+looking at Brighton"--he laid his head upon one side, and beamed at
+Shelton,--"what do I do?  Do I say 'Hands off'?  No.  'Take it,'
+I say--take it!'"  He archly smiled.  "But do you think they would?"
+
+And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.
+
+"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is
+necessarily on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--
+than the philanthropist.  His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys
+the compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
+persuasively.  "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do
+I talk about it?"  But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat,
+he put his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my
+brother has one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from
+him?"
+
+Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."
+
+"Come, come!  Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage
+laws are barbarous."
+
+For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
+comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of
+another group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned.
+Here an Irish sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously,
+"Bees are not bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!  "A Scotch painter, who
+listened with a curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this
+proposition, which appeared to have relation to the middle classes;
+and though agreeing with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his
+discharge of electricity.  Next to them two American ladies,
+assembled under the tent of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were
+discussing the emotions aroused in them by Wagner's operas.
+
+"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
+one.
+
+"They 're just divine," said the fatter.
+
+"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
+thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.
+
+Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of
+formality was haunting Shelton.  Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a
+Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours; so,
+assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an
+assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of
+exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of
+having no ideas to traffic in.  He could not help wondering whether,
+in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the
+inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run
+at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and
+what would be left when the steam had all escaped.  Somebody ceased
+playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics.
+Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts.
+He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes
+from ideas which haunt the soul.
+
+Again the violinist played.
+
+"Cock gracious!"  said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
+fiddle ceased: "Colossal!  'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"
+
+"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.
+
+"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"
+
+"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing
+but a volcanic eruption would cure him."
+
+Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements.
+They were two men of letters talking of a third.
+
+"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.
+
+"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes
+gleamed with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed
+himself.  Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help
+recognising from those eyes what joy it was to say those words:
+"These fellows don't exist!"
+
+"Poor Besom!  You know what Moulter said .  .  ."
+
+Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair
+smelt of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned.  With
+the exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of
+English blood.  Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans,
+Scotch, and Russians.  He was not contemptuous of them for being
+foreigners; it was simply that God and the climate had made him
+different by a skin or so.
+
+But at this point his conclusions were denied (as will sometimes
+happen) by his introduction to an Englishman--a Major Somebody, who,
+with smooth hair and blond moustache, neat eyes and neater clothes,
+seemed a little anxious at his own presence there.  Shelton took a
+liking to him, partly from a fellow-feeling, and partly because of
+the gentle smile with which he was looking at his wife.  Almost
+before he had said "How do you do?" he was plunged into a discussion
+on imperialism.
+
+"Admitting all that," said Shelton, "what I hate is the humbug with
+which we pride ourselves on benefiting the whole world by our so-
+called civilising methods."
+
+The soldier turned his reasonable eyes.
+
+"But is it humbug?"
+
+Shelton saw his argument in peril.  If we really thought it, was it
+humbug?  He replied, however:
+
+"Why should we, a small portion of the world's population, assume
+that our standards are the proper ones for every kind of race?  If
+it 's not humbug, it 's sheer stupidity."
+
+The soldier, without taking his hands out of his pockets, but by a
+forward movement of his face showing that he was both sincere and
+just, re-replied:
+
+"Well, it must be a good sort of stupidity; it makes us the nation
+that we are."
+
+Shelton felt dazed.  The conversation buzzed around him; he heard the
+smiling prophet saying, "Altruism, altruism," and in his voice a
+something seemed to murmur, "Oh, I do so hope I make a good
+impression!"
+
+He looked at the soldier's clear-cut head with its well-opened eyes,
+the tiny crow's-feet at their corners, the conventional moustache; he
+envied the certainty of the convictions lying under that well-parted
+hair.
+
+"I would rather we were men first and then Englishmen," he muttered;
+"I think it's all a sort of national illusion, and I can't stand
+illusions."
+
+"If you come to that," said the soldier, "the world lives by
+illusions.  I mean, if you look at history, you'll see that the
+creation of illusions has always been her business, don't you know."
+
+This Shelton was unable to deny.
+
+"So," continued the soldier (who was evidently a highly cultivated
+man), "if you admit that movement, labour, progress, and all that
+have been properly given to building up these illusions, that--er--in
+fact, they're what you might call--er--the outcome of the world's
+crescendo," he rushed his voice over this phrase as if ashamed of it
+--"why do you want to destroy them?"
+
+Shelton thought a moment, then, squeezing his body with his folded
+arms, replied:
+
+"The past has made us what we are, of course, and cannot be
+destroyed; but how about the future?  It 's surely time to let in
+air.  Cathedrals are very fine, and everybody likes the smell of
+incense; but when they 've been for centuries without ventilation you
+know what the atmosphere gets like."
+
+The soldier smiled.
+
+"By your own admission," he said, "you'll only be creating a fresh
+set of illusions."
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton, "but at all events they'll be the honest
+necessities of the present."
+
+The pupils of the soldier's eyes contracted; he evidently felt the
+conversation slipping into generalities; he answered:
+
+"I can't see how thinking small beer of ourselves is going to do us
+any good!"
+
+An "At Home!"
+
+Shelton felt in danger of being thought unpractical in giving vent to
+the remark:
+
+"One must trust one's reason; I never can persuade myself that I
+believe in what I don't."
+
+A minute later, with a cordial handshake, the soldier left, and
+Shelton watched his courteous figure shepherding his wife away.
+
+"Dick, may I introduce you to Mr. Wilfrid Curly?" said his cousin's
+voice behind, and he found his hand being diffidently shaken by a
+fresh-cheeked youth with a dome-like forehead, who was saying
+nervously:
+
+"How do you do?  Yes, I am very well, thank you!"
+
+He now remembered that when he had first come in he had watched this
+youth, who had been standing in a corner indulging himself in private
+smiles.  He had an uncommon look, as though he were in love with
+life--as though he regarded it as a creature to whom one could put
+questions to the very end--interesting, humorous, earnest questions.
+He looked diffident, and amiable, and independent, and he, too, was
+evidently English.
+
+"Are you good at argument?" said Shelton, at a loss for a remark.
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and, putting back his hair, replied:
+
+"Yes--no--I don't know; I think my brain does n't work fast enough
+for argument.  You know how many motions of the brain-cells go to
+each remark.  It 's awfully interesting"; and, bending from the waist
+in a mathematical position, he extended the palm of one hand, and
+started to explain.
+
+Shelton stared at the youth's hand, at his frowns and the taps he
+gave his forehead while he found the expression of his meaning; he
+was intensely interested.  The youth broke off, looked at his watch,
+and, blushing brightly, said:
+
+"I 'm afraid I have to go; I have to be at the 'Den' before eleven."
+
+"I must be off, too," said Shelton.  Making their adieux together,
+they sought their hats and coats.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE NIGHT CLUB
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, as he and the youth came out into the
+chilly street, "What it is you call the 'Den'?"
+
+His companion smilingly answered:
+
+"Oh, the night club.  We take it in turns.  Thursday is my night.
+Would you like to come?  You see a lot of types.  It's only round the
+corner."
+
+Shelton digested a momentary doubt, and answered:
+
+"Yes, immensely."
+
+They reached the corner house in an angle of a, dismal street,
+through the open door of which two men had just gone in.  Following,
+they ascended some wooden, fresh-washed stairs, and entered a large
+boarded room smelling of sawdust, gas, stale coffee, and old clothes.
+It was furnished with a bagatelle board, two or three wooden tables,
+some wooden forms, and a wooden bookcase.  Seated on these wooden
+chairs, or standing up, were youths, and older men of the working
+class, who seemed to Shelton to be peculiarly dejected.  One was
+reading, one against the wall was drinking coffee with a
+disillusioned air, two were playing chess, and a group of four made a
+ceaseless clatter with the bagatelle.
+
+A little man in a dark suit, with a pale face, thin lips, and deep-
+set, black-encircled eyes, who was obviously in charge, came up with
+an anaemic smile.
+
+"You 're rather late," he said to Curly, and, looking ascetically at
+Shelton, asked, without waiting for an introduction: "Do you play
+chess?  There 's young Smith wants a game."
+
+A youth with a wooden face, already seated before a fly-blown chess-
+board, asked him drearily if he would have black or white.  Shelton
+took white; he was oppressed by the virtuous odour of this room.
+
+The little man with the deep blue eyes came up, stood in an uneasy
+attitude, and watched:
+
+"Your play's improving, young Smith," he said; "I should think you'd
+be able to give Banks a knight."  His eyes rested on Shelton,
+fanatical and dreary; his monotonous voice was suffering and nasal;
+he was continually sucking in his lips, as though determined to
+subdue 'the flesh.  "You should come here often," he said to Shelton,
+as the latter received checkmate; "you 'd get some good practice.
+We've several very fair players.  You're not as good as Jones or
+Bartholomew," he added to Shelton's opponent, as though he felt it a
+duty to put the latter in his place.  "You ought to come here often,"
+he repeated to Shelton; "we have a lot of very good young fellows";
+and, with a touch of complacence, he glanced around the dismal room.
+"There are not so many here tonight as usual.  Where are Toombs and
+Body?"
+
+Shelton, too, looked anxiously around.  He could not help feeling
+sympathy with Toombs and Body.
+
+"They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man.
+"Our principle is to amuse everyone.  Excuse me a minute; I see that
+Carpenter is doing nothing."  He crossed over to the man who had been
+drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his
+opponent and try to think of a remark, before the little man was
+back.  "Do you know anything about astronomy?" he asked of Shelton.
+"We have several very interested in astronomy; if you could talk to
+them a little it would help."
+
+Shelton made a motion of alarm.
+
+"Please-no," said he; "I---"
+
+"I wish you'd come sometimes on Wednesdays; we have most interesting
+talks, and a service afterwards.  We're always anxious to get new
+blood"; and his eyes searched Shelton's brown, rather tough-looking
+face, as though trying to see how much blood there was in it.  "Young
+Curly says you 've just been around the world; you could describe
+your travels."
+
+"May I ask," said Shelton, "how your club is made up?"
+
+Again a look of complacency, and blessed assuagement, visited the
+little man.
+
+"Oh," he said, "we take anybody, unless there 's anything against
+them.  The Day Society sees to that.  Of course, we shouldn't take
+anyone if they were to report against them.  You ought to come to our
+committee meetings; they're on Mondays at seven.  The women's side,
+too---"
+
+"Thank you," said Shelton; "you 're very kind---"
+
+"We should be pleased," said the little man; and his face seemed to
+suffer more than ever.  "They 're mostly young fellows here to-night,
+but we have married men, too.  Of course, we 're very careful about
+that," he added hastily, as though he might have injured Shelton's
+prejudices--"that, and drink, and anything criminal, you know."
+
+"And do you give pecuniary assistance, too?"
+
+"Oh yes," replied the little man; "if you were to come to our
+committee meetings you would see for yourself.  Everything is most
+carefully gone into; we endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, "you find a great deal of chaff?"
+
+The little man smiled a suffering smile.  The twang of his toneless
+voice sounded a trifle shriller.
+
+"I was obliged to refuse a man to-day--a man and a woman, quite young
+people, with three small children.  He was ill and out of work; but
+on inquiry we found that they were not man and wife."
+
+There was a slight pause; the little man's eyes were fastened on his
+nails, and, with an appearance of enjoyment, he began to bite them.
+Shelton's face had grown a trifle red.
+
+"And what becomes of the woman and the children in a case like that?"
+he said.
+
+The little man's eyes began to smoulder.
+
+"We make a point of not encouraging sin, of course.  Excuse me a
+minute; I see they've finished bagatelle."
+
+He hurried off, and in a moment the clack of bagatelle began again.
+He himself was playing with a cold and spurious energy, running after
+the balls and exhorting the other players, upon whom a wooden
+acquiescence seemed to fall.
+
+Shelton crossed the room, and went up to young Curly.  He was sitting
+on a bench, smiling to himself his private smiles.
+
+"Are you staying here much longer?" Shelton asked.
+
+Young Curly rose with nervous haste.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, "there 's nobody very interesting here to-
+night."
+
+"Oh, not at all!"  said Shelton; "on the contrary.  Only I 've had a
+rather tiring day, and somehow I don't feel up to the standard here."
+
+His new acquaintance smiled.
+
+"Oh, really!  do you think--that is--"
+
+But he had not time to finish before the clack of bagatelle balls
+ceased, and the voice of the little deep-eyed man was heard saying:
+"Anybody who wants a book will put his name down.  There will be the
+usual prayer-meeting on Wednesday next.  Will you all go quietly?
+I am going to turn the lights out."
+
+One gas-jet vanished, and the remaining jet flared suddenly.  By its
+harder glare the wooden room looked harder too, and disenchanting.
+The figures of its occupants began filing through the door.  The
+little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes
+smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and
+finger raised to the turncock of the metre.
+
+"Do you know this part?" asked young Curly as they emerged into the
+street.  "It 's really jolly; one of the darkest bits in London--it
+is really.  If you care, I can take you through an awfully dangerous
+place where the police never go."  He seemed so anxious for the
+honour that Shelton was loath to disappoint him.  "I come here pretty
+often," he went on, as they ascended a sort of alley rambling darkly
+between a wall and row of houses.
+
+"Why?" asked Shelton; "it does n't smell too nice."
+
+The young man threw up his nose and sniffed, as if eager to add any
+new scent that might be about to his knowledge of life.
+
+"No, that's one of the reasons, you know," he said; "one must find
+out.  The darkness is jolly, too; anything might happen here.  Last
+week there was a murder; there 's always the chance of one."
+
+Shelton stared; but the charge of morbidness would not lie against
+this fresh-cheeked stripling.
+
+"There's a splendid drain just here," his guide resumed; "the people
+are dying like flies of typhoid in those three houses"; and under the
+first light he turned his grave, cherubic face to indicate the
+houses.  "If we were in the East End, I could show you other places
+quite as good.  There's a coffee-stall keeper in one that knows all
+the thieves in London; he 's a splendid type, but," he added, looking
+a little anxiously at Shelton, "it might n't be safe for you.  With
+me it's different; they 're beginning to know me.  I've nothing to
+take, you see."
+
+"I'm afraid it can't be to-night," said Shelton; "I must get back."
+
+"Do you mind if I walk with you?  It's so jolly now the stars are
+out."
+
+"Delighted," said Shelton; "do you often go to that club?"
+
+His companion raised his hat, and ran his fingers through his hair.
+
+"They 're rather too high-class for me," he said.  "I like to go
+where you can see people eat--school treats, or somewhere in the
+country.  It does one good to see them eat.  They don't get enough,
+you see, as a rule, to make bone; it's all used up for brain and
+muscle.  There are some places in the winter where they give them
+bread and cocoa; I like to go to those."
+
+"I went once," said Shelton, "but I felt ashamed for putting my nose
+in."
+
+"Oh, they don't mind; most of them are half-dead with cold, you know.
+You see splendid types; lots of dipsomaniacs .  .  .  .  It 's useful
+to me," he went on as they passed a police-station, "to walk about at
+night; one can take so much more notice.  I had a jolly night last
+week in Hyde Park; a chance to study human nature there."
+
+"And do you find it interesting?" asked Shelton.
+
+His companion smiled.
+
+"Awfully," he replied; "I saw a fellow pick three pockets."
+
+" What did you do?"
+
+"I had a jolly talk with him."
+
+Shelton thought of the little deep-eyed man; who made a point of not
+encouraging sin.
+
+"He was one of the professionals from Notting Hill, you know; told me
+his life.  Never had a chance, of course.  The most interesting part
+was telling him I 'd seen him pick three pockets--like creeping into
+a cave, when you can't tell what 's inside."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He showed me what he 'd got--only fivepence halfpenny."
+
+"And what became of your friend?" asked Shelton.
+
+"Oh, went off; he had a splendidly low forehead."
+
+They had reached Shelton's rooms.
+
+"Will you come in," said the latter, "and have a drink?"
+
+The youth smiled, blushed, and shook his head.
+
+"No, thank you," he said; "I have to walk to Whitechapel.  I 'm
+living on porridge now; splendid stuff for making bone.  I generally
+live on porridge for a week at the end of every month.  It 's the
+best diet if you're hard up"; once more blushing and smiling, he was
+gone.
+
+Shelton went upstairs and sat down on his bed.  He felt a little
+miserable.  Sitting there, slowly pulling out the ends of his white
+tie, disconsolate, he had a vision of Antonia with her gaze fixed
+wonderingly on him.  And this wonder of hers came as a revelation--
+just as that morning, when, looking from his window, he had seen a
+passer-by stop suddenly and scratch his leg; and it had come upon him
+in a flash that that man had thoughts and feelings of his own.  He
+would never know what Antonia really felt and thought.  "Till I saw
+her at the station, I did n't know how much I loved her or how little
+I knew her"; and, sighing deeply, he hurried into bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+POLE TO POLE
+
+The waiting in London for July to come was daily more unbearable to
+Shelton, and if it had not been for Ferrand, who still came to
+breakfast, he would have deserted the Metropolis.  On June first the
+latter presented himself rather later than was his custom, and
+announced that, through a friend, he had heard of a position as
+interpreter to an hotel at Folkestone.
+
+"If I had money to face the first necessities, he said, swiftly
+turning over a collection of smeared papers with his yellow fingers,
+as if searching for his own identity, "I 'd leave today.  This London
+blackens my spirit."
+
+"Are you certain to get this place," asked Shelton.
+
+"I think so," the young foreigner replied; "I 've got some good
+enough recommendations."
+
+Shelton could not help a dubious glance at the papers in his hand.  A
+hurt look passed on to Ferrand's curly lips beneath his nascent red
+moustache.
+
+"You mean that to have false papers is as bad as theft.  No, no; I
+shall never be a thief--I 've had too many opportunities," said he,
+with pride and bitterness.  "That's not in my character. I never do
+harm to anyone.  This"--he touched the papers--"is not delicate, but
+it does harm to no one.  If you have no money you must have papers;
+they stand between you and starvation.  Society, has an excellent eye
+for the helpless--it never treads on people unless they 're really
+down."  He looked at Shelton.
+
+"You 've made me what I am, amongst you," he seemed to say; "now put
+up with me!"
+
+"But there are always the workhouses," Shelton remarked at last.
+
+"Workhouses!" returned Ferrand; "certainly there are--regular
+palaces: I will tell you one thing: I've never been in places so
+discouraging as your workhouses; they take one's very heart out."
+
+"I always understood," said Shelton coldly; "that our system was
+better than that of other countries."
+
+Ferrand leaned over in his chair, an elbow on his knee, his favourite
+attitude when particularly certain of his point.
+
+"Well," he replied, "it 's always permissible to think well of your own
+country.  But, frankly, I've come out of those places here with
+little strength and no heart at all, and I can tell you why."  His
+lips lost their bitterness, and he became an artist expressing the
+result of his experience.  "You spend your money freely, you have
+fine buildings, self-respecting officers, but you lack the spirit of
+hospitality.  The reason is plain; you have a horror of the needy.
+You invite us--and when we come you treat us justly enough, but as if
+we were numbers, criminals, beneath contempt--as if we had inflicted
+a personal injury on you; and when we get out again, we are naturally
+degraded."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.
+
+"How much money will you want for your ticket, and to make a start?"
+he asked.
+
+The nervous gesture escaping Ferrand at this juncture betrayed how
+far the most independent thinkers are dependent when they have no
+money in their pockets.  He took the note that Shelton proffered him.
+
+"A thousand thanks," said he; "I shall never forget what you have
+done for me"; and Shelton could not help feeling that there was true
+emotion behind his titter of farewell.
+
+He stood at the window watching Ferrand start into the world again;
+then looked back at his own comfortable room, with the number of
+things that had accumulated somehow--the photographs of countless
+friends, the old arm-chairs, the stock of coloured pipes.  Into him
+restlessness had passed with the farewell clasp of the foreigner's
+damp hand.  To wait about in London was unbearable.
+
+He took his hat, and, heedless of direction, walked towards the
+river.  It was a clear, bright day, with a bleak wind driving showers
+before it.  During one of such Shelton found himself in Little Blank
+Street.  "I wonder how that little Frenchman that I saw is getting
+on!"  he thought.  On a fine day he would probably have passed by on
+the other side; he now entered and tapped upon the wicket.
+
+No. 3 Little Blank Street had abated nothing of its stone-flagged
+dreariness; the same blowsy woman answered his inquiry.  Yes, Carolan
+was always in; you could never catch him out--seemed afraid to go
+into the street!  To her call the little Frenchman made his
+appearance as punctually as if he had been the rabbit of a conjurer.
+His face was as yellow as a guinea.
+
+"Ah!  it's you, monsieur!"  he said.
+
+"Yes," said Shelton; "and how are you?"
+
+"It 's five days since I came out of hospital," muttered the little
+Frenchman, tapping on his chest; "a crisis of this bad atmosphere.
+I live here, shut up in a box; it does me harm, being from the South.
+If there's anything I can do for you, monsieur, it will give me
+pleasure."
+
+"Nothing," replied Shelton, "I was just passing, and thought I should
+like to hear how you were getting on."
+
+"Come into the kitchen,--monsieur, there is nobody in there.  'Brr!
+Il fait un froid etonnant'!"
+
+"What sort of customers have you just now?"  asked Shelton, as they
+passed into the kitchen.
+
+"Always the same clientele," replied the little man; "not so
+numerous, of course, it being summer."
+
+"Could n't you find anything better than this to do?"
+
+The barber's crow's-feet radiated irony.
+
+"When I first came to London," said he, "I secured an engagement at
+one of your public institutions.  I thought my fortune made.
+Imagine, monsieur, in that sacred place I was obliged to shave at the
+rate of ten a penny!  Here, it's true, they don't pay me half the
+time; but when I'm  paid, I 'm paid.  In this, climate, and being
+'poitrinaire', one doesn't make experiments.  I shall finish my days
+here.  Have you seen that young man who interested you?  There 's
+another!  He has spirit, as I had once--'il fait de la philosophie',
+as I do--and you will see, monsieur, it will finish him.  In this
+world what you want is to have no spirit.  Spirit ruins you."
+
+Shelton looked sideways at the little man with his sardonic, yellow,
+half-dead face, and the incongruity of the word "spirit" in his mouth
+struck him so sharply that he smiled a smile with more pity in it
+than any burst of tears.
+
+"Shall we 'sit down?" he said, offering a cigarette.
+
+"Merci, monsieur, it is always a pleasure to smoke a good cigarette.
+You remember, that old actor who gave you a Jeremiad?  Well, he's
+dead.  I was the only one at his bedside; 'un vrai drole'.  He was
+another who had spirit.  And you will see, monsieur, that young man
+in whom you take an interest, he'll die in a hospital, or in some.
+hole or other, or even on the highroad; having closed his eyes once
+too often some cold night; and all because he has something in him
+which will not accept things as they are, believing always that they
+should be better.  'Il n'y a riens de plus tragique'!"
+
+"According to you, then," said Shelton--and the conversation seemed
+to him of a sudden to have taken too personal a turn--"rebellion of
+any sort is fatal."
+
+"Ah!"  replied the little man, with the eagerness of one whose ideal
+it is to sit under the awning of a cafe‚ and talk life upside down,
+"you pose me a great problem there!  If one makes rebellion; it is
+always probable that one will do no good to any one and harm one's
+self.  The law of the majority arranges that.  But I would draw your
+attention to this"--and he paused; as if it were a real discovery to
+blow smoke through his nose--"if you rebel it is in all likelihood
+because you are forced by your nature to rebel; this is one of the
+most certain things in life.  In any case, it is necessary to avoid
+falling between two stools--which is unpardonable," he ended with
+complacence.
+
+Shelton thought he had never seen a man who looked more completely as
+if he had fallen between two stools, and he had inspiration enough to
+feel that the little barber's intellectual rebellion and the action
+logically required by it had no more than a bowing acquaintanceship.
+
+"By nature," went on the little man, "I am an optimist; it is in
+consequence of this that I now make pessimism.  I have always had
+ideals; seeing myself cut off from them for ever, I must complain; to
+complain, monsieur, is very sweet!"
+
+Shelton wondered what these ideals had been, but had no answer ready;
+so he nodded, and again held out his cigarettes, for, like a true
+Southerner, the little man had thrown the first away, half smoked.
+
+"The greatest pleasure in life," continued the Frenchman, with a bow,
+"is to talk a little to a being who is capable of understanding you.
+At present we have no one here, now that that old actor's dead.  Ah!
+there was a man who was rebellion incarnate!  He made rebellion as
+other men make money, 'c'etait son metier'; when he was no longer
+capable of active revolution, he made it getting drunk.  At the last
+this was his only way of protesting against Society.  An interesting
+personality, 'je le regrette beaucoup'.  But, as you see, he died in
+great distress, without a soul to wave him farewell, because as you
+can well understand, monsieur, I don't count myself.  He died drunk.
+'C'etait un homme'!"
+
+Shelton had continued staring kindly at the little man; the barber
+added hastily:
+
+"It's difficult to make an end like that one has moments of
+weakness."
+
+"Yes," assented Shelton, "one has indeed."
+
+The little barber looked at him with cynical discretion.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "it 's to the destitute that such things are
+important.  When one has money, all these matters---"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  A smile had lodged amongst his crow's-
+feet; he waved his hand as though to end the subject.
+
+A sense of having been exposed came over Shelton.
+
+"You think, then," said he, "that discontent is peculiar to the
+destitute?"
+
+"Monsieur," replied the little barber, "a plutocrat knows too well
+that if he mixes in that 'galere' there 's not a dog in the streets
+more lost than he."
+
+Shelton rose.
+
+"The rain is over.  I hope you 'll soon be better; perhaps you 'll
+accept this in memory of that old actor," and he slipped a sovereign
+into the little Frenchman's hand.
+
+The latter bowed.
+
+"Whenever you are passing, monsieur," he said eagerly, "I shall be
+charmed to see you."
+
+And Shelton walked away.  "'Not a dog in the streets more lost,'"
+thought he; "now what did he mean by that?"
+
+Something of that "lost dog" feeling had gripped his spirit.  Another
+month of waiting would kill all the savour of anticipation, might
+even kill his love.  In the excitement of his senses and his nerves,
+caused by this strain of waiting, everything seemed too vivid; all
+was beyond life size; like Art--whose truths; too strong for daily
+use, are thus, unpopular with healthy people.  As will the, bones in
+a worn face, the spirit underlying things had reached the surface;
+the meanness and intolerable measure of hard facts, were too
+apparent.  Some craving for help, some instinct, drove him into
+Kensington, for he found himself before his, mother's house.
+Providence seemed bent on flinging him from pole to pole.
+
+Mrs. Shelton was in town; and, though it was the first of June, sat
+warming her feet before a fire; her face, with its pleasant colour,
+was crow's-footed like the little barber's, but from optimism, not
+rebellion.  She, smiled when she saw her son; and the wrinkles round
+her eyes twinkled, with vitality.
+
+"Well, my dear boy," she said, "it's lovely to see you.  And how is
+that sweet girl?"
+
+"Very well, thank you," replied Shelton.
+
+"She must be such a dear!"
+
+"Mother," stammered Shelton, "I must give it up."
+
+"Give it up?  My dear Dick, give what up?  You look quite worried.
+Come and sit down, and have a cosy chat.  Cheer up!"  And Mrs.
+Shelton; with her head askew, gazed at her son quite irrepressibly.
+
+Mother," said Shelton, who, confronted by her optimism, had never,
+since his time of trial began, felt so wretchedly dejected, "I can't
+go on waiting about like this."
+
+"My dear boy, what is the matter?";
+
+"Everything is wrong!
+
+"Wrong?" cried Mrs. Shelton.  "Come, tell me all, about it!"
+
+But Shelton, shook his head.
+
+"You surely have not had a quarrel----"
+
+Mrs. Shelton stopped; the question seemed so vulgar--one might have
+asked it of a groom.
+
+"No," said Shelton, and his answer sounded like a groan.
+
+"You know, my dear old Dick," murmured his mother, "it seems a little
+mad."
+
+"I know it seems mad."
+
+"Come!" said Mrs. Shelton, taking his hand between her own; "you
+never used to be like this."
+
+"No," said Shelton, with a laugh; "I never used to be like this."
+
+Mrs. Shelton snuggled in her Chuda shawl.
+
+"Oh," she said, with cheery sympathy, "I know exactly how you feel!"
+
+Shelton, holding his head, stared at the fire, which played and
+bubbled like his mother's face.
+
+"But you're so fond of each other," she began again.  "Such a sweet
+girl!"
+
+"You don't understand," muttered Shelton gloomily; "it 's not her--
+it's nothing--it's--myself!"
+
+Mrs. Shelton again seized his hand, and this time pressed it to her
+soft, warm cheek, that had lost the elasticity of youth.
+
+"Oh!" she cried again; "I understand.  I know exactly what you 're
+feeling."  But Shelton saw from the fixed beam in her eyes that she
+had not an inkling.  To do him justice, he was not so foolish as to
+try to give her one.  Mrs. Shelton sighed.  "It would be so lovely if
+you could wake up
+to-morrow and think differently.  If I were you, my dear, I would
+have a good long walk, and then a Turkish bath; and then I would just
+write to her, and tell her all about it, and you'll see how
+beautifully it'll all come straight"; and in the enthusiasm of advice
+Mrs. Shelton rose, and, with a faint stretch of her tiny figure,
+still so young, clasped her hands together.  "Now do, that 's a dear
+old Dick!  You 'll just see how lovely it'll be!"  Shelton smiled; he
+had not the heart to chase away this vision.  "And give her my
+warmest love, and tell her I 'm longing for the wedding.  Come, now,
+my dear boy, promise me that's what you 'll do."
+
+And Shelton said: "I'll think about it."
+
+Mrs. Shelton had taken up her stand with one foot on the fender, in
+spite of her sciatica.
+
+"Cheer up!"  she cried; her eyes beamed as if intoxicated by her
+sympathy.
+
+Wonderful woman!  The uncomplicated optimism that carried her through
+good and ill had not descended to her son.
+
+>From pole to pole he had been thrown that day, from the French
+barber, whose intellect accepted nothing without carping, and whose
+little fingers worked all day, to save himself from dying out, to his
+own mother, whose intellect accepted anything presented with
+sufficient glow, but who, until she died, would never stir a finger.
+When Shelton reached his rooms, he wrote to Antonia:
+
+I can't wait about in London any longer; I am going down to Bideford
+to start a walking tour.  I shall work my way to Oxford, and stay
+there till I may come to Holm Oaks.  I shall send you my address; do
+write as usual.
+
+He collected all the photographs he had of her--amateur groups, taken
+by Mrs. Dennant--and packed them in the pocket of his shooting-
+jacket.  There was one where she was standing just below her little
+brother, who was perched upon a wall.  In her half-closed eyes, round
+throat, and softly tilted chin, there was something cool and
+watchful, protecting the ragamuffin up above her head.  This he kept
+apart to be looked at daily, as a man says his prayers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+THE COUNTRY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE INDIAN CIVILIAN
+
+One morning then, a week later, Shelton found himself at the walls of
+Princetown Prison.
+
+He had seen this lugubrious stone cage before.  But the magic of his
+morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs
+of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building.  He
+left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning
+the walls with morbid fascination.
+
+This, then, was the system by which men enforced the will of the
+majority, and it was suddenly borne in on him that all the ideas and
+maxims which his Christian countrymen believed themselves to be
+fulfilling daily were stultified in every cellule of the social
+honeycomb.  Such teachings as "He that is without sin amongst you"
+had been pronounced unpractical by peers and judges, bishops,
+statesmen, merchants, husbands--in fact, by every truly Christian
+person in the country.
+
+"Yes," thought Shelton, as if he had found out something new, "the
+more Christian the nation, the less it has to do with the Christian
+spirit."
+
+Society was a charitable organisation, giving nothing for nothing,
+little for sixpence; and it was only fear that forced it to give at
+all!
+
+He took a seat on a wall, and began to watch a warder who was slowly
+paring a last year's apple.  The expression of his face, the way he
+stood with his solid legs apart, his head poked forward and his lower
+jaw thrust out, all made him a perfect pillar of Society.  He was
+undisturbed by Shelton's scrutiny, watching the rind coil down below
+the apple; until in a springing spiral it fell on the path and
+collapsed like a toy snake.  He took a bite; his teeth were jagged;
+and his mouth immense.  It was obvious that he considered himself a
+most superior man.  Shelton frowned, got down slowly, from the wall,
+and proceeded on his way.
+
+A little further down the hill he stopped again to watch a group of
+convicts in a field.  They seemed to be dancing in a slow and sad
+cotillon, while behind the hedge on every side were warders armed
+with guns.  Just such a sight, substituting spears could have been
+seen in Roman times.
+
+While he thus stood looking, a man, walking, rapidly, stopped beside
+him, and asked how many miles it was to Exeter.  His round visage;
+and long, brown eyes, sliding about beneath their, brows, his cropped
+hair and short neck, seemed familiar.
+
+"Your name is Crocker, is n't it?"
+
+"Why! it's the Bird!"  exclaimed the traveller; putting out his
+hand.  "Have n't seen you since we both went down."
+
+Shelton returned his handgrip.  Crocker had lived above his head at
+college, and often kept him, sleepless half the night by playing on
+the hautboy.
+
+"Where have you sprung from?"
+
+"India.  Got my long leave.  I say, are you going this way?  Let's go
+together."
+
+They went, and very fast; faster and faster every minute.
+
+"Where are you going at this pace?" asked Shelton.
+
+"London."
+
+"Oh!  only as far as London?"
+
+"I 've set myself to do it in a week."
+
+"Are you in training?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You 'll kill yourself."
+
+Crocker answered with a chuckle.
+
+Shelton noted with alarm the expression of his eye; there was a sort
+of stubborn aspiration in it.  "Still an idealist!"  he thought;
+"poor fellow!"  "Well," he inquired, "what sort of a time have you
+had in India?"
+
+"Oh," said the Indian civilian absently, "I've, had the plague."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+Crocker smiled, and added:
+
+"Caught it on famine duty."
+
+"I see," said Shelton; "plague and famine!  I suppose you fellows
+really think you 're doing good out there?"
+
+His companion looked at him surprised, then answered modestly:
+
+"We get very good screws."
+
+"That 's the great thing," responded Shelton.
+
+After a moment's silence, Crocker, looking straight before him,
+asked:
+
+"Don't you think we are doing good?"
+
+"I 'm not an authority; but, as a matter of fact, I don't."
+
+Crocker seemed disconcerted.
+
+"Why?" he bluntly asked.
+
+Shelton was not anxious to explain his views, and he did not reply.
+
+His friend repeated:
+
+"Why don't you think we're doing good in India?"
+
+"Well," said Shelton gruffly, "how can progress be imposed on
+nations from outside?"
+
+The Indian civilian, glancing at Shelton in an affectionate and
+doubtful way, replied:
+
+"You have n't changed a bit, old chap."
+
+"No, no," said Shelton; "you 're not going to get out of it that way.
+Give me a single example of a nation, or an individual, for that
+matter, who 's ever done any good without having worked up to it from
+within."
+
+Crocker, grunting, muttered, "Evils."
+
+"That 's it," said Shelton; "we take peoples entirely different from
+our own, and stop their natural development by substituting a
+civilisation grown for our own use.  Suppose, looking at a tropical
+fern in a hothouse, you were to say: 'This heat 's unhealthy for me;
+therefore it must be bad for the fern, I 'll take it up and plant it
+outside in the fresh air.'"
+
+"Do you know that means giving up India?" said the Indian civilian
+shrewdly.
+
+"I don't say that; but to talk about doing good to India is--h'm!"
+
+Crocker knitted his brows, trying to see the point of view his friend
+was showing him.
+
+"Come, now!  Should we go on administering India if it were dead
+loss?  No.  Well, to talk about administering the country for the
+purpose of pocketing money is cynical, and there 's generally some
+truth in cynicism; but to talk about the administration of a country
+by which we profit, as if it were a great and good thing, is cant.
+I hit you in the wind for the benefit of myself--all right: law of
+nature; but to say it does you good at the same time is beyond me."
+
+"No, no," returned Crocker, grave and anxious; "you can't persuade me
+that we 're not doing good."
+
+"Wait a bit.  It's all a question of horizons; you look at it from
+too close.  Put the horizon further back.  You hit India in the wind,
+and say it's virtuous.  Well, now let's see what happens.  Either the
+wind never comes back, and India gasps to an untimely death, or the
+wind does come back, and in the pant of reaction your blow--that's to
+say your labour--is lost, morally lost labour that you might have
+spent where it would n't have been lost."
+
+"Are n't you an Imperialist?" asked Crocker, genuinely concerned.
+
+"I may be, but I keep my mouth shut about the benefits we 're
+conferring upon other people."
+
+"Then you can't believe in abstract right, or justice?"
+
+"What on earth have our ideas of justice or right got to do with
+India?"
+
+"If I thought as you do," sighed the unhappy Crocker, "I should be
+all adrift."
+
+"Quite so.  We always think our standards best for the whole world.
+It's a capital belief for us.  Read the speeches of our public men.
+Does n't it strike you as amazing how sure they are of being in the
+right?  It's so charming to benefit yourself and others at the same
+time, though, when you come to think of it, one man's meat is usually
+another's poison.  Look at nature.  But in England we never look at
+nature--there's no necessity.  Our national point of view has filled
+our pockets, that's all that matters."
+
+"I say, old chap, that's awfully bitter," said Crocker, with a sort
+of wondering sadness.
+
+"It 's enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat,
+and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon.
+I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape."
+Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason
+thought of Antonia--surely, she was not a Pharisee.
+
+His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of
+trouble on his face.
+
+"To fill your pockets," said Crocker, "is n't the main thing.  One
+has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them."
+
+"Do you ever see the other side to any question?" asked Shelton.
+"I suppose not.  You always begin to act before you stop thinking,
+don't you?"
+
+Crocker grinned.
+
+"He's a Pharisee, too," thought Shelton, "without a Pharisee's pride.
+Queer thing that!"
+
+After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled
+out:
+
+"You 're not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up
+India."
+
+Shelton smiled uneasily.
+
+"Why should n't we fill our pockets?  I only object to the humbug
+that we talk."
+
+The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.
+
+"If I thought like you," he said, "I could n't stay another day in
+India."
+
+And to this Shelton made no reply.
+
+The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning's magic
+was stealing again upon the moor.  They were nearing the outskirt
+fields of cultivation.  It was past five when, dropping from the
+level of the tors, they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.
+
+"They say," said Crocker, reading from his guide-book--"they say this
+place occupies a position of unique isolation."
+
+The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an
+old lime-tree on the village green.  The smoke of their pipes, the
+sleepy air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made
+Shelton drowsy.
+
+"Do you remember," his companion asked, "those 'jaws' you used to
+have with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?
+How is old Halidome?"
+
+"Married," replied Shelton.
+
+Crocker sighed. "And are you?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," said Shelton grimly; "I 'm--engaged."
+
+Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he
+grunted.  Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him
+more; there was the spice of envy in them.
+
+"I should like to get married while I 'm home," said the civilian
+after a long pause.  His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows
+on the green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a
+little to one side.  An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.
+
+The sun had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the
+ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy
+perfume.  From the converging lanes figures passed now and then,
+lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves,
+and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline.  A clock
+struck seven, and round the shady lime-tree a chafer or some heavy
+insect commenced its booming rushes.  All was marvellously sane and
+slumbrous.  The soft air, the drawling voices, the shapes and
+murmurs, the rising smell of wood-smoke from fresh-kindled fires--
+were full of the spirit of security and of home.  The outside world
+was far indeed.  Typical of some island nation was this nest of
+refuge--where men grew quietly tall, fattened, and without fuss
+dropped off their perches; where contentment flourished, as
+sunflowers flourished in the sun.
+
+Crocker's cap slipped off; he was nodding, and Shelton looked at him.
+>From a manor house in some such village he had issued; to one of a
+thousand such homes he would find his way at last, untouched by the
+struggles with famines or with plagues, uninfected in his fibre, his
+prejudices, and his principles, unchanged by contact with strange
+peoples, new conditions, odd feelings, or queer points of view!
+
+The chafer buzzed against his shoulder, gathered flight again, and
+boomed away.  Crocker roused himself, and, turning his amiable face,
+jogged Shelton's arm.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Bird?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A PARSON
+
+Shelton continued to travel with his college friend, and on Wednesday
+night, four days after joining company, they reached the village of
+Dowdenhame.  All day long the road had lain through pastureland, with
+thick green hedges and heavily feathered elms.  Once or twice they
+had broken the monotony by a stretch along the towing-path of a
+canal, which, choked with water-lily plants and shining weeds,
+brooded sluggishly beside the fields.  Nature, in one of her ironic
+moods, had cast a grey and iron-hard cloak over all the country's
+bland luxuriance.  From dawn till darkness fell there had been no
+movement in the steely distant sky; a cold wind ruffed in the hedge-
+tops, and sent shivers through the branches of the elms.  The cattle,
+dappled, pied, or bay, or white, continued grazing with an air of
+grumbling at their birthright.  In a meadow close to the canal
+Shelton saw five magpies, and about five o'clock the rain began, a
+steady, coldly-sneering rain, which Crocker, looking at the sky,
+declared was going to be over in a minute.  But it was not over in a
+minute; they were soon drenched.  Shelton was tired, and it annoyed
+him very much that his companion, who was also tired, should grow
+more cheerful.  His thoughts kept harping upon Ferrand: "This must be
+something like what he described to me, tramping on and on when
+you're dead-beat, until you can cadge up supper and a bed."  And
+sulkily he kept on ploughing through the mud with glances at the
+exasperating Crocker, who had skinned one heel and was limping
+horribly.  It suddenly came home to him that life for three quarters
+of the world meant physical exhaustion every day, without a
+possibility of alternative, and that as soon as, for some cause
+beyond control, they failed thus to exhaust themselves, they were
+reduced to beg or starve.  "And then we, who don't know the meaning
+of the word exhaustion, call them 'idle scamps,'" he said aloud.
+
+It was past nine and dark when they reached Dowdenhame.  The street
+yielded no accommodation, and while debating where to go they passed
+the church, with a square tower, and next to it a house which was
+certainly the parsonage.
+
+"Suppose," said Crocker, leaning on his arms upon the gate, "we ask
+him where to go"; and, without waiting for Shelton's answer, he rang
+the bell.
+
+The door was opened by the parson, a bloodless and clean-shaven man,
+whose hollow cheeks and bony hands suggested a perpetual struggle.
+Ascetically benevolent were his grey eyes; a pale and ghostly smile
+played on the curves of his thin lips.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked.  "Inn? yes, there's the Blue
+Chequers, but I 'm afraid you 'll find it shut.  They 're early
+people, I 'm glad to say"; and his eyes seemed to muse over the
+proper fold for these damp sheep.  "Are you Oxford men, by any
+chance?" he asked, as if that might throw some light upon the matter.
+"Of Mary's?  Really!  I'm of Paul's myself.  Ladyman--Billington
+Ladyman; you might remember my youngest brother.  I could give you a
+room here if you could manage without sheets.  My housekeeper has two
+days' holiday; she's foolishly taken the keys."
+
+Shelton accepted gladly, feeling that the intonation in the parson's
+voice was necessary unto his calling, and that he did not want to
+patronise.
+
+"You 're hungry, I expect, after your tramp.  I'm very much afraid
+there 's--er--nothing in the house but bread; I could boil you water;
+hot lemonade is better than nothing."
+
+Conducting them into the kitchen, he made a fire, and put a kettle on
+to boil; then, after leaving them to shed their soaking clothes,
+returned with ancient, greenish coats, some carpet slippers, and some
+blankets.  Wrapped in these, and carrying their glasses, the
+travellers followed to the study, where, by doubtful lamp-light, he
+seemed, from books upon the table, to have been working at his
+sermon.
+
+"We 're giving you a lot of trouble," said Shelton, "it's really very
+good of you."
+
+"Not at all," the parson answered; "I'm only grieved the house is
+empty."
+
+It was a truly dismal contrast to the fatness of the land they had
+been passing through, and the parson's voice issuing from bloodless
+lips, although complacent, was pathetic.  It was peculiar, that voice
+of his, seeming to indicate an intimate acquaintanceship with what
+was fat and fine, to convey contempt for the vulgar need of money,
+while all the time his eyes--those watery, ascetic eyes--as plain as
+speech they said, "Oh, to know what it must be like to have a pound
+or two to spare just once a year, or so!"
+
+Everything in the room had been bought for cheapness; no luxuries
+were there, and necessaries not enough.  It was bleak and bare; the
+ceiling cracked, the wall-paper discoloured, and those books--prim,
+shining books, fat-backed, with arms stamped on them--glared in the
+surrounding barrenness.
+
+"My predecessor," said the parson, "played rather havoc with the
+house.  The poor fellow had a dreadful struggle, I was told.  You
+can, unfortunately, expect nothing else these days, when livings have
+come down so terribly in value!  He was a married man--large family!"
+
+Crocker, who had drunk his steaming lemonade, was smiling and already
+nodding in his chair; with his black garment buttoned closely round
+his throat, his long legs rolled up in a blanket, and stretched
+towards the feeble flame of the newly-lighted fire, he had a rather
+patchy air.  Shelton, on the other hand, had lost his feeling of
+fatigue; the strangeness of the place was stimulating his brain; he
+kept stealing glances at the scantiness around; the room, the parson,
+the furniture, the very fire, all gave him the feeling caused by
+seeing legs that have outgrown their trousers.  But there was
+something underlying that leanness of the landscape, something
+superior and academic, which defied all sympathy.  It was pure
+nervousness which made him say:
+
+"Ah! why do they have such families?"
+
+A faint red mounted to the parson's cheeks; its appearance there was
+startling, and Crocker chuckled, as a sleepy man will chuckle who
+feels bound to show that he is not asleep.
+
+"It's very unfortunate," murmured the parson, "certainly, in many
+cases."
+
+Shelton would now have changed the subject, but at this moment the
+unhappy Crocker snored.  Being a man of action, he had gone to sleep.
+
+"It seems to me," said Shelton hurriedly, as he saw the parson's
+eyebrows rising at the sound, "almost what you might call wrong."
+
+"Dear me, but how can it be wrong?"
+
+Shelton now felt that he must justify his saying somehow.
+
+"I don't know," he said, "only one hears of such a lot of cases--
+clergymen's families; I've two uncles of my own, who---"
+
+A new expression gathered on the parson's face; his mouth had
+tightened, and his chin receded slightly.  "Why, he 's like a mule!"
+thought Shelton.  His eyes, too, had grown harder, greyer, and more
+parroty.  Shelton no longer liked his face.
+
+"Perhaps you and I," the parson said, "would not understand each
+other on such matters."
+
+And Shelton felt ashamed.
+
+"I should like to ask you a question in turn, however," the parson
+said, as if desirous of meeting Shelton on his low ground: "How do
+you justify marriage if it is not to follow the laws of nature?"
+
+"I can only tell you what I personally feel."
+
+"My dear sir, you forget that a woman's chief delight is in her
+motherhood."
+
+"I should have thought it a pleasure likely to pall with too much
+repetition.  Motherhood is motherhood, whether of one or of a dozen."
+
+"I 'm afraid," replied the parson, with impatience, though still
+keeping on his guest's low ground, "your theories are not calculated
+to populate the world."
+
+"Have you ever lived in London?" Shelton asked.  "It always makes me
+feel a doubt whether we have any right to have children at all."
+
+"Surely," said the parson with wonderful restraint, and the joints of
+his fingers cracked with the grip he had upon his chair, "you are
+leaving out duty towards the country; national growth is paramount!"
+
+"There are two ways of looking at that.  It depends on what you want
+your country to become."
+
+"I did n't know," said the parson--fanaticism now had crept into his
+smile--"there could be any doubt on such a subject."
+
+The more Shelton felt that commands were being given him, the more
+controversial he naturally became--apart from the merits of this
+subject, to which he had hardly ever given thought.
+
+"I dare say I'm wrong," he said, fastening his eyes on the blanket in
+which his legs were wrapped; "but it seems to me at least an open
+question whether it's better for the country to be so well populated
+as to be quite incapable of supporting itself."
+
+"Surely," said the parson, whose face regained its pallor, "you're
+not a Little Englander?"
+
+On Shelton this phrase had a mysterious effect.  Resisting an impulse
+to discover what he really was, he answered hastily:
+
+" Of course I'm not!"
+
+The parson followed up his triumph, and, shifting the ground of the
+discussion from Shelton's to his own, he gravely said:
+
+"Surely you must see that your theory is founded in immorality.  It
+is, if I may say so, extravagant, even wicked."
+
+But Shelton, suffering from irritation at his own dishonesty, replied
+with heat:
+
+"Why not say at once, sir, 'hysterical, unhealthy'?  Any opinion
+which goes contrary to that of the majority is always called so, I
+believe."
+
+"Well," returned the parson, whose eyes seemed trying to bind Shelton
+to his will, "I must say your ideas do seem to me both extravagant
+and unhealthy.  The propagation of children is enjoined of marriage."
+
+Shelton bowed above his blanket, but the parson did not smile.
+
+"We live in very dangerous times," he said, "and it grieves me when a
+man of your standing panders to these notions."
+
+"Those," said Shelton, "whom the shoe does n't pinch make this rule
+of morality, and thrust it on to such as the shoe does pinch."
+
+"The rule was never made," said the parson; "it was given us."
+
+"Oh!" said Shelton, "I beg your pardon."  He was in danger of
+forgetting the delicate position he was in.  "He wants to ram his
+notions down my throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the
+parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior,
+his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of
+great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance
+whatsoever.  That which, however, was important was the fact that in
+nothing could they ever have agreed.
+
+But Crocker had suddenly ceased to snore; his head had fallen so that
+a peculiar whistling arose instead.  Both Shelton and the parson
+looked at him, and the sight sobered them.
+
+"Your friend seems very tired," said the parson.
+
+Shelton forgot all his annoyance, for his host seemed suddenly
+pathetic, with those baggy garments, hollow cheeks, and the slightly
+reddened nose that comes from not imbibing quite enough.  A kind
+fellow, after all!
+
+The kind fellow rose, and, putting his hands behind his back, placed
+himself before the blackening fire.  Whole centuries of authority
+stood behind him.  It was an accident that the mantelpiece was
+chipped and rusty, the fire-irons bent and worn, his linen frayed
+about the cuffs.
+
+"I don't wish to dictate," said he, "but where it seems to me that
+you are wholly wrong in that your ideas foster in women those lax
+views of the family life that are so prevalent in Society nowadays."
+
+Thoughts of Antonia with her candid eyes, the touch of freckling on
+her pink-white skin, the fair hair gathered back, sprang up in
+Shelton, and that word--"lax" seemed ridiculous.  And the women he
+was wont to see dragging about the streets of London with two or
+three small children, Women bent beneath the weight of babies that
+they could not leave, women going to work with babies still unborn,
+anaemic-looking women, impecunious mothers in his own class, with
+twelve or fourteen children, all the victims of the sanctity of
+marriage, and again the word "lax" seemed to be ridiculous.
+
+"We are not put into the world to exercise our wits,"--muttered
+Shelton.
+
+"Our wanton wills," the parson said severely.
+
+"That, sir, may have been all right for the last generation, the
+country is more crowded now.  I can't see why we should n't decide it
+for ourselves."
+
+"Such a view of morality," said the parson, looking down at Crocker
+with a ghostly smile, "to me is unintelligible."
+
+Cracker's whistling grew in tone and in variety.
+
+"What I hate," said Shelton, "is the way we men decide what women are
+to bear, and then call them immoral, decadent, or what you will, if
+they don't fall in with our views."
+
+"Mr. Shelton," said the parson, "I think we may safely leave it in
+the hands of God."
+
+Shelton was silent.
+
+"The questions of morality," said the parson promptly, "have always
+lain through God in the hands of men, not women.  We are the
+reasonable sex."
+
+Shelton stubbornly replied
+
+"We 're certainly the greater humbugs, if that 's the same."
+
+"This is too bad," exclaimed the parson with some heat.
+
+"I 'm sorry, sir; but how can you expect women nowadays to have the
+same views as our grandmothers?  We men, by our commercial
+enterprise, have brought about a different state of things; yet, for
+the sake of our own comfort, we try to keep women where they were.
+It's always those men who are most keen about their comfort"--and in
+his heat the sarcasm of using the word "comfort" in that room was
+lost on him--"who are so ready to accuse women of deserting the old
+morality."
+
+The parson quivered with impatient irony.
+
+"Old morality! new morality!" he said.  "These are strange words."
+
+"Forgive me," explained Shelton; "we 're talking of working morality,
+I imagine.  There's not a man in a million fit to talk of true
+morality."
+
+The eyes of his host contracted.
+
+"I think," he said--and his voice sounded as if he had pinched it in
+the endeavour to impress his listener--"that any well-educated man
+who honestly tries to serve his God has the right humbly--I say
+humbly--to claim morality."
+
+Shelton was on the point of saying something bitter, but checked
+himself.  "Here am I," thought he, "trying to get the last word, like
+an old woman."
+
+At this moment there was heard a piteous mewing; the parson went
+towards the door.
+
+"Excuse me a moment; I 'm afraid that's one of my cats out in the
+wet."  He returned a minute later with a wet cat in his arms.  "They
+will get out," he said to Shelton, with a smile on his thin face,
+suffused by stooping.  And absently he stroked the dripping cat,
+while a drop of wet ran off his nose.  "Poor pussy, poor pussy!"  The
+sound of that "Poor pussy!" like nothing human in its cracked
+superiority, the softness of that smile, like the smile of gentleness
+itself, haunted Shelton till he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ACADEMIC
+
+The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers
+entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men.  The
+spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its
+concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was
+from church dogmas.
+
+"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the
+club.
+
+But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel
+suits were coming out.
+
+"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.
+
+Shelton shook his head.  Never before had he felt such love for this
+old city.  It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it
+seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble.
+Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition,
+radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the
+perfume of a woman's dress.  At the entrance of a college they
+glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of
+a window flowerbox--secluded, mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of
+the sacred past.  Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face
+and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the
+noticeboard.  The college porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-
+mouthed--stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude.
+An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous
+air to multitudes of pecadilloes.  His blue eyes rested on the
+travellers.  "I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak I
+shall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make," they
+seemed to say.
+
+Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its
+handle.  A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was
+snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain
+was fastened stayed immovable.  Through this narrow mouth, human
+metal had been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
+
+"Come along," said Shelton.
+
+They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room
+where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred
+youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass,
+thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there,
+serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter.  When they
+had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty
+from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked
+in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic
+--and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the
+forest college, of the forest country in the finest world.  The
+streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this
+after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college--spaciously
+majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe,
+the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow
+of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of
+rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety.  The
+garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty
+water-bottles, failed to rouse him.  Nor when they passed the
+staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate
+disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse.  High on that staircase were
+the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by
+which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the
+moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after.  His coach's
+face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off
+knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.
+
+They passed their tutor's staircase.
+
+"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should
+like to see him.  Shall we go and look him up?"
+
+"Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.
+
+Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
+
+"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.
+
+A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat
+pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
+
+"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.
+
+"Don't you know me, sir?"
+
+"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it?  I didn't recognise you with a
+beard."
+
+Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels,
+chuckled feebly.
+
+"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.
+
+"Shelton?  Oh yes!  How do you do, Shelton?  Sit down; take a cigar";
+and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them
+up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all
+you know, why come and wake me up like this?"
+
+Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking,
+"Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this?  "And Shelton, who
+could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar.
+The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains;
+the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet;
+the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps;
+the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely
+comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his
+little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge
+meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon.  The door
+was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown,
+whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.
+
+"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air,
+"am I intruding, Turl?"
+
+The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured,
+
+"Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"
+
+The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with
+his fine eyes.
+
+Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the new-
+comer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.
+
+"Trimmer and Washer are coming round," he said, and as he spoke the
+door opened to admit these gentlemen.  Of the same height, but
+different appearance, their manner was faintly jocular, faintly
+supercilious, as if they tolerated everything.  The one whose name
+was Trimmer had patches of red on his large cheek-bones, and on his
+cheeks a bluish tint.  His lips were rather full, so that he had a
+likeness to a spider.  Washer, who was thin and pale, wore an
+intellectual smile.
+
+The little fat host moved the hand that held the meerschaum.
+
+"Crocker, Shelton," he said.
+
+An awkward silence followed.  Shelton tried to rouse the cultured
+portion of his wits; but the sense that nothing would be treated
+seriously paralysed his faculties; he stayed silent, staring at the
+glowing tip of his cigar.  It seemed to him unfair to have intruded
+on these gentlemen without its having been made quite clear to them
+beforehand who and what he was; he rose to take his leave, but Washer
+had begun to speak.
+
+"Madame Bovary!" he said quizzically, reading the title of the book
+on the little fat man's bookrest; and, holding it closer to his
+boiled-looking eyes, he repeated, as though it were a joke, "Madame
+Bovary!"
+
+"Do you mean to say, Turl, that you can stand that stuff?" said
+Berryman.
+
+As might have been expected, this celebrated novel's name had
+galvanised him into life; he strolled over to the bookcase, took down
+a book, opened it, and began to read, wandering in a desultory way
+about the room.
+
+"Ha!  Berryman," said a conciliatory voice behind--it came from
+Trimmer, who had set his back against the hearth, and grasped with
+either hand a fistful of his gown--"the book's a classic!"
+
+"Classic!" exclaimed Berryman, transfixing Shelton with his eyes;
+"the fellow ought to have been horsewhipped for writing such
+putridity!"
+
+A feeling of hostility instantly sprang up in Shelton; he looked at
+his little host, who, however, merely blinked.
+
+"Berryman only means," explains Washer, a certain malice in his
+smile, "that the author is n't one of his particular pets."
+
+"For God's sake, you know, don't get Berryman on his horse!"  growled
+the little fat man suddenly.
+
+Berryman returned his volume to the shelf and took another down.
+There was something almost godlike in his sarcastic absent-
+mindedness.
+
+"Imagine a man writing that stuff," he said, "if he'd ever been at
+Eton!  What do we want to know about that sort of thing?  A writer
+should be a sportsman and a gentleman"; and again he looked down over
+his chin at Shelton, as though expecting him to controvert the
+sentiment.
+
+"Don't you--" began the latter.
+
+But Berryman's attention had wandered to the wall.
+
+"I really don't care," said he, "to know what a woman feels when she
+is going to the dogs; it does n't interest me."
+
+The voice of Trimmer made things pleasant:
+
+"Question of moral standards, that, and nothing more."
+
+He had stretched his legs like compasses,--and the way he grasped his
+gown-wings seemed to turn him to a pair of scales.  His lowering
+smile embraced the room, deprecating strong expressions.  "After
+all," he seemed to say, "we are men of the world; we know there 's
+not very much in anything.  This is the modern spirit; why not give
+it a look in?"
+
+"Do I understand you to say, Berryman, that you don't enjoy a spicy
+book?" asked Washer with his smile; and at this question the little
+fat man sniggered, blinking tempestuously, as if to say, "Nothing
+pleasanter, don't you know, before a hot fire in cold weather."
+
+Berryman paid no attention to the impertinent inquiry, continuing to
+dip into his volume and walk up and down.
+
+"I've nothing to say," he remarked, stopping before Shelton, and
+looking down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being
+justified through Art.  I call a spade a spade."
+
+Shelton did not answer, because he could not tell whether Berryman
+was addressing him or society at large.  And Berryman went on:
+
+"Do we want to know about the feelings of a middle-class woman with a
+taste for vice?   Tell me the point of it.  No man who was in the
+habit of taking baths would choose such a subject."
+
+"You come to the question of-ah-subjects," the voice of Trimmer
+genially buzzed he had gathered his garments tight across his back-
+"my dear fellow, Art, properly applied, justifies all subjects."
+
+"For Art," squeaked Berryman, putting back his second volume and
+taking down a third, "you have Homer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Ossian;
+for garbage, a number of unwashed gentlemen."
+
+There was a laugh; Shelton glanced round at all in turn.  With the
+exception of Crocker, who was half asleep and smiling idiotically,
+they wore, one and all, a look as if by no chance could they consider
+any subject fit to move their hearts; as if, one and all, they were
+so profoundly anchored on the sea of life that waves could only seem
+impertinent.  It may have been some glimmer in this glance of
+Shelton's that brought Trimmer once more to the rescue with his
+compromising air.
+
+"The French," said he, "have quite a different standard from
+ourselves in literature, just as they have a different standard in
+regard to honour.  All this is purely artificial."
+
+What he, meant, however, Shelton found it difficult to tell.
+
+"Honour," said Washer, "'l'honneur, die Ehre' duelling, unfaithful
+wives---"
+
+He was clearly going to add to this, but it was lost; for the little
+fat man, taking the meerschaum with trembling fingers, and holding it
+within two inches of his chin, murmured:
+
+"You fellows, Berryman's awf'ly strong on honour."
+
+He blinked twice, and put the meerschaum back between his lips.
+
+Without returning the third volume to its shelf, Berryman took down a
+fourth; with chest expanded, he appeared about to use the books as
+dumb-bells.
+
+"Quite so," said Trimmer; "the change from duelling to law courts is
+profoundly---"
+
+Whether he were going to say "significant" or "insignificant," in
+Shelton's estimate he did not know himself.  Fortunately Berryman
+broke in:
+
+"Law courts or not, when a man runs away with a wife of mine, I shall
+punch his head!"
+
+"Come, come!"  said Turner, spasmodically grasping his two wings.
+
+Shelton had a gleam of inspiration.  "If your wife deceived you," he
+thought, looking at Trimmer's eyes, "you 'd keep it quiet, and hold
+it over her."
+
+Washer passed his hand over his pale chaps: his smile had never
+wavered; he looked like one for ever lost in the making of an
+epigram.
+
+The punching theorist stretched his body, holding the books level
+with his shoulders, as though to stone his hearers with his point of
+view.  His face grew paler, his fine eyes finer, his lips ironical.
+Almost painful was this combination of the "strong" man and the
+student who was bound to go to pieces if you hit him a smart blow.
+
+"As for forgiving faithless wives," he said, "and all that sort of
+thing, I don't believe in sentiment."
+
+The words were high-pitched and sarcastic.  Shelton looked hastily
+around.  All their faces were complacent.  He grew red, and suddenly
+remarked, in a soft; clear voice:
+
+"I see!"
+
+He was conscious that he had never before made an impression of this
+sort, and that he never would again.  The cold hostility flashing out
+all round was most enlightening; it instantly gave way to the polite,
+satirical indulgence peculiar to highly-cultivated men.  Crocker rose
+nervously; he seemed scared, and was obviously relieved when Shelton,
+following his example, grasped the little fat man's hand, who said
+good-night in a voice shaken by tobacco.
+
+"Who are your unshaven friends?" he heard as the door was closed
+behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+AN INCIDENT
+
+"Eleven o'clock," said Crocker, as they went out of college.  "I
+don't feel sleepy; shall we stroll along the 'High' a bit?"
+
+Shelton assented; he was too busy thinking of his encounter with the
+dons to heed the soreness of his feet.  This, too, was the last day
+of his travels, for he had not altered his intention of waiting at
+Oxford till July.
+
+"We call this place the heart of knowledge," he said, passing a great
+building that presided, white and silent, over darkness; "it seems to
+me as little that, as Society is the heart of true gentility."
+
+Crocker's answer was a grunt; he was looking at the stars,
+calculating possibly in how long he could walk to heaven.
+
+"No," proceeded Shelton; "we've too much common-sense up here to
+strain our minds.  We know when it's time to stop.  We pile up news
+of Papias and all the verbs in 'ui' but as for news of life or of
+oneself!  Real seekers after knowledge are a different sort.  They
+fight in the dark--no quarter given.  We don't grow that sort up
+here."
+
+"How jolly the limes smell!"  said Crocker.
+
+He had halted opposite a garden, and taken hold of Shelton by a
+button of his coat.  His eyes, like a dog's, stared wistfully.  It
+seemed as though he wished to speak, but feared to give offence.
+
+"They tell you," pursued Shelton, "that we learn to be gentlemen up
+here.  We learn that better through one incident that stirs our
+hearts than we learn it here in all the time we're up."
+
+"Hum!"  muttered Crocker, twisting at the button; "those fellows who
+seemed the best sorts up here have turned out the best sorts
+afterwards."
+
+"I hope not," said Shelton gloomily; "I was a snob when I was up
+here.  I believed all I was told, anything that made things pleasant;
+my "set" were nothing but---"
+
+Crocker smiled in the darkness; he had been too "cranky" to belong to
+Shelton's "set."
+
+"You never were much like your 'set,' old chap," he said.
+
+Shelton turned away, sniffing the perfume of the limes.  Images were
+thronging through his mind.  The faces of his old friends strangely
+mixed with those of people he had lately met--the girl in the train,
+Ferrand, the lady with the short, round, powdered face, the little
+barber; others, too, and floating, mysterious,--connected with them
+all, Antonia's face.  The scent of the lime-trees drifted at him with
+its magic sweetness.  From the street behind, the footsteps of the
+passers-by sounded muffled, yet exact, and on the breeze was borne
+the strain: "For he's a jolly good fellow!"
+
+"For he's a jolly good fellow!  For he's a jolly good fe-ellow!  And
+so say all of us!"
+
+"Ah!" he said, "they were good chaps."
+
+"I used to think," said Crocker dreamily, "that some of them had too
+much side."
+
+And Shelton laughed.
+
+"The thing sickens me," said he, "the whole snobbish, selfish
+business.  The place sickens me, lined with cotton-wool-made so
+beastly comfortable."
+
+Crocker shook his head.
+
+"It's a splendid old place," he said, his eyes fastening at last on
+Shelton's boots.  "You know, old chap," he stammered, "I think you--
+you ought to take care!"
+
+"Take care?  What of?"
+
+Crocker pressed his arm convulsively.
+
+"Don't be waxy, old boy," he said; "I mean that you seem somehow--to
+be--to be losing yourself."
+
+"Losing myself!  Finding myself, you mean!"
+
+Crocker did not answer; his face was disappointed.  Of what exactly
+was he thinking?  In Shelton's heart there was a bitter pleasure in
+knowing that his friend was uncomfortable on his account, a sort of
+contempt, a sort of aching.  Crocker broke the silence.
+
+"I think I shall do a bit more walking to-night," he said; "I feel
+very fit.  Don't you really mean to come any further with me, Bird?"
+
+And there was anxiety in his voice, as though Shelton were in danger
+of missing something good.  The latter's feet had instantly begun to
+ache and burn.
+
+"No!"?  he said; "you know what I'm staying here for."
+
+Crocker nodded.
+
+"She lives near here.  Well, then, I'll say good-bye.  I should like
+to do another ten miles to-night."
+
+"My dear fellow, you're tired and lame."
+
+Crocker chuckled.
+
+"No," he said; "I want to get on.  See you in London.  Good-bye!"
+and, gripping Shelton's hand, he turned and limped away.
+
+Shelton called after him: "Don't be an idiot: You 'll only knock
+yourself up."
+
+But the sole answer was the pale moon of Crocker's face screwed round
+towards him in the darkness, and the waving of his stick.
+
+Shelton strolled slowly on; leaning over the bridge, he watched the
+oily gleam of lamps, on the dark water underneath the trees.  He felt
+relieved, yet sorry.  His thoughts were random, curious, half
+mutinous, half sweet.  That afternoon five years ago, when he had
+walked back from the river with Antonia across the Christchurch
+meadows, was vivid to his mind; the scent of that afternoon had never
+died away from him-the aroma of his love.  Soon she would be his
+wife--his wife!  The faces of the dons sprang up before him.  They
+had wives, perhaps.  Fat, lean, satirical, and compromising--what was
+it that through diversity they had in common?  Cultured intolerance!
+.  .  .  Honour!  .  .  .  A queer subject to discuss.  Honour!  The
+honour that made a fuss, and claimed its rights!  And Shelton smiled.
+"As if man's honour suffered when he's injured!"  And slowly he
+walked along the echoing, empty street to his room at the Bishop's
+Head.  Next morning he received the following wire:
+
+     Thirty miles left eighteen hours heel bad but going
+     strong                         CROCKER
+
+He passed a fortnight at the Bishop's Head, waiting for the end of
+his probation, and the end seemed long in coming.  To be so near
+Antonia, and as far as if he lived upon another planet, was worse
+than ever.  Each day he took a sculling skiff, and pulled down to
+near Holm Oaks, on the chance of her being on the river; but the
+house was two miles off, and the chance but slender.  She never came.
+After spending the afternoons like this he would return, pulling hard
+against the stream, with a queer feeling of relief, dine heartily,
+and fall adreaming over his cigar.  Each morning he awoke in an
+excited mood, devoured his letter if he had one, and sat down to
+write to her.  These letters of his were the most amazing portion of
+that fortnight.  They were remarkable for failing to express any
+single one of his real thoughts, but they were full of sentiments
+which were not what he was truly feeling; and when he set himself to
+analyse, he had such moments of delirium that he was scared, and
+shocked, and quite unable to write anything.  He made the discovery
+that no two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel,
+except, perhaps, in situations with which he could not connect
+Antonia's ice-blue eyes and brilliant smile.  All the world was too
+engaged in planning decency.
+
+Absorbed by longings, he but vaguely realised the turmoil of
+Commemoration, which had gathered its hundreds for their annual cure
+of salmon mayonnaise and cheap champagne.  In preparation for his
+visit to Holm Oaks he shaved his beard and had some clothes sent down
+from London.  With them was forwarded a letter from Ferrand, which
+ran as follows:
+
+
+IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
+FOLKESTONE,
+
+June 20.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,
+
+Forgive me for not having written to you before, but I have been so
+bothered that I have felt no taste for writing; when I have the time,
+I have some curious stories to tell you.  Once again I have
+encountered that demon of misfortune which dogs my footsteps.  Being
+occupied all day and nearly all night upon business which brings me a
+heap of worries and next to no profit, I have no chance to look after
+my things.  Thieves have entered my room, stolen everything, and left
+me an empty box.  I am once again almost without clothes, and know
+not where to turn to make that figure necessary for the fulfilment of
+my duties.  You see, I am not lucky.  Since coming to your country,
+the sole piece of fortune I have had was to tumble on a man like you.
+Excuse me for not writing more at this moment.  Hoping that you are
+in good health, and in affectionately pressing your hand,
+          I am,
+               Always your devoted
+                         LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+
+Upon reading this letter Shelton had once more a sense of being
+exploited, of which he was ashamed; he sat down immediately and wrote
+the following reply:
+
+BISHOPS HEAD HOTEL,
+OXFORD,
+
+June 25.
+
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am grieved to hear of your misfortunes.  I was much hoping that you
+had made a better start.  I enclose you Post Office Orders for four
+pounds.  Always glad to hear from you.
+
+Yours sincerely,
+
+RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+He posted it with the satisfaction that a man feels who nobly shakes
+off his responsibilities.
+
+Three days before July he met with one of those disturbing incidents
+which befall no persons who attend quietly to their, property and
+reputation.
+
+The night was unbearably hot, and he had wandered out with his cigar;
+a woman came sidling up and spoke to him.  He perceived her to be one
+of those made by men into mediums for their pleasure, to feel
+sympathy with whom was sentimental.  Her face was flushed, her
+whisper hoarse; she had no attractions but the curves of a tawdry
+figure.  Shelton was repelled by her proprietary tone, by her blowzy
+face, and by the scent of patchouli.  Her touch on his arm startled
+him, sending a shiver through his marrow; he almost leaped aside, and
+walked the faster.  But her breathing as she followed sounded
+laboured; it suddenly seemed pitiful that a woman should be panting
+after him like that.
+
+"The least I can do," he thought, "is to speak to her."  He stopped,
+and, with a mixture of hardness and compassion, said, "It 's
+impossible."
+
+In spite of her smile, he saw by her disappointed eyes that she
+accepted the impossibility.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said.
+
+She muttered something.  Shelton shook his head.
+
+"I 'm sorry," he said once more.  "Good.-night."
+
+The woman bit her lower lip.
+
+"Good-night," she answered dully.
+
+At the corner of the street he turned his head.  The woman was
+hurrying uneasily; a policeman coming from behind had caught her by
+the arm.
+
+His heart began to beat.  "Heavens!"  he thought, "what shall I do
+now?"  His first impulse was to walk away, and think no more about it
+--to act, indeed, like any averagely decent man who did not care to
+be concerned in such affairs.
+
+He retraced his steps, however, and halted half a dozen paces from
+their figures.
+
+"Ask the gentleman!  He spoke to me," she was saying in her brassy
+voice, through the emphasis of which Shelton could detect her fear.
+
+"That's all right," returned the policeman, "we know all about that."
+
+"You--police!"  cried the woman tearfully; "I 've got to get my
+living, have n't I, the same as you?"
+
+Shelton hesitated, then, catching the expression in her frightened
+face, stepped forward.  The policeman turned, and at the sight of his
+pale, heavy jowl, cut by the cheek-strap, and the bullying eyes, he
+felt both hate and fear, as if brought face to face with all that he
+despised and loathed, yet strangely dreaded.  The cold certainty of
+law and order upholding the strong, treading underfoot the weak, the
+smug front of meanness that only the purest spirits may attack,
+seemed to be facing him.  And the odd thing was, this man was only
+carrying out his duty.  Shelton moistened his lips.
+
+"You're not going to charge her?"
+
+"Aren't I?" returned the policeman.
+
+"Look here; constable, you 're making a mistake."
+
+The policeman took out his note-book.
+
+"Oh, I 'm making a mistake?  I 'll take your name and address,
+please; we have to report these things."
+
+"By all means," said Shelton, angrily giving it.  "I spoke to her
+first."
+
+"Perhaps you'll come up to the court tomorrow morning, and repeat
+that," replied the policeman, with incivility.
+
+Shelton looked at him with all the force at his command.
+
+"You had better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of
+uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded.
+
+"We 're not to be trifled with," returned the policeman in a
+threatening voice.
+
+Shelton could think of nothing but to repeat:
+
+"You had better be careful, constable."
+
+"You're a gentleman," replied the policeman.  "I'm only a policeman.
+You've got the riches, I've got the power."
+
+Grasping the woman's arm, he began to move along with her.
+
+Shelton turned, and walked away.
+
+He went to Grinnings' Club, and flung himself down upon a sofa.  His
+feeling was not one of pity for the woman, nor of peculiar anger with
+the policeman, but rather of dissatisfaction with himself.
+
+"What ought I to have done?" he thought, "the beggar was within his
+rights."
+
+He stared at the pictures on the wall, and a tide of disgust surged
+up in him.
+
+"One or other of us," he reflected, "we make these women what they
+are.  And when we've made them, we can't do without them; we don't
+want to; but we give them no proper homes, so that they're reduced to
+prowl about the streets, and then we run them in.  Ha! that's good--
+that's excellent!  We run them in!  And here we sit and carp.  But
+what do we do?  Nothing!  Our system is the most highly moral known.
+We get the benefit without soiling even the hem of our phylacteries--
+the women are the only ones that suffer.  And why should n't they--
+inferior things?"
+
+He lit a cigarette, and ordered the waiter to bring a drink.
+
+"I'll go to the Court," he thought; but suddenly it occurred to him
+that the case would get into the local papers.   The press would
+never miss so nice a little bit of scandal--"Gentleman v. Policeman!"
+And he had a vision of Antonia's father, a neighbouring and
+conscientious magistrate, solemnly reading this.  Someone, at all
+events, was bound to see his name and make a point of mentioning it
+too good to be missed!  And suddenly he saw with horror that to help
+the woman he would have to assert again that he had spoken to her
+first.  "I must go to the Court!" he kept thinking, as if to assure
+himself that he was not a coward.
+
+He lay awake half the night worrying over this dilemma.
+
+"But I did n't speak to her first," he told himself; "I shall only be
+telling a lie, and they 'll make me swear it, too!"
+
+He tried to persuade himself that this was against his principles,
+but at the bottom of his heart he knew that he would not object to
+telling such a lie if only guaranteed immune from consequences; it
+appeared to him, indeed, but obvious humanity.
+
+"But why should I suffer?" he thought; "I've done nothing.  It's
+neither reasonable nor just."
+
+He hated the unhappy woman who was causing him these horrors of
+uncertainty.  Whenever he decided one way or other, the policeman's
+face, with its tyrannical and muddy eyes, rose before him like a
+nightmare, and forced him to an opposite conviction.  He fell asleep
+at last with the full determination to go and see what happened.
+
+He woke with a sense of odd disturbance.  "I can do no good by
+going," he thought, remembering, aid lying very still; "they 're
+certain to believe the policeman; I shall only blacken myself for
+nothing;" and the combat began again within him, but with far less
+fury.  It was not what other people thought, not even the risk of
+perjury that mattered (all this he made quite clear)--it was Antonia.
+It was not fair to her to put himself in such a false position; in
+fact, not decent.
+
+He breakfasted.  In the room were some Americans, and the face of one
+young girl reminded him a little of Antonia.  Fainter and fainter
+grew the incident; it seemed to have its right proportions.
+
+Two hours later, looking at the clock, he found that it was lunch-
+time.  He had not gone, had not committed perjury; but he wrote to a
+daily paper, pointing out the danger run by the community from the
+power which a belief in their infallibility places in the hands of
+the police--how, since they are the sworn abettors of right and
+justice, their word is almost necessarily taken to be gospel; how one
+and all they hang together, from mingled interest and esprit de
+corps.  Was it not, he said, reasonable to suppose that amongst
+thousands of human beings invested with such opportunities there
+would be found bullies who would take advantage of them, and rise to
+distinction in the service upon the helplessness of the unfortunate
+and the cowardice of people with anything to lose?  Those who had in
+their hands the sacred duties of selecting a practically
+irresponsible body of men were bound, for the sake of freedom and
+humanity, to exercise those duties with the utmost care and
+thoroughness .  .  .  .
+
+However true, none of this helped him to think any better of himself
+at heart, and he was haunted by the feeling that a stout and honest
+bit of perjury was worth more than a letter to a daily paper.
+
+He never saw his letter printed, containing, as it did, the germs of
+an unpalatable truth.
+
+In the afternoon he hired a horse, and galloped on Port Meadow.  The
+strain of his indecision over, he felt like a man recovering from an
+illness, and he carefully abstained from looking at the local papers.
+There was that within him, however, which resented the worsting of
+his chivalry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+HOLM OAKS
+
+Holm Oaks stood back but little from the road--an old manor-house,
+not set upon display, but dwelling close to its barns, stables, and
+walled gardens, like a good mother; long, flat-roofed, red, it had
+Queen Anne windows, on whose white-framed diamond panes the sunbeams
+glinted.
+
+In front of it a fringe of elms, of all trees the tree of most
+established principle, bordered the stretch of turf between the
+gravel drive and road; and these elms were the homes of rooks of all
+birds the most conventional.  A huge aspen--impressionable creature--
+shivered and shook beyond, apologising for appearance among such
+imperturbable surroundings.  It was frequented by a cuckoo, who came
+once a year to hoot at the rules of life, but seldom made long stay;
+for boys threw stones at it, exasperated by the absence of its
+morals.
+
+The village which clustered in the dip had not yet lost its dread of
+motor-cars.  About this group of flat-faced cottages with gabled
+roofs the scent of hay, manure, and roses clung continually; just now
+the odour of the limes troubled its servile sturdiness.  Beyond the
+dip, again, a square-towered church kept within grey walls the record
+of the village flock, births, deaths, and marriages--even the births
+of bastards, even the deaths of suicides--and seemed to stretch a
+hand invisible above the heads of common folk to grasp the forgers of
+the manor-house.  Decent and discreet, the two roofs caught the eye
+to the exclusion of all meaner dwellings, seeming to have joined in a
+conspiracy to keep them out of sight.
+
+The July sun had burned his face all the way from Oxford, yet pale
+was Shelton when he walked up the drive and rang the bell.
+
+"Mrs. Dennant at home, Dobson?" he asked of the grave butler, who,
+old servant that he was, still wore coloured trousers (for it was not
+yet twelve o'clock, and he regarded coloured trousers up to noon as a
+sacred distinction between the footmen and himself).
+
+"Mrs. Dennant," replied this personage, raising his round and
+hairless face, while on his mouth appeared that apologetic pout which
+comes of living with good families--"Mrs. Dennant has gone into the
+village, sir; but Miss Antonia is in the morning-room."
+
+Shelton crossed the panelled, low-roofed hall, through whose far side
+the lawn was visible, a vision of serenity.  He mounted six wide,
+shallow steps, and stopped.  From behind a closed door there came the
+sound of scales, and he stood, a prey to his emotions, the notes
+mingling in his ears with the beating of his heart.  He softly turned
+the handle, a fixed smile on his lips.
+
+Antonia was at the piano; her head was bobbing to the movements of
+her fingers, and pressing down the pedals were her slim monotonously
+moving feet.  She had been playing tennis, for a racquet and her tam-
+o'-shanter were flung down, and she was dressed in a blue skirt and
+creamy blouse, fitting collarless about her throat.  Her face was
+flushed, and wore a little frown; and as her fingers raced along the
+keys, her neck swayed, and the silk clung and shivered on her arms.
+
+Shelton's eyes fastened on the silent, counting lips, on the fair
+hair about her forehead, the darker eyebrows slanting down towards
+the nose, the undimpled cheeks with the faint finger-marks beneath
+the ice-blue eyes, the softly-pouting and undimpled chin, the whole
+remote, sweet, suntouched, glacial face.
+
+She turned her head, and, springing up, cried:
+
+"Dick!  What fun!"  She gave him both her hands, but her smiling face
+said very plainly, "Oh; don't let us be sentimental!"
+
+"Are n't you glad to see me?" muttered Shelton.
+
+"Glad to see you!  You are funny, Dick!--as if you did n't know!
+Why, you 've shaved your beard!  Mother and Sybil have gone into the
+village to see old Mrs. Hopkins.  Shall we go out?  Thea and the boys
+are playing tennis.  It's so jolly that you 've come!  "She caught up
+the tam-o'-shanter, and pinned it to her hair.  Almost as tall as
+Shelton, she looked taller, with arms raised and loose sleeves
+quivering like wings to the movements of her fingers.  "We might have
+a game before lunch; you can have my other racquet."
+
+"I've got no things," said Shelton blankly.
+
+Her calm glance ran over him.
+
+"You can have some of old Bernard's; he's got any amount.  I'll wait
+for you."  She swung her racquet, looked at Shelton, cried, "Be
+quick!"  and vanished.
+
+Shelton ran up-stairs, and dressed in the undecided way of men
+assuming other people's clothes.  She was in the hall when he
+descended, humming a tune and prodding at her shoe; her smile showed
+all her pearly upper teeth.  He caught hold of her sleeve and
+whispered:
+
+"Antonia!"
+
+The colour rushed into her cheeks; she looked back across her
+shoulder.
+
+"Come along, old Dick!"  she cried; and, flinging open the glass
+door, ran into the garden.
+
+Shelton followed.
+
+The tennis-ground was divided by tall netting from a paddock.  A holm
+oak tree shaded one corner, and its thick dark foliage gave an
+unexpected depth to the green smoothness of the scene.  As Shelton
+and Antonia carne up, Bernard Dennant stopped and cordially grasped
+Shelton's hand.  From the far side of the net Thea, in a shortish
+skirt, tossed back her straight fair hair, and, warding off the sun,
+came strolling up to them. The umpire, a small boy of twelve, was
+lying on his stomach, squealing and tickling a collie.  Shelton bent
+and pulled his hair.
+
+"Hallo, Toddles! you young ruffian!"
+
+One and all they stood round Shelton, and there was a frank and
+pitiless inquiry in their eyes, in the angle of their noses something
+chaffing and distrustful, as though about him were some subtle
+poignant scent exciting curiosity and disapproval.
+
+When the setts were over, and the girls resting in the double hammock
+underneath the holm oak, Shelton went with Bernard to the paddock to
+hunt for the lost balls.
+
+"I say, old chap," said his old school-fellow, smiling dryly, "you're
+in for a wigging from the Mater."
+
+"A wigging?" murmured Shelton.
+
+"I don't know much about it, but from something she let drop it seems
+you've been saying some queer things in your letters to Antonia"; and
+again he looked at Shelton with his dry smile.
+
+"Queer things?" said the latter angrily. "What d' you mean?"
+
+"Oh, don't ask me.  The Mater thinks she's in a bad way--unsettled,
+or what d' you call at.  You've been telling her that things are not
+what they seem.  That's bad, you know"; and still smiling he shook
+his head.
+
+Shelton dropped his eyes.
+
+"Well, they are n't!" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's all right!  But don't bring your philosophy down here,
+old chap."
+
+"Philosophy!" said Shelton, puzzled.
+
+"Leave us a sacred prejudice or two."
+
+"Sacred!  Nothing's sacred, except--"  But Shelton did not finish his
+remark. "I don't understand," he said.
+
+"Ideals, that sort of thing!  You've been diving down below the line
+of 'practical politics,' that's about the size of it, my boy"; and,
+stooping suddenly, he picked up the last ball. "There is the Mater!"
+Shelton saw Mrs. Dennant coming down the lawn with her second
+daughter, Sybil.
+
+By the time they reached the holm oak the three girls had departed
+towards the house, walking arm in arm, and Mrs. Dennant was standing
+there alone, in a grey dress, talking to an undergardener.  Her
+hands, cased in tan gauntlets, held a basket which warded off the
+bearded gardener from the severe but ample lines of her
+useful-looking skirt.  The collie, erect upon his haunches, looked at
+their two faces, pricking his ears in his endeavour to appreciate how
+one of these two bipeds differed from the other.
+
+"Thank you; that 'll do, Bunyan.  Ah, Dick!  Charmin' to see you
+here, at last!"
+
+In his intercourse with Mrs. Dennant, Shelton never failed to mark
+the typical nature of her personality.  It always seemed to him that
+he had met so many other ladies like her.  He felt that her
+undoubtable quality had a non-individual flavour, as if standing for
+her class.  She thought that standing for herself was not the thing;
+yet she was full of character.  Tall, with nose a trifle beaked,
+long, sloping chin, and an assured, benevolent mouth, showing,
+perhaps, too many teeth--though thin, she was not unsubstantial.  Her
+accent in speaking showed her heritage; it was a kind of drawl which
+disregarded vulgar merits such as tone; leaned on some syllables, and
+despised the final 'g'--the peculiar accent, in fact, of aristocracy,
+adding its deliberate joys to life.
+
+Shelton knew that she had many interests; she was never really idle,
+from the time (7 A.M.) when her maid brought her a little china pot
+of tea with a single biscuit and her pet dog, Tops, till eleven
+o'clock at night, when she lighted a wax candle in a silver
+candlestick, and with this in one hand, and in the other a new novel,
+or, better still, one of those charming volumes written by great
+people about the still greater people they have met, she said good-
+night to her children and her guests.  No!  What with photography,
+the presidency of a local league, visiting the rich, superintending
+all the poor, gardening, reading, keeping all her ideas so tidy that
+no foreign notions might stray in, she was never idle.  The
+information she collected from these sources was both vast and
+varied, but she never let it flavour her opinions, which lacked
+sauce, and were drawn from some sort of dish into which, with all her
+class, she dipped her fingers.
+
+He liked her.  No one could help liking her.  She was kind, and of
+such good quality, with a suggestion about her of thin, excellent,
+and useful china; and she was scented, too--not with verbena,
+violets, or those essences which women love, but with nothing, as if
+she had taken stand against all meretricity.  In her intercourse with
+persons not "quite the thing" (she excepted the vicar from this
+category, though his father had dealt in haberdashery), her
+refinement, gently, unobtrusively, and with great practical good
+sense, seemed continually to murmur, "I am, and you--well, are you,
+don't you know?" But there was no self-consciousness about this
+attitude, for she was really not a common woman.  She simply could
+not help it; all her people had done this.  Their nurses breathed
+above them in their cradles something that, inhaled into their
+systems, ever afterwards prevented them from taking good, clear
+breaths.  And her manner!  Ah! her manner--it concealed the inner
+woman so as to leave doubt of her existence!
+
+Shelton listened to the kindly briskness with which she dwelt upon
+the under-gardener.
+
+"Poor Bunyan! he lost his wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful
+just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'.  I 've done all
+I can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'.  And, my
+dear Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees!  I'm afraid he's
+goin' mad; I shall have to send him away; poor fellow!"
+
+It was clear that she sympathised with Bunyan, or, rather, believed
+him entitled to a modicum of wholesome grief, the loss of wives being
+a canonised and legal, sorrow.  But excesses!  O dear, no!
+
+"I 've told him I shall raise his wages," she sighed.  "He used to be
+such a splendid gardener!  That reminds me, my dear Dick; I want to
+have a talk with you.  Shall we go in to lunch?"
+
+Consulting the memorandum-book in which she had been noting the case
+of Mrs. Hopkins, she slightly preceded Shelton to the house.
+
+It was somewhat late that afternoon when Shelton had his "wigging";
+nor did it seem to him, hypnotised by the momentary absence of
+Antonia, such a very serious affair.
+
+"Now, Dick," the Honourable Mrs. Dennant said, in her decisive drawl,
+"I don't think it 's right to put ideas into Antonia's head."
+
+"Ideas!"  murmured Shelton in confusion.
+
+"We all know," continued Mrs. Dennant, "that things are not always
+what they ought to be."
+
+Shelton looked at her; she was seated at her writing-table,
+addressing in her large, free writing a dinner invitation to a
+bishop.  There was not the faintest trace of awkwardness about her,
+yet Shelton could not help a certain sense of shock.  If she--she--
+did not think things were what they ought to be--in a bad way things
+must be indeed!
+
+"Things!"  he muttered.
+
+Mrs. Dennant looked at him firmly but kindly with the eyes that would
+remind him of a hare's.
+
+"She showed me some of your letters, you know.  Well, it 's not a bit
+of use denyin', my dear Dick, that you've been thinkin' too much
+lately."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had done her an injustice; she handled
+"things" as she handled under-gardeners--put them away when they
+showed signs of running to extremes.
+
+"I can't help that, I 'm afraid," he answered.
+
+"My dear boy!  you'll never get on that way.  Now, I want you to
+promise me you won't talk to Antonia about those sort of things."
+
+Shelton raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Oh, you know what I mean!"
+
+He saw that to press Mrs. Dennant to say what she meant by "things"
+would really hurt her sense of form; it would be cruel to force her
+thus below the surface!
+
+He therefore said, "Quite so!"
+
+To his extreme surprise, flushing the peculiar arid pathetic flush of
+women past their prime, she drawled out:
+
+"About the poor--and criminals--and marriages--there was that
+wedding, don't you know?"
+
+Shelton bowed his head.  Motherhood had been too strong for her; in
+her maternal flutter she had committed the solecism of touching in so
+many words on "things."
+
+"Does n't she really see the fun," he thought, "in one man dining out
+of gold and another dining in the gutter; or in two married people
+living on together in perfect discord 'pour encourages les autres',
+or in worshipping Jesus Christ and claiming all her rights at the
+same time; or in despising foreigners because they are foreigners; or
+in war; or in anything that is funny?" But he did her a certain
+amount of justice by recognising that this was natural, since her
+whole life had been passed in trying not to see the fun in all these
+things.
+
+But Antonia stood smiling in the doorway.  Brilliant and gay she
+looked, yet resentful, as if she knew they had been talking of her.
+She sat down by Shelton's side, and began asking him about the
+youthful foreigner whom he had spoken of; and her eyes made him doubt
+whether she, too, saw the fun that lay in one human being patronising
+others.
+
+"But I suppose he's really good," she said, "I mean, all those things
+he told you about were only---"
+
+"Good!"  he answered, fidgeting; "I don't really know what the word
+means."
+
+Her eyes clouded.  "Dick, how can you?" they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton stroked her sleeve.
+
+"Tell us about Mr. Crocker," she said, taking no heed of his caress.
+
+"The lunatic!"  he said.
+
+"Lunatic!  Why, in your letters he was splendid."
+
+"So he is," said Shelton, half ashamed; "he's not a bit mad, really
+--that is, I only wish I were half as mad."
+
+"Who's that mad?" queried Mrs. Dennant from behind the urn--"Tom
+Crocker?  Ah, yes!  I knew his mother; she was a Springer."
+
+"Did he do it in the week?" said Thea, appearing in the window with a
+kitten.
+
+"I don't know," Shelton was obliged to answer.
+
+Thea shook back her hair.
+
+"I call it awfully slack of you not to have found out," she said.
+
+Antonia frowned.
+
+"You were very sweet to that young foreigner, Dick," she murmured
+with a smile at Shelton.  "I wish that we could see him."
+
+But Shelton shook his head.
+
+"It seems to me," he muttered, "that I did about as little for him as
+I could."
+
+Again her face grew thoughtful, as though his words had chilled her.
+
+"I don't see what more you could have done," she answered.
+
+A desire to get close to her, half fear, half ache, a sense of
+futility and bafflement, an inner burning, made him feel as though a
+flame were licking at his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ENGLISH
+
+Just as Shelton was starting to walk back to Oxford he met Mr.
+Dennant coming from a ride.  Antonia's father was a spare man of
+medium height, with yellowish face, grey moustache, ironical
+eyebrows, and some tiny crow's-feet.  In his old, short grey coat,
+with a little slit up the middle of the back, his drab cord breeches,
+ancient mahogany leggings, and carefully blacked boats, he had a dry,
+threadbare quality not without distinction.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  he said, in his quietly festive voice; "glad to see
+the pilgrim here, at last.  You're not off already?" and, laying his
+hand on Shelton's arm, he proposed to walk a little way with him
+across the fields.
+
+This was the first time they had met since the engagement; and
+Shelton began to nerve himself to express some sentiment, however
+bald, about it.  He squared his shoulders, cleared his throat, and
+looked askance at Mr. Dennant.  That gentleman was walking stiffly,
+his cord breeches faintly squeaking.  He switched a yellow, jointed
+cane against his leggings, and after each blow looked at his legs
+satirically.  He himself was rather like that yellow cane-pale, and
+slim, and jointed, with features arching just a little, like the
+arching of its handle.
+
+"They say it'll be a bad year for fruit," Shelton said at last.
+
+"My dear fellow, you don't know your farmer, I 'm afraid.  We ought
+to hang some farmers--do a world of good.  Dear souls!  I've got some
+perfect strawberries."
+
+"I suppose," said Shelton, glad to postpone the evil moment, "in a
+climate like this a man must grumble."
+
+"Quite so, quite so!  Look at us poor slaves of land-owners; if I
+couldn't abuse the farmers I should be wretched.  Did you ever see
+anything finer than this pasture?  And they want me to lower their
+rents!"
+
+And Mr. Dennant's glance satirically wavered, rested on Shelton, and
+whisked back to the ground as though he had seen something that
+alarmed him.  There was a pause.
+
+"Now for it!"  thought the younger man.
+
+Mr. Dennant kept his eyes fixed on his boots.
+
+"If they'd said, now," he remarked jocosely, "that the frost had
+nipped the partridges, there 'd have been some sense in it; but what
+can you expect?  They've no consideration, dear souls!"
+
+Shelton took a breath, and, with averted eyes, he hurriedly began:
+
+"It's awfully hard, sir, to---"
+
+Mr. Dennant switched his cane against his shin.
+
+"Yes," he said, "it 's awfully hard to put up with, but what can a
+fellow do?  One must have farmers.  Why, if it was n't for the
+farmers, there 'd be still a hare or two about the place!"
+
+Shelton laughed spasmodically; again he glanced askance at his future
+father-in-law.  What did the waggling of his head mean, the deepening
+of his crow's-feet, the odd contraction of the mouth?  And his eye
+caught Mr. Dennant's eye; its expression was queer above the fine,
+dry nose (one of the sort that reddens in a wind).
+
+"I've never had much to do with farmers," he said at last.
+
+"Have n't you?  Lucky fellow!  The most--yes, quite the most trying
+portion of the human species--next to daughters."
+
+"Well, sir, you can hardly expect me--" began Shelton.
+
+"I don't--oh, I don't!  D 'you know, I really believe we're in for a
+ducking."
+
+A large black cloud had covered up the sun, and some drops were
+spattering on Mr. Dennant's hard felt hat.
+
+Shelton welcomed the shower; it appeared to him an intervention on
+the part of Providence.  He would have to say something, but not now,
+later.
+
+"I 'll go on," he said; "I don't mind the rain.  But you'd better get
+back, sir."
+
+"Dear me!  I've a tenant in this cottage," said Mr. Dennant in his,
+leisurely, dry manner "and a beggar he is to poach, too.  Least we
+can do 's to ask for a little shelter; what do you think?" and
+smiling sarcastically, as though deprecating his intention to keep
+dry, he rapped on the door of a prosperous-looking cottage.
+
+It was opened by a girl of Antonia's age and height.
+
+"Ah, Phoebe!  Your father in?"
+
+"No," replied the girl, fluttering; "father's out, Mr. Dennant."
+
+"So sorry!  Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?"
+
+The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying,
+left them in the parlour.
+
+"What a pretty girl!" said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, she's a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but
+she won't leave her father.  Oh, he 's a charming rascal is that
+fellow!"
+
+This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he
+was further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking.  He
+walked over to the window.  The rain.  was coming down with fury,
+though a golden line far down the sky promised the shower's quick
+end.  "For goodness' sake," he thought, "let me say something,
+however idiotic, and get it over!"  But he did not turn; a kind of
+paralysis had seized on him.
+
+"Tremendous heavy rain!"  he said at last; "coming down in
+waterspouts."
+
+It would have been just as easy to say: "I believe your daughter to
+be the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I 'm going to make
+her happy!"  Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath
+required; but he couldn't say it!  He watched the rain stream and
+hiss against the leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with
+its insistent torrent; and he noticed with precision all the details
+of the process going on outside how the raindrops darted at the
+leaves like spears, and how the leaves shook themselves free a
+hundred times a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear,
+rolled over their edges, soft and quick.  He noticed, too, the
+mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at the hedge.
+
+Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain.  So
+disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned.  His future
+father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked
+boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the
+carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution.  It was
+not forbidding, stern, discouraging--not in the least; it had merely
+for the moment ceased to look satirical.  This was so startling that
+Shelton lost his chance of speaking.  There seemed a heart to Mr.
+Dennant's gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because
+he felt so.  But glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared
+at once.
+
+"What a day for ducks!"  he said; and again there was unmistakable
+alarm about the eye.  Was it possible that he, too, dreaded
+something?
+
+"I can't express---" began Shelton hurriedly.
+
+"Yes, it's beastly to get wet," said Mr. Dennant, and he sang--
+
+          "For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
+          And jump out anywhere."
+
+"You 'll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh?  Capital!
+There's the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must
+get my wife to put you between them---"
+
+          "For it's my delight of a starry night--"
+
+"The Bishop's a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell 's been in
+the court at least twice---"
+
+          "In the season of the year!"
+
+"Will you please to take some tea, gentlemen?" said the voice of
+Phoebe in the doorway.
+
+"No, thank you, Phoebe.  That girl ought to get married," went on Mr.
+Dennant, as Phoebe blushingly withdrew.  A flush showed queerly on
+his sallow cheeks.  "A shame to keep her tied like this to her
+father's apron-strings--selfish fellow, that!"  He looked up sharply,
+as if he had made a dangerous remark.
+
+          The keeper he was watching us,
+          For him we did n't care!
+
+Shelton suddenly felt certain that Antonia's father was just as
+anxious to say something expressive of his feelings, and as unable as
+himself.  And this was comforting.
+
+"You know, sir---" he began.
+
+But Mr. Dennant's eyebrows rose, his crow's-feet twinkled; his
+personality seemed to shrink together.
+
+"By Jove!"  he said, "it's stopped!  Now's our chance!  Come along,
+my dear fellow; delays are dangerous!"  and with his bantering
+courtesy he held the door for Shelton to pass out.  "I think we'll
+part here," he said--"I almost think so.  Good luck to you!"
+
+He held out his dry, yellow hand.  Shelton seized it, wrung it hard,
+and muttered the word:
+
+"Grateful!"
+
+Again Mr. Dennant's eyebrows quivered as if they had been tweaked; he
+had been found out, and he disliked it.  The colour in his face had
+died away; it was calm, wrinkled, dead-looking under the flattened,
+narrow brim of his black hat; his grey moustache drooped thinly; the
+crow's-feet hardened round his eyes; his nostrils were distended by
+the queerest smile.
+
+"Gratitude!"  he said; "almost a vice, is n't it?  Good-night!"
+
+Shelton's face quivered; he raised his hat, and, turning as abruptly
+as his senior, proceeded on his way.  He had been playing in a comedy
+that could only have been played in England.  He could afford to
+smile now at his past discomfort, having no longer the sense of duty
+unfulfilled.  Everything had been said that was right and proper to
+be said, in the way that we such things should say.  No violence had
+been done; he could afford to smile--smile at himself, at Mr.
+Dennant, at to-morrow; smile at the sweet aroma of the earth, the
+shy, unwilling sweetness that only rain brings forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE COUNTRY HOUSE
+
+The luncheon hour at Holm Oaks, was, as in many well-bred country
+houses--out of the shooting season, be it understood--the soulful
+hour.  The ferment of the daily doings was then at its full height,
+and the clamour of its conversation on the weather, and the dogs, the
+horses, neighbours, cricket, golf, was mingled with a literary
+murmur; for the Dennants were superior, and it was quite usual to
+hear remarks like these "Have you read that charmin' thing of
+Poser's?" or, "Yes, I've got the new edition of old Bablington:
+delightfully bound--so light."  And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as
+a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best.  For in July it had
+become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from
+London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no
+seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday.
+The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season.  It was
+their good pleasure not to.  A week or fortnight of it satisfied
+them.  They had a radical weakness for fresh air, and Antonia, even
+after her presentation two seasons back, had insisted on returning
+home, stigmatising London balls as "stuffy things."
+
+When Shelton arrived the stream had only just begun, but every day
+brought fresh, or rather jaded, people to occupy the old, dark,
+sweet-smelling bedrooms.  Individually, he liked his fellow-guests,
+but he found himself observing them.  He knew that, if a man judged
+people singly, almost all were better than himself; only when judged
+in bulk were they worthy of the sweeping criticisms he felt inclined
+to pass on them.  He knew this just as he knew that the conventions,
+having been invented to prevent man following his natural desires,
+were merely the disapproving sums of innumerable individual
+approvals.
+
+It was in the bulk; then, that he found himself observing.  But with
+his amiability and dread of notoriety he remained to all appearance a
+well-bred, docile creature, and he kept his judgments to himself.
+
+In the matter of intellect he made a rough division of the guests--
+those who accepted things without a murmur, those who accepted them
+with carping jocularity; in the matter of morals he found they all
+accepted things without the semblance of a kick.  To show sign of
+private moral judgment was to have lost your soul, and, worse, to be
+a bit of an outsider.  He gathered this by intuition rather than from
+conversation; for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and
+was carried on in the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of
+good breeding.  Shelton had never been able to acquire this tone, and
+he could not help feeling that the inability made him more or less an
+object of suspicion.  The atmosphere struck him as it never had
+before, causing him to feel a doubt of his gentility.  Could a man
+suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or misgivings, and remain a
+gentleman?  It seemed improbable.  One of his fellow-guests, a man
+called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and
+a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one day by
+remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
+seem to know his mind."  Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.
+
+Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and
+valued.  For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and
+wives than women.  Those things or phases of life with which people
+had no personal acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and
+a certain disapproval.  The principles of the upper class, in fact,
+were strictly followed.
+
+He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for
+recording currents foreign to itself.  Things he had never before
+noticed now had profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men
+spoke of women--not precisely with hostility, nor exactly with
+contempt best, perhaps, described as cultured jeering; never, of
+course, when men spoke of their own wives, mothers, sisters, or
+immediate friends, but merely when they spoke of any other women.  He
+reflected upon this, and came to the conclusion that, among the upper
+classes, each man's own property was holy, while other women were
+created to supply him with gossip, jests, and spice.  Another thing
+that struck him was the way in which the war then going on was made
+into an affair of class.  In their view it was a baddish business,
+because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost their lives,
+and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.  Humanity in
+general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor, incidentally,
+the country which belonged to them.  For there they were, all seated
+in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.
+
+Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
+Shelton returned from changing to his smoking-suit, and dropped into
+one of the great arm-chairs that even in summer made a semicircle
+round the fendered hearth.  Fresh from his good-night parting with
+Antonia, he sat perhaps ten minutes before he began to take in all
+the figures in their parti-coloured smoking jackets, cross-legged,
+with glasses in their hands, and cigars between their teeth.
+
+The man in the next chair roused him by putting down his tumbler with
+a tap, and seating himself upon the cushioned fender.  Through the
+mist of smoke, with shoulders hunched, elbows and knees crooked out,
+cigar protruding, beak-ways, below his nose, and the crimson collar
+of his smoking jacket buttoned close as plumage on his breast, he
+looked a little like a gorgeous bird.
+
+"They do you awfully well," he said.
+
+A voice from the chair on Shelton's right replied,
+
+"They do you better at Verado's."
+
+"The Veau d'Or 's the best place; they give you Turkish baths for
+nothing!"  drawled a fat man with a tiny mouth.
+
+The suavity of this pronouncement enfolded all as with a blessing.
+And at once, as if by magic, in the old, oak-panelled room, the world
+fell naturally into its three departments: that where they do you
+well; that where they do you better; and that where they give you
+Turkish baths for nothing.
+
+"If you want Turkish baths," said a tall youth with clean red face,
+who had come into the room, and stood, his mouth a little open, and
+long feet jutting with sweet helplessness in front of him, "you
+should go, you know, to Buda Pesth; most awfully rippin' there."
+
+Shelton saw an indescribable appreciation rise on every face, as
+though they had been offered truffles or something equally delicious.
+
+"Oh no, Poodles," said the man perched on the fender.  "A Johnny I
+know tells me they 're nothing to Sofia."  His face was transfigured
+by the subtle gloating of a man enjoying vice by proxy.
+
+"Ah!" drawled the small-mouthed man, "there 's nothing fit to hold a
+candle to Baghda-ad."
+
+Once again his utterance enfolded all as with a blessing, and once
+again the world fell into its three departments: that where they do
+you well; that where they do you better; and--Baghdad.
+
+Shelton thought to himself: "Why don't I know a place that's better
+than Baghdad?"
+
+He felt so insignificant.  It seemed that he knew none of these
+delightful spots; that he was of no use to any of his fellow-men;
+though privately he was convinced that all these speakers were as.
+ignorant as himself, and merely found it warming to recall such
+things as they had heard, with that peculiar gloating look.  Alas!
+his anecdotes would never earn for him that prize of persons in
+society, the label of a "good chap" and "sportsman."
+
+"Have you ever been in Baghdad?" he feebly asked.
+
+The fat man did not answer; he had begun an anecdote, and in his
+broad expanse of face his tiny mouth writhed like a caterpillar.  The
+anecdote was humorous.
+
+With the exception of Antonia, Shelton saw but little of the ladies,
+for, following the well-known custom of the country house, men and
+women avoided each other as much as might be.  They met at meals, and
+occasionally joined in tennis and in croquet; otherwise it seemed--
+almost Orientally--agreed that they were better kept apart.
+
+Chancing one day to enter the withdrawing room, while searching for
+Antonia, he found that he had lighted on a feminine discussion; he
+would have beaten a retreat, of course, but it seemed too obvious
+that he was merely looking for his fiancee, so, sitting down, he
+listened.
+
+The Honourable Charlotte Penguin, still knitting a silk tie--the
+sixth since that she had been knitting at Hyeres--sat on the low
+window-seat close to a hydrangea, the petals of whose round flowers
+almost kissed her sanguine cheek. Her eyes were fixed with languid
+aspiration on the lady who was speaking.  This was a square woman of
+medium height, with grey hair brushed from her low forehead, the
+expression of whose face was brisk and rather cross.  She was
+standing with a book, as if delivering a sermon.  Had she been a man
+she might have been described as a bright young man of business; for,
+though grey, she never could be old, nor ever lose the power of
+forming quick decisions.  Her features and her eyes were prompt and
+slightly hard, tinged with faith fanatical in the justice of her
+judgments, and she had that fussy simpleness of dress which indicates
+the right to meddle.  Not red, not white, neither yellow nor quite
+blue, her complexion was suffused with a certain mixture of these
+colours, adapted to the climate; and her smile had a strange sour
+sweetness, like nothing but the flavour of an apple on the turn.
+
+"I don't care what they tell you," she was saying--not offensively,
+though her voice seemed to imply that she had no time to waste in
+pleasing--" in all my dealings with them I've found it best to treat
+them quite like children."
+
+A lady, behind the Times, smiled; her mouth--indeed, her whole hard,
+handsome face--was reminiscent of dappled rocking-horses found in the
+Soho Bazaar.  She crossed her feet, and some rich and silk stuff
+rustled.  Her whole personality seemed to creak as, without looking,
+she answered in harsh tones:
+
+"I find the poor are most delightful persons."
+
+Sybil Dennant, seated on the sofa, with a feathery laugh shot a
+barking terrier dog at Shelton.
+
+"Here's Dick," she said.  "Well, Dick, what's your opinion?"
+
+Shelton looked around him, scared.  The elder ladies who had spoken
+had fixed their eyes on him, and in their gaze he read his utter
+insignificance.
+
+"Oh, that young man!" they seemed to say.  "Expect a practical remark
+from him?  Now, come!"
+
+"Opinion," he stammered, "of the poor?  I haven't any."
+
+The person on her feet, whose name was Mrs. Mattock, directing her
+peculiar sweet-sour smile at the distinguished lady with the Times,
+said:
+
+"Perhaps you 've not had experience of them in London, Lady
+Bonington?"
+
+Lady Bonington, in answer, rustled.
+
+"Oh, do tell us about the slums, Mrs. Mattock!"  cried Sybil.
+
+"Slumming must be splendid!  It's so deadly here--nothing but flannel
+petticoats."
+
+"The poor, my dear," began Mrs. Mattock, "are not the least bit what
+you think them---"
+
+"Oh, d' you know, I think they're rather nice!"  broke in Aunt
+Charlotte close to the hydrangea.
+
+"You think so?" said Mrs. Mattock sharply.  "I find they do nothing
+but grumble."
+
+"They don't grumble at me: they are delightful persons", and Lady
+Bonington gave Shelton a grim smile.
+
+He could not help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that
+rich, despotic personality would require a superhuman courage.
+
+"They're the most ungrateful people in the world," said Mrs. Mattock.
+
+"Why, then," thought Shelton, "do you go amongst them?"
+
+She continued, "One must do them good, one, must do one's duty, but
+as to getting thanks---"
+
+Lady Bonington sardonically said,
+
+"Poor things! they have a lot to bear."
+
+"The little children!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, with a flushing
+cheek and shining eyes; "it 's rather pathetic."
+
+"Children indeed!"  said Mrs. Mattock.  "It puts me out of all
+patience to see the way that they neglect them.  People are so
+sentimental about the poor."
+
+Lady Bonington creaked again.  Her splendid shoulders were wedged
+into her chair; her fine dark hair, gleaming with silver, sprang back
+upon her brow; a ruby bracelet glowed on the powerful wrist that held
+the journal; she rocked her copper-slippered foot.  She did not
+appear to be too sentimental.
+
+"I know they often have a very easy time," said Mrs. Mattock, as if
+some one had injured her severely.  And Shelton saw, not without
+pity, that Fate had scored her kind and squashed-up face with
+wrinkles, whose tiny furrows were eloquent of good intentions
+frustrated by the unpractical and discontented poor.  "Do what you
+will, they are never satisfied; they only resent one's help, or else
+they take the help and never thank you for it!"
+
+"Oh!"  murmured Aunt Charlotte, "that's rather hard."
+
+Shelton had been growing, more uneasy.  He said abruptly:
+
+"I should do the same if I were they."
+
+Mrs. Mattock's brown eyes flew at him; Lady Bonington spoke to the
+Times; her ruby bracelet and a bangle jingled.
+
+"We ought to put ourselves in their places."
+
+Shelton could not help a smile; Lady Bonington in the places of the
+poor!
+
+"Oh!"  exclaimed Mrs. Mattock, "I put myself entirely in their place.
+I quite understand their feelings.  But ingratitude is a repulsive
+quality."
+
+"They seem unable to put themselves in your place," murmured Shelton;
+and in a fit of courage he took the room in with a sweeping glance.
+
+Yes, that room was wonderfully consistent, with its air of perfect
+second-handedness, as if each picture, and each piece of furniture,
+each book, each lady present, had been made from patterns.  They were
+all widely different, yet all (like works of art seen in some
+exhibitions) had the look of being after the designs of some original
+spirit.  The whole room was chaste, restrained, derived, practical,
+and comfortable; neither in virtue nor in work, neither in manner,
+speech, appearance, nor in theory, could it give itself away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE STAINED-GLASS MAN
+
+Still looking for Antonia, Shelton went up to the morning-room.  Thea
+Dennant and another girl were seated in the window, talking.  From
+the look they gave him he saw that he had better never have been
+born; he hastily withdrew.  Descending to the hall, he came on Mr.
+Dennant crossing to his study, with a handful of official-looking
+papers.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!"  said he, "you look a little lost.  Is the shrine
+invisible?"
+
+Shelton grinned, said "Yes," and went on looking.  He was not
+fortunate.  In the dining-room sat Mrs. Dennant, making up her list
+of books.
+
+"Do give me your opinion, Dick," she said.  "Everybody 's readin'
+this thing of Katherine Asterick's; I believe it's simply because
+she's got a title."
+
+"One must read a book for some reason or other," answered Shelton.
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. Dennant, "I hate doin' things just because
+other people do them, and I sha'n't get it."
+
+"Good!"
+
+Mrs. Dennant marked the catalogue.
+
+"Here 's Linseed's last, of course; though I must say I don't care
+for him, but I suppose we ought to have it in the house.  And there's
+Quality's 'The Splendid Diatribes': that 's sure to be good, he's
+always so refined.  But what am I to do about this of Arthur Baal's?
+They say that he's a charlatan, but everybody reads him, don't you
+know"; and over the catalogue Shelton caught the gleam of hare-like
+eyes.
+
+Decision had vanished from her face, with its arched nose and
+slightly sloping chin, as though some one had suddenly appealed to
+her to trust her instincts.  It was quite pathetic.  Still, there was
+always the book's circulation to form her judgment by.
+
+"I think I 'd better mark it," she said, "don't you?  Were you
+lookin' for Antonia?  If you come across Bunyan in the garden, Dick,
+do say I want to see him; he's gettin' to be a perfect nuisance.  I
+can understand his feelin's, but really he 's carryin' it too far."
+
+Primed with his message to the under-gardener, Shelton went.  He took
+a despairing look into the billiard-room.  Antonia was not there.
+Instead, a tall and fat-cheeked gentleman with a neat moustache,
+called Mabbey, was practising the spot-stroke.  He paused as Shelton
+entered, and, pouting like a baby, asked in a sleepy voice,
+
+"Play me a hundred up?"
+
+Shelton shook his head, stammered out his sorrow, and was about to
+go.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey, plaintively feeling the places where his
+moustaches joined his pink and glossy cheeks, asked with an air of
+some surprise,
+
+"What's your general game, then?"
+
+"I really don't know," said Shelton.
+
+The gentleman called Mabbey chalked his cue, and, moving his round,
+knock-kneed legs in their tight trousers, took up his position for
+the stroke.
+
+"What price that?" he said, as he regained the perpendicular; and his
+well-fed eyes followed Shelton with sleepy inquisition.  "Curious
+dark horse, Shelton," they seemed to say.
+
+Shelton hurried out, and was about to run down the lower lawn, when
+he was accosted by another person walking in the sunshine--a slight-
+built man in a turned-down collar, with a thin and fair moustache,
+and a faint bluish tint on one side of his high forehead, caused by a
+network of thin veins.  His face had something of the youthful,
+optimistic, stained-glass look peculiar to the refined English type.
+He walked elastically, yet with trim precision, as if he had a
+pleasant taste in furniture and churches, and held the Spectator in
+his hand.
+
+"Ah, Shelton!  "he said in high-tuned tones, halting his legs in such
+an easy attitude that it was impossible to interrupt it: "come to
+take the air?"
+
+Shelton's own brown face, nondescript nose, and his amiable but
+dogged chin contrasted strangely with the clear-cut features of the
+stained-glass man.
+
+"I hear from Halidome that you're going to stand for Parliament," the
+latter said.
+
+Shelton, recalling Halidome's autocratic manner of settling other
+people's business, smiled.
+
+"Do I look like it?" he asked.
+
+The eyebrows quivered on the stained-glass man.  It had never
+occurred to him, perhaps, that to stand for Parliament a man must
+look like it; he examined Shelton with some curiosity.
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "now you mention it, perhaps not."  His eyes, so
+carefully ironical, although they differed from the eyes of Mabbey,
+also seemed to ask of Shelton what sort of a dark horse he was.
+
+"You 're still in the Domestic Office, then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The stained-glass man stooped to sniff a rosebush.  "Yes," he said;
+"it suits me very well.  I get lots of time for my art work."
+
+"That must be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was
+roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby."
+
+"Never had a hobby!"  said the stained-glass man, brushing back his
+hair (he was walking with no hat); "why, what the deuce d' you do?"
+
+Shelton could not answer; the idea had never troubled him.
+
+"I really don't know," he said, embarrassed; "there's always
+something going on, as far as I can see."
+
+The stained-glass man placed his hands within his pockets, and his
+bright glance swept over his companion.
+
+"A fellow must have a hobby to give him an interest in life," he
+said.
+
+"An interest in life?" repeated Shelton grimly; "life itself is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Oh!" replied the stained-glass man, as though he disapproved of
+regarding life itself as interesting.
+
+"That's all very well, but you want something more than that.  Why
+don't you take up woodcarving?"
+
+"Wood-carving?"
+
+"The moment I get fagged with office papers and that sort of thing I
+take up my wood-carving; good as a game of hockey."
+
+"I have n't the enthusiasm."
+
+The eyebrows of the stained-glass man twitched; he twisted his
+moustache.
+
+"You 'll find not having a hobby does n't pay," he said; "you 'll get
+old, then where 'll you be?"
+
+It came as a surprise that he should use the words "it does n't pay,"
+for he had a kind of partially enamelled look, like that modern
+jewellery which really seems unconscious of its market value.
+
+"You've given up the Bar?  Don't you get awfully bored having nothing
+to do?" pursued the stained-glass man, stopping before an ancient
+sundial.
+
+Shelton felt a delicacy, as a man naturally would, in explaining that
+being in love was in itself enough to do.  To do nothing is unworthy
+of a man!  But he had never felt as yet the want of any occupation.
+His silence in no way disconcerted his acquaintance.
+
+"That's a nice old article of virtue," he said, pointing with his
+chin; and, walking round the sundial, he made its acquaintance from
+the other side.  Its grey profile cast a thin and shortening shadow
+on the turf; tongues of moss were licking at its sides; the daisies
+clustered thick around its base; it had acquired a look of growing
+from the soil.  "I should like to get hold of that," the stained-
+glass man remarked; "I don't know when I 've seen a better specimen,"
+and he walked round it once again.
+
+His eyebrows were still ironically arched, but below them his eyes
+were almost calculating, and below them, again, his mouth had opened
+just a little.  A person with a keener eye would have said his face
+looked greedy, and even Shelton was surprised, as though he had read
+in the Spectator a confession of commercialism.
+
+"You could n't uproot a thing like that," he said; "it would lose all
+its charm."
+
+His companion turned impatiently, and his countenance looked
+wonderfully genuine.
+
+"Couldn't I?" he said.  "By Jove!  I thought so.  1690!  The best
+period."  He ran his forger round the sundial's edge.  "Splendid
+line-clean as the day they made it.  You don't seem to care much
+about that sort of thing"; and once again, as though accustomed to
+the indifference of Vandals, his face regained its mask.
+
+They strolled on towards the kitchen gardens, Shelton still busy
+searching every patch of shade.  He wanted to say "Can't stop," and
+hurry off; but there was about the stained-glass man a something
+that, while stinging Shelton's feelings, made the showing of them
+quite impossible.  "Feelings!"  that person seemed to say; "all very
+well, but you want more than that.  Why not take up wood-carving?
+ .   .  .  .  Feelings!  I was born in England, and have been at
+Cambridge."
+
+"Are you staying long?" he asked Shelton.  "I go on to Halidome's
+to-morrow; suppose I sha'n't see you there?  Good, chap, old
+Halidome!  Collection of etchings very fine!"
+
+"No; I 'm staying on," said Shelton.
+
+"Ah!"  said the stained-glass man, "charming people, the Dennants!"
+
+Shelton, reddening slowly, turned his head away; he picked a
+gooseberry, and muttered, "Yes."
+
+"The eldest girl especially; no nonsense about her.  I thought she
+was a particularly nice girl."
+
+Shelton heard this praise of Antonia with an odd sensation; it gave
+him the reverse of pleasure, as though the words had cast new light
+upon her.  He grunted hastily,
+
+"I suppose you know that we 're engaged?"
+
+"Really!"  said the stained-glass man, and again his bright, clear,
+iron-committal glance swept over Shelton--"really!  I didn't know.
+Congratulate you!"
+
+It was as if he said: "You're a man of taste; I should say she would
+go well in almost any drawing-room!"
+
+"Thanks," said Shelton; "there she' is.  If you'll excuse me, I want
+to speak to her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+PARADISE
+
+Antonia, in a sunny angle of the old brick wall, amid the pinks and
+poppies and cornflowers, was humming to herself.  Shelton saw the
+stained-glass man pass out of sight, then, unobserved, he watched her
+smelling at the flowers, caressing her face with each in turn,
+casting away spoiled blossoms, and all the time humming that soft
+tune.
+
+In two months, or three, all barriers between himself and this
+inscrutable young Eve would break; she would be a part of him, and he
+a part of her; he would know all her thoughts, and she all his;
+together they would be as one, and all would think of them, and talk
+of them, as one; and this would come about by standing half an hour
+together in a church, by the passing of a ring, and the signing of
+their names.
+
+The sun was burnishing her hair--she wore no hat flushing her cheeks,
+sweetening and making sensuous her limbs; it had warmed her through
+and through, so that, like the flowers and bees, the sunlight and the
+air, she was all motion, light, and colour.
+
+She turned and saw Shelton standing there.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said: "Lend me your hand-kerchief to put these
+flowers in, there 's a good boy!"
+
+Her candid eyes, blue as the flowers in her hands, were clear and
+cool as ice, but in her smile was all the warm profusion of that
+corner; the sweetness had soaked into her, and was welling forth
+again.  The sight of those sun-warmed cheeks, and fingers twining
+round the flower-stalks, her pearly teeth, and hair all fragrant,
+stole the reason out of Shelton.  He stood before her, weak about the
+knees.
+
+"Found you at last!"  he said.
+
+Curving back her neck, she cried out, "Catch!"  and with a sweep of
+both her hands flung the flowers into Shelton's arms.
+
+Under the rain of flowers, all warm and odorous, he dropped down on
+his knees, and put them one by one together, smelling at the pinks,
+to hide the violence of his feelings.  Antonia went on picking
+flowers, and every time her hand was full she dropped them on his
+hat, his shoulder, or his arms, and went on plucking more; she
+smiled, and on her lips a little devil danced, that seemed to know
+what he was suffering.  And Shelton felt that she did know.
+
+"Are you tired?" she asked; "there are heaps more wanted.  These are
+the bedroom-flowers--fourteen lots.  I can't think how people can
+live without flowers, can you?" and close above his head she buried
+her face in pinks.
+
+He kept his eyes on the plucked flowers before him on the grass, and
+forced himself to answer,
+
+"I think I can hold out."
+
+"Poor old Dick!"  She had stepped back.  The sun lit the clear-cut
+profile of her cheek, and poured its gold over the bosom of her
+blouse.  "Poor old Dick!  Awfully hard luck, is n't it?"  Burdened
+with mignonette, she came so close again that now she touched his
+shoulder, but Shelton did not look; breathless, with wildly beating
+heart, he went on sorting out the flowers.  The seeds of mignonette
+rained on his neck, and as she let the blossoms fall, their perfume
+fanned his face.  "You need n't sort them out!" she said.
+
+Was she enticing him?  He stole a look; but she was gone again,
+swaying and sniffing at the flowers.
+
+"I suppose I'm only hindering you," he growled; "I 'd better go."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I like to see you on your knees, you look so funny!"  and as she
+spoke she flung a clove carnation at him.  "Does n't it smell good?"
+
+"Too good Oh, Antonia!  why are you doing this?"
+
+" Why am I doing what?"
+
+"Don't you know what you are doing?"
+
+"Why, picking flowers!"  and once more she was back, bending and
+sniffing at the blossoms.
+
+"That's enough."
+
+"Oh no," she called; "it's not not nearly.
+
+"Keep on putting them together, if you love me."
+
+"You know I love you," answered Shelton, in a smothered voice.
+
+Antonia gazed at him across her shoulder; puzzled and inquiring was
+her face.
+
+"I'm not a bit like you," she said.  "What will you have for your
+room?"
+
+"Choose!"
+
+"Cornflowers and clove pinks.  Poppies are too frivolous, and pinks
+too---"
+
+"White," said Shelton.
+
+"And mignonette too hard and---"
+
+"Sweet.  Why cornflowers?"
+
+Antonia stood before him with her hands against her sides; her figure
+was so slim and young, her face uncertain and so grave.
+
+"Because they're dark and deep."
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"And why clove pinks?"
+
+"Because," she said, and, flushing, touched a bee that had settled on
+her skirt, "because of something in you I don't understand."
+
+"Ah!  And what flowers shall t give YOU?"
+
+She put her hands behind her.
+
+"There are all the other flowers for me."
+
+Shelton snatched from the mass in front of him an Iceland poppy with
+straight stem and a curved neck, white pinks, and sprigs of hard,
+sweet mignonette, and held it out to her.
+
+"There," he said, "that's you."  But Antonia did not move.
+
+"Oh no, it is n't!" and behind her back her fingers slowly crushed
+the petals of a blood-red poppy.  She shook her head, smiling a
+brilliant smile.  The blossoms fell, he flung his arms around her,
+and kissed her on the lips.
+
+But his hands dropped; not fear exactly, nor exactly shame, had come
+to him.  She had not resisted, but he had kissed the smile away; had
+kissed a strange, cold, frightened look, into her eyes.
+
+"She did n't mean to tempt me, then," he thought, in surprise and
+anger.  "What did she mean?" and, like a scolded dog, he kept his
+troubled watch upon her face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE RIDE
+
+"Where now?" Antonia asked, wheeling her chestnut mare, as they
+turned up High Street, Oxford City.  "I won't go back the same way,
+Dick!"
+
+"We could have a gallop on Port Meadow, cross the Upper River twice,
+and get home that way; but you 'll be tired."
+
+Antonia shook her head.  Aslant her cheek the brim of a straw hat
+threw a curve of shade, her ear glowed transparent in the sun.
+
+A difference had come in their relations since that kiss; outwardly
+she was the same good comrade, cool and quick.  But as before a
+change one feels the subtle difference in the temper of the wind, so
+Shelton was affected by the inner change in her.  He had made a blot
+upon her candour; he had tried to rub it out again, but there was
+left a mark, and it was ineffaceable.  Antonia belonged to the most
+civilised division of the race most civilised in all the world, whose
+creed is "Let us love and hate, let us work and marry, but let us
+never give ourselves away; to give ourselves away is to leave a mark,
+and that is past forgive ness.  Let our lives be like our faces, free
+from every kind of wrinkle, even those of laughter; in this way alone
+can we be really civilised."
+
+He felt that she was ruffled by a vague discomfort.  That he should
+give himself away was natural, perhaps, and only made her wonder, but
+that he should give her the feeling that she had given herself away
+was a very different thing.
+
+"Do you mind if I just ask at the Bishop's Head for letters?" he
+said, as they passed the old hotel.
+
+A dirty and thin envelope was brought to him, addressed "Mr. Richard
+Shelton, Esq.," in handwriting that was passionately clear, as though
+the writer had put his soul into securing delivery of the letter.  It
+was dated three days back, and, as they rode away, Shelton read as
+follows:
+
+                              IMPERIAL PEACOCK HOTEL,
+                                        FOLKESTONE.
+
+MON CHER MONSIEUR SHELTON,
+
+This is already the third time I have taken up pen to write to you,
+but, having nothing but misfortune to recount, I hesitated, awaiting
+better days.  Indeed, I have been so profoundly discouraged that if I
+had not thought it my duty to let you know of my fortunes I know not
+even now if I should have found the necessary spirit.  'Les choses
+vont de mal en mal'.  From what I hear there has never been so bad a
+season here.  Nothing going on.  All the same, I am tormented by a
+mob of little matters which bring me not sufficient to support my
+life.  I know not what to do; one thing is certain, in no case shall
+I return here another year.  The patron of this hotel, my good
+employer, is one of those innumerable specimens who do not forge or
+steal because they have no need, and if they had would lack the
+courage; who observe the marriage laws because they have been brought
+up to believe in them, and know that breaking them brings risk and
+loss of reputation; who do not gamble because they dare not; do not
+drink because it disagrees with them; go to church because their
+neighbours go, and to procure an appetite for the mid-day meal;
+commit no murder because, not transgressing in any other fashion,
+they are not obliged.  What is there to respect in persons of this
+sort?  Yet they are highly esteemed, and form three quarters of
+Society.  The rule with these good gentlemen is to shut their eyes,
+never use their thinking powers, and close the door on all the dogs
+of life for fear they should get bitten.
+
+Shelton paused, conscious of Antonia's eyes fixed on him with the
+inquiring look that he had come to dread.  In that chilly questioning
+she seemed to say: "I am waiting.  I am prepared to be told things--
+that is, useful things--things that help one to believe without the
+risk of too much thinking."
+
+"It's from that young foreigner," he said; and went on reading to
+himself.
+
+I have eyes, and here I am; I have a nose 'pour, flairer le humbug'.
+I see that amongst the value of things nothing is the equal of "free
+thought."  Everything else they can take from me, 'on ne pent pas
+m'oter cela'!  I see no future for me here, and certainly should have
+departed long ago if I had had the money, but, as I have already told
+you, all that I can do barely suffices to procure me 'de quoi vivre'.
+'Je me sens ecceuye'.  Do not pay too much attention to my Jeremiads;
+you know what a pessimist I am.  'Je ne perds pas courage'.
+
+Hoping that you are well, and in the cordial pressing of your hand, I
+subscribe myself,
+
+                    Your very devoted
+
+                              LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+
+He rode with the letter open in his hand, frowning at the curious
+turmoil which Ferrand excited in his heart.  It was as though this
+foreign vagrant twanged within him a neglected string, which gave
+forth moans of a mutiny.
+
+"What does he say?" Antonia asked.
+
+Should he show it to her?  If he might not, what should he do when
+they were married?
+
+"I don't quite know," he said at last; "it 's not particularly
+cheering."'
+
+"What is he like, Dick--I mean, to look at?  Like a gentleman, or
+what?"
+
+Shelton stifled a desire to laugh.
+
+"He looks very well in a frock-coat," he replied; "his father was a
+wine merchant."
+
+Antonia flicked her whip against her skirt.
+
+"Of course," she murmured, "I don't want to hear if there's anything
+I ought not."
+
+But instead of soothing Shelton, these words had just the opposite
+effect.  His conception of the ideal wife was not that of one from
+whom the half of life must be excluded.
+
+"It's only," he stammered again, "that it's not cheerful."
+
+"Oh, all right!"  she cried, and, touching her horse, flew off in
+front.  "I hate dismal things."
+
+Shelton bit his lips.  It was not his fault that half the world was
+dark.  He knew her words were loosed against himself, and, as always
+at a sign of her displeasure, was afraid.  He galloped after her on
+the scorched turf.
+
+" What is it?" he said.  "You 're angry with me!"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"Darling, I can't help it if things are n't cheerful.  We have eyes,"
+he added, quoting from the letter.
+
+Antonia did not look at him; but touched her horse again.
+
+"Well, I don't want to see the gloomy side," she said, "and I can't
+see why YOU should.  It's wicked to be discontented"; and she
+galloped off.
+
+It was not his fault if there were a thousand different kinds of men,
+a thousand different points of view, outside the fence of her
+experience!  "What business," he thought, digging in his dummy spurs,
+"has our class to patronise?  We 're the only people who have n't an
+idea of what life really means."  Chips of dried turf and dust came
+flying back, stinging his face.  He gained on her, drew almost within
+reach, then, as though she had been playing with him, was left
+hopelessly behind.
+
+She stooped under the far hedge, fanning her flushed face with dock-
+leaves:
+
+"Aha, Dick!  I knew you'd never catch me" and she patted the chestnut
+mare, who turned her blowing muzzle with contemptuous humour towards
+Shelton's steed, while her flanks heaved rapturously, gradually
+darkening with sweat.
+
+"We'd better take them steadily," grunted Shelton, getting off and
+loosening his girths, "if we mean to get home at all."
+
+"Don't be cross, Dick!"
+
+"We oughtn't to have galloped them like this; they 're not in
+condition.  We'd better go home the way we came."
+
+Antonia dropped the reins, and straightened her back hair.
+
+"There 's no fun in that," she said.  "Out and back again; I hate a
+dog's walk."
+
+"Very well," said Shelton; he would have her longer to himself!
+
+The road led up and up a hill, and from the top a vision of Saxonia
+lay disclosed in waves of wood and pasture.  Their way branched down
+a gateless glade, and Shelton sidled closer till his knee touched the
+mare's off-flank.
+
+Antonia's profile conjured up visions.  She was youth itself; her
+eyes so brilliant, and so innocent, her cheeks so glowing, and her
+brow unruffled; but in her smile and in the setting of her jaw lurked
+something resolute and mischievous.  Shelton put his hand out to the
+mare's mane.
+
+"What made you promise to marry me?" he said.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Well, what made you?"
+
+"I?" cried Shelton.
+
+She slipped her hand over his hand.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"  she said.
+
+"I want," he stammered, "to be everything to you.  Do you think I
+shall?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Of course!  The words seemed very much or very little.
+
+She looked down at the river, gleaming below the glade in a curving
+silver line.  "Dick, there are such a lot of splendid things that we
+might do."
+
+Did she mean, amongst those splendid things, that they might
+understand each other; or were they fated to pretend to only, in the
+old time-honoured way?
+
+They crossed the river by a ferry, and rode a long time in silence,
+while the twilight slowly fell behind the aspens.  And all the beauty
+of the evening, with its restless leaves, its grave young moon, and
+lighted campion flowers, was but a part of her; the scents, the
+witchery and shadows, the quaint field noises, the yokels' whistling,
+and the splash of water-fowl, each seemed to him enchanted.  The
+flighting bats, the forms of the dim hayricks, and sweet-brier
+perfume-she summed them all up in herself.  The fingermarks had
+deepened underneath her eyes, a languor came upon her; it made her
+the more sweet and youthful.  Her shoulders seemed to bear on them
+the very image of our land--grave and aspiring, eager yet contained--
+before there came upon that land the grin of greed, the folds of
+wealth, the simper of content.  Fair, unconscious, free!
+
+And he was silent, with a beating heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE BIRD 'OF PASSAGE
+
+That night, after the ride, when Shelton was about to go to bed, his
+eyes fell on Ferrand's letter, and with a sleepy sense of duty he
+began to read it through a second time.  In the dark, oak-panelled
+bedroom, his four-post bed, with back of crimson damask and its
+dainty sheets, was lighted by the candle glow; the copper pitcher of
+hot water in the basin, the silver of his brushes, and the line of
+his well-polished boots all shone, and Shelton's face alone was
+gloomy, staring at the yellowish paper in his hand.
+
+"The poor chap wants money, of course," he thought.  But why go on
+for ever helping one who had no claim on him, a hopeless case,
+incurable--one whom it was his duty to let sink for the good of the
+community at large?  Ferrand's vagabond refinement had beguiled him
+into charity that should have been bestowed on hospitals, or any
+charitable work but foreign missions.  To give a helping hand, a bit
+of himself, a nod of fellowship to any fellow-being irrespective of a
+claim, merely because he happened to be down, was sentimental
+nonsense!  The line must be drawn!  But in the muttering of this
+conclusion he experienced a twinge of honesty.  "Humbug!  You don't
+want to part with your money, that's all!"
+
+So, sitting down in shirt-sleeves at his writing table, he penned the
+following on paper stamped with the Holm Oaks address and crest:
+
+MY DEAR FERRAND,
+
+I am sorry you are having such a bad spell.  You seem to be dead out
+of luck.  I hope by the time you get this things will have changed
+for the better.  I should very much like to see you again and have a
+talk, but shall be away for some time longer, and doubt even when I
+get back whether I should be able to run down and look you up.  Keep
+me 'au courant' as to your movements.  I enclose a cheque.
+
+                    Yours sincerely,
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+Before he had written out the cheque, a moth fluttering round the
+candle distracted his attention, and by the time he had caught and
+put it out he had forgotten that the cheque was not enclosed.  The
+letter, removed with his clothes before he was awake, was posted in
+an empty state.
+
+One morning a week later he was sitting in the smoking-room in the
+company of the gentleman called Mabbey, who was telling him how many
+grouse he had deprived of life on August 12 last year, and how many
+he intended to deprive of life on August 12 this year, when the door
+was opened, and the butler entered, carrying his head as though it
+held some fatal secret.
+
+"A young man is asking for you, sir," he said to Shelton, bending
+down discreetly; "I don't know if you would wish to see him, sir."
+
+"A young man!  "repeated Shelton; "what sort of a young man?"
+
+"I should say a sort of foreigner, sir," apologetically replied the
+butler.  "He's wearing a frock-coat, but he looks as if he had been
+walking a good deal."
+
+Shelton rose with haste; the description sounded to him ominous.
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"I put him in the young ladies' little room, sir."
+
+"All right," said Shelton; "I 'll come and see him.  Now, what the
+deuce!"  he thought, running down the stairs.
+
+It was with a queer commingling of pleasure and vexation that he
+entered the little chamber sacred to the birds, beasts, racquets,
+golf-clubs, and general young ladies' litter.  Ferrand was standing
+underneath the cage of a canary, his hands folded on his pinched-up
+hat, a nervous smile upon his lips.  He was dressed in Shelton's old
+frock-coat, tightly buttoned, and would have cut a stylish figure but
+far his look of travel.  He wore a pair of pince-nez, too, which
+somewhat veiled his cynical blue eyes, and clashed a little with the
+pagan look of him.  In the midst of the strange surroundings he still
+preserved that air of knowing, and being master of, his fate, which
+was his chief attraction.
+
+"I 'm glad to see you," said Shelton, holding out his hand.
+
+"Forgive this liberty," began Ferrand, "but I thought it due to you
+after all you've done for me not to throw up my efforts to get
+employment in England without letting you know first.  I'm entirely
+at the end of my resources."
+
+The phrase struck Shelton as one that he had heard before.
+
+"But I wrote to you," he said; "did n't you get my letter?"
+
+A flicker passed across the vagrant's face; he drew the letter from
+his pocket and held it out.
+
+"Here it is, monsieur."
+
+Shelton stared at it.
+
+"Surely," said he, "I sent a cheque?"
+
+Ferrand did not smile; there was a look about him as though Shelton
+by forgetting to enclose that cheque had done him a real injury.
+
+Shelton could not quite hide a glance of doubt.
+
+"Of course," he said, "I--I--meant to enclose a cheque."
+
+Too subtle to say anything, Ferrand curled his lip.  "I am capable of
+much, but not of that," he seemed to say; and at once Shelton felt
+the meanness of his doubt.
+
+"Stupid of me," he said.
+
+"I had no intention of intruding here," said Ferrand; "I hoped to see
+you in the neighbourhood, but I arrive exhausted with fatigue.  I've
+eaten nothing since yesterday at noon, and walked thirty miles."  He
+shrugged his shoulders.  "You see, I had no time to lose before
+assuring myself whether you were here or not."
+
+"Of course---" began Shelton, but again he stopped.
+
+"I should very much like," the young foreigner went on, "for one of
+your good legislators to find himself in these country villages with
+a penny in his pocket.  In other countries bakers are obliged to sell
+you an equivalent of bread for a penny; here they won't sell you as
+much as a crust under twopence.  You don't encourage poverty."
+
+"What is your idea now?" asked Shelton, trying to gain time.
+
+"As I told you," replied Ferrand, "there 's nothing to be done at
+Folkestone, though I should have stayed there if I had had the money
+to defray certain expenses"; and again he seemed to reproach his
+patron with the omission of that cheque.  "They say things will
+certainly be better at the end of the month.  Now that I know English
+well, I thought perhaps I could procure a situation for teaching
+languages."
+
+"I see," said Shelton.
+
+As a fact, however, he was far from seeing; he literally did not know
+what to do.  It seemed so brutal to give Ferrand money and ask him to
+clear out; besides, he chanced to have none in his pocket.
+
+"It needs philosophy to support what I 've gone through this week,"
+said Ferrand, shrugging his shoulders.  "On Wednesday last, when I
+received your letter, I had just eighteen-pence, and at once I made a
+resolution to come and see you; on that sum I 've done the journey.
+My strength is nearly at an end."
+
+Shelton stroked his chin.
+
+"Well," he had just begun, "we must think it over," when by Ferrand's
+face he saw that some one had come in.  He turned, and saw Antonia in
+the doorway.  "Excuse me," he stammered, and, going to Antonia, drew
+her from the room.
+
+With a smile she said at once: "It's the young foreigner; I'm
+certain.  Oh, what fun!"
+
+"Yes," answered Shelton slowly; "he's come to see me about getting
+some sort of tutorship or other.  Do you think your mother would mind
+if I took him up to have a wash?  He's had a longish walk.  And might
+he have some breakfast?  He must be hungry."
+
+"Of course!  I'll tell Dobson.  Shall I speak to mother?  He looks
+nice, Dick."
+
+He gave her a grateful, furtive look, and went back to his guest; an
+impulse had made him hide from her the true condition of affairs.
+
+Ferrand was standing where he had been left his face still clothed in
+mordant impassivity.
+
+"Come up to my room!"  said Shelton; and while his guest was washing,
+brushing, and otherwise embellishing his person, he stood reflecting
+that Ferrand was by no means unpresentable, and he felt quite
+grateful to him.
+
+He took an opportunity, when the young man's back was turned, of
+examining his counterfoils.  There was no record, naturally, of a
+cheque drawn in Ferrand's favour.  Shelton felt more mean than ever.
+
+A message came from Mrs. Dennant; so he took the traveller to the
+dining-room and left him there, while he himself went to the lady of
+the house.  He met Antonia coming down.
+
+"How many days did you say he went without food that time--you know?"
+she asked in passing.
+
+"Four."
+
+"He does n't look a bit common, Dick."
+
+Shelton gazed at her dubiously.
+
+"They're surely not going to make a show of him!" he thought.
+
+Mrs. Dennant was writing, in a dark-blue dress starred over with
+white spots, whose fine lawn collar was threaded with black velvet.
+
+"Have you seen the new hybrid Algy's brought me back from Kidstone?
+Is n't it charmin'?" and she bent her face towards this perfect rose.
+"They say unique; I'm awfully interested to find out if that's true.
+I've told Algy I really must have some."
+
+Shelton thought of the unique hybrid breakfasting downstairs; he
+wished that Mrs. Dennant would show in him the interest she had
+manifested in the rose.  But this was absurd of him, he knew, for the
+potent law of hobbies controlled the upper classes, forcing them to
+take more interest in birds, and roses, missionaries, or limited and
+highly-bound editions of old books (things, in a word, in treating
+which you knew exactly where you were) than in the manifestations of
+mere life that came before their eyes.
+
+"Oh, Dick, about that young Frenchman.  Antonia says he wants a
+tutorship; now, can you really recommend him?  There's Mrs. Robinson
+at the Gateways wants someone to teach her boys languages; and, if he
+were quite satisfactory, it's really time Toddles had a few lessons
+in French; he goes to Eton next half."
+
+Shelton stared at the rose; he had suddenly realised why it was that
+people take more interest in roses than in human beings--one could do
+it with a quiet heart.
+
+"He's not a Frenchman, you know," he said to gain a little time.
+
+"He's not a German, I hope," Mrs. Dennant answered, passing her
+forgers round a petal, to impress its fashion on her brain; "I don't
+like Germans.  Is n't he the one you wrote about--come down in the
+world?  Such a pity with so young a fellow!  His father was a
+merchant, I think you told us.  Antonia says he 's quite refined to
+look at."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Shelton, feeling on safe ground; "he's refined enough
+to look at."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took the rose and put it to her nose.
+
+"Delicious perfume!  That was a very touchin' story about his goin'
+without food in Paris.  Old Mrs. Hopkins has a room to let; I should
+like to do her a good turn.  I'm afraid there's a hole in the
+ceilin', though.  Or there's the room here in the left wing on the
+ground-floor where John the footman used to sleep.  It's quite nice;
+perhaps he could have that."
+
+"You 're awfully kind," said Shelton, "but---"
+
+"I should like to do something to restore his self-respect,", went on
+Mrs. Dennant, "if, as you say, he 's clever and all that.  Seein' a
+little refined life again might make a world of difference to him.
+It's so sad when a young man loses self-respect."
+
+Shelton was much struck by the practical way in which she looked at
+things.  Restore his self-respect!  It seemed quite a splendid
+notion!  He smiled, and said,
+
+"You're too kind.  I think---"
+
+"I don't believe in doin' things by halves," said Mrs. Dennant; "he
+does n't drink, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Shelton.  "He's rather a tobacco maniac, of course."
+
+"Well, that's a mercy!  You would n't believe the trouble I 've had
+with drink, especially over cooks and coachmen.  And now Bunyan's
+taken to it."
+
+"Oh, you'd have no trouble with Ferrand," returned Shelton; "you
+couldn't tell him from a gentleman as far as manners go."
+
+Mrs. Dennant smiled one of her rather sweet and kindly smiles.
+
+"My dear Dick," she said, "there's not much comfort in that.  Look at
+poor Bobby Surcingle, look at Oliver Semples and Victor Medallion;
+you could n't have better families.  But if you 're sure he does n't
+drink!  Algy 'll laugh, of course; that does n't matter--he laughs at
+everything."
+
+Shelton felt guilty; being quite unprepared for so rapid an adoption
+of his client.
+
+"I really believe there's a lot of good in him," he stammered; "but,
+of course, I know very little, and from what he tells me he's had a
+very curious life.  I shouldn't like---"
+
+"Where was he educated?" inquired Mrs. Dennant.  "They have no public
+schools in France, so I 've been told; but, of course, he can't help
+that, poor young fellow!  Oh, and, Dick, there 's one thing--has he
+relations?  One has always to be so careful about that.  It 's one
+thing to help a young fellow, but quite another to help his family
+too.  One sees so many cases of that where men marry girls without
+money, don't you know."
+
+"He has told me," answered Shelton, "his only relations are some
+cousins, and they are rich."
+
+Mrs. Dennant took out her handkerchief, and, bending above the rose,
+removed a tiny insect.
+
+"These green-fly get in everywhere," she said.
+
+"Very sad story; can't they do anything for him?" and she made
+researches in the rose's heart.
+
+"He's quarrelled with them, I believe," said Shelton; "I have n't
+liked to press him, about that."
+
+"No, of course not," assented Mrs. Dennant absently--she had found
+another green-fly "I always think it's painful when a young man seems
+so friendless."
+
+Shelton was silent; he was thinking deeply.  He had never before felt
+so distrustful of the youthful foreigner.
+
+"I think," he said at last, "the best thing would be for you to see
+him for yourself."
+
+"Very well," said Mrs. Dennant.  "I should be so glad if you would
+tell him to come up.  I must say I do think that was a most touchin'
+story about Paris.  I wonder whether this light's strong enough now
+for me to photograph this rose."
+
+Shelton withdrew and went down-stairs.  Ferrand was still at
+breakfast.  Antonia stood at the sideboard carving beef for him, and
+in the window sat Thea with her Persian kitten.
+
+Both girls were following the traveller's movements with inscrutable
+blue eyes.  A shiver ran down Shelton's spine.  To speak truth, he
+cursed the young man's coming, as though it affected his relations
+with Antonia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+SUB ROSA
+
+>From the interview, which Shelton had the mixed delight of watching,
+between Ferrand and the Honourable Mrs. Dennant, certain definite
+results accrued, the chief of which was the permission accorded the
+young wanderer to occupy the room which had formerly been tenanted by
+the footman John.  Shelton was lost in admiration of Ferrand's manner
+in this scene..  Its subtle combination of deference and dignity was
+almost paralysing; paralysing, too, the subterranean smile upon his
+lips.
+
+"Charmin' young man, Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, when Shelton lingered
+to say once more that he knew but very little of him; "I shall send a
+note round to Mrs. Robinson at once.  They're rather common, you
+know--the Robinsons.  I think they'll take anyone I recommend."
+
+"I 'm sure they will," said Shelton; "that's why I think you ought to
+know---"
+
+But Mrs. Dennant's eyes, fervent, hare-like, were fixed on something
+far away; turning, he saw the rose in a tall vase on a tall and
+spindly stool.  It seemed to nod towards them in the sunshine.  Mrs.
+Dennant dived her nose towards her camera.
+
+"The light's perfect now," she said, in a voice muffled by the cloth.
+"I feel sure that livin' with decent people will do wonders for him.
+Of course, he understands that his meals will be served to him
+apart."
+
+Shelton, doubly anxious, now that his efforts had lodged his client
+in a place of trust, fell, back on hoping for the best; his instinct
+told him that, vagabond as Ferrand was, he had a curious self-
+respect, that would save him from a mean ingratitude.
+
+In fact, as Mrs. Dennant, who was by no means void of common-sense,
+foresaw, the arrangement worked all right.  Ferrand entered on his
+duties as French tutor to the little Robinsons.  In the Dennants'
+household he kept himself to his own room, which, day and night, he
+perfumed with tobacco, emerging at noon into the garden, or, if wet,
+into the study, to teach young Toddles French.  After a time it
+became customary for him to lunch with the house-party, partly
+through a mistake of Toddles, who seemed to think that it was
+natural, and partly through John Noble, one of Shelton's friends, who
+had come to stay, and discovered Ferrand to be a most awfully
+interesting person he was always, indeed, discovering the most
+awfully interesting persons.  In his grave and toneless voice,
+brushing his hair from off his brow, he descanted upon Ferrand with
+enthusiasm, to which was joined a kind of shocked amusement, as who
+should say, "Of course, I know it's very odd, but really he 's such
+an awfully interesting person."  For John Noble was a politician,
+belonging to one of those two Peculiar parties, which, thoroughly in
+earnest, of an honesty above suspicion, and always very busy, are
+constitutionally averse to anything peculiar for fear of finding they
+have overstepped the limit of what is practical in politics.  As such
+he inspired confidence, not caring for things unless he saw some
+immediate benefit to be had from them, having a perfect sense of
+decency, and a small imagination.  He discussed all sorts of things
+with Ferrand; on one occasion Shelton overheard them arguing on
+anarchism.
+
+"No Englishman approves of murder," Noble was saying, in the gloomy
+voice that contrasted with the optimistic cast of his fine head, "but
+the main principle is right.  Equalisation of property is bound to
+come.  I sympathise with then, not with their methods."
+
+"Forgive me," struck in Ferrand; "do you know any anarchists?"
+
+"No," returned Noble; "I certainly do not."
+
+"You say you sympathise with them, but the first time it comes to
+action---"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, monsieur! one doesn't make anarchism with the head."
+
+Shelton perceived that he had meant to add, "but with the heart, the
+lungs, the liver."  He drew a deeper meaning from the saying, and
+seemed to see, curling with the smoke from Ferrand's lips, the words:
+"What do you, an English gentleman, of excellent position, and all
+the prejudices of your class, know about us outcasts?  If you want to
+understand us you must be an outcast too; we are not playing at the
+game."
+
+This talk took place upon the lawn, at the end of one of Toddles's
+French lessons, and Shelton left John Noble maintaining to the
+youthful foreigner, with stubborn logic, that he, John Noble, and the
+anarchists had much, in common.  He was returning to the house, when
+someone called his name from underneath the holm oak.  There, sitting
+Turkish fashion on the grass, a pipe between his teeth, he found a
+man who had arrived the night before, and impressed him by his
+friendly taciturnity.  His name was Whyddon, and he had just returned
+from Central Africa; a brown-faced, large-jawed man, with small but
+good and steady eyes, and strong, spare figure.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Shelton!" he said, "I wondered if you could tell me what
+tips I ought to give the servants here; after ten years away I 've
+forgotten all about that sort of thing."
+
+Shelton sat down beside him; unconsciously assuming, too, a cross-
+legged attitude, which caused him much discomfort.
+
+"I was listening," said his new acquaintance, "to the little chap
+learning his French.  I've forgotten mine.  One feels a hopeless
+duffer knowing no, languages."
+
+"I suppose you speak Arabic?" said Shelton.
+
+"Oh, Arabic, and a dialect or two; they don't count.  That tutor has
+a curious face."
+
+"You think so?" said Shelton, interested.  "He's had a curious life."
+
+The traveller spread his hands, palms downwards, on the grass and
+looked at Shelton with, a smile.
+
+"I should say he was a rolling stone," he said.  "It 's odd, I' ve
+seen white men in Central Africa with a good deal of his look about
+them.
+
+"Your diagnosis is a good one," answered Shelton.
+
+"I 'm always sorry for those fellows.  There's generally some good in
+them.  They are their own enemies.  A bad business to be unable to
+take pride in anything one does!"  And there was a look of pity on
+his face.
+
+"That's exactly it," said Shelton.  "I 've often tried to put it into
+words.  Is it incurable?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Can you tell me why?"
+
+Whyddon pondered.
+
+"I rather think," he said at last, "it must be because they have too
+strong a faculty of criticism.  You can't teach a man to be proud of
+his own work; that lies in his blood "; folding his arms across his
+breast, he heaved a sigh.  Under the dark foliage, his eyes on the
+sunlight, he was the type of all those Englishmen who keep their
+spirits bright and wear their bodies out in the dark places of hard
+work.  "You can't think," he said, showing his teeth in a smile, "how
+delightful it is to be at home!  You learn to love the old country
+when you're away from it."
+
+Shelton often thought, afterwards; of this diagnosis of the vagabond,
+for he was always stumbling on instances of that power of subtle
+criticism which was the young foreigner's prime claim to be "a most
+awfully interesting" and perhaps a rather shocking person.
+
+An old school-fellow of Shelton's and his wife were staying in the
+house, who offered to the eye the picture of a perfect domesticity.
+Passionless and smiling, it was impossible to imagine they could ever
+have a difference.  Shelton, whose bedroom was next to theirs, could
+hear them in the mornings talking in exactly the tones they used at
+lunch, and laughing the same laughs.  Their life seemed to accord
+them perfect satisfaction; they were supplied with their convictions
+by Society just as, when at home, they were supplied with all the
+other necessaries of life by some co-operative stores.  Their fairly
+handsome faces, with the fairly kind expressions, quickly and
+carefully regulated by a sense of compromise, began to worry him so
+much that when in the same room he would even read to avoid the need
+of looking at them.  And yet they were kind--that is, fairly kind--
+and clean and quiet in the house, except when they laughed, which was
+often, and at things which made him want to howl as a dog howls at
+music.
+
+"Mr. Shelton," Ferrand said one day, "I 'm not an amateur of
+marriage--never had the chance, as you may well suppose; but, in any
+case, you have some people in the house who would make me mark time
+before I went committing it.  They seem the ideal young married
+people--don't quarrel, have perfect health, agree with everybody, go
+to church, have children--but I should like to hear what is beautiful
+in their life," and he grimaced.  "It seems to me so ugly that I can
+only gasp.  I would much rather they ill-treated each other, just to
+show they had the corner of a soul between them.  If that is
+marriage, 'Dieu m'en garde!'"
+
+But Shelton did not answer; he was thinking deeply.
+
+The saying of John Noble's, "He's really a most interesting person,"
+grew more and more upon his nerves; it seemed to describe the Dennant
+attitude towards this stranger within their gates.  They treated him
+with a sort of wonder on the "don't touch" system, like an object in
+an exhibition.  The restoration, however, of, his self-respect
+proceeded with success.  For all the semblance of having grown too
+big for Shelton's clothes, for all his vividly burnt face, and the
+quick but guarded play of cynicism on his lips--he did much credit to
+his patrons.  He had subdued his terror of a razor, and looked well
+in a suit of Shelton's flannels.  For, after all, he had only been
+eight years exiled from middle-class gentility, and he had been a
+waiter half that time.  But Shelton wished him at the devil.  Not for
+his manners' sake--he was never tired of watching how subtly the
+vagabond adapted his conduct to the conduct of his hosts, while
+keeping up his critical detachment--but because that critical
+detachment was a constant spur to his own vision, compelling him to
+analyse the life into which, he had been born and was about to marry.
+This process was disturbing; and to find out when it had commenced,
+he had to go back to his meeting with Ferrand on the journey up from
+Dover.
+
+There was kindness in a hospitality which opened to so strange a
+bird; admitting the kindness, Shelton fell to analysing it.  To
+himself, to people of his class, the use of kindness was a luxury,
+not significant of sacrifice, but productive of a pleasant feeling in
+the heart, such as massage will setup in the legs.  "Everybody's
+kind," he thought; "the question is, What understanding is there,
+what real sympathy?"  This problem gave him food for thought.
+
+The progress, which Mrs. Dennant not unfrequently remarked upon, in
+Ferrand's conquest of his strange position, seemed to Shelton but a
+sign that he was getting what he could out of his sudden visit to
+green pastures; under the same circumstances, Shelton thought that he
+himself would do the same.  He felt that the young foreigner was
+making a convenient bow to property, but he had more respect for the
+sarcastic smile on the lips of Ferrand's heart.
+
+It was not long before the inevitable change came in the spirit of
+the situation; more and more was Shelton conscious of a quaint
+uneasiness in the very breathing of the household.
+
+"Curious fellow you've got hold of there, Shelton," Mr. Dennant said
+to him during a game of croquet; "he 'll never do any good for
+himself, I'm afraid."
+
+"In one sense I'm afraid not," admitted Shelton.
+
+"Do you know his story?  I will bet you sixpence"--and Mr.  Dennant
+paused to swing his mallet with a proper accuracy "that he's been in
+prison."
+
+"Prison!" ejaculated Shelton.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Dennant, with bent knees carefully measuring his
+next shot, "that you ought to make inquiries--ah!  missed it!
+Awkward these hoops!  One must draw the line somewhere."
+
+"I never could draw," returned Shelton, nettled and uneasy; "but I
+understand--I 'll give him a hint to go."
+
+"Don't," said Mr. Dennant, moving after his second ball, which
+Shelton had smitten to the farther end, "be offended, my dear
+Shelton, and by no means give him a hint; he interests me very much--
+a very clever, quiet young fellow."
+
+That this was not his private view Shelton inferred by studying Mr.
+Dennant's manner in the presence of the vagabond.  Underlying the
+well-bred banter of the tranquil voice, the guarded quizzicality of
+his pale brown face, it could be seen that Algernon Cuffe Dennant,
+Esq., J.P., accustomed to laugh at other people, suspected that he
+was being laughed at.  What more natural than that he should grope
+about to see how this could be?  A vagrant alien was making himself
+felt by an English Justice of the Peace--no small tribute, this, to
+Ferrand's personality.  The latter would sit silent through a meal,
+and yet make his effect.  He, the object of their kindness,
+education, patronage, inspired their fear.  There was no longer any
+doubt; it was not of Ferrand that they were afraid, but of what they
+did not understand in him; of horrid subtleties meandering in the
+brain under that straight, wet-looking hair; of something bizarre
+popping from the curving lips below that thin, lopsided nose.
+
+But to Shelton in this, as in all else, Antonia was what mattered.
+At first, anxious to show her lover that she trusted him, she seemed
+never tired of doing things for his young protege, as though she too
+had set her heart on his salvation; but, watching her eyes when they
+rested on the vagabond, Shelton was perpetually reminded of her
+saying on the first day of his visit to Holm Oaks, "I suppose he 's
+really good--I mean all these things you told me about were only...."
+
+Curiosity never left her glance, nor did that story of his four days'
+starving leave her mind; a sentimental picturesqueness clung about
+that incident more valuable by far than this mere human being with
+whom she had so strangely come in contact.  She watched Ferrand, and
+Shelton watched her.  If he had been told that he was watching her,
+he would have denied it in good faith; but he was bound to watch her,
+to find out with what eyes she viewed this visitor who embodied all
+the rebellious under-side of life, all that was absent in herself.
+
+"Dick," she said to him one day, "you never talk to me of Monsieur
+Ferrand."
+
+"Do you want to talk of him?"
+
+"Don't you think that he's improved?"
+
+"He's fatter."
+
+Antonia looked grave.
+
+"No, but really?"
+
+"I don't know," said Shelton; "I can't judge him."
+
+Antonia turned her face away, and something in her attitude alarmed
+him.
+
+"He was once a sort of gentleman," she said; "why shouldn't he become
+one again?"
+
+Sitting on the low wall of the kitchen-garden, her head was framed by
+golden plums.  The sun lay barred behind the foliage of the holm oak,
+but a little patch filtering through a gap had rested in the plum-
+tree's heart.  It crowned the girl.  Her raiment, the dark leaves,
+the red wall, the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a
+block of pagan colour.  And her face above it, chaste, serene, was
+like the scentless summer evening.  A bird amongst the currant bushes
+kept a little chant vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and
+colour seemed alive.
+
+"Perhaps he does n't want to be a gentleman," said Shelton.
+
+Antonia swung her foot.
+
+"How can he help wanting to?"
+
+"He may have a different philosophy of life."
+
+Antonia was slow to answer.
+
+"I know nothing about philosophies of life," she said at last.
+
+Shelton answered coldly,
+
+"No two people have the same."
+
+With the falling sun-glow the charm passed off the tree.  Chilled and
+harder, yet less deep, it was no more a block of woven colour, warm
+and impassive, like a southern goddess; it was now a northern tree,
+with a grey light through its leaves.
+
+"I don't understand you in the least," she said; "everyone wishes to
+be good."
+
+"And safe?" asked Shelton gently.
+
+Antonia stared.
+
+"Suppose," he said--"I don't pretend to know, I only suppose--what
+Ferrand really cares for is doing things differently from other
+people?  If you were to load him with a character and give him money
+on condition that he acted as we all act, do you think he would
+accept it?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Why are n't cats dogs; or pagans Christians?"
+
+Antonia slid down from the wall.
+
+"You don't seem to think there 's any use in trying," she said, and
+turned away.
+
+Shelton made a movement as if he would go after her, and then stood
+still, watching her figure slowly pass, her head outlined above the
+wall, her hands turned back across her narrow hips.  She halted at
+the bend, looked back, then, with an impatient gesture, disappeared.
+
+Antonia was slipping from him!
+
+A moment's vision from without himself would have shown him that it
+was he who moved and she who was standing still, like the figure of
+one watching the passage of a stream with clear, direct, and sullen
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE RIVER
+
+One day towards the end of August Shelton took Antonia on the river--
+the river that, like soft music, soothes the land; the river of the
+reeds and poplars, the silver swan-sails, sun and moon, woods, and
+the white slumbrous clouds; where cuckoos, and the wind, the pigeons,
+and the weirs are always singing; and in the flash of naked bodies,
+the play of waterlily leaves, queer goblin stumps, and the twilight
+faces of the twisted tree-roots, Pan lives once more.
+
+The reach which Shelton chose was innocent of launches, champagne
+bottles and loud laughter; it was uncivilised, and seldom troubled by
+these humanising influences.  He paddled slowly, silent and absorbed,
+watching Antonia.  An unaccustomed languor clung about her; her eyes
+had shadows, as though she had not slept; colour glowed softly in her
+cheeks, her frock seemed all alight with golden radiance.  She made
+Shelton pull into the reeds, and plucked two rounded lilies sailing
+like ships against slow-moving water.
+
+"Pull into the shade, please," she said; "it's too hot out here."
+
+The brim of her linen hat kept the sun from her face, but her head
+was drooping like a flower's head at noon.
+
+Shelton saw that the heat was really harming her, as too hot a day
+will dim the icy freshness of a northern plant.  He dipped his
+sculls, the ripples started out and swam in grave diminuendo till
+they touched the banks.
+
+He shot the boat into a cleft, and caught the branches of an
+overhanging tree.  The skiff rested, balancing with mutinous
+vibration, like a living thing.
+
+"I should hate to live in London," said Antonia suddenly;" the slums
+must be so awful.  What a pity, when there are places like this!  But
+it's no good thinking."
+
+"No," answered Shelton slowly!  "I suppose it is no good."
+
+"There are some bad cottages at the lower end of Cross Eaton.  I went
+them one day with Miss Truecote.  The people won't help themselves.
+It's so discouraging to help people who won't help themselves."
+
+She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and, with her chin resting
+on her hands, gazed up at Shelton.  All around them hung a tent of
+soft, thick leaves, and, below, the water was deep-dyed with green
+refraction.  Willow boughs, swaying above the boat, caressed
+Antonia's arms and shoulders; her face and hair alone were free.
+
+"So discouraging," she said again.
+
+A silence fell....  Antonia seemed thinking deeply.
+
+"Doubts don't help you," she said suddenly; "how can you get any good
+from doubts?  The thing is to win victories."
+
+"Victories?" said Shelton.  "I 'd rather understand than conquer!"
+
+He had risen to his feet, and grasped stunted branch, canting the
+boat towards the bank.
+
+"How can you let things slide like that, Dick?  It's like Ferrand."
+
+"Have you such a bad opinion of him, then?" asked Shelton.  He felt
+on the verge of some, discovery.
+
+She buried her chin deeper in her hands.
+
+"I liked him at first," she said; "I thought that he was different.
+I thought he couldn't really be---"
+
+"Really be what?"
+
+Antonia did not answer.
+
+"I don't know," she said at last.  "I can't explain.  I thought---"
+
+Shelton still stood, holding to the branch, and the oscillation of
+the boat freed an infinity of tiny ripples.
+
+"You thought--what?" he said.
+
+He ought to have seen her face grow younger, more childish, even
+timid.  She said in a voice smooth, round, and young:
+
+"You know, Dick, I do think we ought to try.  I know I don't try half
+hard enough.  It does n't do any good to think; when you think,
+everything seems so mixed, as if there were nothing to lay hold of.
+I do so hate to feel like that.  It is n't as if we didn't know
+what's right.  Sometimes I think, and think, and it 's all no good,
+only a waste of time, and you feel at the end as if you had been
+doing wrong."
+
+Shelton frowned.
+
+"What has n't been through fire's no good," he said; and, letting go
+the branch, sat down.  Freed from restraint, the boat edged out
+towards the current.  "But what about Ferrand?"
+
+"I lay awake last night wondering what makes you like him so.  He's
+so bitter; he makes me feel unhappy.  He never seems content with
+anything.  And he despises"--her face hardened--"I mean, he hates us
+all!"
+
+"So should I if I were he," said Shelton.
+
+The boat was drifting on, and gleams of sunlight chased across their
+faces.  Antonia spoke again.
+
+"He seems to be always looking at dark things, or else he seems as
+if--as if he could--enjoy himself too much.  I thought--I thought at
+first," she stammered, "that we could do him good."
+
+"Do him good!  Ha, ha!"
+
+A startled rat went swimming for its life against the stream; and
+Shelton saw that he had done a dreadful thing: he had let Antonia
+with a jerk into a secret not hitherto admitted even by himself--the
+secret that her eyes were not his eyes, her way of seeing things not
+his nor ever would be.  He quickly muffled up his laughter.  Antonia
+had dropped her gaze; her face regained its languor, but the bosom of
+her dress was heaving.  Shelton watched her, racking his brains to
+find excuses for that fatal laugh; none could he find.  It was a
+little piece of truth.  He paddled slowly on, close to the bank, in
+the long silence of the river.
+
+The breeze had died away, not a fish was rising; save for the lost
+music of the larks no birds were piping; alone, a single pigeon at
+brief intervals cooed from the neighbouring wood.
+
+They did not stay much longer in the boat.
+
+On the homeward journey in the pony-cart, rounding a corner of the
+road, they came on Ferrand in his pince-nez, holding a cigarette
+between his fingers and talking to a tramp, who was squatting on the
+bank.  The young foreigner recognised them, and at once removed his
+hat.
+
+"There he is," said Shelton, returning the salute.
+
+Antonia bowed.
+
+"Oh!" she, cried, when they were out of hearing, "I wish he 'd go.
+I can't bear to see him; it's like looking at the dark."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+ON THE WING
+
+That night, having gone up to his room, Shelton filled his pipe for
+his unpleasant duty.  He had resolved to hint to Ferrand that he had
+better go.  He was still debating whether to write or go himself to
+the young foreigner, when there came a knock and Ferrand himself
+appeared.
+
+"I should be sorry," he said, breaking an awkward silence, "if you
+were to think me ungrateful, but I see no future for me here.  It
+would be better for me to go.  I should never be content to pass my
+life in teaching languages 'ce n'est guere dans mon caractre'."
+
+As soon as what he had been cudgelling his brains to find a way of
+saying had thus been said for him, Shelton experienced a sense of
+disapproval.
+
+"What do you expect to get that's better?" he said, avoiding
+Ferrand's eyes.
+
+"Thanks to your kindness," replied the latter, "I find myself
+restored.  I feel that I ought to make some good efforts to dominate
+my social position."
+
+"I should think it well over, if I were you!" said Shelton.
+
+"I have, and it seems to me that I'm wasting my time.  For a man with
+any courage languages are no career; and, though I 've many defects,
+I still have courage."
+
+Shelton let his pipe go out, so pathetic seemed to him this young
+man's faith in his career; it was no pretended faith, but neither was
+it, he felt, his true motive for departure.  "He's tired," he
+thought; "that 's it.  Tired of one place."  And having the
+instinctive sense that nothing would keep Ferrand, he redoubled his
+advice.
+
+"I should have thought," he said, "that you would have done better to
+have held on here and saved a little before going off to God knows
+what."
+
+"To save," said Ferrand, "is impossible for me, but, thanks to you
+and your good friends, I 've enough to make front to first
+necessities.  I'm in correspondence with a friend; it's of great
+importance for me to reach Paris before all the world returns.  I 've
+a chance to get, a post in one of the West African companies.  One
+makes fortunes out there--if one survives, and, as you know, I don't
+set too much store by life."
+
+"We have a proverb," said Shelton, "'A bird in the hand is worth two
+birds in the bush!'"
+
+"That," returned Ferrand, "like all proverbs, is just half true.
+This is an affair of temperament.  It 's not in my character to
+dandle one when I see two waiting to be caught; 'voyager, apprendre,
+c'est plus fort que moi'."  He paused; then, with a nervous goggle of
+the eyes and an ironic smile he said: "Besides, 'mon cher monsieur',
+it is better that I go.  I have never been one to hug illusions, and
+I see pretty clearly that my presence is hardly acceptable in this
+house."
+
+"What makes you say that?" asked, Shelton, feeling that the murder
+was now out."
+
+"My dear sir, all the world has not your understanding and your lack
+of prejudice, and, though your friends have been extremely kind to
+me, I am in a false position; I cause them embarrassment, which is
+not extraordinary when you reflect what I have been, and that they
+know my history."
+
+"Not through me," said Shelton quickly, "for I don't know it myself."
+
+"It's enough," the vagrant said, "that they feel I'm not a bird of
+their feather.  They cannot change, neither can I.  I have never
+wanted to remain where I 'm not welcome."
+
+Shelton turned to the window, and stared into the darkness; he would
+never quite understand this vagabond, so delicate, so cynical, and he
+wondered if Ferrand had been swallowing down the words, "Why, even
+you won't be sorry to see my back!"
+
+"Well," he said at last, "if you must go, you must.  When do you
+start?"
+
+"I 've arranged with a man to carry my things to the early train.  I
+think it better not to say good-bye.  I 've written a letter instead;
+here it is.  I left it open for you to read if you should wish,"
+
+"Then," said Shelton, with a curious mingling of relief, regret,
+good-will, "I sha'n't see you again?"
+
+Ferrand gave his hand a stealthy rub, and held it out.
+
+"I shall never forget what you have done for me," he said.
+
+"Mind you write," said Shelton.
+
+"Yes, yes"--the, vagrant's face was oddly twisted--"you don't know
+what a difference it makes to have a correspondent; it gives one
+courage.  I hope to remain a long time in correspondence with you."
+
+"I dare say you do," thought Shelton grimly, with a certain queer
+emotion.
+
+"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you
+for anything," said Ferrand.  "Thank you a thousand times.
+Good-bye!"
+
+He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out,
+left Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat.  "You will do me
+the justice to remember that I have never asked you for anything."
+The phrase seemed strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer
+acquaintanceship.  It was a fact: from the beginning to the end the
+youth had never really asked for anything.  Shelton sat down on his
+bed, and began to read the letter in his hand.  It was in French.
+
+DEAR MADAME (it ran),
+
+It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me
+for ungrateful.  Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me
+into the necessity of leaving your hospitality.  In all lives, as you
+are well aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I
+know that you will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an
+event which gives me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me
+subject to an imputation of ingratitude, which, believe me, dear
+Madame, by no means lies in my character.  I know well enough that it
+is a breach of politeness to leave you without in person conveying
+the expression of my profound reconnaissance, but if you consider how
+hard it is for me to be compelled to abandon all that is so
+distinguished in domestic life, you will forgive my weakness.  People
+like me, who have gone through existence with their eyes open, have
+remarked that those who are endowed with riches have a right to look
+down on such as are not by wealth and breeding fitted to occupy the
+same position.  I shall never dispute a right so natural and
+salutary, seeing that without this distinction, this superiority,
+which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race apart, the rest
+of the world would have no standard by which to rule their lives, no
+anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of fortune and of
+misfortune on which we others drive before the wind.  It is because
+of this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly fortunate to
+have been able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage called
+life, to sit beneath the tree of safety.  To have been able, if only
+for an hour, to sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with the
+blistered feet and ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard
+within their hearts a certain joy in life, illegal joy, like the
+desert air which travellers will tell you fills men as with wine to
+be able thus to sit an hour, and with a smile to watch them pass,
+lame and blind, in all the rags of their deserved misfortunes, can
+you not conceive, dear Madame, how that must be for such as I a
+comfort?  Whatever one may say, it is sweet, from a position of
+security, to watch the sufferings of others; it gives one a good
+sensation in the heart.
+
+In writing this, I recollect that I myself once had the chance of
+passing all my life in this enviable safety, and as you may suppose,
+dear Madame, I curse myself that I should ever have had the courage
+to step beyond the boundaries of this fine tranquil state.  Yet, too,
+there have been times when I have asked myself: "Do we really differ
+from the wealthy--we others, birds of the fields, who have our own
+philosophy, grown from the pains of needing bread--we who see that
+the human heart is not always an affair of figures, or of those good
+maxims that one finds in copy-books--do we really differ?"  It is
+with shame that I confess to have asked myself a question so
+heretical.  But now, when for these four weeks I have had the fortune
+of this rest beneath your roof, I see how wrong I was to entertain
+such doubts.  It is a great happiness to have decided once for all
+this point, for it is not in my character to pass through life
+uncertain--mistaken, perhaps--on psychological matters such as these.
+No, Madame; rest happily assured that there is a great difference,
+which in the future will be sacred for me.  For, believe me, Madame,
+it would be calamity for high Society if by chance there should arise
+amongst them any understanding of all that side of life which--vast
+as the plains and bitter as the sea, black as the ashes of a corpse,
+and yet more free than any wings of birds who fly away--is so justly
+beyond the grasp of their philosophy.  Yes, believe me, dear Madame,
+there is no danger in the world so much to be avoided by all the
+members of that circle, most illustrious, most respectable, called
+high Society.
+
+>From what I have said you may imagine how hard it is for me to take
+my flight.  I shall always keep for you the most distinguished
+sentiments.  With the expression of my full regard for you and your
+good family, and of a gratitude as sincere as it is badly worded,
+
+                         Believe me, dear Madame,
+                                   Your devoted
+                                             LOUIS FERRAND.
+
+Shelton's first impulse was to tear the letter up, but this he
+reflected he had no right to do.  Remembering, too, that Mrs.
+Dennant's French was orthodox, he felt sure she would never
+understand the young foreigner's subtle innuendoes.  He closed the
+envelope and went to bed, haunted still by Ferrand's parting look.
+
+It was with no small feeling of embarrassment, however, that, having
+sent the letter to its destination by an early footman, he made his
+appearance at the breakfast-table.  Behind the Austrian coffee-urn,
+filled with French coffee, Mrs. Dennant, who had placed four eggs in
+a German egg-boiler, said "Good-morning," with a kindly smile.
+
+"Dick, an egg?" she asked him, holding up a fifth.
+
+"No, thank you," replied Shelton, greeting the table and fitting
+down.
+
+He was a little late; the buzz of conversation rose hilariously
+around.
+
+"My dear," continued Mr. Dennant, who was talking to his youngest
+daughter, "you'll have no chance whatever--not the least little bit
+of chance."
+
+"Father, what nonsense!  You know we shall beat your heads off!"
+
+"Before it 's too late, then, I will eat a muffin.  Shelton, pass the
+muffins!  "But in making this request, Mr. Dennant avoided looking in
+his face.
+
+Antonia, too, seemed to keep her eyes away from him.  She was talking
+to a Connoisseur on Art of supernatural appearances, and seemed in
+the highest spirits.  Shelton rose, and, going to the sideboard,
+helped himself to grouse.
+
+"Who was the young man I saw yesterday on the lawn?" he heard the
+Connoisseur remark.  "Struck me as having an--er--quite intelligent
+physiog."
+
+His own intelligent physiog, raised at a slight slant so that he
+might look the better through his nose-nippers, was the very pattern
+of approval.  "It's curious how one's always meeting with
+intelligence;" it seemed to say.  Mrs. Dennant paused in the act of
+adding cream, and Shelton scrutinised her face; it was hare-like, and
+superior as ever.  Thank goodness she had smelt no rat!  He felt
+strangely disappointed.
+
+"You mean Monsieur Ferrand, teachin' Toddles French?  Dobson, the
+Professor's cup."
+
+"I hope I shall see him again," cooed the Connoisseur; "he was quite
+interesting on the subject of young German working men.  It seems
+they tramp from place to place to learn their trades.  What
+nationality was he, may I ask?"
+
+Mr. Dennant, of whom he asked this question, lifted his brows, and
+said,
+
+"Ask Shelton."
+
+"Half Dutch, half French."
+
+"Very interesting breed; I hope I shall see him again."
+
+"Well, you won't," said Thea suddenly; "he's gone."
+
+Shelton saw that their good breeding alone prevented all from adding,
+"And thank goodness, too!"
+
+"Gone?  Dear me, it's very--"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Dennant, "very sudden."
+
+"Now, Algie," murmured Mrs. Dennant, "it 's quite a charmin' letter.
+Must have taken the poor young man an hour to write."
+
+"Oh, mother!" cried Antonia.
+
+And Shelton felt his face go crimson.  He had suddenly remembered
+that her French was better than her mother's.
+
+"He seems to have had a singular experience," said the Connoisseur.
+
+"Yes," echoed Mr. Dennant; "he 's had some singular experience.  If
+you want to know the details, ask friend Shelton; it's quite
+romantic.  In the meantime, my dear; another cup?"
+
+The Connoisseur, never quite devoid of absent-minded malice, spurred
+his curiosity to a further effort; and, turning his well-defended
+eyes on Shelton, murmured,
+
+"Well, Mr. Shelton, you are the historian, it seems."
+
+"There is no history," said Shelton, without looking up.
+
+"Ah, that's very dull," remarked the Connoisseur.
+
+"My dear Dick," said Mrs. Dennant, "that was really a most touchin'
+story about his goin' without food in Paris."
+
+Shelton shot another look at Antonia; her face was frigid.  "I hate
+your d---d superiority!" he thought, staring at the Connoisseur.
+
+"There's nothing," said that gentleman, "more enthralling than
+starvation.  Come, Mr Shelton."
+
+"I can't tell stories," said Shelton; "never could."
+
+He cared not a straw for Ferrand, his coming, going, or his history;
+for, looking at Antonia, his heart was heavy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE LADY FROM BEYOND
+
+The morning was sultry, brooding, steamy.  Antonia was at her music,
+and from the room where Shelton tried to fix attention on a book he
+could hear her practising her scales with a cold fury that cast an
+added gloom upon his spirit.  He did not see her until lunch, and
+then she again sat next the Connoisseur.  Her cheeks were pale, but
+there was something feverish in her chatter to her neighbour; she
+still refused to look at Shelton.  He felt very miserable.  After
+lunch, when most of them had left the table, the rest fell to
+discussing country neighbours.
+
+"Of course," said Mrs. Dennant, "there are the Foliots; but nobody
+calls on them."
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "the Foliots--the Foliots--the people--
+er--who--quite so!"
+
+"It's really distressin'; she looks so sweet ridin' about.  Many
+people with worse stories get called on," continued Mrs. Dennant,
+with that large frankness of intrusion upon doubtful subjects which
+may be made by certain people in a certain way," but, after all, one
+couldn't ask them to meet anybody."
+
+"No," the Connoisseur assented.  "I used to know Foliot.  Thousand
+pities.  They say she was a very pretty woman."
+
+"Oh, not pretty!"  said Mrs. Dennant! "more interestin than pretty, I
+should say."
+
+Shelton, who knew the lady slightly, noticed that they spoke of her
+as in the past.  He did not look towards Antonia; for, though a
+little troubled at her presence while such a subject was discussed,
+he hated his conviction that her face, was as unruffled as though the
+Foliots had been a separate species.  There was, in fact, a curiosity
+about her eyes, a faint impatience on her lips; she was rolling
+little crumbs of bread.  Suddenly yawning, she muttered some remark,
+and rose.  Shelton stopped her at the door.
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+"May n't I come?".
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I 'm going to take Toddles."
+
+Shelton held the door open, and went back to the table.
+
+"Yes," the Connoisseur said, sipping at his sherry, "I 'm afraid it's
+all over with young Foliot."
+
+"Such a pity!" murmured Mrs. Dennant, and her kindly face looked
+quite disturbed.  "I've known him ever since he was a boy.  Of
+course, I think he made a great mistake to bring her down here.  Not
+even bein' able to get married makes it doubly awkward.  Oh, I think
+he made a great mistake!"
+
+"Ah!" said the Connoisseur, "but d' you suppose that makes much
+difference?  Even if What 's--his-name gave her a divorce, I don't
+think, don't you know, that--"
+
+"Oh, it does!  So many people would be inclined to look over it in
+time.  But as it is it's hopeless, quite.  So very awkward for
+people, too, meetin' them about.  The Telfords and the Butterwicks--
+by the way, they're comin' here to dine to-night--live near them,
+don't you know."
+
+"Did you ever meet her before-er-before the flood?" the Connoisseur
+inquired; and his lips parting and unexpectedly revealing teeth gave
+him a shadowy resemblance to a goat.
+
+"Yes; I did meet her once at the Branksomes'.  I thought her quite a
+charmin' person."
+
+"Poor fellow!"  said the Connoisseur; "they tell me he was going to
+take the hounds."
+
+"And there are his delightful coverts, too.  Algie often used to
+shoot there, and now they say he just has his brother down to shoot
+with him.  It's really quite too melancholy!  Did you know him,
+Dick?"
+
+"Foliot?" replied Shelton absently.  "No; I never met him: I've seen
+her once or twice at Ascot."
+
+Through the window he could see Antonia in her scarlet Tam-o'-
+shanter, swinging her stick, and he got up feigning unconcern.  Just
+then Toddles came bounding up against his sister.  They went off arm
+in arm.  She had seen him at the window, yet she gave no friendly
+glance; Shelton felt more miserable than ever.  He stepped out upon
+the drive.  There was a lurid, gloomy canopy above; the elm-trees
+drooped their heavy blackish green, the wonted rustle of the aspen-
+tree was gone, even the rooks were silent.  A store of force lay
+heavy on the heart of nature.  He started pacing slowly up and down,
+his pride forbidding him to follow her, and presently sat down on an
+old stone seat that faced the road.  He stayed a long time staring at
+the elms, asking himself what he had done and what he ought to do.
+And somehow he was frightened.  A sense of loneliness was on him, so
+real, so painful, that he shivered in the sweltering heat.  He was
+there, perhaps, an hour, alone, and saw nobody pass along the road.
+Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a
+motor-car approaching from the opposite direction.  The rider made
+appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head
+and tail.  She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the
+approaching car grew every moment louder.  Shelton rose; the car
+flashed by.  He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its
+rider up against the gatepost.
+
+He ran, but before he reached the gate the lady was on foot, holding
+the plunging horse's bridle.
+
+"Are you hurt?" cried Shelton breathlessly, and he, too, grabbed the
+bridle.  "Those beastly cars!"
+
+"I don't know," she said.  "Please don't; he won't let strangers
+touch him."
+
+Shelton let go, and watched her coax the horse.  She was rather tall,
+dressed in a grey habit, with a grey Russian cap upon her head, and
+he suddenly recognised the Mrs. Foliot whom they had been talking of
+at lunch.
+
+"He 'll be quiet now," she said, "if you would n't mind holding him a
+minute."
+
+She gave the reins to him, and leaned against the gate.  She was very
+pale.
+
+"I do hope he has n't hurt you," Shelton said.  He was quite close to
+her, well able to see her face--a curious face with high cheek-bones
+and a flatfish moulding, enigmatic, yet strangely passionate for all
+its listless pallor.  Her smiling, tightened lips were pallid;
+pallid, too, her grey and deep-set eyes with greenish tints; above
+all, pale the ashy mass of hair coiled under her grey cap.
+
+"Th-thanks!"  she said; "I shall be all right directly.  I'm sorry to
+have made a fuss."
+
+She bit her lips and smiled.
+
+"I 'm sure you're hurt; do let me go for---" stammered Shelton.
+"I can easily get help."
+
+"Help!"  she said, with a stony little laugh; "oh, no, thanks!"
+
+She left the gate, and crossed the road to where he held the horse.
+Shelton, to conceal embarrassment, looked at the horse's legs, and
+noticed that the grey was resting one of them.  He ran his hand down.
+
+"I 'm afraid," he said, "your horse has knocked his off knee; it's
+swelling."
+
+She smiled again.
+
+"Then we're both cripples."
+
+"He'll be lame when he gets cold.  Would n't you like to put him in
+the stable here?  I 'm sure you ought to drive home."
+
+"No, thanks; if I 'm able to ride him he can carry me.  Give me a
+hand up."
+
+Her voice sounded as though something had offended her.  Rising from
+inspection of the horse's leg, Shelton saw Antonia and Toddles
+standing by.  They had come through a wicketgate leading from the
+fields.
+
+The latter ran up to him at once.
+
+"We saw it," he whispered--"jolly smash-up.  Can't I help?"
+
+"Hold his bridle," answered Shelton, and he looked from one lady to
+the other.
+
+There are moments when the expression of a face fixes itself with
+painful clearness; to Shelton this was such a moment.  Those two
+faces close together, under their coverings of scarlet and of grey,
+showed a contrast almost cruelly vivid.  Antonia was flushed, her
+eyes had grown deep blue; her look of startled doubt had passed and
+left a question in her face.
+
+"Would you like to come in and wait?  We could send you home, in the
+brougham," she said.
+
+The lady called Mrs. Foliot stood, one arm across the crupper of her
+saddle, biting her lips and smiling still her enigmatic smile, and it
+was her face that stayed most vividly on Shelton's mind, its ashy
+hail, its pallor, and fixed, scornful eyes.
+
+"Oh, no, thanks!  You're very kind."
+
+Out of Antonia's face the timid, doubting friendliness had fled, and
+was replaced by enmity.  With a long, cold look at both of them she
+turned away.  Mrs. Foliot gave a little laugh, and raised her foot
+for Shelton's help.  He heard a hiss of pain as he swung her up, but
+when he looked at her she smiled.
+
+"Anyway,"  he said impatiently, "let me come and see you don't break
+down."
+
+She shook her head.  "It 's only two miles.  I'm not made of sugar."
+
+"Then I shall simply have to follow."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, fixing her resolute eyes on him.
+
+"Would that boy like to come?" she asked.
+
+Toddles left the horse's head.
+
+"By Jove!" he cried.  "Would n't I just!"
+
+"Then," she said, "I think that will be best.  You 've been so kind."
+
+She bowed, smiled inscrutably once more, touched the Arab with her
+whip, and started, Toddles trotting at her side.
+
+Shelton was left with Antonia underneath the elms.  A sudden puff of
+tepid air blew in their faces, like a warning message from the heavy,
+purple heat clouds; low rumbling thunder travelled slowly from afar.
+
+"We're going to have a storm," he said.
+
+Antonia nodded.  She was pale now, and her face still wore its cold
+look of offence.
+
+"I 've got a headache," she said, "I shall go in and lie down."
+
+Shelton tried to speak, but something kept him silent--submission to
+what was coming, like the mute submission of the fields and birds to
+the menace of the storm.
+
+He watched her go, and went back to his seat.  And the silence seemed
+to grow; the flowers ceased to exude their fragrance, numbed by the
+weighty air.  All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted.
+No noise came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing
+of no bell; the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness.  And the
+silence added to the solitude within him.  What an unlucky chance,
+that woman's accident!  Designed by Providence to put Antonia further
+from him than before!  Why was not the world composed of the
+immaculate alone?  He started pacing up and down, tortured by a
+dreadful heartache.
+
+"I must get rid of this," he thought.  "I 'll go for a good tramp,
+and chance the storm."
+
+Leaving the drive he ran on Toddles, returning in the highest
+spirits.
+
+"I saw her home," he crowed.  "I say, what a ripper, isn't she?
+She 'll be as lame as a tree to-morrow; so will the gee.  Jolly hot!"
+
+This meeting showed Shelton that he had been an hour on the stone
+seat; he had thought it some ten minutes, and the discovery alarmed
+him.  It seemed to bring the import of his miserable fear right home
+to him.  He started with a swinging stride, keeping his eyes fixed on
+the road, the perspiration streaming down his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE STORM
+
+It was seven and more when Shelton returned, from his walk; a few
+heat drops had splashed the leaves, but the storm had not yet broken.
+In brooding silence the world seemed pent beneath the purple
+firmament.
+
+By rapid walking in the heat Shelton had got rid of his despondency.
+He felt like one who is to see his mistress after long estrangement.
+He, bathed, and, straightening his tie-ends, stood smiling at the
+glass.  His fear, unhappiness, and doubts seemed like an evil dream;
+how much worse off would he not have been, had it all been true?
+
+It was dinner-party night, and when he reached the drawing-room the
+guests were there already, chattering of the coming storm.  Antonia
+was not yet down, and Shelton stood by the piano waiting for her
+entry.  Red faces, spotless shirt-fronts, white arms; and freshly-
+twisted hair were all around him.  Some one handed him a clove
+carnation, and, as he held it to his nose, Antonia came in,
+breathless, as though she had rushed down-stairs, Her cheeks were
+pale no longer; her hand kept stealing to her throat.  The flames of
+the coming storm seemed to have caught fire within her, to be
+scorching her in her white frock; she passed him close, and her
+fragrance whipped his senses.
+
+She had never seemed to him so lovely.
+
+Never again will Shelton breathe the perfume of melons and pineapples
+without a strange emotion.  From where he sat at dinner he could not
+see Antonia, but amidst the chattering of voices, the clink of glass
+and silver, the sights and sounds and scents of feasting, he thought
+how he would go to her and say that nothing mattered but her love.
+He drank the frosted, pale-gold liquid of champagne as if it had been
+water.
+
+The windows stood wide open in the heat; the garden lay in thick,
+soft shadow, where the pitchy shapes of trees could be discerned.
+There was not a breath of air to fan the candle-flames above the
+flowers; but two large moths, fearful of the heavy dark, flew in and
+wheeled between the lights over the diners' heads.  One fell scorched
+into a dish of fruit, and was removed; the other, eluding all the
+swish of napkins and the efforts of the footmen, continued to make
+soft, fluttering rushes till Shelton rose and caught it in his hand.
+He took it to the window and threw it out into the darkness, and he
+noticed that the air was thick and tepid to his face.  At a sign from
+Mr. Dennant the muslin curtains were then drawn across the windows,
+and in gratitude, perhaps, for this protection, this filmy barrier
+between them and the muffled threats of Nature, everyone broke out in
+talk.  It was such a night as comes in summer after perfect weather,
+frightening in its heat, and silence, which was broken by the distant
+thunder travelling low along the ground like the muttering of all
+dark places on the earth--such a night as seems, by very
+breathlessness, to smother life, and with its fateful threats to
+justify man's cowardice.
+
+The ladies rose at last.  The circle of the rosewood dining-table,
+which had no cloth, strewn with flowers and silver gilt, had a
+likeness to some autumn pool whose brown depths of oily water gleam
+under the sunset with red and yellow leaves; above it the smoke of
+cigarettes was clinging, like a mist to water when the sun goes down.
+Shelton became involved in argument with his neighbour on the English
+character.
+
+"In England we've mislaid the recipe of life," he said.  "Pleasure's
+a lost art.  We don't get drunk, we're ashamed of love, and as to
+beauty, we've lost the eye for' it.  In exchange we have got money,
+but what 's the good of money when we don't know how to spend it?"
+Excited by his neighbour's smile, he added: "As to thought, we think
+so much of what our neighbours think that we never think at all....
+Have you ever watched a foreigner when he's listening to an
+Englishman?  We 're in the habit of despising foreigners; the scorn
+we have for them is nothing to the scorn they have for us.  And they
+are right!  Look at our taste!  What is the good of owning riches if
+we don't know how to use them?"
+
+"That's rather new to me," his neighbour said.  "There may be
+something in it....  Did you see that case in the papers the other
+day of old Hornblower, who left the 1820 port that fetched a guinea a
+bottle?  When the purchaser--poor feller!--came to drink it he found
+eleven bottles out of twelve completely ullaged--ha! ha!  Well,
+there's nothing wrong with this"; and he drained his glass.
+
+"No," answered Shelton.
+
+When they rose to join the ladies, he slipped out on the lawn.
+
+At once he was enveloped in a bath of heat.  A heavy odour, sensual,
+sinister, was in the air, as from a sudden flowering of amorous
+shrubs.  He stood and drank it in with greedy nostrils.  Putting his
+hand down, he felt the grass; it was dry, and charged with
+electricity.  Then he saw, pale and candescent in the blackness,
+three or four great lilies, the authors of that perfume.  The
+blossoms seemed to be rising at him through the darkness; as though
+putting up their faces to be kissed.  He straightened himself
+abruptly and went in.
+
+The guests were leaving when Shelton, who was watching; saw Antonia
+slip through the drawing-room window.  He could follow the white
+glimmer of her frock across the lawn, but lost it in the shadow of
+the trees; casting a hasty look to see that he was not observed, he
+too slipped out.  The blackness and the heat were stifling he took
+great breaths of it as if it were the purest mountain air, and,
+treading softly on the grass, stole on towards the holm oak.  His
+lips were dry, his heart beat painfully.  The mutter of the distant
+thunder had quite ceased; waves of hot air came wheeling in his face,
+and in their midst a sudden rush of cold.  He thought, "The storm is
+coming now!"  and stole on towards the tree.  She was lying in the
+hammock, her figure a white blur in, the heart of the tree's shadow,
+rocking gently to a little creaking of the branch.  Shelton held his
+breath; she had not heard him.  He crept up close behind the trunk
+till he stood in touch of her.  "I mustn't startle her," he thought.
+"Antonia!"
+
+There was a faint stir in the hammock, but no answer.  He stood over
+her, but even then he could not see her face; he only, had a sense of
+something breathing and alive within a yard of him--of something warm
+and soft.  He whispered again, "Antonia!" but again there came no
+answer, and a sort of fear and frenzy seized on him.  He could no
+longer hear her breathe; the creaking of the branch had ceased.  What
+was passing in that silent, living creature there so close?  And then
+he heard again the sound of breathing, quick and scared, like the
+fluttering of a bird; in a moment he was staring in the dark at an
+empty hammock.
+
+He stayed beside the empty hammock till he could bear uncertainty no
+longer.  But as he crossed the lawn the sky was rent from end to end
+by jagged lightning, rain spattered him from head to foot, and with a
+deafening crack the thunder broke.
+
+He sought the smoking-room, but, recoiling at the door, went to his
+own room, and threw himself down on the bed.  The thunder groaned and
+sputtered in long volleys; the lightning showed him the shapes of
+things within the room, with a weird distinctness that rent from them
+all likeness to the purpose they were made for, bereaved them of
+utility, of their matter-of-factness, presented them as skeletons,
+abstractions, with indecency in their appearance, like the naked
+nerves and sinews of a leg preserved in, spirit.  The sound of the
+rain against the house stunned his power of thinking, he rose to shut
+his windows; then, returning to his bed, threw himself down again.
+He stayed there till the storm was over, in a kind of stupor; but
+when the boom of the retreating thunder grew every minute less
+distinct, he rose.  Then for the first time he saw something white
+close by the door.
+
+It was a note:
+
+I have made a mistake.  Please forgive me, and go away.--ANTONIA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+WILDERNESS
+
+When he had read this note, Shelton put it down beside his sleeve-
+links on his dressing table, stared in the mirror at himself, and
+laughed. But his lips soon stopped him laughing; he threw himself
+upon his bed and pressed his face into the pillows.  He lay there
+half-dressed throughout the night, and when he rose, soon after dawn,
+he had not made his mind up what to do.  The only thing he knew for
+certain was that he must not meet Antonia.
+
+At last he penned the following:
+
+I have had a sleepless night with toothache, and think it best to run
+up to the dentist at once.  If a tooth must come out, the sooner the
+better.
+
+He addressed it to Mrs. Dennant, and left it on his table.  After
+doing this he threw himself once more upon his bed, and this time
+fell into a doze.
+
+He woke with a start, dressed, and let himself quietly out.  The
+likeness of his going to that of Ferrand struck him.  "Both outcasts
+now," he thought.
+
+He tramped on till noon without knowing or caring where he went;
+then, entering a field, threw himself down under the hedge, and fell
+asleep.
+
+He was awakened by a whirr.  A covey of partridges, with wings
+glistening in the sun, were straggling out across the adjoining field
+of mustard.  They soon settled in the old-maidish way of partridges,
+and began to call upon each other.
+
+Some cattle had approached him in his sleep, and a beautiful bay cow,
+with her head turned sideways, was snuffing at him gently, exhaling
+her peculiar sweetness.  She was as fine in legs and coat as any
+race-horse.  She dribbled at the corners of her black, moist lips;
+her eye was soft and cynical.  Breathing the vague sweetness of the
+mustard-field, rubbing dry grasp-stalks in his fingers, Shelton had a
+moment's happiness--the happiness of sun and sky, of the eternal
+quiet, and untold movements of the fields.  Why could not human
+beings let their troubles be as this cow left the flies that clung
+about her eyes?  He dozed again, and woke up with a laugh, for this
+was what he dreamed:
+
+He fancied he was in a room, at once the hall and drawing-room of
+some country house.  In the centre of this room a lady stood, who was
+looking in a hand-glass at her face.  Beyond a door or window could
+be seen a garden with a row of statues, and through this door people
+passed without apparent object.
+
+Suddenly Shelton saw his mother advancing to the lady with the hand-
+glass, whom now he recognised as Mrs. Foliot.  But, as he looked, his
+mother changed to Mrs. Dennant, and began speaking in a voice that
+was a sort of abstract of refinement.  "Je fais de la philosophic,"
+it said; "I take the individual for what she's worth.  I do not
+condemn; above all, one must have spirit!"  The lady with the mirror
+continued looking in the glass; and, though he could not see her
+face, he could see its image-pale, with greenish eyes, and a smile
+like scorn itself.  Then, by a swift transition, he was walking in
+the garden talking to Mrs. Dennant.
+
+It was from this talk that he awoke with laughter.  "But," she had
+been saying, "Dick, I've always been accustomed to believe what I was
+told.  It was so unkind of her to scorn me just because I happen to
+be second-hand."  And her voice awakened Shelton's pity; it was like
+a frightened child's.  "I don't know what I shall do if I have to
+form opinions for myself.  I was n't brought up to it.  I 've always
+had them nice and secondhand.  How am I to go to work?  One must
+believe what other people do; not that I think much of other people,
+but, you do know what it is--one feels so much more comfortable," and
+her skirts rustled.  "But, Dick, whatever happens"--her voice
+entreated--"do let Antonia get her judgments secondhand.  Never mind
+for me--if I must form opinions for myself, I must--but don't let
+her; any old opinions so long as they are old.  It 's dreadful to
+have to think out new ones for oneself."  And he awoke.  His dream
+had had in it the element called Art, for, in its gross absurdity,
+Mrs. Dennant had said things that showed her soul more fully than
+anything she would have said in life.
+
+"No," said a voice quite close, behind the hedge, "not many
+Frenchmen, thank the Lord!  A few coveys of Hungarians over from the
+Duke's.  Sir James, some pie?"
+
+Shelton raised himself with drowsy curiosity--still half asleep--and
+applied his face to a gap in the high, thick osiers of the hedge.
+Four men were seated on camp-stools round a folding-table, on which
+was a pie and other things to eat.  A game-cart, well-adorned with
+birds and hares, stood at a short distance; the tails of some dogs
+were seen moving humbly, and a valet opening bottles.  Shelton had
+forgotten that it was "the first."  The host was a soldierly and
+freckled man; an older man sat next him, square-jawed, with an
+absent-looking eye and sharpened nose; next him, again, there was a
+bearded person whom they seemed to call the Commodore; in the fourth,
+to his alarm, Shelton recognised the gentleman called Mabbey.  It was
+really no matter for surprise to meet him miles from his own place,
+for he was one of those who wander with a valet and two guns from the
+twelfth of August to the end of January, and are then supposed to go
+to Monte Carlo or to sleep until the twelfth of August comes again.
+
+He was speaking.
+
+"Did you hear what a bag we made on the twelfth, Sir James?"
+
+"Ah! yes; what was that?  Have you sold your bay horse, Glennie?"
+
+Shelton had not decided whether or no to sneak away, when the
+Commodore's thick voice began:
+
+"My man tellsh me that Mrs. Foliot--haw--has lamed her Arab.  Does
+she mean to come out cubbing?"
+
+Shelton observed the smile that came on all their faces.  "Foliot 's
+paying for his good time now; what a donkey to get caught!" it seemed
+to say.  He turned his back and shut his eyes.
+
+"Cubbing?" replied Glennie; "hardly."
+
+"Never could shee anything wonderful in her looks," went on the
+Commodore; "so quiet, you never knew that she was in the room.  I
+remember sayin' to her once, 'Mrs. Lutheran, now what do you like
+besht in all the world?' and what do you think she answered?  'Music!'
+Haw!"
+
+The voice of Mabbey said:
+
+"He was always a dark horse, Foliot: It 's always the dark horses
+that get let in for this kind of thing"; and there was a sound as
+though he licked his lips.
+
+"They say," said the voice of the host, "he never gives you back a
+greeting now.  Queer fish; they say that she's devoted to him."
+
+Coming so closely on his meeting with this lady, and on the dream
+from which he had awakened, this conversation mesmerised the listener
+behind the hedge.
+
+"If he gives up his huntin' and his shootin', I don't see what the
+deuce he 'll do; he's resigned his clubs; as to his chance of
+Parliament---" said the voice of Mabbey.
+
+"Thousand pities," said Sir James; "still, he knew what to expect."
+
+"Very queer fellows, those Foliots," said the Commodore.  "There was
+his father: he 'd always rather talk to any scarecrow he came across
+than to you or me.  Wonder what he'll do with all his horses; I
+should like that chestnut of his."
+
+"You can't tell what a fellow 'll do," said the voice of Mabbey--
+"take to drink or writin' books.  Old Charlie Wayne came to gazin' at
+stars, and twice a week he used to go and paddle round in
+Whitechapel, teachin' pothooks--"
+
+"Glennie," said Sir James, "what 's become of Smollett, your old
+keeper?"
+
+"Obliged to get rid of him."  Shelton tried again to close his ears,
+but again he listened.  "Getting a bit too old; lost me a lot of eggs
+last season."
+
+"Ah!"  said the Commodore, "when they oncesh begin to lose eggsh--"
+
+"As a matter of fact, his son--you remember him, Sir James, he used
+to load for you?--got a girl into trouble; when her people gave her
+the chuck old Smollet took her in; beastly scandal it made, too.  The
+girl refused to marry Smollett, and old Smollett backed her up.
+Naturally, the parson and the village cut up rough; my wife offered
+to get her into one of those reformatory what-d' you-call-'ems, but
+the old fellow said she should n't go if she did n't want to.  Bad
+business altogether; put him quite off his stroke.  I only got five
+hundred pheasants last year instead of eight."
+
+There was a silence.  Shelton again peeped through the hedge.  All
+were eating pie.
+
+"In Warwickshire," said the Commodore, "they always marry--haw--and
+live reshpectable ever after."
+
+"Quite so," remarked the host; "it was a bit too thick, her refusing
+to marry him.  She said he took advantage of her."
+
+"She's sorry by this time," said Sir James; "lucky escape for young
+Smollett.  Queer, the obstinacy of some of these old fellows!"
+
+"What are we doing after lunch?" asked the Commodore.
+
+"The next field," said the host, "is pasture.  We line up along the
+hedge, and drive that mustard towards the roots; there ought to be a
+good few birds."
+
+"Shelton rose, and, crouching, stole softly to the gate:
+
+"On the twelfth, shootin' in two parties," followed the voice of
+Mabbey from the distance.
+
+Whether from his walk or from his sleepless night, Shelton seemed to
+ache in every limb; but he continued his tramp along the road.  He
+was no nearer to deciding what to do.  It was late in the afternoon
+when he reached Maidenhead, and, after breaking fast, got into a
+London train and went to sleep.  At ten o'clock that evening he
+walked into St. James's Park and there sat down.
+
+The lamplight dappled through the tired foliage on to these benches
+which have rested many vagrants.  Darkness has ceased to be the
+lawful cloak of the unhappy; but Mother Night was soft and moonless,
+and man had not despoiled her of her comfort, quite.
+
+Shelton was not alone upon the seat, for at the far end was sitting a
+young girl with a red, round, sullen face; and beyond, and further
+still, were dim benches and dim figures sitting on them, as though
+life's institutions had shot them out in an endless line of rubbish.
+
+"Ah!"  thought Shelton, in the dreamy way of tired people; "the
+institutions are all right; it's the spirit that's all---"
+
+"Wrong?"  said a voice behind him; "why, of course!  You've taken the
+wrong turn, old man."
+
+He saw a policeman, with a red face shining through the darkness,
+talking to a strange old figure like some aged and dishevelled bird.
+
+"Thank you, constable," the old man said, "as I've come wrong I'll
+take a rest."  Chewing his gums, he seemed to fear to take the
+liberty of sitting down.
+
+Shelton made room, and the old fellow took the vacant place.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure," he said in shaky tones, and
+snatching at his battered hat; "I see you was a gentleman"--and
+lovingly he dwelt upon the word--"would n't disturb you for the
+world.  I'm not used to being out at night, and the seats do get so
+full.  Old age must lean on something; you'll excuse me, sir, I 'm
+sure."
+
+"Of course," said Shelton gently.
+
+"I'm a respectable old man, really," said his neighbour; "I never
+took a liberty in my life.  But at my age, sir, you get nervous;
+standin' about the streets as I been this last week, an' sleepin' in
+them doss-houses--Oh, they're dreadful rough places--a dreadful rough
+lot there!  Yes," the old man said again, as Shelton turned to look
+at him, struck by the real self-pity in his voice, "dreadful rough
+places!"
+
+A movement of his head, which grew on a lean, plucked neck like that
+of an old fowl, had brought his face into the light.  It was long,
+and run to seed, and had a large, red nose; its thin, colourless lips
+were twisted sideways and apart, showing his semi-toothless mouth;
+and his eyes had that aged look of eyes in which all colour runs into
+a thin rim round the iris; and over them kept coming films like the
+films over parrots' eyes.  He was, or should have been, clean-shaven.
+His hair--for he had taken off his hat was thick and lank, of dusty
+colour, as far as could be seen, without a  speck of grey, and parted
+very beautifully just about the middle.
+
+"I can put up with that," he said again.  "I never interferes with
+nobody, and nobody don't interfere with me; but what frightens me"--
+his voice grew steady, as if too terrified to shake, is never knowin'
+day to day what 's to become of yer.  Oh, that 'a dreadful, that is!"
+
+"It must be," answered Shelton.
+
+"Ah! it is," the old man said; "and the winter cumin' on.  I never
+was much used to open air, bein' in domestic service all my life; but
+I don't mind that so long as I can see my way to earn a livin'.
+Well, thank God!  I've got a job at last"; and his voice grew
+cheerful suddenly.  "Sellin' papers is not what I been accustomed to;
+but the Westminister, they tell me that's one of the most respectable
+of the evenin' papers--in fact, I know it is.  So now I'm sure to get
+on; I try hard."
+
+"How did you get the job?" asked Shelton.
+
+"I 've got my character," the old fellow said, making a gesture with
+a skinny hand towards his chest, as if it were there he kept his
+character.
+
+"Thank God, nobody can't take that away!  I never parts from that";
+and fumbling, he produced a packet, holding first one paper to the
+light, and then another, and he looked anxiously at Shelton.  "In
+that house where I been sleepin' they're not honest; they 've stolen
+a parcel of my things--a lovely shirt an' a pair of beautiful gloves
+a gentleman gave me for holdin' of his horse.  Now, would n't you
+prosecute 'em, sir?"
+
+"It depends on what you can prove."
+
+"I know they had 'em.  A man must stand up for his rights; that's
+only proper.  I can't afford to lose beautiful things like them.  I
+think I ought to prosecute, now, don't you, sir?"
+
+Shelton restrained a smile.
+
+"There!"  said the old man, smoothing out a piece of paper shakily,
+"that's Sir George!"  and his withered finger-tips trembled on the
+middle of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as
+butler, during which time I have found him all that a servant should
+be.'  And this 'ere'--he fumbled with another--"this 'ere 's Lady
+Glengow: 'Joshua Creed--' I thought I'd like you to read 'em since
+you've been so kind."
+
+"Will you have a pipe?"
+
+"Thank  ye, sir," replied the aged butler, filling his clay from
+Shelton's pouch; then, taking a front tooth between his finger and
+his thumb, he began to feel it tenderly, working it to and fro with a
+sort of melancholy pride.
+
+"My teeth's a-comin' out," he said; "but I enjoys pretty good health
+for a man of my age."
+
+"How old is that?"
+
+"Seventy-two!  Barrin' my cough, and my rupture, and this 'ere
+affliction"--he passed his hand over his face--" I 've nothing to
+complain of; everybody has somethink, it seems.  I'm a wonder for my
+age, I think."
+
+Shelton, for all his pity, would have given much to laugh.
+
+"Seventy-two!" he said; "yes, a great age.  You remember the country
+when it was very different to what it is now?"
+
+"Ah!" said the old butler, "there was gentry then; I remember them
+drivin' down to Newmarket (my native place, sir) with their own
+horses.  There was n't so much o' these here middle classes then.
+There was more, too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness
+in people then--none o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin'
+his own little shop; not so eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as
+you might say.  And then look at the price of bread!  O dear!  why,
+it is n't a quarter what it was!"
+
+"And are people happier now than they were then?" asked Shelton.
+
+The old butler sucked his pipe.
+
+"No," he answered, shaking his old head; "they've lost the contented
+spirit.  I see people runnin' here and runnin' there, readin' books,
+findin' things out; they ain't not so self-contented as they were."
+
+"Is that possible?" thought Shelton.
+
+"No," repeated the old man, again sucking at his pipe, and this time
+blowing out a lot of smoke; "I don't see as much happiness about, not
+the same look on the faces.  'T isn't likely.  See these 'ere motor-
+cars, too; they say 'orses is goin' out"; and, as if dumbfounded at
+his own conclusion, he sat silent for some time, engaged in the
+lighting and relighting of his pipe.
+
+The girl at the far end stirred, cleared her throat, and settled down
+again; her movement disengaged a scent of frowsy clothes.  The
+policeman had approached and scrutinised these ill-assorted faces;
+his glance was jovially contemptuous till he noticed Shelton, and
+then was modified by curiosity.
+
+"There's good men in the police," the aged butler said, when the
+policeman had passed on--" there's good men in the police, as good
+men as you can see, and there 's them that treats you like the dirt--
+a dreadful low class of man.  Oh dear, yes!  when they see you down
+in the world, they think they can speak to you as they like; I don't
+give them no chance to worry me; I keeps myself to myself, and speak
+civil to all the world.  You have to hold the candle to them; for, oh
+dear! if they 're crossed--some of them--they 're a dreadful
+unscrup'lous lot of men!"
+
+"Are you going to spend the night here?"
+
+"It's nice and warm to-night," replied the aged butler.  "I said to
+the man at that low place I said: 'Don't you ever speak to me again,'
+I said, 'don't you come near me!'  Straightforward and honest 's been
+my motto all my life; I don't want to have nothing to say to them low
+fellows"--he made an annihilating gesture--"after the way they
+treated me, takin' my things like that.  Tomorrow I shall get a room
+for three shillin's a week, don't you think so, sir?  Well, then I
+shall be all right.  I 'm not afraid now; the mind at rest.  So long
+as I ran keep myself, that's all I want.  I shall do first-rate, I
+think"; and he stared at Shelton, but the look in his eyes and the
+half-scared optimism of his voice convinced the latter that he lived
+in dread.  "So long as I can keep myself," he said again, "I sha'n't
+need no workhouse nor lose respectability."
+
+"No," thought Shelton; and for some time sat without a word.  "When
+you can;" he said at last, "come and see me; here's my card."
+
+The aged butler became conscious with a jerk, for he was nodding.
+
+"Thank ye, sir; I will," he said, with pitiful alacrity.  "Down by
+Belgravia?  Oh, I know it well; I lived down in them parts with a
+gentleman of the name of Bateson--perhaps you knew him; he 's dead
+now--the Honourable Bateson.  Thank ye, sir; I'll be sure to come";
+and, snatching at his battered hat, he toilsomely secreted Shelton's
+card amongst his character.  A minute later he began again to nod.
+
+The policeman passed a second time; his gaze seemed to say, "Now,
+what's a toff doing on that seat with those two rotters?"  And
+Shelton caught his eye.
+
+"Ah!"  he thought; "exactly!  You don't know what to make of me--a
+man of my position sitting here!  Poor devil! to spend your days in
+spying on your fellow-creatures!  Poor devil!  But you don't know
+that you 're a poor devil, and so you 're not one."
+
+The man on the next bench sneezed--a shrill and disapproving sneeze.
+
+The policeman passed again, and, seeing that the lower creatures were
+both dozing, he spoke to Shelton:
+
+"Not very safe on these 'ere benches, sir," he said; "you never know
+who you may be sittin' next to.  If I were you, sir, I should be
+gettin' on--if you 're not goin' to spend the night here, that is";
+and he laughed, as at an admirable joke.
+
+Shelton looked at him, and itched to say, "Why shouldn't I?" but it
+struck him that it would sound very odd.  "Besides," he thought, "I
+shall only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat,
+and went along towards his rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE END
+
+He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting
+to light up, he dropped into a chair.  The curtains and blinds had
+been removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's
+staring gaze.  Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as
+one lost man might fix his eyes upon another.
+
+An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
+whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
+perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation
+still clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his.
+queer trance.  There was a decision to be made.  He rose to light a
+candle; the dust was thick on everything he touched.  "Ugh!"  he
+thought, "how wretched!"  and the loneliness that had seized him on
+the stone seat at Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful
+force.
+
+On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and
+circulars.  He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random
+haste of men back from their holidays.  A single long envelope was
+placed apart.
+
+MY DEAR DICK [he read],
+
+I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement.
+It is now shipshape.  Return it before the end of the week, and I
+will have it engrossed for signature.  I go to Scotland next
+Wednesday for a month; shall be back in good time for your wedding.
+My love to your mother when you see her.
+               Your-affectionate uncle,
+                         EDMUND PARAMOR.
+
+
+Shelton smiled and took out the draft.
+
+"This Indenture made the____day of 190_, between Richard Paramor
+Shelton---"
+
+He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the
+foreign vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to
+preach philosophy.
+
+He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and,
+taking his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and
+gazing in the mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in
+its wretchedness.  He went at last into the hall and opened the door,
+to go downstairs again into the street; but the sudden certainty
+that, in street or house, in town or country, he would have to take
+his trouble with him, made him shut it to.  He felt in the letter-
+box, drew forth a letter, and with this he went back to the sitting-
+room.
+
+It was from Antonia.  And such was his excitement that he was forced
+to take three turns between the window and the wall before he could
+read; then, with a heart beating so that he could hardly hold the
+paper, he began:
+
+I was wrong to ask you to go away.  I see now that it was breaking my
+promise, and I did n't mean to do that.  I don't know why things have
+come to be so different.  You never think as I do about anything.
+
+I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to
+mother was impudent.  Of course you did n't know what was in it; but
+when Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt
+that you believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't
+understand it.  And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her
+horse, it was all as if you were on her side.  How can you feel like
+that?
+
+I must say this, because I don't think I ought to have asked you to
+go away, and I want you to believe that I will keep my promise, or I
+should feel that you and everybody else had a right to condemn me.
+I was awake all last night, and have a bad headache this morning.  I
+can't write any more.
+
+ANTONIA.
+
+
+His first sensation was a sort of stupefaction of relief that had in
+it an element of anger.  He was reprieved!  She would not break her
+promise; she considered herself bound!  In the midst of the
+exaltation of this thought he smiled, and that smile was strange.
+
+He read it through again, and, like a judge, began to weigh what she
+had written, her thoughts when she was writing, the facts which had
+led up to this.
+
+The vagrant's farewell document had done the business.  True to his
+fatal gift of divesting things of clothing, Ferrand had not vanished
+without showing up his patron in his proper colours; even to Shelton
+those colours were made plain.  Antonia had felt her lover was a
+traitor.  Sounding his heart even in his stress of indecision,
+Shelton knew that this was true.
+
+"Then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse-"  That woman!
+"It was as if you were on her side!"
+
+He saw too well her mind, its clear rigidity, its intuitive
+perception of that with which it was not safe to sympathise, its
+instinct for self-preservation, its spontaneous contempt for those
+without that instinct.  And she had written these words considering
+herself bound to him--a man of sentiment, of rebellious sympathies,
+of untidiness of principle!  Here was the answer to the question he
+had asked all day: "How have things come to such a pass?" and he
+began to feel compassion for her.
+
+Poor child!  She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in
+the word!  Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented
+him and thrown him over.  No lady did these things!  They were
+impossible!  At the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious
+sympathy with, this impossibility.
+
+Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with
+fresh meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first
+sensation of relief detached itself and grew in force.  In that
+letter there was something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a
+separate point of view.  It was like a finger pointed at him as an
+unsound person.  In marrying her he would be marrying not only her,
+but her class--his class.  She would be there always to make him look
+on her and on himself, and all the people that they knew and all the
+things they did, complacently; she would be there to make him feel
+himself superior to everyone whose life was cast in other moral
+moulds.  To feel himself superior, not blatantly, not consciously,
+but with subconscious righteousness.
+
+But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had
+made him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority,"
+struck him all at once as impotent and ludicrous.  What was the good
+of being angry?  He was on the point of losing her!  And the anguish
+of that thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold.
+She was so certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her
+natural impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him.
+Of that fact, at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt.  It was
+beyond argument.  She did not really love him; she wanted to be free
+of him!
+
+A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the
+hall door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady
+Bonington, Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were
+there; and on the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her,
+Antonia.  Her face in its youthfulness, more than all those others,
+expressed their point of view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a
+world of safety and tradition.  "I am not as others are," they seemed
+to say.
+
+And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out;
+he could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar
+and uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still
+decisive, but a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:
+
+"He 's made a donkey of himself!"
+
+"Ah!  it's too distressin'!"
+
+They, too, thought him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the
+situation they would be glad to keep him.  She did n't want him, but
+she refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their
+promises; I will not!"  He sat down at the table between the candles,
+covering his face.  His grief and anger grew and grew within him.  If
+she would not free herself, the duty was on him!  She was ready
+without love to marry him, as a sacrifice to her ideal of what she
+ought to be!
+
+But she had n't, after all, the monopoly of pride!
+
+As if she stood before him, he could see the shadows underneath her
+eyes that he had dreamed of kissing, the eager movements of her lips.
+For several minutes he remained, not moving hand or limb.  Then once
+more his anger blazed.  She was going to sacrifice herself and--him!
+All his manhood scoffed at such a senseless sacrifice.  That was not
+exactly what he wanted!
+
+He went to the bureau, took a piece of paper and an envelope, and
+wrote as follows:
+
+There never was, is not, and never would have been any question of
+being bound between us.  I refuse to trade on any such thing.  You
+are absolutely free.  Our engagement is at an end by mutual consent.
+
+                              RICHARD SHELTON.
+
+
+He sealed it, and, sitting with his hands between his knees, he let
+his forehead droop lower and lower to the table, till it rested on
+his marriage settlement.  And he had a feeling of relief, like one
+who drops exhausted at his journey's end.
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Island Pharisees, by John Galsworthy
+
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