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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sixth Sense, by Stephen McKenna
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Sixth Sense
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Stephen McKenna
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2011  [eBook #37164]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIXTH SENSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's note:                                        |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and dialect spelling in the       |
+    | original document has been preserved.                      |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Greek text is enclosed by plus signs (+Greek+)             |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For      |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.      |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN McKENNA
+
+Author of "The Reluctant Lovers" "Sheila Intervenes"
+
+
+   "The World is a Comedy to those that think, a tragedy
+   to those who feel."
+        _Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+À L'INTROUVABLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+        PROLOGUE. LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS                     1
+
+     I. WAR À OUTRANCE                                         25
+
+    II. SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC                                   46
+
+   III. BRANDON COURT                                          62
+
+    IV. THE FIRST ROUND                                        84
+
+     V. COMMEMORATION                                         103
+
+    VI. THE SECOND ROUND                                      123
+
+   VII. A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE                                       140
+
+  VIII. HENLEY--AND AFTER                                     160
+
+    IX. THE THIRD ROUND                                       178
+
+     X. THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION                      197
+
+    XI. THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE                                 214
+
+   XII. THE SIXTH SENSE                                       232
+
+  XIII. OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE                            247
+
+   XIV. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY                                263
+
+    XV. THE RAID                                              279
+
+   XVI. RIMINI                                                296
+
+        EPILOGUE                                              308
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS
+
+    "As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+I paused, with my foot on the lowest step of the Club, to mark the
+changes that had overtaken Pall Mall during my twenty years' absence
+from England.
+
+The old War Office, of course, was gone; some of the shops on the
+north side were being demolished; and the Automobile Club was new and
+unassimilated. In my day, too, the Athenæum had not been painted
+Wedgwood-green. Compared, however, with the Strand or Mall, Piccadilly
+or Whitehall, marvellously little change had taken place. I made an
+exception in favour of the character and velocity of the traffic: the
+bicycle boom was in its infancy when I left England: I returned to
+find the horse practically extinct, and the streets of London as
+dangerous as the railway stations of America.
+
+I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the London of
+1913.... Then I wondered if I should find anything to keep me long
+enough to grow acclimatised. Chance had brought me back to England,
+chance and the "wandering foot" might as easily bear me away again. It
+has always been a matter of indifference to me where I live, what I
+do, whom I meet. If I never seem to get bored, it is perhaps because I
+am never long enough in one place or at one occupation. There was no
+reason why England should not keep me amused....
+
+A man crossed the road and sold me a _Westminster Gazette_. I opened
+it to see what was engaging the England of 1913, remembering as I did
+so that the _Westminster_ was the last paper of importance to be
+published before I went abroad. As I glanced at the headlines, twenty
+years seemed to drop out of my life. Another Home Rule Bill was being
+acclaimed as the herald of the Millennium; Ulster was being told to
+fight and be right: the Welsh Church was once more being
+disestablished, while in foreign politics a confederation of Balkan
+States was spending its blood and treasure in clearing Europe of the
+Turk, to a faint echoing accompaniment of Gladstone's "bag and
+baggage" trumpet call. At home and abroad, English politics repeated
+themselves with curiously dull monotony.
+
+Then I turned to the middle page, and saw I had spoken too hastily.
+"Suffragette Outrages" seemed to fill three columns of the paper. My
+return to England had synchronised with a political campaign more
+ruthless, intransigeant and unyielding than anything since the Fenian
+outrages of my childhood. I read of unique fifteenth-century houses
+burnt to the ground, interrupted meetings, assaults on Ministers,
+sabotage in public buildings, and the demolition of plate-glass
+windows at the hands of an uncompromising, fearless and diabolically
+ingenious army of destroyers. On the other side of the account were
+entered long sentences, hunger-strikes, forcible feeding and something
+that was called "A Cat and Mouse Act." I was to hear more of that
+later: it was indeed the political parent of the "New Militant
+Campaign" whose life coincided with my own residence in England. I
+fancy the supporters of the bill like Roden, Rawnsley or Jefferson
+genuinely believed they had killed hunger-striking--and with it the
+spirit of militancy--when the Government assumed the power of
+imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning at will. The event proved
+that they had only driven militancy into a fresh channel....
+
+It is curious to reflect that as I at last mounted the steps and
+entered the Club, I was wondering where it would be possible to meet
+the resolute, indomitable women who formed the Council of War to the
+militant army. It would be a new, alluring experience. I was so
+occupied with my thoughts that I hardly noticed the hall porter
+confronting me with the offer of the New Members' Address Book.
+
+"Surely a new porter?" I suggested. At ten guineas a year for twenty
+years, it was costing me two hundred and ten pounds to enter the
+Club, and I did not care to have my expensive right challenged.
+
+"Seventeen years, sir," he answered with the gruff, repellent
+stiffness of the English official.
+
+"I must have been before your time, then," I said.
+
+Of course he disbelieved me, on the score of age if for no other
+reason; and the page boy who dogged my steps into the Cloak Room, was
+sent--I have no doubt--to act as custodian of the umbrellas. My age is
+forty-two, but I have never succeeded in looking more than about eight
+and twenty: perhaps I have never tried, as I find that a world of
+personal exertion and trouble is saved by allowing other people to do
+my trying, thinking, arranging for me ... whatever I am, others have
+made me.
+
+There was not a single familiar face in the hall, and I passed into
+the Morning Room, like a ghost ascending from Hades to call on Æneas.
+Around me in arm-chair groups by the fire, or quarrelsome knots
+suspended over the day's bill of fare, were sleek, full-bodied
+creatures of dignified girth and portentous gravity--fathers of
+families, successes in life. These--I told myself--were my
+contemporaries; their faces were for the most part unknown, but this
+was hardly surprising as many of my friends are dead and most of the
+survivors are to be found at the Bar. A barrister with anything of a
+practice cannot afford time to lunch in the spacious atmosphere of
+Pall Mall, and the smaller the practice, the greater his anxiety to
+conceal his leisure. For a moment I felt painfully insignificant,
+lonely and unfriended.
+
+I was walking towards the Coffee Room when a heavy hand descended on
+my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out----
+
+"Toby, by Gad!"
+
+No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to
+find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face
+extending a diffident palm.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of
+surprise. "I thought for a moment...."
+
+"You were right," I interrupted.
+
+"Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you
+were dead."
+
+The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning.
+
+"That's not original," I objected.
+
+"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
+
+"You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was
+before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's
+Attorney-General."
+
+"By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a
+second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing
+with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?"
+
+"As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began.
+
+"'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he
+interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for
+the third of a lifetime...."
+
+"You've not ordered yourself any lunch."
+
+"Oh, hang lunch!"
+
+"But you haven't ordered any for me, either."
+
+My poor story--for what it was worth--started with the plovers' eggs,
+and finished neck-to-neck with the cheese. I told him how I had gone
+down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to
+India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying
+him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines
+of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the
+Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months
+when we all lay _perdus_ wondering what course the Government was
+going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the
+war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in
+despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in
+between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene
+of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation,
+during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or
+sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another.
+
+"What brings you home now?" he asked.
+
+"Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and
+when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a
+touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come
+himself, so suggested I should take charge. _J'y suis_...."
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to
+make...."
+
+"Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire."
+
+"Done."
+
+"You're not married?"
+
+"'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray believes Dr. Johnson ought
+to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be
+indecent.'"
+
+"And never will be, I suppose."
+
+"I've no plans. You, of course...."
+
+I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me
+all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me
+remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my
+absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of
+children before I left England; I had no idea how far the
+ramifications went.
+
+It appeared that his wife--who was still living--had presented him
+with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and
+member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and
+unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and
+Michael, an _enfant terrible_ of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy
+there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in
+Cadogan Square or Brandon Court.
+
+In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful
+man. I remember him during the barren first few years of practice, but
+soon after my departure from England reports used to reach me showing
+the increasing volume of his work, until he became one of the busiest
+juniors on the Common Law side, reading briefs at four in the morning,
+and sending a clerk out to buy his new clothes. After taking silk at
+an early age, he had entered the House and been made Attorney-General
+in 1912.
+
+"I was appointed the same day your brother was raised to the Bench,"
+he told me.
+
+"I should think he makes a pretty bad Judge," I suggested.
+
+"Resolute," said Arthur. "We want firmness."
+
+I knew what that meant. According to unsympathetic papers, Mr. Justice
+Merivale had conducted a Bloody Assize among the Militants of the
+Suffrage Army. When Roden prosecuted in person, there was short shrift
+indeed.
+
+"We've killed militancy between us," he boasted.
+
+"And I understand you're burnt together in effigy."
+
+His face grew suddenly stern.
+
+"They haven't stopped at that. There've been two attempts to fire
+Brandon Court, and one wing of your brother's house was burnt down a
+few weeks ago. I expect you found him rather shaken."
+
+"I haven't seen him yet."
+
+Arthur looked surprised.
+
+"Oh, you ought to," he said. "I'm afraid he won't be able to last out
+the rest of the term without a change. It's got on his nerves. Got on
+his wife's nerves, too. Your niece is the only one who doesn't seem to
+care; but then I think girls have very little imagination. It's the
+same with Sylvia. By the way, I suppose you know you've got a niece?"
+
+We paid our bills, and walked upstairs to the Smoking Room.
+
+"What'll be their next move?" I asked.
+
+"I don't think there will be a next move," he answered slowly. "What
+can they do?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"I'm only an onlooker, but d'you believe this Cat and Mouse Act is
+going to stop them? My knowledge is mere newspaper knowledge, but to
+be beaten by a device like that--it isn't in keeping with the
+character of the women who've organised the Militant Campaign so far."
+
+"What _can_ they do?" he repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"They don't either. One or two of the most determined law breakers are
+in reality spies; they've kept us posted in the successive steps of
+the campaign up to the present. Now they report that there's no plan
+for the future. They know it would be futile to start assassination;
+if they go on burning and breaking, a proportion of them get caught
+and punished. Hunger striking's been killed by the Cat and Mouse Act.
+Well, militancy's dead, Toby. If you come down to the House to-night,
+you'll be present at the funeral."
+
+"What's happening?"
+
+"It's the division on the Suffrage amendment to the Electoral Reform
+Bill. Hullo! here's Philip. Let me introduce my eldest son."
+
+I made friends with Philip as we crossed the Park and entered the
+House. He was curiously like the Arthur I had known twenty years
+before--tall, dark-haired, clean-featured, with an exuberant zest for
+life tempered to an almost imperceptible degree by the reserve of the
+responsible public man. The physical and mental vigour of father and
+son left me silently admiring; as they hurried along at a swinging
+five miles an hour, I took stock of their powerful, untiring frames,
+quick movements, and crisp, machine-made speech. They were hard,
+business-like, unimaginative, with the qualities of those defects and
+the defects of those qualities; trained, taught, and equipped to play
+the midwife to any of the bureaucratic social reforms that have been
+brought into the English political world the last few years, but
+helpless and impotently perplexed in face of an idea outside their
+normal ken. They were highly efficient average English politicians.
+Either or both would reform you the Poor Law, nationalise a railway,
+or disestablish a Church; but send Philip to India, set Arthur to
+carry out Cromer's work in Egypt, and you would see English dominion
+driven from two continents as speedily as North drove it from America.
+It was one of the paradoxes of English politics that Arthur should
+have been entrusted with the problem of Suffrage militancy, a paradox
+of the same order as that whereby Strafford grappled with the problem
+of a parliamentary system.
+
+"You'll stay a few minutes," Philip urged as I abandoned him to Empire
+and wandered off to pay my belated respects to my brother.
+
+I glanced round me and shook my head. I would not grow old all at
+once, and yet--Gladstone was Prime Minister when I left England: his
+statue now dominated the public lobby. And Salisbury, Harcourt,
+Chamberlain, Parnell, Labby--their voices were sunk in the great
+silence. In my day Committee Room Number Fifteen used to be an object
+of historic interest....
+
+    "They say the lion and the lizard keep
+    The Halls where Jamshyd gloried, and drank deep:
+      And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass
+    Stamps o'er his head, and he lies fast asleep."
+
+I quoted the lines to Philip apologetically, reminding him that the
+Omar Khayyam vogue had not come in when I left England. "I shall see
+you at Brandon Court," I added.
+
+"What are you going to do till then?" he asked.
+
+"Heaven knows! I never make arrangements. Things just happen to me. I
+always contrive to be in the thick of whatever's going on. I don't
+know how long I shall stay in England, or where I shall go to
+afterwards. But whether it's a railway strike or a coronation, I shall
+be there. I don't like it, I'm a peaceful man by nature, but I can't
+help it. I always get dragged into these things."
+
+Philip scratched his chin thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't know that we've got any great sensations at the present
+time," he said.
+
+"Something will turn up," I answered in the words of one greater than
+myself, as I waved my hand in farewell and started back in the
+direction of the Club.
+
+I knew my brother would not leave Court till at least four o'clock, so
+I had to dispose of an hour before it was time to call round in Pont
+Street. The Club had emptied since luncheon, and I drew blank in one
+place after another until fate directed my steps to the Card Room.
+There were two men playing bézique, one of them poor Tom Wilding whom
+I had left lame and returned to find half paralysed and three parts
+blind. The other--who played with a wonderful patience, calling the
+names of the cards--I recognised as my young friend Lambert Aintree
+who had parted from me in Morocco five years before. I reminded them
+both of my identity, and we sat gossiping till an attendant arrived to
+wheel poor Wilding away for his afternoon drive.
+
+Leaving the card-table, Aintree joined me on the window-seat and
+subjected my face, clothes and general appearance to a rapid scrutiny.
+It was the practised, comprehensive glance of an old physician in
+making diagnosis, and I waited for him to pronounce on my case. Five
+years ago in Morocco he had exhibited a disconcerting and almost
+uncanny skill in reading character and observing little forgotten
+points that every one else missed. The results of his observation were
+usually shrouded in the densest veils of uncommunicativeness: I
+sometimes wonder if I have ever met a more silent man. When you could
+get him to talk, he was usually worth hearing: for the most part,
+however, talking like every other form of activity seemed too much of
+an exertion. I understand him now better than I did, but I am not so
+foolish as to pretend that I understand him completely. I am a man of
+three dimensions: Aintree, I am convinced, was endowed with the
+privilege of a fourth.
+
+"Well?" I said invitingly, as he brought his examination to an end and
+looked out of the window.
+
+His answer was to throw me over a cigarette and light one himself.
+
+"Take an interest in me," I said plaintively. "Say you thought I was
+dead...."
+
+"Everyone's said that."
+
+"True," I admitted.
+
+"And they've all asked you when you landed, and how long you were
+staying, and what brought you to England."
+
+"It would be rather friendly if you did the same."
+
+"You couldn't tell me--any more than you could tell them."
+
+"But I could. It was Sunday morning."
+
+"About then. I knew that. You've been here long enough to get English
+clothes, and," he gave me another rapid look, "to have them made for
+you. How long you're here for--you don't know."
+
+"Not to a day," I conceded. "Well, why did I come?"
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"Pardon me." I told him of my visit to Malta and the charitable
+guardianship of my friend's convalescent wife.
+
+"But that wasn't the real reason."
+
+"It was the only reason."
+
+"The only one you thought of at the time."
+
+I was amazed at the certainty of his tone.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said. "I am a more or less rational creature, a
+reason comes along and compels me to do a thing. If I were a woman, no
+doubt I should do a thing and find reasons for it afterwards."
+
+"Don't you ever do a thing on impulse, instinctively? And analyse your
+motives afterwards to see what prompted you?"
+
+"Oh, possibly. But not on this occasion."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"What are you driving at?" I asked.
+
+"You'll find out in time."
+
+"I should like to know now."
+
+Aintree inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and answered with eyes
+half-closed.
+
+"Most men of your age wake up one morning to find they've turned
+forty. They feel it would be good to renew their youth, they play with
+the idea of getting married."
+
+"Is this to my address?" I asked.
+
+"D'you feel it applies to your case?"
+
+"I can solemnly assure you that such an idea never crossed my mind."
+
+"Not consciously."
+
+"Nor unconsciously."
+
+"What do you know of the unconscious ideas in your own mind?"
+
+"Hang it," I said, "what do _you_ know of the unconscious ideas in
+my--or any one else's mind?"
+
+"I'm interested in them," he answered quietly. "Tell me if you ever
+feel my prophecy coming true."
+
+"You shall be best man," I promised him. "Married! One doesn't marry
+at my age."
+
+It was a glorious spring afternoon, and I suggested that he should
+accompany me part of my way to Pont Street.
+
+"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself since you stayed with me
+five years ago," I said as we stepped into Pall Mall.
+
+He seemed to shiver and retreat into his shell as soon as the
+conversation became focussed on himself.
+
+"I've done nothing," he answered briefly, and relapsed into one of his
+wonted spells of silence.
+
+In the blazing afternoon sunlight I returned him the compliment of a
+careful scrutiny. He had come to Morocco five years before as a boy of
+one-and-twenty just down from Oxford. A girl to whom he had been
+engaged had died of consumption a few months before, and he was
+straying into the Desert, broken, unnerved, and hopeless, to forget
+her. I must have seemed sympathetic, or he would not have unburdened
+himself of the whole pitiful little tragedy. At twenty-one you feel
+these things more keenly perhaps than in after life; there were
+moments when I feared he was going to follow her....
+
+Five years may have healed the wound, but they left him listless,
+dispirited, and sore. He was more richly endowed with nerves than any
+man or woman I know, and all the energy of his being seemed
+requisitioned to keep them under control. Less through love of mystery
+than for fear of self-betrayal his face wore the expressionless mask
+of a sphynx. He was fair, thin, and pale, with large frightened eyes,
+sapphire blue in colour, and troubled with the vague, tired
+restlessness that you see in overwrought, sensitive women. The nose
+and mouth were delicate and almost ineffeminate, with lips tightly
+closed as though he feared to reveal emotion in opening them. You see
+women and children with mouths set in that thin, hard line when they
+know a wickering lip or catch in the breath will give the lie to their
+brave front. And there were nerves, nerves, nerves everywhere, never
+so much present as when the voice was lazily drawling, the hands
+steady, and the eyes dreamily half-closed. I wonder if anything ever
+escaped those watchful, restless eyes; his entire soul seemed stored
+up and shining out of them; and I wonder what was the process of
+deduction in his curious, quick, feminine brain. Before I left England
+I tried to evolve a formula that would fit him; "a woman's senses and
+intuition in a man's body" was the best I could devise, and I am
+prepared at once to admit the inadequacy of the label. For one thing
+his intuition transcended that of any woman I have ever known.
+
+As he would not talk about himself, I started to wile away the time by
+telling him of my meeting with the Rodens, and their invitation to
+Hampshire.
+
+"I was asked too," he told me. "I shan't go."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Unsociability, I suppose. I don't go out much."
+
+"It's a bachelor's party, I understand."
+
+"That's the best thing I've heard about it. Did they say who'd be
+there? If you're not careful you'll have politics to eat, politics to
+drink, and politics to smoke."
+
+"Come and create a diversion," I suggested.
+
+"I'll think about it. Is Phil going to be there? Oh, then it won't be
+a bachelor party. I could name one young woman who will be there for
+certain, only I mustn't make mischief. Did you find Roden much
+changed?"
+
+I tried to sort out my impressions of Arthur.
+
+"Harder than he used to be. I shouldn't care to be a militant
+prosecuted by him."
+
+Aintree raised his eyebrows slightly.
+
+"I don't think they mind him; they can look after themselves."
+
+"I've never met one."
+
+"Would you like to?"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Joyce Davenant, the queen bee of the swarm. Dine with me to-night at
+the Ritz; seven o'clock, I'm afraid, but we are going to a first
+night."
+
+"Is she a daughter of old Jasper Davenant? I used to shoot with him."
+
+"The younger daughter. Do you know her sister, Mrs. Wylton? She's
+coming too. You'd better meet her," he went on with a touch of acidity
+in his tone, "you'll hear her name so much during the next few months
+that it will be something to say you've seen her in the flesh."
+
+I only remembered Elsie Wylton as a young girl with her hair down her
+back. Of her husband, Arnold Wylton, I suppose every one has heard; he
+enjoys the reputation of being a man who literally cannot be flogged
+past a petticoat. How such a girl came to marry such a man no rational
+person has ever been able to explain; and it never sweetens the
+amenities of debate to talk vaguely of marriages being made in heaven.
+I met Wylton twice, and on both occasions he was living in retirement
+abroad. I have no wish to meet him a third time.
+
+"How did she ever come to marry a fellow like that?" I asked.
+
+Aintree shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Her father was dead, or he'd have stopped it. Nobody else felt it
+their business to interfere, and it wouldn't have made the slightest
+difference if they had. You know what the Davenants are like--or
+perhaps you don't. Nothing shakes them when they've made up their
+minds to do a thing."
+
+"But didn't she know the man's reputation?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't suppose so. Wylton had never been mixed up in any overt
+scandal, so the women wouldn't know; and it's always a tall order for
+a man to lay information against another man when a girl's engaged to
+marry him. She just walked into it with her eyes shut."
+
+"And now she's divorcing him at last?"
+
+"The other way about."
+
+I felt sure I could not have heard him correctly.
+
+"The other way about," he repeated deliberately. "Oh, she'd have got
+rid of him years ago if he'd given her the chance! Wylton was too
+clever; he knew the divorce law inside out; he was alive to all its
+little technicalities. He's sailed close to the wind a number of
+times, but never close enough to be in danger."
+
+"And what's happening now?" I asked.
+
+"She's forced his hand--gone to some trouble to compromise herself.
+She couldn't divorce him, it was the only way, she's making him
+divorce her. Rather a burlesque of justice, isn't it? Elsie Wylton,
+the respondent in an undefended action! The daughter of Jasper
+Davenant--one of the finest, cleanest, bravest women I know. And the
+successful petitioner will be Arnold Wylton, who ought to have been
+thrashed out of half the houses and clubs in London. Who ought to have
+been cited as a co-respondent half a dozen times over if he hadn't
+been so clever in covering up his tracks. I wonder if he's got
+sufficient humour to appreciate the delicate irony of _his_ coming
+sanctimoniously into court to divorce _her_. It's a sickening
+business, we won't discuss it--but it will be the one topic of
+conversation in a few weeks' time."
+
+We walked in silence for a few yards.
+
+"Was the man any one of note?" I asked. "The co-respondent?"
+
+"Fellow in the Indian Army," Aintree answered. "I don't suppose you
+know him. It was a bogus case; he just lent his name."
+
+I sniffed incredulously.
+
+"The world won't believe _that_," I said.
+
+"Elsie's going to make it."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"She can't. Would you?"
+
+"Most certainly. So will you when you've met her. You knew the father
+well? She's her father's own daughter."
+
+The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a
+horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of
+married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his
+true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper,
+never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North
+American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with
+little loss of essential characteristics.
+
+"I look forward to meeting them both," I said as we parted at
+Buckingham Gate. "Seven o'clock? I'll try not to be late."
+
+Walking on alone through Sloane Square, something set me thinking of
+my boast to Philip Roden. Within three hours I was apparently going to
+meet one woman whose name was mixed up with the most prominent _cause
+célèbre_ of the year, and another who was a _cause célèbre_ in
+herself--the redoubtable Miss Joyce Davenant of the Militant Suffrage
+Union. That my introduction should come from the peace-loving,
+nerve-ridden Aintree, was in accordance with the best ironical
+traditions of life. I was not surprised then: I should have still less
+reason to be surprised now. In the last six months he has placed me
+under obligations which I shall never be able to meet: in all
+probability he expects no repayment; the active side of his unhappy,
+fatalistic temperament is seen in his passionate desire to make life
+less barren and melancholy for others. Tom Wilding can testify to this
+at the bézique table: Elsie and Joyce and I can endorse the testimony
+in a hundred ways and half a hundred places.
+
+As I turned into Pont Street a private car was drawn up by the kerb
+opposite my brother's house. I dawdled for a few steps while a pretty,
+brown-eyed, black-haired girl said good-bye to a friend at the door
+and drove away. It was no more than a glimpse that I caught, but the
+smiling, small-featured face attracted me. I wondered who she was, and
+who was the girl with auburn hair who persisted in standing on my
+brother's top step long after the car was out of sight, instead of
+retiring indoors and leaving me an unembarrassed entry.
+
+I pretended not to see her as I mounted the steps, but the pretence
+was torn away when I heard her addressing me as "Uncle Simon."
+
+"You must be Gladys," I said, wondering if I looked as sheepish as I
+felt. "How did you recognise me?"
+
+"By your photograph," she said. "You haven't altered a bit."
+
+On the whole I carried it off fairly well, though I was glad Arthur
+Roden was not present after my implied familiarity with my niece's
+existence. Of course I knew I had a niece, and that her birthday
+fell--like the Bastille--on July 14th. Usually I remembered the date
+and sent her some little trifle, and she would write me a friendly
+letter of thanks. If I had kept count of the number of birthdays, I
+should have known she was now nineteen, but then one never does keep
+count of these things. Frankly, I had imagined her to be about seven
+or eight, and her handwriting--by becoming steadily more unformed and
+sporadic the older she grew--did nothing to dispel the illusion.
+Instead of curious little pieces of jewellery I might easily have sent
+her a doll....
+
+"Where's the Judge?" I asked as she kissed me and led the way upstairs
+to her room.
+
+"He's not home yet," she answered to my relief.
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+But my sister-in-law also was out, and I reconciled myself without
+difficulty to the prospect of taking tea alone with my niece. Possibly
+as a romantic reaction from her father, possibly with her mother Eve's
+morbid craving for forbidden fruit, Gladys had elevated me into a
+Tradition. The whole of her pretty, sun-splashed room seemed hung with
+absurd curios I had sent her from out-of-the-way parts of the world,
+while on a table by the window stood a framed photograph of myself in
+tweeds that only an undergraduate would have worn, and a tie loosely
+arranged in a vast sailor's knot after the unsightly fashion of the
+early 'nineties. My hair was unduly long, and at my feet lay a large
+dog; it must have been a property borrowed for the purpose, as I hate
+and have always hated dogs.
+
+"A wasted, unsatisfactory life, Gladys," I said as my tour of
+inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd
+known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."
+
+"Would you like to now?"
+
+In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so
+literally or promptly.
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Your father and mother...."
+
+"Would you if I were left an orphan?"
+
+"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in
+joke."
+
+Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a
+menacing angle.
+
+"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.
+
+"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I
+prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan
+in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."
+
+I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in
+domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden
+had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his
+person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted
+violence, had seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he
+was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose
+at Whitsun.
+
+"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's
+going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want
+to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to
+take me through the Bay."
+
+"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother
+has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable
+family of two.
+
+"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping.
+"The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on
+Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."
+
+"I can imagine worse fates."
+
+"For her? or for me?"
+
+"Either or both."
+
+"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll
+adopt me, I'll introduce you."
+
+"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon
+Court improving my acquaintance with her."
+
+Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.
+
+"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just
+as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my
+guardian...."
+
+"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents
+to decide. You can guess my feelings."
+
+I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was
+then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree
+and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the
+following night.
+
+"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll
+only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got
+a book?"
+
+I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of
+late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the
+head.
+
+"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was
+incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.
+
+Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me
+reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged
+to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble,
+nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions
+or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For
+a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in
+England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is
+one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in
+England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into
+effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor
+points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory,
+but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.
+
+It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I
+had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now
+shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this
+date--to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant,
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my
+first glimpse of Sylvia....
+
+Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then
+natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander
+abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil
+and excitement of the following six months.
+
+I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAR À OUTRANCE
+
+      "RIDGEON: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I
+      cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart;
+      sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me,
+      but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is
+      going to happen....
+
+      SIR PATRICK: You are sure there are no voices?
+
+      RIDGEON: Quite sure.
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Then it's only foolishness.
+
+      RIDGEON: Have you ever met anything like it before in your
+      practice?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the
+      ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on
+      again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see.
+      It's not serious--if you're careful.
+
+      RIDGEON: About my food?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going
+      to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."
+
+                  BERNARD SHAW: "The Doctor's Dilemma."
+
+
+I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had
+quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of
+the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin
+and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and
+South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I
+associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it
+must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet
+returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by
+the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair
+and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real
+life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are
+cherishing an illusion.
+
+I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of
+the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by
+flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant
+brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I
+was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and
+Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still
+unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut
+hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted
+to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as
+they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large
+enough to hold a rein.
+
+When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young
+draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie
+was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a
+subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball
+at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the
+hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as
+they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked,
+golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father
+to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with
+pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth
+it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper
+to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to
+establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off
+this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me
+again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate
+shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd
+better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.
+I've had my fun."
+
+The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of
+the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half
+moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to
+compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with
+uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had
+run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the
+hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third;
+but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had
+a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a
+poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the
+day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen
+and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and
+Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve
+hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name
+before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in
+the suffrage agitation.
+
+"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as
+Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I
+shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"
+
+"Twenty years," I said. "You have--grown, rather."
+
+She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright
+golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered
+in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure,
+and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.
+
+I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness
+between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band
+of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and
+wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only
+differences--until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw
+that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of
+her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went
+out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I
+hardly know what to call it--homage, allegiance, devotion. She
+impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this
+life--Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more--with the feeling that
+I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would
+always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among
+straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was
+twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim
+and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.
+
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.
+
+"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared
+to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we _did_
+meet?"
+
+"The last time I heard of you...." I began.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some
+pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait
+a bit--'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach
+to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a
+compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant
+hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at
+the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front--he's too good
+for this world--he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm
+afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed--that is, if we ever did
+meet."
+
+"As I was saying...."
+
+"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of
+interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time
+we met...."
+
+"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came
+to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary
+to your happiness. It was an _idée fixe_, you were a fanatic, you
+broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When
+I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an
+insufficient allowance of bread and water."
+
+Joyce shook her head sadly.
+
+"I was an awful child."
+
+"Was?"
+
+She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.
+
+"Haven't I improved?"
+
+"You were a wonderfully pretty child."
+
+"Oh, never mind looks!"
+
+"But I do. They're the only things worth having."
+
+"They're not enough."
+
+"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."
+
+"In any case they don't last."
+
+"And while they do, you slight them."
+
+"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room
+to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow,
+childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."
+
+"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a
+dinner-service to get a pony."
+
+"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"
+
+"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. _Plus ça change, plus
+c'est la même chose._ You are still not content with looking extremely
+nice, you _must_ break a dinner-service now and again."
+
+Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident
+proposition.
+
+"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.
+
+"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince
+you of your error."
+
+"I get condemned to that now."
+
+"Dull eating, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't know. I've never tried."
+
+"You did then?"
+
+"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."
+
+We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.
+
+"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful
+child of five that I remember so well."
+
+"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.
+
+How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an
+admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much
+to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs.
+Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was
+approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the
+Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table,
+living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in
+its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the
+present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out
+of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the
+future as the past....
+
+I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like
+dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written
+and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told
+her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she
+had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when
+sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one
+to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a
+determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into
+the Prime Minister's private room.
+
+The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the
+ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and
+hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the
+Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling
+campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without
+the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been
+decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and
+then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a
+General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain
+Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into
+the scale of the Opposition candidate.
+
+Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had
+promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced
+to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by
+an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh
+terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the
+institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible
+Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat
+and Mouse" Bill.
+
+I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been
+against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often
+that Joyce herself would stick at nothing--fire, flood or dynamite--to
+secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be
+thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right,
+responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt
+pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof
+from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her
+countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of
+art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and
+burning down unique, priceless houses.
+
+"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I
+renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me
+down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant
+movement."
+
+Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of
+mankind.
+
+"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't
+you?"
+
+"He seemed quite certain of the result."
+
+"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he
+had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one
+at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."
+
+I reminded her that she had not answered my question.
+
+"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers,"
+I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the
+constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"
+
+Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her
+head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through
+the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks
+breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be
+serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.
+
+"What would _you_ do?" she asked.
+
+"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to _force majeure_. I've lived long
+enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."
+
+"But if we _won't_ give it up?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to
+be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the
+Amendment's rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the
+first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the _New
+Militant_, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most
+of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign,
+rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No
+more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just
+where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she
+concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."
+
+Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.
+
+"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to
+grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away,
+or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you
+adopted militant tactics."
+
+"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I
+requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the
+name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better
+description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened
+eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like
+it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full
+of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you
+like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."
+
+"I don't know that I can."
+
+Joyce turned to her sister.
+
+"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"
+
+"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.
+
+"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, laying her hand on
+my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very
+little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on
+either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to
+refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There
+are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all
+get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because
+the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial
+franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory
+workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who
+bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and
+leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you
+say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an
+impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further
+forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your
+head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."
+
+She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted
+almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.
+
+"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted
+one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still
+the stronger."
+
+"And woman the more resourceful."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished
+her coffee and drew on her gloves.
+
+"War _à outrance_," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what
+after the war?"
+
+"When we've got the vote...." she began.
+
+"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.
+
+"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win,
+do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share
+of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality
+with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.
+
+"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce
+Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"
+
+"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her
+father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and
+fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was
+very angry and whipped her with a crop."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's all. Only--he said afterwards that she took it rather well,
+there was no crying."
+
+I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way
+appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.
+
+"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.
+
+"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she
+interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.
+
+"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."
+
+Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out
+of the dining-room with Aintree.
+
+"_She's_ worth some sacrifice."
+
+"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation.
+She's up against the existing divorce law, and that's buttressed by
+every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're
+starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."
+
+Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.
+
+"Joyce?" she repeated.
+
+"You were Joyce when last we met."
+
+"That was twenty years ago."
+
+"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."
+
+"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"
+
+"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with
+laborious antithesis.
+
+"Then I haven't improved?"
+
+"You're perfect--off duty, in private life."
+
+"I have no private life."
+
+"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."
+
+"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I
+say good-bye to you."
+
+"But not for good?"
+
+"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If
+you like to come in as an ally...?"
+
+"Do you think you could convert me?"
+
+She looked at me closely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.
+
+"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're
+dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."
+
+"How long will you be in England?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Six months? In six months I'll make you the Prince Rupert of the
+militant army. Then when we're sent to prison--Sir Arthur Roden's a
+friend of yours--you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and
+we'll tap on the dividing wall."
+
+I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on
+segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however,
+for captious criticism.
+
+"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from
+your militant army."
+
+"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"
+
+"I've never found anything worth doing before."
+
+"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."
+
+"They haven't the monopoly of that."
+
+Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the
+word "Cheek!"
+
+"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of
+the law."
+
+"I don't expect to hear _you_ calling the law and the prophets in
+aid."
+
+"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she
+answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.
+
+"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I
+am going to make the best of it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."
+
+"How?" she repeated.
+
+"I'll tell you in six months' time."
+
+Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her
+sister vanished from sight.
+
+"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.
+
+"Which?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.
+
+"They are astonishingly alike," I said _à propos_ of nothing.
+
+"They're often mistaken for each other."
+
+"I can well believe it."
+
+"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.
+
+I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was
+thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his
+mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping
+imperceptibly away."
+
+I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.
+And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph
+interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and
+my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy
+directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her
+audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to
+do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the
+graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless
+front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the
+laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when
+one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready
+to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.
+It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of
+Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English
+imagination....
+
+"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"
+
+"What influence have _I_ got over her?"
+
+"Some--not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, _I_'ve no
+control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I
+say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."
+
+"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I
+objected.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."
+
+The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was _The Heir-at-Law_,
+and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my
+residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may
+still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic
+success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of
+characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a
+masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going,
+and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know;
+possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats,
+possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as _virtuosi_, and
+say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had
+had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually
+had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were
+often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted
+substantial cutting.
+
+"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were _The
+Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and _A Woman of No Importance_."
+
+Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we
+thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely
+of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many
+revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little
+out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to
+understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed
+in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with
+fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the
+inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....
+
+"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.
+
+"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.
+
+"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote
+plays."
+
+"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"
+
+"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the
+coming men."
+
+I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across
+Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had
+read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from
+the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage:
+then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his
+"Child of Misery."
+
+I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece
+of self-revelation--"Jean Christophe"--which in many ways it so
+closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and
+"Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than
+"Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero--for want of a better
+name--was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers
+with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme
+would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you
+the childhood and upbringing of Rupert--and incidentally revealed to
+my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive
+boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage
+to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental
+prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how
+the third volume would shape....
+
+"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by
+jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.
+
+From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or
+two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived
+from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were
+in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one
+quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was
+pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a
+moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we
+had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous
+explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the
+box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing
+mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious
+that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of
+nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that
+occasion for the first, last and only time.
+
+_The Heir-at-Law_ went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end
+of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain
+while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of
+"Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the
+curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.
+
+"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager
+had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was
+not in the house.
+
+We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.
+
+"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.
+Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as
+a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in
+turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be
+credited with the dominant mind of the party.
+
+"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop
+short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a
+wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening
+paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill
+were four gigantic words:--
+
+        DEFEAT OF SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.
+
+Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.
+
+"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I
+go to bed."
+
+"When shall I see you again?" I asked.
+
+She held out a small gloved hand.
+
+"You won't. It's good-bye."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"It's war _à outrance_."
+
+"That's no concern of mine."
+
+"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."
+
+I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.
+
+"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head provokingly.
+
+"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason,
+justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when
+I think of my wasted chances...."
+
+"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."
+
+"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put
+the two women inside it.
+
+"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.
+
+"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."
+
+"I shall convert you."
+
+"If there's any conversion...."
+
+"When are you coming?" she interrupted.
+
+"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun
+with the Rodens."
+
+Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and
+then abruptly congratulated me.
+
+"What on?" I asked.
+
+"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked
+itself epileptically away from the kerb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC
+
+      "I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ...
+      I see your soul."--JOHN MASEFIELD, "The Tragedy of Nan."
+
+
+I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it
+disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an
+invitation to supper.
+
+"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me
+alone," I heard him murmuring.
+
+At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down
+by myself, and think--think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion
+of thinking.
+
+"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the
+direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose,
+I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at
+dinner."
+
+"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a
+minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
+
+I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a
+powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many
+years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of
+what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of
+six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little
+grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the
+need.
+
+"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.
+
+"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled
+to-night."
+
+He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for
+the powders had trembled more than was necessary.
+
+"You were all right at dinner," I said.
+
+"That was some time ago," he answered.
+
+"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."
+
+"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.
+
+Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge
+dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as
+silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of
+other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the
+arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told
+him to talk to me.
+
+"What about?" he asked.
+
+"Anything."
+
+"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past
+three hours in particular."
+
+"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.
+
+He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs
+crossed.
+
+"Don't you think it strange and--unsettling? Three months ago life
+was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day
+was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt
+lonely--lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four
+hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten
+it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the
+vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on?
+You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent,
+that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then
+you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then
+exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not
+going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to
+find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to
+save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now
+you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think
+that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall
+tell you how I know."
+
+I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials
+with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.
+
+"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Suppose it was?"
+
+His shoulders gave a slight shrug.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."
+
+I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.
+
+"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that
+I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"
+
+"Not the world."
+
+"You?"
+
+"As a rule. Not more than other people."
+
+"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"
+
+"I can with a good many men."
+
+"Not women?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and
+starts--jerkily; it's hard to follow them."
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the
+expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in
+succession--you just _see_."
+
+"I'm hanged if I do."
+
+"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening
+dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction
+of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't
+it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes
+between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken
+at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to
+go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be.
+You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're
+flabbergasted that _I_ should be the person. You're impotently angry.
+Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're
+going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether
+I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little
+thought--will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head
+because it'll hurt more. Still another thought--how hard to hit? You
+don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide
+to be on the safe side and hit rather gently. Then--then at last
+you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"
+
+I thought it over very carefully.
+
+"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each
+other. There isn't time."
+
+The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.
+
+"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was
+introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly
+assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into
+such attitudes."
+
+"How do you account for it?" I asked.
+
+"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."
+
+I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather
+than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then
+I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh--er--porter, taxi,
+please."
+
+"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.
+
+"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"
+
+"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.
+
+He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."
+
+I jumped up and ran into the hall.
+
+"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.
+
+"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.
+
+I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.
+
+"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get
+interested."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Why not?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot
+more that I haven't told you about. I only----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking
+drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather--abnormal."
+
+"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"Occupy your mind more."
+
+"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as
+we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.
+
+As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace,
+our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we
+had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in
+aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm
+that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two
+thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side
+like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent
+conversation.
+
+As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh
+train of thought.
+
+"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness
+one employs in advancing these general propositions.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young
+friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going
+on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to
+paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that
+gets published, the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my
+question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six
+psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James
+there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power
+that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and
+observation, comes to you--by some freak of nature--ready made. You
+could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"
+
+"I might try."
+
+"I know what that means."
+
+"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your
+advice."
+
+"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.
+
+"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."
+
+"I'm still waiting to see the result."
+
+"You've seen it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."
+
+"In my sleep?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."
+
+"I didn't write in my own name."
+
+"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.
+
+His lips opened, and then shut in silence.
+
+"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.
+
+"It won't go any further," I promised.
+
+"I don't want even you to know."
+
+"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."
+
+We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us
+thought of turning in.
+
+"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the
+Wellington Street crossing and were waiting for a stream of traffic
+to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.
+
+"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.
+
+"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.
+
+"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.
+
+"Try something a little less well--known: get hold of a book that's
+been published anonymously."
+
+"'Gretchen' was published over a _nom de plume_."
+
+"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."
+
+"You don't know him?"
+
+"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you
+didn't."
+
+"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.
+
+"A mere quibble," I protested.
+
+"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who _has_ met
+him?"
+
+I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a
+smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was
+borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.
+
+"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.
+
+"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he
+answered in parenthesis.
+
+He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had
+reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the
+fantastic tangle was straightened out.
+
+Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in
+Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of
+"Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name
+through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with
+the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the
+same way: even the _Heir-at-Law_ I had just witnessed came to a
+similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without
+criticism or suggestion from the author.
+
+I could see no reason for a _nom de plume_ in the case of "Gretchen"
+or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was
+different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the
+second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out
+of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert
+and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but
+the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering
+termination, had taken place a few months--a few weeks, I might
+say--before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I
+was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke
+through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
+
+"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
+
+He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to
+have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth
+century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all
+time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
+
+"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
+
+"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon
+Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
+
+Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona
+Macleod.'"
+
+"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence.
+"You think after what's passed...."
+
+"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he
+hesitated.
+
+"I know. 'Tisn't that--altogether. It's the future."
+
+"What's going to happen?"
+
+"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him
+writing plays."
+
+Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know
+the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was
+trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with
+friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for
+minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was
+always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously
+from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before
+mustering resolution to take a step forward....
+
+"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed
+Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.
+
+"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out;
+as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I
+do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind
+on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.
+
+"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days
+you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....
+
+I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a
+credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the
+belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope
+or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the
+close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a
+costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian
+mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through
+the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse
+drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse
+seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been
+manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.
+
+The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat
+armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard
+peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken
+by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his
+memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the
+peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
+
+In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She
+was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black
+hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far
+apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore
+an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met,
+but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her
+walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the
+Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and
+once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror
+changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire
+and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and
+frightened.
+
+It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a
+fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and
+intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always
+interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched
+away. Gradually--like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist--the
+outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open
+with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.
+
+The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at
+almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple
+Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on
+the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters,
+with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.
+
+"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean?
+Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know
+her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And
+it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've
+never felt so ... so _conscious_ of anybody in my life. I saw her for
+those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall
+meet her again----"
+
+"Don't you want to?"
+
+He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once
+more in mine.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up
+Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy
+curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's
+some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ...
+she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
+
+When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink.
+He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was
+reluctant to be left to his own company.
+
+"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your
+dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to
+change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The
+Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"
+
+He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.
+
+"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
+
+"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I
+shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a
+diversion. Come to oblige me."
+
+He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat
+and jerking it out straight.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+"You will be my salvation."
+
+"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
+
+"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
+
+"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered,
+turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
+
+For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's
+premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from
+Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and
+in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be
+concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of
+reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In
+the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the
+careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was
+held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the
+question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my
+brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by
+reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in
+store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered
+occasional pangs of disappointment?
+
+Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed.
+Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and
+arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South
+Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing
+the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More
+charitable than the Psalmist--from whom indeed he differs in all
+material respects--Brian could not bring himself to believe that any
+one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked.
+At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be
+attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in
+the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.
+
+For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial
+good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my
+curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I
+was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was
+inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common
+fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade
+manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should
+have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge;
+indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.
+
+When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my
+sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with
+her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would
+cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not
+to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other
+mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived
+for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the
+code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have
+had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle";
+"Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation
+successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist
+nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or
+even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps
+needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they
+sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian
+and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I
+had passed out of the life of all three--presumably for ever.
+
+In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that
+my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter
+would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the
+weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in
+contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and
+position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and
+independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to
+know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.
+
+I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present
+regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She
+was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited--tasting life for the first
+time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it
+could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before
+wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday
+world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless
+courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's
+passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side
+with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she
+was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those
+thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched
+Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England
+has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice
+over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my
+happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.
+
+I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board
+the _Bessarabia_. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of
+instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My
+niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.
+
+"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her
+ingenious explanation.
+
+As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went
+abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to
+be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a
+bachelor party."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BRANDON COURT
+
+      "I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do
+      you?"
+
+      "At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
+
+      "Do _you_ call it that too?" ...
+
+      ... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
+      all my life!"--RUDYARD KIPLING, "The Brushwood Boy."
+
+
+The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed
+myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
+
+"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she
+had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the
+rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be
+there."
+
+As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second
+reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
+
+"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the
+Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last
+minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own
+account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley
+or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize
+him...."
+
+"Do you _know_ him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.
+
+"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he
+had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the
+Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."
+
+Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to
+gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several
+years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the
+sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly
+respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public
+position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for
+his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do
+so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the
+waters returned to me after not many days.
+
+"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.
+
+"Oh, a topper!"
+
+I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.
+
+"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, _per obscurans ad
+obscurantius_; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of
+the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent
+specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in
+weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the
+kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of
+speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might
+starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your
+plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was
+brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and
+followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination
+he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and
+unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose
+he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him,
+and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a
+Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity
+Eight.
+
+I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.
+
+"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He
+is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not
+comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime
+Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime
+Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise
+him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you
+with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on
+five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and
+finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also
+his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious
+enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic
+instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously;
+he is making a mark in the House."
+
+"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the
+Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a
+very general feeling.
+
+I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of
+the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more
+than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable,
+I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I
+have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to
+size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. Nigel
+went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an
+abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of
+personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those
+who--like the Jews--trample that they be not trampled on. He became
+overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for
+fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his
+tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House
+christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was
+not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom
+to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when
+he was sure of his ground.
+
+I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have
+been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff,
+make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness.
+Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own
+case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him
+no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will
+carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and
+humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the
+youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and
+figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not
+now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery
+of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still
+able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I
+laughed--though he had all the trumps in his hand--he must needs think
+I had reason for my laughter.
+
+"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat
+Culling. He is an irrepressible Irishman of some thirty summers, with
+a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ
+it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless
+face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument
+from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to
+Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in
+Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I
+know.
+
+"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he
+will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing
+that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a
+special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be
+losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He
+is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your
+hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him
+gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable
+foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will
+deal himself five aces with the utmost _sang froid_."
+
+"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in
+my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.
+
+"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her
+belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole
+time."
+
+I reminded myself that I stood _in loco parentis_, shook hands with
+Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.
+
+The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip
+conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my
+presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told
+me how life had treated him since our parting in Asia Minor; while
+Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated
+history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Avénement de
+Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily
+summoned to be informed of the birth--I noticed that the ministers
+were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi--it concluded with
+the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For
+reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived
+of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the
+badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable
+as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry
+when we arrived at Brandon Junction.
+
+We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being
+collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and
+from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I
+recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long
+rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour
+of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony
+must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from
+Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect
+without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.
+
+When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at
+the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud
+youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the
+ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling
+black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft,
+unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge
+hovered round her small, straight mouth, as though she were conscious
+of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile
+there lurked--or so I fancied--a suggestion of weariness as with one
+whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling
+blend of frankness and reserve. The _camaraderie_ of her greeting
+reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers;
+fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by
+her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the
+man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It
+was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends
+were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr.
+Culling."
+
+Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach
+Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were
+astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in
+trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be
+filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other
+people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick
+movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I
+remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical
+energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame
+could contain such fire without eruption.
+
+Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....
+
+"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands.
+"And where's the wicked uncle?"
+
+My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.
+
+"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a
+hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."
+
+"I feel even younger," I began.
+
+"Face massage," Culling murmured.
+
+"A good conscience," I protested.
+
+"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.
+
+It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other
+than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would
+outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched
+Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an
+excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his
+arrangements.
+
+"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in
+desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come
+to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in,
+everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."
+
+"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage,"
+objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one
+else.
+
+"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.
+
+"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good
+enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.
+
+Philip was seized with inspiration.
+
+"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"
+
+"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes,"
+his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."
+
+My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was
+shod with neat, serviceable brogues.
+
+"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the
+way."
+
+Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia
+and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across
+the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon
+Court.
+
+"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.
+
+"What was?" she asked.
+
+"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand,
+but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."
+
+We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a
+temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking
+down on me.
+
+"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"I sincerely hope so."
+
+"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time
+to go back and get a cab at the station."
+
+"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.
+
+"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake
+of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to
+make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them.
+Will you promise?"
+
+"The flesh is weak," I protested.
+
+"Am I worth a little promise like that?"
+
+"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."
+
+"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar,
+as you call them. You know you're really--you won't mind my saying
+it?--you're old enough...."
+
+"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was
+perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the
+subject. So far as I can see, my declining years will be one long
+riot of senile infidelity.
+
+"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I
+don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood
+facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine.
+"You're not in love with me, are you?"
+
+I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot
+tapped the ground with impatience.
+
+"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known
+me five minutes. Well,"--her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may
+have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm--"please
+don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till
+I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've
+knocked about the world, you're seasoned----"
+
+I held out my hand to seal the bargain.
+
+"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence.
+"I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."
+
+"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.
+
+"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she
+added with a flash of pride.
+
+"I think I saw that the moment we met."
+
+"I wonder."
+
+It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before
+I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty
+years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and
+troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared
+with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them
+had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and
+Sylvia had been in attendance at every important match in which he
+was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a
+prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an
+end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of
+Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and
+Sylvia, whose one cry--like Kundry's--had ever been, "Let me serve,"
+found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household,
+when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without
+an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding.
+Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had
+slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his
+place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the
+world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her
+devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am
+convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an
+outlet for her activities in militancy.
+
+"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her
+eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be
+friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."
+
+"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate
+them all!"
+
+"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Did you know her?"
+
+I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by
+her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came
+afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was
+reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.
+
+"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.
+
+"You think so?" she asked without conviction.
+
+It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions;
+they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was
+being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had
+troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers
+superfluous.
+
+"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden
+standstill.
+
+"I _say_, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.
+
+"He didn't come," I reassured her.
+
+"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept
+invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably
+polite."
+
+"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.
+
+"Why?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"Shyness, I suppose."
+
+"I hate shy people."
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I don't know him. What's he like?"
+
+"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the
+Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I
+ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather
+haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very
+nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."
+
+"Sounds like a degenerate poet."
+
+"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia.
+Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."
+
+"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."
+
+"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time
+to hate!"
+
+"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate
+myself more than anybody else."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't
+control myself."
+
+On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden
+was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the
+household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained
+Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as
+Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in
+prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget
+that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect
+for Morningtons--or any other pre-Conquest families--whether they come
+from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn
+reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have
+possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon
+Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for
+pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the
+Judge?" she said when we met. "Then--let me see--your sister-in-law
+was a Hylton."
+
+I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench
+politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion
+quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt.
+Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"--it
+now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square--rescued the conversation
+from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had to arrange
+for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was
+coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought
+over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia
+volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while
+the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon
+Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.
+
+"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me,
+when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a
+cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that
+high, and now--God knows--it's in a decline you'd say he was taken.
+You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has
+his heart broken."
+
+I did not know what answer to give.
+
+"Just a passing mood," I suggested.
+
+"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.
+
+He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those
+feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world
+and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other
+business--a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost
+to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel
+moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy
+kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and
+the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.
+
+"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came
+towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his
+thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we dragged the depths
+of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick
+and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual,
+and his manner restless.
+
+"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.
+
+"I was giving up hope."
+
+"I _had_ to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into
+one of his longest silences.
+
+We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens,
+reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming
+masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve
+rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth
+in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun,
+and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We
+drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymphæas
+closing their eyes for the night.
+
+Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom,
+Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old
+spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.
+
+"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we
+approached.
+
+"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it,"
+said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of
+us did to improve or debase our minds.
+
+"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two
+glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and
+Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind
+as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his
+head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"
+
+Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At
+two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and
+passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as
+many minutes.
+
+"He _knows_ it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance.
+If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"
+
+"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If _you_ were blind,
+you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."
+
+"Not enough," said Gartside.
+
+"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ.
+You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive
+surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive
+organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing,
+hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."
+
+Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.
+
+"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."
+
+"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.
+
+"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the
+sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the
+moment he got into the room."
+
+"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.
+
+"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather,"
+Gartside went on.
+
+"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't
+coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere
+on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute
+touch sense."
+
+I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the
+fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.
+
+"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.
+
+"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling,
+infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.
+
+"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called
+'premonition.'"
+
+Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.
+
+"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."
+
+"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.
+
+"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's
+dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What
+about all those other mornings...."
+
+"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.
+
+"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure
+coincidence."
+
+I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.
+
+"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my
+observation in the East--the power possessed by many natives of
+foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came
+across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had
+been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One
+morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature
+was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I
+congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die
+punctually at eight that evening.
+
+In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the
+relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme
+unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect
+health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his
+assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be
+morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at
+hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on
+his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.
+
+"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating
+illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to
+fancies. An idea--from a dream, perhaps--that death will take place at
+a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body
+is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm
+going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I
+shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an
+unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick
+to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and
+dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."
+
+"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from
+the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in
+his voice.
+
+We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had
+a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.
+
+"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my
+bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know--it's your livelihood."
+
+"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."
+
+"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"
+
+Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or
+verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.
+To write an entirely imaginative work would be--as the poet said of
+love--"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like
+keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal
+length.
+
+"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when
+I put this view before him.
+
+"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.
+
+"You'd lose the psychology of expectation--uncertainty."
+
+"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.
+
+"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."
+
+"What form does it take?"
+
+His lips parted, and closed again quickly.
+
+"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.
+
+Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and
+after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the _entrée_, it
+was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in
+my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were
+unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away
+from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between
+Philip and the Seraph.
+
+"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.
+
+He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words
+the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.
+I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and
+whisper something to Arthur.
+
+"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.
+
+"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she
+had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.
+
+"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.
+
+"The man only said...."
+
+Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia
+framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress,
+and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed
+with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle
+of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study
+in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into
+relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared
+unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my
+forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through
+bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted
+lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into
+the room.
+
+"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair
+by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be
+sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.
+Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she
+ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She
+hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and
+as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.
+Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."
+
+"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be
+sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.
+
+Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph
+as she did so.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him
+with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood
+likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I
+came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"
+
+I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the
+one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.
+
+"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was
+ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."
+
+Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at
+last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had
+already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant
+tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood
+about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table
+with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation
+for a stroll on the terrace.
+
+He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time
+and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and
+a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the
+face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that
+at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and
+unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's
+many feminine characteristics.
+
+It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he
+and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only
+house in England--till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found
+two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.
+Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had
+been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty
+years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or
+other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.
+
+It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open
+library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he
+would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it
+would have enlightened neither of us.
+
+On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the
+frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed
+herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair
+braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no
+portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the
+fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to
+judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable
+temperament....
+
+I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or
+twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately--almost before I
+had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the
+adjoining room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FIRST ROUND
+
+      "BRASSBOUND: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Prisoner?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: I warned you. You should have taken my
+      warning.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a
+      brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom
+      you.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Then what do you expect to gain by this?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: Justice...."
+
+            BERNARD SHAW: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."
+
+
+But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the
+following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily
+placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the
+Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay
+scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding
+of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent
+pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.
+
+"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.
+"Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun
+it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."
+
+As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly
+arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason
+for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and
+for some years I have found that other people tend to be somewhat
+irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in
+the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that
+the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it
+difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the
+first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical
+student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own
+person.
+
+"Seraph up yet?" I asked.
+
+"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first
+time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept
+in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had,
+further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and
+escorted Sylvia to the early service.
+
+"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.
+
+"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in
+disgrace over something."
+
+The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter
+Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time
+and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any
+known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to
+their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth
+doing. Sylvia--like most _dévôtes_--could not believe in the existence
+of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people
+should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my
+comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion
+only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for
+the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other--and to
+tell me all about it.
+
+"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.
+
+"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."
+
+Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and
+admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a
+strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and
+brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but
+Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He
+was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and
+brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his
+handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most
+enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use
+of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The
+first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy
+of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of
+our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I
+tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I
+forget who won; he certainly had the note.
+
+A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence.
+Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few
+days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of
+perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last
+Commemoration.
+
+"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced.
+"House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."
+
+"Who's paying?" asked Michael.
+
+"Guv'nor, I hope."
+
+"_Je_ ne _pense pas_," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the
+library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.
+
+"You come," Robin went on regardless of the interruption. "I've got
+six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."
+
+"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance
+together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead
+necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University
+dancing costume, I believe it's called."
+
+"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already
+depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for
+the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and
+Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates
+from Carfax.
+
+"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."
+
+"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was
+unpinning a motor-veil.
+
+"Oh, _yes_, darling Sylvia!" Robin--I know--was both fond and proud of
+his sister, but the tone of _ad hoc_ blandishment suggested that
+experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll
+come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully
+averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."
+
+"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd
+you like?" he asked me.
+
+"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any
+one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I
+shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me
+drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to
+mischief."
+
+Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just
+entered the room, and turned to his sister.
+
+"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.
+
+"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.
+
+"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and
+misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to
+hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me
+know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the
+driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."
+
+Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's
+chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing
+up the drive, cutting all corners.
+
+"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."
+
+Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with
+the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime
+Minister's sudden appearance.
+
+"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise
+God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."
+
+"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.
+
+"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the
+selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a
+viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and
+fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make
+him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How
+perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."
+
+We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the
+inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's
+suggestion we began to retreat through the open French windows into
+the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file
+and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could
+escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had
+to be introduced afresh.
+
+"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement
+towards the window. "You may be able to help us."
+
+I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a
+spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met
+him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade,
+coming to Oxford to address some political club.
+
+"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato
+voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into
+three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance
+without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now.
+My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you
+know her by sight?"
+
+I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.
+
+"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter
+to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to
+Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the
+day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the
+four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The
+eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything
+of her before you left?"
+
+I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting
+old friends and being introduced to new ones that I had had neither
+time nor eyes....
+
+"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you
+know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten
+yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles
+beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by
+the slip?"
+
+The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the
+A.B.C. with an impatient slap.
+
+"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left
+London."
+
+"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.
+
+"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.
+
+"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been
+called away suddenly?"
+
+"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter
+makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place--with a
+view to tracing her."
+
+He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by
+first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western
+District Office at Victoria."
+
+The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows:
+
+        "DEAR SIR,
+
+    "This is to inform you that your daughter is well and in safe
+    keeping, but that she is being held as a hostage pending the
+    satisfactory settlement of the Suffrage Question. As you are
+    aware, Sir George Marklake has secured second place in the
+    ballot for Private Member's Bills. Your daughter will be
+    permitted to communicate with you by post, subject to
+    reasonable censorship; on the day when you promise special
+    facilities and Government support for the Marklake Bill, and
+    again at the end of the Report Stage and Third Reading. The same
+    privilege will be accorded at the end of each stage in the House
+    of Lords, and she will be restored to you on the day following
+    that on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent.
+
+    "You will hardly need to be reminded that the Marklake Bill is
+    to be taken on the first Private Member's night after the
+    Recess. Should you fail to give the assurances we require, it
+    will be necessary for us to take such further steps as may seem
+    best calculated to secure the settlement we desire."
+
+It took me some minutes to digest the letter before I was in a
+condition to offer even the most perfunctory condolence. Now that the
+blow had been struck, I found myself wondering why it had never been
+attempted before.
+
+"You've no clue?" I asked.
+
+Rawnsley inspected the letter carefully and held it up to the light.
+
+"Written with a Remington, I should say. And a new one, without a
+single defect in type or alignment. And the paper is made by
+Hitchcock. That's all I have to go on."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Advise Scotland Yard, I suppose. Then await developments. I don't
+wish what I've told you this morning to go any further; no good
+purpose will be served by giving the militants a free advertisement.
+When I am in town, it is to be understood that Mavis is with her
+mother at Hanningford; and when I am at Hanningford, Mavis must be at
+Downing Street."
+
+One has no business in private life to badger ministers with political
+questions, but I could not help asking what line Rawnsley proposed to
+take with the Marklake Bill. His grey eyes flashed with momentary
+fire.
+
+"It won't be taken this session," he declared. "I'm moving to
+appropriate all Private Members' time for the Poor Law Bill. And
+that's all, I think; I must be getting back to my wife, she's--a good
+deal upset. Can you spare Nigel, Roden? I should like to take him if I
+may. Good-bye, Mr. Merivale. Good-bye, Mr. ---- Oh, by the way, Roden,
+remember you're tarred with the same brush. As soon as the Recess is
+over, you'll have to keep a close watch on your family. Harding's
+another; I shall have to warn him."
+
+Rawnsley's departure left me with a feeling of anti-climax and vague
+discomfort. Short of assassination, which would have defeated its own
+object, a policy of abduction was the boldest and most effective that
+the militants could devise at a time when--in Joyce's words--all
+arguments had been exhausted on both sides and war _à outrance_ was
+declared by women who insisted on a vote against men who refused to
+concede it. I had every reason to think I knew whose brain had evolved
+that abduction policy; its reckless simplicity and directness were
+characteristic. Then and now I wondered, and still wonder, whether the
+author of that policy had sufficient imagination and perspective to
+appreciate the enormity of her offence, or the seriousness of the
+penalty attendant on non-success.
+
+"Ber-luddy day!" exclaimed Michael, rejoining us in the library and
+delicately brushing occasional drops of moisture from his immaculate
+person. A heavy downpour of rain was starting, and though I looked
+like being spared initiation into the mysteries of golf--which I am
+not yet infirm enough to learn--it was not very clear how we were to
+kill time between meal and meal. Gladys was spending the morning
+quietly in her room, Philip wandered to and fro like a troubled
+spirit, and Sylvia had mysteriously departed.
+
+In time Michael condescended to give us the reason. It appeared that
+while we were closeted with Rawnsley in the library, Robin had decided
+that rest and relaxation before his Schools could best be secured by
+the organisation of an impromptu Calico Ball, to be given that night
+to all who would come. While he sat at the telephone summoning the
+County of Hampshire to do his bidding, Sylvia had departed in her
+little white runabout to purchase masks and a bale of calico from
+Brandon Junction, and scour the neighbourhood in search of piano,
+violin, and 'cello. The wet afternoon was to be spent by the women of
+the party in improvising costumes, by the men in French-chalking the
+floor of the ball-room.
+
+I took the precaution of calling on Gladys to acquaint her with the
+day's arrangements, and beg her to see that I was not compelled to
+wear any costume belittling to the dignity of a middle-aged uncle.
+Then after writing a bulletin to catch my brother at Gibraltar, I felt
+I had earned rest and a cheroot before luncheon. Brandon Court was one
+of those admirably appointed houses where you could be certain of
+finding wooden matches in every room; it was not, however, till I got
+back to the library that I found companionship and the Seraph. He was
+lying on a sofa writing slowly and painfully with his left hand.
+
+"If that's volume three," I said, "I won't interrupt. If it's
+anything else, we'd better smoke and talk. I will do the smoking."
+
+"I'm only scribbling," he answered. "There's no hurry about volume
+three."
+
+"Your public--_quorum pars non magna sum_--is growing impatient."
+
+"There won't be any volume three," he said quietly.
+
+"But why not? I mean, a mere temporary hitch...."
+
+"It's not that. If it wasn't for this hand I could write like, well,
+like you _do_ write once in a lifetime."
+
+"What's to stop you?"
+
+"Nothing. I only said there wouldn't be a volume three. I shan't
+publish it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+His big blue eyes looked up at me thoughtfully for a moment from under
+their long lashes. Then he crumpled up the half-covered sheet of
+paper, remarking--
+
+"There are some things you can't make public."
+
+"But with a _nom de plume_...."
+
+"I might let _you_ see it," he conceded.
+
+There we had to leave the subject, as the library was soon afterwards
+invaded by zealous seekers after luncheon, first Lady Roden and
+Gartside, then the rest of the party with the single exception of
+Sylvia. Lady Roden walked over to the window and gazed in dismay at
+the unceasing downpour.
+
+"Is Sylvia back yet, does anybody know?" she asked.
+
+"She came in about a quarter of an hour ago," volunteered the Seraph.
+
+"Was she very wet?"
+
+"I didn't see her."
+
+Lady Roden bustled out of the room to make first-hand investigation.
+
+"She took a Burberry with her," Robin called out; then springing up he
+seized an ebony paper knife and advanced on Michael who was reclining
+decoratively on a Chesterfield sofa. "Talking of Burberries," he went
+on, with menace in his tone, "what the deuce d'you mean by stealing
+mine, Michael?"
+
+"Wouldn't be seen dead in your bloody Burberry," Michael responded
+with delicate languor.
+
+The Roden boys were all much of a size, and on the subject of raided
+and disputed garments a fierce border warfare raged unintermittently
+round their bedroom doors. It was so invariable a rule with Michael to
+meet all direct charges with an equally direct denial that his
+brothers placed but slight reliance on his word.
+
+"What was it doing in your room, then?" persisted Robin, as he applied
+the paper-knife to the soles of Michael's feet.
+
+"That was Phil's," said Michael ingenuously.
+
+Robin turned to his elder brother with the suggestion of a little
+disciplinary boiling-oil.
+
+"It'll be enough if we just ruffle him," answered the humane Philip.
+"Keep the door, Pat. Now, Robin!"
+
+The perfect harmony of their attack argued long practice. Almost
+before I had time to move out of the way, Culling was standing with
+his back to the door while a scuffling trio on the hearthrug indicated
+that castigation was already being meted out. Within two minutes the
+immaculate Michael had been reduced to slim, white nudity, and even as
+the decorous Gartside proffered a consolatory "_Times'_ Educational
+Supplement," the two brothers and Culling had divided the raiment and
+taken their centrifugal course through the house, secreting boots,
+socks, tie and collar in a succession of ingeniously inaccessible
+places as they went. Then the gong sounded, and Gartside took me in to
+luncheon.
+
+Such little breezes, as I afterwards discovered, were characteristic
+of Brandon Court when the three brothers were at home and Philip had
+forgotten his public dignity. I could have spared the present
+outbreak, as the inflammatory word "Burberry" had kept me from putting
+a certain question to the Seraph. At one-thirty he had told Lady Roden
+that Sylvia had come in about a quarter of an hour before: to be
+strictly accurate, she had entered the yard as the stable clock struck
+one-fifteen, and had come into the house three minutes later by a side
+door and gone straight to her room by a side staircase. The Seraph and
+I had been sitting in the library since twelve-forty-five. The library
+looked out over a terrace on to the lawn: stable yard, side door and
+side staircase were at the diametrically opposite angle of the house.
+It was impossible for any one, even with the Seraph's uncannily acute
+senses, to hear a sound from the stable yard; even had it been
+possible, he could not have identified it as the sound of Sylvia's
+return.
+
+I put my question in the smoking-room after luncheon, but got no
+satisfactory answer. Meeting Sylvia in the hall a few minutes later, I
+took my revenge by setting her to find out.
+
+The afternoon was spent in polishing the ball-room floor. Others
+worked, I offered advice. At one point, Michael, too, showed a
+tendency to offer advice, but the threat that his young body would be
+dragged up and down till the bones cut through the skin and scratched
+the floor, was effectual in persuading him to swathe his feet in
+towels and wade through uncharted seas of French chalk to the infinite
+detriment of the blue colour-scheme he had been forced into adopting
+for luncheon.
+
+Mrs. Roden, Sylvia and Gladys retired with their three maids and a
+bale of calico. From time to time one of us would be summoned to have
+our measurements taken, but no indication was manifested of the guise
+in which we were to appear. At eight we retired to our rooms with
+sinking hearts; at eight-thirty a group of sheepish men loitered at
+the stair-head, waiting for one less self-conscious than the rest to
+give a lead to the others.
+
+The ball--when it came and found us filled and reckless with
+dinner--proved an unqualified success. My indistinct memory of it
+recalls a number of pretty girls who danced well, talked very quickly,
+and called me--without exception--"my dear." I sat out two with
+Sylvia, and was cut three times by Gladys, who disappeared with Philip
+at an early stage. Further, I supped twice with two creditably hungry
+girls, discussed the lineage of the county with Lady Roden, and smoked
+a sympathetic cigarette with a nice-looking shy boy of fifteen, who
+was always being cut by Gladys when he was not being cut by some one
+else. His name was Willoughby, and I hope some girl has smiled on him
+less absent-mindedly than my niece.
+
+In my few spare moments I watched Sylvia dealing with her male guests.
+Culling approached and was rewarded with a smile and one dance.
+Gartside followed and received an even sweeter, Tristan-und-Isolde
+smile, and the same proportion of her programme. The Seraph,
+arm-in-sling, hung unostentatiously on the outskirts of the crowd, and
+with much hesitation summoned courage to ask if she could spare him
+one to sit out. She gave him two, and extended it later to three.
+
+I heard afterwards that at the end of the third he prepared to return
+to the ball-room.
+
+"Who are you taking this one with?" she asked him.
+
+"No one," he told her.
+
+"Why not stay here, then?"
+
+"Haven't you promised it to young Willoughby?"
+
+"He'll survive the disappointment," said Sylvia lightly.
+
+The Seraph shook his head. "May I have one later?" he asked. "You
+oughtn't to cut Willoughby, he's been looking forward to it."
+
+Sylvia was not accustomed or inclined to dictation from others.
+
+"Have you asked him?" she said, uncertain whether to be amused or
+angry.
+
+"It wasn't necessary. Haven't you felt his eyes on you while you were
+dancing? He thinks you're the most wonderful girl in the world. There
+he's right. He'll treasure up every word you speak, every smile you
+give him; he'll send himself to sleep picturing ways of saving your
+life at the cost of his own. And he'll dream of you all night."
+
+The Seraph's tranquil, unemotional voice had grown so earnest that
+Sylvia found herself growing serious in spite of herself.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't discuss me with boys like that," she said, more
+to gain time than administer reproof.
+
+"Should I have discussed you?" exclaimed the Seraph. "And would he
+have told me? Why can't you, why can't any girl understand the mind of
+a boy of fifteen? You'd make such men of them if you'd only take the
+trouble. Look at him now, he's thinking out wonderful speeches to make
+to you...."
+
+"I _hope_ not," said Sylvia ruefully.
+
+"He'll forget them all when he meets you. I was fifteen once."
+
+"I wonder if you'll ever be more."
+
+The Seraph made no answer.
+
+"That wasn't meant for a snub," said Sylvia reassuringly.
+
+"I know that."
+
+Sylvia looked at him curiously. "Is there anything you _don't_ know?"
+she asked as they descended the stairs to the ball-room.
+
+"I don't even know if you're going to let me take you in to supper."
+
+"I'm glad there's something."
+
+"That's not an answer."
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"You ought to know that without asking."
+
+"I'm afraid there's a great deal about you I _don't_ know."
+
+Supper was ended and their table deserted before Sylvia put the
+question with which I had primed her that afternoon.
+
+"Is there anything I _don't_ know? to use your own words," said the
+Seraph evasively.
+
+"That's not an answer, to use yours."
+
+"It's the only answer I can give," he replied, with that curious
+expression in his dark eyes that did duty for a smile.
+
+"Why won't you tell me? I'm interested. It's about myself, so I've a
+right to know."
+
+"But I can't explain; I don't know. It never happened before."
+
+"Never?"
+
+The Seraph thought over his first meeting with her the previous day.
+
+"Never with any one else," he answered.
+
+Sylvia shook her head in perplexity.
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Either it was just coincidence and
+you were talking without thinking, or else ... I don't know. It's
+rather funny. D'you want to smoke? Let's go out on to the terrace."
+
+"The detectives are there."
+
+"No, father said they weren't to appear to-night."
+
+"They're out there."
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I can hear them."
+
+Sylvia looked round at the closed plate-glass windows.
+
+"You _can't_," she said incredulously.
+
+"Will you bet? No, I don't want to rob you. Shall I tell you something
+else? You opened a fresh bottle of scent to-night when you dressed for
+dinner. It's Chaminade, the same kind that you were using before, but
+this is fresher. Had you noticed it?"
+
+The Seraph was considerably less impressed by his powers than Sylvia
+appeared to be.
+
+"Anything else?" she asked after a pause.
+
+The Seraph wrinkled his brows in thought.
+
+"Gladys Merivale was coughing last night," he said. "Some one passed
+my door at two o'clock and went into her room. I don't know who it
+was, but it wasn't you. The coughing stopped for a time, but started
+again just before three. Then you passed by and went in."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I heard you."
+
+"You may have heard some one; you didn't know it was me. I went once
+and mother went once. You couldn't tell which was which."
+
+The Seraph lit a cigarette and walked with her to the door of the
+supper-room.
+
+"Oh, it was your mother?" he said. "Then she went the first time."
+
+"But how do you know?" Sylvia repeated.
+
+"I can't explain, any more than about the car coming back this
+morning."
+
+Sylvia shook her head a little uneasily.
+
+"You're abnormal," she pronounced.
+
+"Because I...?"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Because I know a fraction more about you than other people?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Only a fraction. It would take time to understand you."
+
+"How much? I hate to be thought a sphinx."
+
+"However little I wanted, we should be parted before I got it."
+
+"Why? How? How parted?"
+
+The Seraph shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Don't ask me to read the future," he said with a sigh.
+
+At the end of the ball I found the Roden boys congratulating
+themselves on the success of the evening. I added my quota of praise,
+and was pressed to state if I now felt equal to three successive
+nights at Commemoration.
+
+"Which reminds me!" Robin exclaimed, flying off at his usual tangent.
+"Where's Sylvia? Sylvia, my angel, what about Commem.?"
+
+His sister looked tired but happy, and in some way excited.
+
+"I'll come if you want me," she answered, putting her arm round
+Robin's neck and kissing him good-night. "Yes, all right--I will. Oh,
+Mr. Rawnsley told me this morning that Mavis wouldn't be able to come,
+so you must get another girl."
+
+Robin dropped his voice confidentially.
+
+"See if you can persuade Cynthia to come. And we're still a man
+short."
+
+Sylvia looked slowly round the room with thoughtful, unsmiling
+eyes--past Culling, past Gartside....
+
+"Will you come, Seraph?" she asked.
+
+Less than a day and a half had passed since I had noticed her practice
+of avoiding Christian names. For some reason I had supposed nicknames
+to fall into the same category.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COMMEMORATION
+
+      "Oxford ... the seat of one of the most ancient and
+      celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid
+      picturesque environs at the confluence of the Cherwell
+      and the Thames.... Oxford is on the whole more attractive
+      than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor.... The best time
+      for a visit is the end of the Summer term.... This period
+      of mingled work and play (the latter predominating) is
+      named _Commemoration_.... It is almost needless to add
+      that an introduction to a 'Don' will greatly add to the
+      visitor's pleasure and profit."
+
+      KARL BAEDECKER: "Handbook for Travellers: Great Britain."
+
+
+Of the weeks that passed between my return to London from Brandon
+Court and our departure from London to Oxford, I have only the most
+indistinct recollection. My engagement book earned many honourable
+scars before I carried it away into my present exile, but for May and
+the first half of June there appears a black, undecipherable smudge
+that my memory tells me should represent a long succession of late
+nights and crowded days. Individual items are blurred out of
+recognition; my general sense of the period is that I pretended to be
+preternaturally young, and was punished by being made to feel
+prematurely old.
+
+It was the busiest part of the London season, and Gladys appeared to
+receive cards for an average of three balls a night on five nights of
+the week. I accompanied her everywhere, growing gradually broken to
+the work and relieved of my more serious responsibilities by the fact
+that Philip Roden was too busy at the House to waste his nights in a
+ball-room. We seemed to move in the midst of a stage army, the same
+few hundred men, women, and dowagers reappearing in an endless
+march-past. With the advent of the big hotels, hospitality had changed
+in character since the days when I counted myself a Londoner: there
+was more of it and it was less hospitable. The rising generation, and
+more particularly the female portion of it, seemed to have taken
+matters into its own hands.
+
+Regularly each morning, after a late breakfast, Gladys would set me to
+write a series of common-form letters: "Dear Mr. Blank," I would say,
+"My niece and I shall be so pleased if you will dine with us here
+to-night at 8.30 and go on to Lady Anonym's ball." Then Gladys would
+bring unknowing guest and unknown hostess into communication. "Can I
+speak to Lady Anonym?" I would hear her call down the telephone. "Oh,
+good morning! I say, do you think you could _possibly_ do with another
+man for your ball to-night? Honest? It _is_ sweet of you. Oh, quite a
+nice thing--Mr. Incognito Blank, 101, Utopia Chambers, St. James.
+Thanks, most awfully. Oh no, not _him_, he's the most awful stiff;
+this is a dear thing. Well, I would have, only he's only just got back
+to England, he's been shooting big game...."
+
+This was the retail method. In the case of intimate friends, Gladys
+would be encouraged to send in her own list of desirable invitees.
+Because I am old-fashioned and unacquainted with English ways, I trust
+I am not inaccessible to new ideas. I would carry the policy of
+promiscuity to its logical conclusion. An announcement in the _Times_
+with draft _ménu_, name of band and programme of music--even a
+placard outside Claridge's--would save endless postage and stationery,
+and could not pack the ball-room tighter than on a dozen occasions I
+remember. Hostesses who believe that numbers are the soul of
+hospitality, could be certain beforehand of the success of their
+efforts; superior young men would continue to remark, "Society gettin'
+very mixed, what?" exactly as they have done ever since I entered my
+first ball-room at the age of seventeen. Everybody, in short, would be
+pleased.
+
+We saw a good deal of Sylvia during those weeks, as for reasons of her
+own she would frequently drop in at Pont Street and conduct her share
+of the arrangements over our telephone. Occasionally Gladys would be
+called in as an accomplice, I would hear "Mr. Aintree's" name added to
+Lady Anonym's list, and Gladys would remark with fine carelessness,
+"Oh, just send him the card, if you will; don't bother to say who it
+comes from." The Seraph may have suspected, but he never had
+documentary proof of the originating cause of some of his invitations.
+
+In making our arrangements for Commemoration, I decided to take the
+greater part of my charges to Oxford by road. Robin, of course, was
+still in residence, and Philip promised to come down by the first
+possible train. Gladys, Sylvia, the Seraph, and a _pis-aller_ of
+Robin's named Cynthia Bargrave constituted my flock; we motored
+quietly down to Henley, where we lunched and chartered a houseboat for
+the Regatta, and arrived in Oxford with ample time for the three girls
+to have a comfortable rest before dinner. I made rather a point of
+this, as they were going to have three very tiring days and would
+naturally wish to look their best; moreover, I wanted to roam round
+the town with the Seraph.
+
+Even Oxford, that I thought could never alter, had changed during my
+years of absence. The little, nameless back-street colleges I would
+gladly sacrifice to the Destroyer, for they serve no purpose beyond
+that of breeding proctors, and I know we counted it an indignity to be
+fined by the scion of a college we had to reach by cab. But the High
+should have been inviolate; there wanted no new colleges breaking
+through its immemorial sides.... Univ. men, standing at their lodge
+gate and looking northward, have told me the High already contains one
+college in excess.
+
+While the Seraph sought out Robin's rooms in Canterbury, I wandered
+through the college--guiltily, I admit--looking for traces of a
+popular outbreak that occurred when a ball took place at Blenheim and
+House men asked in vain for leave to attend it. In time I came to my
+own old rooms in Tom, and gazed rather in sorrow than anger at the
+strange new name painted over the door. Twice my fingers went to the
+handle, twice I told myself that "Mr. R.F. Davenant" had as much right
+to privacy as I should have claimed in his place.... I wandered out
+through Tom Gate, across St. Aldates, and down Brewer Street to those
+pleasant digs in Micklem Hall, where I once spent an all-too-short
+twelve months. Then I returned to college, crept furtively back to the
+old familiar door, knocked, listened, entered....
+
+"R.F. Davenant" was far more civil than I should have been at a like
+intrusion. He showed me round the rooms, offered me whisky and
+cigarettes, wanted to know when I had been up, whether I was going to
+the Gaudy.... We were friends in a minute. I liked his fair,
+neatly-parted hair and clean, fresh colouring; I liked his Meissonier
+artist proofs; I liked the way the left back leg of the sofa
+collapsed unless you underpinned it with a Liddle and Scott. Not a
+thing was changed but the photographs on the mantelpiece. I walked
+over and surveyed them critically. Then one of those things happened
+that convince me an idle Quixotic Providence is watching over my least
+movements: I was staring at the picture of a girl on horseback when he
+volunteered the information that it was his sister.
+
+"Your married sister?" I suggested.
+
+"Do you know her?"
+
+He fed me on Common-room tea and quarter-pound wedges of walnut cake.
+Joyce was coming up for two of the three balls I was attending, coming
+unprovided with partners to chaperone some girl who had captured her
+brother's wandering fancy. These elder sisters earn more crowns than
+they are ever accorded; it seemed that Joyce who trampled on the world
+would stretch herself out to be trampled on by her heedless only
+brother. I wonder wherein the secret lies.
+
+"Come and dine," suggested Dick Davenant.
+
+I told him of my own party, and lost no time in working the Cumberland
+days with his father for all they were worth. What happened to the
+Seraph I never discovered. As I hurried back to the Randolph for
+dinner, Robin met me with an apology in advance for the dull evening
+before me.
+
+"'Fraid you'll have rather a rotten time," he opined. "I wish you had
+let me find you some old snag or other."
+
+"I shall be all right, Robin," I said.
+
+"There's sure to be bridge _somewhere_. Or look here, what about a
+roulette-board? Combine business with pleasure--what?"
+
+"I shall be able to amuse myself," I assured him.
+
+Our dinner that night was one of the gayest meals I have eaten; we
+were all expectant, excited, above our usual form--with the single
+exception of Philip. If I were a woman, I suppose I should notice
+these things; as it was I put his silent preoccupation down to
+overwork. When he approached Robin with other-world gentleness and
+suggested a stroll up St. Giles after dinner "just to keep me company,
+old boy," I ought to have suspected something; but it was not till the
+Seraph, smoking a lonely cigar, murmured something about "_Consul
+videat ne respublica detrimentum capiat_," that I saw my authority
+over Gladys was being threatened.
+
+The girls had been despatched for their last mysterious finishing
+touches, and we had the hall of the Randolph to ourselves.
+
+"What the deuce ought I to do, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why do anything?"
+
+That is the question I always ask myself when I have no definite idea
+what is expected of me.
+
+"I wish he'd had the consideration to wait till my brother came back,"
+I grumbled.
+
+"These little emotional crises never _do_ wait till we're ready for
+them, do they?"
+
+"From the fulness of the heart...."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, I was not speaking of myself."
+
+"I thought you were."
+
+The Seraph shook his head at me.
+
+"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or
+any one but your own self."
+
+I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.
+
+"No emotional crises have come _my_ way," I protested.
+
+"Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this
+afternoon."
+
+I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my
+chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will
+you...? No! sorry."
+
+"Will I what?"
+
+"It's no business of mine."
+
+"Why d'you start talking about it, then? Will I what?"
+
+The Seraph knocked the ash off his cigar, finished his coffee, and sat
+silent. I repeated my question.
+
+"Well...." he hesitated nervously. "Are you going to propose to her
+to-night?"
+
+"Really, Seraph!"
+
+"You're going to--some time or other...."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense!"
+
+"...I was wondering if it would be to-night."
+
+I felt myself growing rather annoyed and uncomfortable.
+
+"Not very good form to talk like this," I said stiffly. "After all,
+she's a friend of yours and mine. A joke's all very well...."
+
+"But I'm quite serious!"
+
+"My dear Seraph, d'you appreciate that I've met the girl once--a few
+weeks ago--and once only since she was a child of five?"
+
+"Oh yes. And do you remember my telling you what was bringing you back
+to England? Do you remember the impression she made on you that night?
+If you're going to marry her...."
+
+"Seraph, drop it!"
+
+He withdrew into his shell, and we smoked without speaking until I
+began to be sorry for snubbing him.
+
+"I didn't mean to be rude," I said apologetically. "But she's a nice
+girl; I may see her to-night for all I know to the contrary, and this
+coupling of names.... You see my point?"
+
+The Seraph suddenly developed a nervous, excited earnestness.
+
+"Let me give you a word of advice. If you're going to propose to
+her--oh, all right; if X. is going to propose to her, he'd better do
+it now--before the crash comes. There's going to be a very big crash;
+she's going down under it. If you--if X. proposed now, she might be
+got out of the way before it's too late. You--X. won't like to see the
+woman he's going to marry...."
+
+"X. marries her then?" I asked in polite incredulity. "Oh, he should
+certainly lose no time."
+
+"She may not accept you at once."
+
+"Come and get your coat, Seraph."
+
+"But she will later."
+
+"Come and get your coat," I repeated.
+
+"Ah--you don't believe me--well...."
+
+I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.
+
+"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of
+Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I
+have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday
+fortnight?"
+
+The Seraph shook his head without answering.
+
+"Very well, then," I said decisively.
+
+"But you don't know either."
+
+Of course he was right.
+
+"I may not know _now_," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due
+course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do--whether it's
+choosing a tie or...."
+
+"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more
+than what's in your own mind."
+
+"You talked about the woman X. was going to _marry_, not merely
+propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."
+
+"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"
+
+"Does she know herself?"
+
+"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so
+disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve,
+seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you
+at once."
+
+"You know her mind better than she does?"
+
+As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.
+
+"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that
+a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as
+part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you
+wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you
+come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."
+
+I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.
+
+"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.
+
+"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he
+answered.
+
+I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across
+Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was
+half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated
+and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening
+extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and
+white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow
+zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the
+Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H.
+contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.
+
+My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at
+the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various
+inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found
+her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air,
+flushed--or so I fancied--and occasionally passing a hand across eyes
+that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her
+to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the
+luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven
+undergraduate generations.
+
+"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said,
+after telling her of my meeting with Dick.
+
+"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,"
+she answered.
+
+"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So--for that matter--have others."
+
+"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean.
+If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the
+staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"
+
+I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.
+
+"If you _will_ espouse unpopular political causes," I began.
+
+"I'm not complaining! _This_ was nothing to what I've been through in
+the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"
+
+I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I
+used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand
+along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I
+used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable
+precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while
+like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my
+affection.
+
+"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I
+said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time
+was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their
+hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as
+I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who
+know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise
+me."
+
+"Perhaps they don't know you."
+
+"That," I said, "is not very helpful."
+
+"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know
+me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."
+
+"But what did you expect?"
+
+"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."
+
+It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I
+told her--what was no more than the truth--that I owed no allegiance
+to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in
+politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing
+if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise
+question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was
+granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace
+and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of
+hostility.
+
+"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I
+refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and
+enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could
+persuade you to accept the _fait accompli_. You're up against _force
+majeure_, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"
+
+"Why give up at all?"
+
+"You're striking at an immovable body."
+
+"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"
+
+"Is it an irresistible force?"
+
+"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"
+
+The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.
+
+"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight
+of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."
+
+"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern
+hemisphere? Yes."
+
+"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen
+her since."
+
+"Has her father?"
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour
+reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this
+week's _New Militant_, I had such fun writing it."
+
+"What was the rumour?"
+
+"We--ell!" Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her
+memory. "Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in
+that, of course; _you_'ve disappeared before now. Then some one else
+said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the
+suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about
+it; you'd have thought Mr. Rawnsley was making a mystery of it.
+However, I wanted to know, so I'm asking the question in the leading
+article. Perhaps he'll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to
+give me a match?"
+
+I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul's good.
+
+"As I say, my law's pretty rusty," I told her in conclusion, "but you
+may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather
+severe."
+
+"Brutally," Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. "But you've got
+to catch your criminal before you can imprison him."
+
+"Or her."
+
+"And you can't catch without evidence."
+
+I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one,
+but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.
+
+"That's the most banal remark I've ever heard from you," I told her.
+"There never was a criminal yet that didn't think he'd left no traces,
+never one that didn't think he was equal to the strain of sitting
+waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened
+or become reckless----"
+
+"Which am I?"
+
+"Neither as yet. You'll become reckless, because I don't think you
+know what fear means."
+
+"Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial
+room of the _New Militant_, will you climb up and see my moderating
+influence at work? If it hadn't been for me, we should have been
+prosecuted over the first number."
+
+"I suppose that's Mrs. Millington?" I hazarded. An echo of her fiery
+pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson
+and sabotage campaign.
+
+"What's in a name?" Joyce asked sweetly.
+
+"Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there's _some one_ who has to be
+restrained. I tell you you'll be arrested the day after your
+restraining influence is withdrawn...."
+
+Joyce bowed her assent.
+
+"And that will happen when you're invalided home from the front."
+
+Joyce bowed again. "Me that never had a day's illness in my life," I
+heard her murmur.
+
+"It'll be a new experience, and you'll have it very shortly if I know
+anything of what a woman looks like when she's overworked,
+over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways,
+you're man's inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues
+of life...."
+
+"But this wasn't!" The interruption came quickly in a tone that had
+lost its early banter. "Elsie's case comes on at the end of this week.
+I've been with her, I didn't want to come to-night, but she made
+me--so as not to disappoint Dick. It's not very pleasant to sit
+watching any one going through.... However, don't let's talk about it.
+You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It's cheap...."
+
+"And so very filling? I'll give no more."
+
+"Don't stop, it's a wonderful index. As long as people give me good
+advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more."
+
+I weighed the remark rather deliberately.
+
+"You were nearer being spiteful then than I've ever heard you," I
+said.
+
+"But wasn't it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give
+me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph."
+
+"The only three who'll give you anything more?"
+
+"Among the non-politicals. I've got politicals who'd go through fire
+and water for me," she declared proudly.
+
+"I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?"
+
+"Those three." She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a
+mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. "My friend,
+you're not suggesting _yourself_?"
+
+"I'm waiting to be asked."
+
+"It would be waste of time. You've not been living your own sinful
+selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came--it's
+kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six
+months before I could be certain of you."
+
+"You won't get six months."
+
+"Then it's hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win
+without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to
+the ball-room?"
+
+I exhibited my unfinished cigar.
+
+"When you're tired of oakum and a plank bed," I began....
+
+"Caught, tried _and_ condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn't
+leave it as late as that."
+
+"The sooner the better."
+
+"I'll come as soon as there's a warrant out."
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"Faithfully. But there won't be any warrant if the cause succeeds."
+
+"I pray you'll fail," was my fervent answer.
+
+Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.
+
+"You've spoilt _every_thing by that!"
+
+"My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause."
+
+"We can't be separated."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Anything you like!"
+
+She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The
+flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope
+of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited
+breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that
+moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the
+background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible.
+Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was
+hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun
+gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and
+shoulders.
+
+"Anything you like!" she repeated in confident gay challenge.
+
+"I hold you to that."
+
+Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it
+once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings
+so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight
+and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt,
+my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of
+those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian
+jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the
+ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.
+
+"Hold out your hand, Joyce," I said. "No, the other one. There!"
+
+I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table,
+and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.
+
+Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.
+
+"No good," I said. "You may cut the ring, which would be a pity
+because it's unique; and it's not yours till you've won the wager. Or
+you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too
+... well, anyway, it won't be yours to amputate if I win the bet."
+
+Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.
+
+"Will you take it off, please?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"You said I might fix the wager."
+
+"Take it off, please!" she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me.
+Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well
+when she disapproves.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested. "I've finished my cigar."
+
+"A joke may be carried too far," she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I
+remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.
+
+"Heaven witness I'm not joking!" I protested. "Nothing I could say
+would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my
+chance. It's a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you
+separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long
+as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I'm
+backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me."
+
+Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some
+difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.
+
+"How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?" she asked.
+
+I had not considered that.
+
+"Till my death?" I suggested.
+
+"Sooner than that, I hope."
+
+"Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back."
+
+Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as
+she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elated and quite
+deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm bound up with the cause more intimately than you
+think," she began with unexpected gentleness. "For--let me see--three
+years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and
+I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a
+Suffragan Bishop...."
+
+"Quite a proper distinction," I interrupted. "Neither fish, flesh,
+fowl, nor good red herring."
+
+"...and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire."
+
+"But this is where I come in."
+
+"Too late, I'm afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my
+own. I've sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the
+_New Militant_. I'm living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That
+looks like business, doesn't it?"
+
+I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and
+mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.
+
+"Living out in the East," I said, "I have learnt the virtue of
+infinite patience."
+
+Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important
+question unasked.
+
+"When I win my wager," I began.
+
+"You won't."
+
+"Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object
+to the consequences?"
+
+Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.
+
+"I've never given the matter a thought," she answered.
+
+"Subconsciously?" I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, give it a thought now," I begged.
+
+"It wouldn't make much difference whether I objected or not."
+
+"If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing's a joke in
+questionable taste, I'll take the ring off here and now."
+
+Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I
+suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes
+were soft and kind.
+
+"I think any girl 'ud be very lucky...." she began. I bowed, and as I
+did so an imp of mischief took possession of her tongue. "...very
+lucky indeed--to engage your roving affection."
+
+"That wasn't what you started to say."
+
+"I never know what I _am_ going to say. That's why I'm so good on a
+platform."
+
+"Shall I take the ring off?"
+
+"I prefer to win it in fair fight."
+
+"If you can," I rejoined, as we pressed our way into the bright warmth
+of the ball-room.
+
+My charges appeared to be profiting by my absence. Couple after couple
+floated by with touching heads and dreamy eyes; half-way down the room
+Philip was whispering in Gladys' ear and making her smile; I caught a
+glimpse of Robin and Cynthia; then Sylvia and the Seraph glided past.
+
+"Don't they look sweet together?" said Joyce, half to herself, as our
+faces were subjected to a quick, searching glance.
+
+"What about a turn before supper?" I suggested.
+
+"Am I having it with you?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"I should like to."
+
+We started round the room, half-way through the waltz. Joyce was a
+beautiful dancer, easy, light, and rhythmical. It was too good to
+spoil with talking; I contented myself with one final remark.
+
+"After all," I said, "you may as well start getting used to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND ROUND
+
+    "One sleeps, indeed, and wakes at intervals,
+    We know, but waking's the main part with us,
+    And my provision's for life's waking part.
+    Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
+    All day, I build, scheme, study and make friends;
+    And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
+    Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
+    The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
+    What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
+    You, the philosopher that disbelieve,
+    That recognise the night, give dreams their weight--
+    To be consistent--you should keep your bed,
+    Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
+    For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
+    And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
+    Live through the day and bustle as you please.
+    And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
+    To unbelieve as I to still believe?
+    Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
+    Bedridden,--and its good things come to me."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+The Bullingdon Ball took place on the Tuesday night, and Joyce
+returned to town the following morning. Her brother may have mentioned
+the time, or it may have been pure coincidence that I should be buying
+papers and watching the trains when she arrived at the station with
+the girl she was chaperoning. We met as friends and exchanged papers:
+I gave her the _Morning Post_ and received the _New Militant_ in
+return. As the train slipped away from the platform, she waved
+farewell with a carefully gloved left hand. Then Dick and I strolled
+back to the House.
+
+In drowsy, darkened chamber Robin was sleeping the sleep of the just.
+As I voyaged round his rooms, I reflected that undergraduate humour
+changes little through the ages, and in Oxford as elsewhere the
+unsuspecting just falls easy prey to wakeful, prowling injustice. An
+enemy had visited that peaceful home of slumber. Half-hidden by
+disordered bed-clothes, a cold bath prematurely awaited Robin's foot,
+and on his table was spread a repast such as no right-thinking man
+orders for himself after two nights' heavy dancing. Moist, indecorous
+slabs of cold boiled beef, beer for six, two jars of piccalilli and a
+round of over-ripe Gorgonzola cheese, offered piteous appeal to a
+jaded, untasting palate. Suspended from the overmantel--that soul
+might start on equal terms with body--hung the pious aspiration--"God
+Bless our Home."
+
+"Garton, for a bob!" Robin exclaimed when I described the condition of
+his rooms.
+
+Flinging the bed-clothes aside, he fell heavily into the bath,
+extricated himself to the accompaniment of low, vehement muttering
+that may have been a prayer, and bounded across the landing to render
+unto Garton the things that were Garton's. I followed at a
+non-committal distance, and watched the disposal of two pounds of
+boiled beef in unsuspected corners of Garton's rooms. Three slices
+were hidden in the tobacco jar, the rest impartially distributed
+behind Garton's books--to mature and strengthen during sixteen weeks
+of Long Vacation. Balancing the jug of beer on the door-top--whence it
+fell and caved in the fraudulent white head of a venerable
+scout--Robin hastened back to his own quarters and sported the oak.
+
+"I was thinking of a touch of lunch on the Cher," he observed,
+exchanging his dripping pyjamas for a dressing-gown and making for a
+window-seat commanding Canterbury Gate, a cigarette in one hand and a
+Gorgonzola cheese in the other. "If you wouldn't mind toddling round
+to Phil and the Seraph and routing the girls out, we might all meet at
+the House barge at one. I'll cut along and dress as soon as I've given
+Garton a little nourishment. I suppose the pickles 'ud kill him," he
+added with a regretful glance at the two-pound glass jars.
+
+I communicated the rendezvous to Philip, threw an eye over the "Where
+is Miss Rawnsley?" article as I crossed the Quad, and dropped anchor
+in the Seraph's rooms. His quaint streak of femininity showed itself
+in the bowls of "White Enchantress" carnations with which the tables
+and mantelpiece were adorned. A neat pile of foolscap covered with
+shorthand characters indicated early rising and studious method. I
+found him working his way through the _Times_ and _Westminster
+Gazette_ for the last three days.
+
+"I suppose there is no news?" I said when I had told him Robin's
+arrangements for the day and described the Battle of the Beef.
+
+"Nothing to-day," he answered. "Have you seen yesterday's _Times_?"
+
+I had been far too busy with Joyce and my three wards to spare a
+moment for the papers. I now read for the first time that the Prime
+Minister had moved for the appropriation of all Private Members' days.
+The Poor Law Reform Bill would engage the attention of the House for
+the remainder of the Session, to the exclusion of Female Suffrage and
+every other subject.
+
+"That's Rawnsley's answer to _this_," I said, giving the Seraph my
+copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+"I wonder what the answer of the _New Militant_ will be to Rawnsley,"
+he murmured when he had read the article.
+
+"That is for you to say," I told him. "You read the Heavens and
+interpret dreams and forecast the future...."
+
+"Fortunately I can't."
+
+This was an unexpected point of view.
+
+"Wouldn't you if you could?" I asked.
+
+"Would any one go on living if he didn't cheat himself into believing
+the future was not going to be quite as black as the present?"
+
+This was not the right frame of mind for a man who had spent two
+nights dancing with Sylvia--to the exclusion of every one else, and I
+told him so.
+
+"Come along to the Randolph," he exclaimed impatiently. "To-day,
+to-night; and to-morrow all will be over. I was a fool to come. I
+don't know why I did."
+
+We picked up our hats and strolled into King Edward Street.
+
+"You came because Sylvia invited you," I reminded him. "I heard the
+invitation. Young Rawnsley was not there, but Culling and Gartside
+were, and a dozen more I don't know by name. Any of them might have
+been chosen instead, but--they weren't. You should be more grateful
+for your advantages, my young friend."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+I linked my arm in his, and tried to find out what was upsetting him.
+
+"You've been having some senseless, needless quarrel with her...." I
+hazarded.
+
+"How can two people quarrel when they've not a single point in common?
+Our lives are on parallel lines, continue them indefinitely and
+they'll never meet. Therefore--it's a mistake to bring the parallels
+so close together that one can see the other."
+
+For a moment I wondered whether he had put his fortune to the test and
+received a rebuff.
+
+"Does Sylvia think your lives are on parallel lines?" I asked.
+
+"What experience or imagination do you think a girl like that's got?
+It never occurs to them that everybody's not turned out of the same
+machine as themselves, with the same ideas, beliefs, upbringing,
+position, means. D'you suppose Sylvia appreciates that she spends more
+money on dress in six months than I earn in a year? Can she imagine
+that I hate and despise all the little conventions that she wouldn't
+transgress for all the wealth of the Indies? The doctrines she's
+learnt from her mother, the doctrines she'll want to teach her
+children--can she imagine that I regard them as so much witchcraft
+that I wouldn't imperil my soul by asking any sane child to believe?
+I'm an infidel, a penniless, unconventional Bohemian, and she--well,
+you know the atmosphere of Brandon Court. What's the good of our going
+on meeting?"
+
+"Nigel is neither infidel, unconventional, nor Bohemian," I said.
+"Moreover, he stands on the threshold of a big career...."
+
+"I daresay," said the Seraph as I paused.
+
+"Nigel was not invited. Gartside may be an infidel if he ever troubles
+to think of such things; he is certainly not penniless or Bohemian. He
+is a large-framed, large-hearted hero, with every worldly advantage a
+girl could desire. Gartside was not invited. No more were the others.
+You were."
+
+"She hadn't known me two days; perhaps two days aren't long enough to
+find me out."
+
+"Feminine intuition...." I began.
+
+"Feminine intuition's a woman's power of jumping to wrong conclusions
+quicker than men. Unless you want to get yourself into trouble, you'd
+better not march into Sylvia's presence with a _New Militant_ in your
+hand."
+
+I thanked him for the reminder, and bequeathed the offending sheet to
+the Martyrs' Memorial. The heavy type of the headline, "Where is Miss
+Rawnsley?" reminded me of our earlier conversation.
+
+"I shan't be sorry to get rid of my charges," I remarked. "They're a
+responsibility in these troublous times."
+
+"Sylvia's in no danger," he answered with great confidence.
+
+"I'm not so sure."
+
+"She's absolutely safe."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, and the confidence died out of his eyes.
+
+"I don't. It's--just an opinion."
+
+"Even if you're right, there's still Gladys," I said.
+
+"I'd forgotten her."
+
+"She's a fair mark."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Though not as good as Sylvia."
+
+"I assure you Sylvia's in no danger."
+
+"But how do you know?" I repeated.
+
+"I tell you; it's only an opinion."
+
+"But you don't express any opinion about Gladys."
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"How can you about Sylvia?"
+
+He hesitated, flushed, opened his lips and shut them again in his old
+tantalising way.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we entered the Randolph, and walked to
+the end of the hall where the three girls were awaiting us.
+
+Robin had provided an imposing flotilla for our accommodation. His own
+punt was reserved for Cynthia, himself, and the luncheon-baskets; a
+mysterious reconciliation had placed Garton's at the disposal of
+Philip, Gladys, and myself, while Sylvia and the Seraph were stowed
+away in a Canadian canoe, detached by act of sheer piracy from the
+adjoining Univ. barge. We took the old course through Mesopotamia and
+over the Rollers, mooring for luncheon half a mile above the Cherwell
+Hotel. Hunger and a sense of duty secured my presence for that meal
+and tea; in the interval I retired for a siesta. Distance, I find,
+lends enchantment to a chaperon.
+
+It was in my absence that Philip asked Gladys to marry him. On my
+reappearance at tea-time, Robin shouted the news across a not
+inconsiderable section of Oxfordshire. I affected the usual surprise,
+warned Philip that he must await my brother's approval, and shook
+hands with him avuncularly. Then I watched the orgy of kissing that
+seems inseparable from announcements of this kind. A mathematician
+would work out the possible combinations in two minutes, but his
+calculation would, as ever, be upset by the intrusion of the personal
+equation, for Robin kissed Gladys not once, but many times, less with
+a view to welcoming her as a sister than from a reasonable belief that
+such ill-timed assiduity would exasperate her elder brother.
+
+In time it occurred to some one to make tea, and at six o'clock the
+flotilla started home. Robin ostentatiously transferred me from
+Philip's punt to his own, and with equal ostentation announced his
+intention of starting last so as to round up the laggards. The
+Canadian canoe shot gracefully ahead, and was soon lost to view; a
+fast stream was running, and the boat needed little assistance from
+the paddle. I have no doubt that in the late afternoon sun, and with
+an accompaniment of rippling water gently lapping the sides of the
+boat, time passed all too quickly. Fragments of conversation were
+disinterred for my benefit in the course of the following weeks, to
+set me wondering anew what sympathetic nimbus I must wear that girls
+and boys like Sylvia and the Seraph should unlock their hearts for my
+inspection.
+
+I gather that Sylvia called for the verdict on the success of their
+expedition to Oxford, and that the Seraph found for her, but with
+reluctant, qualified judgment.
+
+"You're not sorry you came?" she asked. "Well, what's lacking? I'm
+responsible for bringing you here; I want everything to be quite
+perfect."
+
+"Everything _is_ perfect, Sylvia."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"_Some_thing's wrong. You're moody and silent and troubled, just like
+you were the first time we met. D'you remember that night? You looked
+as if you thought I was going to bite you. I don't bite, Seraph. Tell
+me what's the matter, there's still one night more; I want to make you
+glad you came."
+
+"You can't make me gladder than I am. But you can't find roses without
+thorns. I wish we weren't all going back to-morrow."
+
+"It's only to London."
+
+"I know, but it'll all be different."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I don't know, but it _will_ be. These three days wouldn't have been
+so glorious if I hadn't remembered every moment of the time that they
+were--just three days."
+
+Shipping his paddle, he lay back in the boat and plunged his arms up
+to the elbow in the cool, reedy water. Sylvia roused him with a
+challenge.
+
+"Four days would have bored you?"
+
+"Have you ever met the man who _was_ bored by four days of your
+company?"
+
+"Don't you sometimes fancy you know me better than most?"
+
+"I've known you since Whitsun."
+
+"You've known me since...."
+
+She stopped abruptly. The Seraph lifted a wet hand, and watched the
+water trickling in zigzag rivulets up his arm.
+
+"Shall I finish it for you?" he asked.
+
+"You don't know what I was going to say."
+
+"You've known me since the day I was born."
+
+"Why do you think I was going to say that?"
+
+"You were, weren't you?"
+
+"I stopped in the middle."
+
+"You'd thought out the end."
+
+"Had I?"
+
+"Unconsciously?"
+
+A hand waved in impatient protest.
+
+"If it was unconscious, how should I know?"
+
+The Seraph glanced quickly up at her face, and turned away.
+
+"True," he answered absently.
+
+"No one could know," she persisted.
+
+"_I_ knew."
+
+"Guessed."
+
+For answer he picked up his coat from the bottom of the boat, and
+extracted a closely written sheet of college note-paper. Folding it so
+that only the last line was visible, he handed it her with the words--
+
+"You'll find it there."
+
+Sylvia read the line, and gazed in perplexity at her companion.
+
+"But I never _said_ it," she persisted.
+
+"You were going to."
+
+She turned the paper over without answering.
+
+"What's on the other side?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph extended an anxious hand.
+
+"Please don't read that!" he implored her. "It's not meant for you to
+see."
+
+"Is it about me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why shouldn't I see it?"
+
+"You may, but not now."
+
+"Well, when?"
+
+The Seraph's manner had grown suddenly agitated. To gain time, he
+produced a cigarette, but his agitation was betrayed in the trembling
+hand that held the match.
+
+"When we meet again," he answered after a pause.
+
+"We meet again to-night."
+
+"When we meet--after parting."
+
+"We part to dress for dinner."
+
+"I mean a long, serious parting," he replied in a low voice.
+
+Sylvia laughed at his suddenly grave expression.
+
+"Are we going to quarrel?" she asked.
+
+He nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why, Seraph?" she asked more gently.
+
+"We can't help it."
+
+"It takes two to make a quarrel. _I_ don't want to."
+
+"We shouldn't--if we were the only two souls in creation."
+
+Sylvia sat silent, fidgeting with a signet ring, and from time to time
+looking questioningly into the troubled blue eyes before her.
+
+"How do you _know_ these things?" she asked at length. "You can't
+know."
+
+"Call it guessing, but I was right over the unfinished sentence,
+wasn't I?"
+
+"Perhaps, but how do you know?"
+
+"I don't. It's fancy. Some people spend their lives awake, others
+dreaming." He shrugged his shoulders. "I dream. And sometimes the
+dream's so real that I know it must be true."
+
+Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face
+before.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't dream we were going to quarrel," she said. "I
+don't want to lose you as a friend."
+
+"You won't. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help
+badly."
+
+Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes
+recovered their disdainful, independent fire.
+
+"Why should I want help?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," was all he could answer. "You will."
+
+Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped
+Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up
+and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly
+through Mesopotamia neither was able--perhaps neither was willing--to
+pick up the threads of the conversation where they had been dropped.
+In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade
+of Addison's Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows.
+Sylvia's mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he
+had spoken.
+
+"Do we meet and make it up?" she asked with assumed lightness of tone
+as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and
+shot clear into the Isis.
+
+"We meet."
+
+"And make it up?" she repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Do you care?"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"If we don't?" The Seraph sat motionless for a moment, and then began
+paddling the boat alongside the barges. "I shall go abroad. I've never
+been to India. I want to go there. And then I shall go on to Japan,
+and from Japan to some of Stevenson's islands in the South Seas. I've
+seen everything else that I want to see."
+
+"And then?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shook his head uncertainly.
+
+"Burial at sea, I hope."
+
+"Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+"There'd be nothing more in life?"
+
+"Not if we quarrelled and never made it up."
+
+"But if we _did_----"
+
+"Ah, that'ud make all the difference in the world."
+
+For a moment they looked into each other's eyes: then Sylvia's fell.
+
+"I don't want to quarrel," she said. "I don't believe we shall, I
+don't see why we need. If we do, I'm prepared to make it up."
+
+"I wonder if you will be when the time comes," he answered.
+
+We were, with a single, noteworthy exception--a subdued party that
+night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and
+little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and
+reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed
+an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished
+conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the
+expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and
+the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of
+his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish
+called forth a new simile.
+
+"Pity oysters aren't in season, Toby," he remarked. "Marriage is like
+your first oyster, horrid to look at, clammy to touch, and only to be
+swallowed at a gulp." "Clear soup for me, please. When I'm offered
+thick, I always wonder what the cook's trying to hide. Thick soup is
+like marriage." "Why does dressed crab always remind me of marriage? I
+suppose because it's irresistible, indigestible, and if carelessly
+mixed, full of little pieces of shell." "Capercailzie is symbolical of
+married life: too much for one, not enough for two." "Matrimony is
+like a cigarette before port: it destroys the palate for the best
+things in life."
+
+No one paid any attention to Robin as he rambled on to his own
+infinite contentment: he would probably still be rambling but for the
+arrival of an express letter directed to me in Arthur Roden's writing.
+We were digesting dinner over a cigar in the hall, and after reading
+the letter I took Sylvia and the Seraph aside, and communicated its
+contents. By some chance it was included in a miscellaneous bundle of
+papers I packed up before leaving England, and I have it before me on
+my table as I write.
+
+"Private and Confidential," it began--
+
+    "MY DEAR TOBY,"
+
+    "If this arrives in time, I shall be glad if you will send me a
+    wire to say all is well with Sylvia and the others. We are a
+    good deal alarmed by the latest move of the Militants. You will
+    have seen that Rawnsley got up in the House the other day and
+    moved to appropriate all Private Members' time till the end of
+    the Session, in this way frustrating all idea of the Suffrage
+    coming up in the form of a Private Member's Bill.
+
+    "The Militants have made their counterstroke without loss of
+    time. Yesterday morning Jefferson's only child--a boy of
+    seven--disappeared. We left J. out when we were running over
+    likely victims at Brandon: he was away in the _Enchantress_
+    inspecting Rosyth at the time, and I suppose that was how we
+    forgot him. We certainly ought not to have done so, as he has
+    been one of the most outspoken of the anti-militants.
+
+    "The child went yesterday with his nurse to Hyde Park. The
+    woman--like all her damnable kind--paid no attention to her
+    duty, and allowed some young guardsman to sit and talk to her.
+    In five minutes' time--she says it was only five minutes--the
+    child had disappeared. No trace of him has been found.
+    Jefferson, of course, is in a great state of worry, but agrees
+    with Rawnsley that no word of the story must be allowed to reach
+    the Press, and no effort spared to convince the electorate of
+    the utter impossibility of considering the claims at present
+    put forward by the Militants. I am arranging a series of
+    meetings in the Midlands and Home Counties as soon as the House
+    rises.
+
+    "And that reminds me. Rawnsley received a second letter
+    immediately after the abduction of J.'s boy, telling him his
+    action in respect of Private Members' time had been noted, and
+    that he would be given till the end of the month [June] to
+    foreshadow an autumn session. There may be an autumn
+    session--that depends on the Committee Stage of the Poor Law
+    Bill--but the Suffrage will not come up during its course, and
+    Rawnsley is purposely withholding his announcement till the
+    month has turned.
+
+    "For the next ten days, therefore, we may hope to be spared any
+    fresh attack. After that they will begin again, and as my
+    Midland campaign is being announced in the course of this week,
+    it is more than probable that the blow may be aimed at me.
+
+    "Please shew this letter to Sylvia and the boys, and explain as
+    much of the Rawnsley affair as may be necessary to make it clear
+    to her. At present she has been told that Mavis is ill in London
+    and may have to undergo an operation. Tell her to use the utmost
+    care not to stir in public without some competent person to
+    escort her. Scotland Yard is increasing its bodyguards, and
+    everything must be done to assist them.
+
+    "You will, of course, see the necessity of keeping this letter
+    private.
+
+                                      "Ever yours,
+                                                  "ARTHUR RODEN."
+
+As I gave the letter to Sylvia and the Seraph to read, I will admit
+that my first feeling was one of unsubstantial relief that Joyce had
+been in Oxford when the abduction took place in London. I did not in
+any way condone the offence, I should not have condoned it even had I
+known that she was mainly responsible for the abduction. Independently
+of all moral considerations, I found myself being glad that she was
+out of town at the time of the outrage. The consolation was flimsy. I
+concede that. But it is interesting to me to look back now and review
+my mental standpoint at that moment. I had already got beyond the
+point of administering moral praise and blame: my descent to active
+participation in crime followed with incredible abruptness.
+
+I felt the "Private and Confidential" was not binding against the
+Seraph, as he had been present when Rawnsley described the
+disappearance of Mavis. While he expounded her father's letter to
+Sylvia, I gave its main points to Philip and Robin. The comments of
+the family were characteristic of its various members. Philip shook a
+statesmanlike head and opined that this was getting very serious, you
+know. Robin inquired plaintively who'd want to abduct a little thing
+like him.
+
+"I don't want any 'competent escort,'" Sylvia exclaimed with her
+determined small chin in the air.
+
+"For less than twenty-four hours," I begged. "I'm responsible for your
+safety till then. After that you can fight the matter out with your
+father."
+
+"But I can look after myself even for the next twenty-four hours."
+
+I assumed my severest manner.
+
+"Have you ever seen me angry?" I said.
+
+"Do you think you could frighten me?" she asked with a demure smile.
+
+"I'm quite sure I couldn't," I answered helplessly. "Seraph, can you
+do anything with her?"
+
+"Nobody can do anything with her...."
+
+"Seraph!"
+
+"...against her will."
+
+"That's better."
+
+I struck at a propitious moment.
+
+"When we leave here," I said to the Seraph, "you're to take her hand
+and not let go till you're back in the hotel again. I give her into
+your charge. Treat her...."
+
+I hesitated, and Sylvia interrogated me with a King's Ransom smile.
+
+"Treat her as she deserves," I said. "If she were my wife, ward or
+daughter, I should slap her and send her to bed. So would you, so
+would any man worthy of the name."
+
+"Would you, Seraph?"
+
+He was helping her into her cloak and did not answer the question.
+Suddenly she turned round and looked into his eyes.
+
+"Would you, Seraph?" I heard her repeat.
+
+"I shall treat you--as you deserve to be treated," he answered slowly.
+
+"That's not an answer," she objected.
+
+"What's the good of asking him?" I said as the rest of our party
+joined us.
+
+In the absence of Joyce I spent large portions of a dull and
+interminably long night smoking excessive cigarettes and leaning
+against a wall to watch the dancers. Towards three o'clock I
+discovered an early edition of an evening paper and read it from cover
+to cover. Canadian Pacifics were rising or falling, and some
+convulsion was taking place in Rio Tintos.
+
+The only other news of interest I found in the Cause List. I remember
+the case of Wylton _v._ Wylton and Sleabury was down for trial one day
+towards the end of that week.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE
+
+    "Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological?"
+
+                  GEORGE GISSING: "Born in Exile."
+
+
+I always look back with regret to our return to London after
+Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens' house in Cadogan
+Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful,
+light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first
+careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of
+suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old
+alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping
+unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our
+former frank, trustful footing.
+
+I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time--not even the Seraph,
+for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back
+over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had
+already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much
+that followed.
+
+To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that
+characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have
+warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce
+Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were
+their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of
+demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the
+progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals;
+but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed,
+vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched,
+and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered
+the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the
+suspicions of both belligerents.
+
+Again, the Wylton divorce proved--if proof were ever needed--that when
+English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing
+for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure
+themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of
+moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two
+added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much
+unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that
+Quixotism does not pay in England, while I--well, there is no fool
+like a middle-aged fool.
+
+Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia's tropical
+intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably
+_intriguée_, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as
+she might, there was something arresting in his other-world,
+somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were
+too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy
+was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl
+who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt
+that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and
+revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any
+woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt
+that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated
+the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of
+unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.
+
+The Seraph--it is clear--had not responded. I know now--indeed, I knew
+at the time--that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his
+receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence
+had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a
+man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism.
+Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy
+she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate
+his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred
+to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and
+their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he
+could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had
+shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford
+absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his
+curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his
+mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped
+short--for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to
+go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock.
+I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or
+gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.
+
+With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken
+for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were
+always running over to the Rodens' or receiving visits from Sylvia
+and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as
+completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the
+information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further
+inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady
+Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an
+intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination
+into his antecedents. "Who _is_ this Mr. Aintree?" I remember her
+asking in her lifeless, faded voice. "Has he any relations? There used
+to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell."
+
+After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out
+to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to
+Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I
+felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am
+glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to
+proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day
+or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but
+away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I
+called in at the club before trying his flat. The Seraph was not
+there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside's
+benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current "Vie
+Parisienne."
+
+"Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?" I heard him inquire
+with feigned admiration. "In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?"
+Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity.
+"'Corruptio optimi pessima!' I wonder ye've the courage to show
+yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside."
+
+I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph's whereabouts, but the
+question appeared to add fuel to Culling's indignation.
+
+"Where is the Seraph?" he exclaimed. "Well ye may ask! His wings are
+clipped, there's a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings
+broken. The Heavenly Choir----" He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of
+foolscap and resumed his normal tone. "This'll be rather good--the
+Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as
+Gartside here.
+
+    'To bottomless perdition, there to dwell--
+    Why can't the club afford a decent pen?
+    You're our committeeman, Bob, you're to blame.
+    I always use blank verse for my complaints.--
+    To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
+    In adamantine chains and penal fire.'"
+
+            JOHN MILTON: "Paradise Lost, Liber One."
+
+I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the
+Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of
+the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the
+shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had
+been knocked over one eye, and his halo--in Culling's words--was "all
+anyhow." As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the
+Seraph's reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for
+enlightenment.
+
+"It's been going on long enough to be getting serious," I was told. "A
+solid week now."
+
+"_What's_ been going on?" I exclaimed in despair. "Where are we? Above
+all, where's the Seraph?"
+
+"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the
+day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through
+London like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a
+Gentleman--well known in Society--seeking whom he may devour,'" he
+murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And
+it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak
+to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."
+
+I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in
+extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references
+to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.
+
+"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed
+tobacco."
+
+"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married
+a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm
+hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all
+accounts, and Wylton--well, I expect you've heard some queer stories
+about him, they're all true. After they'd been married--how long was
+it, Paddy?"
+
+"Oh, a few years--by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up
+the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to
+work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being
+horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad
+while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new
+partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his
+actions out of court...."
+
+"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.
+
+"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.
+
+Culling warmed oratorically to his work.
+
+"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient
+Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided
+business.' Toby, ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life
+is a _mauvais quart d'heure_ made up of exquisite week-ends. While
+Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be
+the Hungarian correspondent of the _Baptist Family Herald_, Mrs.
+Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."
+
+He paused delicately.
+
+"Girls will be girls," sighed Gartside.
+
+"A gay cavalry major, with that way they have in the army, made a
+flying descent on Deauville. He'd been seen about with her in London
+quite enough to cause comment. Good-natured friends asked Wylton why
+he was vegetating in Pesth when he might be in Deauville; he came, he
+saw, he stayed in the self same hotel as his wife...."
+
+"Which curiously enough had been already chosen by the gay cavalry
+major."
+
+Culling shook his head over the innate depravity of human nature.
+
+"You see the finish?" he inquired rhetorically. "They say the senior
+partner in Morgan and Travers had a seizure when Wylton had finished
+the last batch of cases in his own department, and strolled into the
+private office to instruct proceedings for a petition."
+
+"Six days ago, decree nisi was granted," said Gartside.
+
+"Scene in Court: President expressing sympathy with Petitioner,"
+murmured Culling, with quick pencil already at work on the
+blotting-pad.
+
+I lit a cigar to clear my head.
+
+"Where does the Seraph come in?" I persisted like a man with an _idée
+fixe_.
+
+"In the sequel," said Gartside. "There is a right way of doing
+everything, also a wrong. When one is divorced, one hides one's
+diminished head...."
+
+"I always do," said Culling.
+
+"One grows a beard and goes to live in Kensington. Mrs. Wylton is
+making the mistake of trying to brazen things out. 'You may cut me,'
+she says, 'but ye canna brek me manly sperrit.' Consequently in every
+place where she can be certain of attracting a crowd, Mrs. Wylton is
+to be found in the front row of the stalls, very pretty, very quiet
+and so unobtrusively dressed that you're almost tempted to damn her as
+respectable."
+
+He lit a cigarette and I took occasion to remind him that we had not
+yet come in sight of the Seraph.
+
+Culling took up the parable.
+
+"Is she alone?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Sir, she is not! Who
+took her to dinner last night at Dieudonné's, the night before at the
+Savoy, the night before that at the Carlton? Who has been seen with
+her at the Duke of York's, the Haymarket, the St. James'?"
+
+"Who rides with her every summer morning in the Park?" cut in
+Gartside. "It is our Seraph. Our foolish Seraph, and we lay at your
+door the blame for his demoralisation. Seriously, Toby, somebody ought
+to speak the word in season. He's getting talked about, and that sort
+of flying in the face of public opinion doesn't do one damn's worth of
+good. The woman's got to have her gruel and take her time over it.
+She'll only put people's backs up by going on as she's doing at
+present. Mind you, I'm sorry for her," he went on more gently. "In her
+place I'd have done precisely the same thing, and I'd have done it
+years ago. But I should have had the sense to recognise I'd got to
+face the consequences."
+
+I wondered for a short two seconds if it would be of the slightest
+avail to proclaim my belief in Elsie Wylton's innocence. A glance at
+Culling and Gartside convinced me of the futility.
+
+"Where's the Seraph now?" I asked.
+
+"With her. Any money you like. She lives with her sister in Chester
+Square; you'll find him there."
+
+I sent a boy off to telephone to Adelphi Terrace. Until his return
+with the announcement that the Seraph was still away from home,
+Gartside suggested the lines on which I was to admonish the young
+offender.
+
+"The gay cavalry major's prudently shipped himself back to India," he
+said, "and he was a pretty shadowy figure to most people as it was.
+What the Seraph has to understand is that he'll get all the discredit
+of being an 'and other' if he ties himself to her strings in this way.
+I only give you what everybody's saying."
+
+I promised to ponder his advice, and after being reminded that Gladys
+and I were due at his musical party the following week, and reminding
+him that he was expected to lunch on my house-boat at Henley, we went
+our several ways.
+
+Wandering circuitously round the smoking-rooms and library on my way
+to the hall, I had ample corroboration of what--in Gartside's
+words--everybody was saying. The Wylton divorce was the one topic of
+conversation. For the most part, I found Gartside's own tolerance to
+the woman representative of the general feeling in the club: his
+strictures on the folly of the Seraph's conduct had a good many
+echoes, though two men had the detachment to praise his disinterested
+behaviour. Of the rest, those who did not condemn opined that he was
+too young to know any better.
+
+The one discordant note was struck when I met Nigel Rawnsley in the
+hall. Elsie Wylton was shot hellwards in one sentence and the Seraph
+in another, but the burden of his discourse was reserved for the
+sacramental nature of wedlock and the damnable heresy of divorce. I
+was subjected to a lucid exposition of the Anglican doctrine of
+marriage, initiated into the mysteries of the first three (or three
+hundred) General Councils of the Church, presented with thumbnail
+biographies of Arius and S. Athanasius, and impressed with the
+necessity of unfrocking all priests who celebrated the marriage of
+divorced persons. It was all very stimulating, and I found that half
+my most prosaic friends were living in something that Rawnsley
+damningly described as "a state of sin."
+
+It was tea-time before I arrived at Chester Square. I suppose I had
+never taken Gartside very seriously: the moment I saw Elsie and the
+Seraph, my lot was unconditionally thrown in with the publicans and
+sinners. She greeted me with the smile of a woman who has no care in
+the world: then as she turned to ring the bell for tea, I caught the
+expression of one who is passing through Purgatory on her way to Hell.
+The Seraph's eyes were telegraphing a whole code-book. I walked to the
+window so that she could not see my face, nor I hers.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in," I said as carelessly as
+I could. "It was tea-time for one thing, and for another I wanted to
+tell you that you've done about the pluckiest thing a woman can do.
+Good luck to you! If there's anything I can do...."
+
+Then we shook hands again, and I found her death-like placidity a good
+deal harder to bear than if she had broken down or gone into
+hysterics. I do not believe the Davenant women know how to cry:
+Nature left the lachrymal sac out of their composition. Yet on
+reflection I can see now that she was suffering less than in the days
+six weeks before when the anticipation of the divorce lowered
+menacingly over her head and haunted every waking moment. It is
+curious to see how suspense cards down a woman's spirit while the
+shock of a catastrophe seems actually to brace her and call forth
+every reserve of strength. From this time till the day of my departure
+from England, Elsie was indomitable.
+
+"It's hard work at present," she said with a gentle, tired smile, "but
+I'm going through with it."
+
+That was what her father used to say when I climbed with him in
+Trans-Caucasia. He would say it as we crawled and fought and bit our
+way up a slippery face of rock, sheer as the side of a house. And he
+was five and twenty years my senior.
+
+"What are you doing to-night?" I asked.
+
+"We were trying to make up our minds when you came in," said the
+Seraph.
+
+"Dinner somewhere, I suppose, and a theatre? What's on, Seraph? I'm
+all alone to-night, and I want you and Elsie to dine with me."
+
+Elsie was sitting with closed eyes, bathing her forehead with scent.
+
+"Make it something that starts late," she said wearily. "I don't feel
+I can stand many hours."
+
+After a brief study of the theatrical advertisements in the _Morning
+Post_ the Seraph went off to make arrangements over the telephone. I
+took hold of Elsie's disengaged hand and tried in a clumsy, masculine
+fashion to pump courage into her tired spirit.
+
+"You must stick it out to the end of the Season," I told her. "It's
+only a few more weeks, and then you can rest as long as you like.
+Don't let people think they can drive you into hiding. If you do that,
+you'll lose pride in yourself, and when you lose pride in yourself,
+why should any one believe in you?"
+
+"How many people believe in me now?"
+
+"Not many. That's why I admire your pluck. But there's Joyce for one."
+
+"Yes, Joyce," she assented slowly.
+
+"And the Seraph for another."
+
+"Yes, the Seraph."
+
+"And me for a third."
+
+I felt her trying to draw her hand away.
+
+"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit--hard
+hit."
+
+I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing
+erect--blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired--she was wonderfully
+like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender
+white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.
+
+"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep
+themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or
+untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but
+the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a
+grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to
+conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean.
+I've known three in one generation and one in another."
+
+I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if
+Elsie had had no sister Joyce.
+
+The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to
+join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I
+found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I
+found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried
+meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or
+fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked
+at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a
+weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short
+to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an anæmic girl
+of twenty--a Miss Draper--with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's
+every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of
+agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after
+coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.
+
+That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I
+believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is
+immaterial; wherever we went we found--or so it seemed to our
+over-sensitive, suspicious nerves--a slight hush, a movement of
+turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through
+it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with
+the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled,
+indifferent--best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought
+actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some
+superiority over man....
+
+We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the
+door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of
+course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two
+months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed
+back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into
+talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....
+
+When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that
+none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without
+running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in
+air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister;
+and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that
+night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of
+any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that
+text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct
+underlying such a belief.
+
+At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our
+preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill--and swore a
+private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts,
+and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out--an unexpected
+party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to
+collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from
+Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had
+eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned
+in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.
+
+The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed,
+and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.
+Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened
+itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been
+expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight
+curve. Every one bowed to every one--Robin with his irrepressible,
+instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public
+man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of
+the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her
+cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and
+parted.
+
+The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than
+enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.
+
+"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.
+"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere
+presence of one was distasteful to the other."
+
+"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me,
+they've got to know my friends."
+
+"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right,
+aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up
+visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather
+uncomfortable."
+
+The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to
+Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much
+publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of
+embarrassment to a private gathering.
+
+I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soirée Musicale three nights
+later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from
+under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House
+Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the
+female side of human nature at work.
+
+Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom
+had led her to dress--as ever--in white, and to wear no jewellery but
+pearls. Her black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever;
+her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.
+Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the
+compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for
+thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies
+called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I
+liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet
+more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there
+was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.
+
+"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.
+
+The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was
+wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel
+approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant
+promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to
+spare--Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one
+who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental
+antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....
+
+They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention,
+preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time
+Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in
+deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him
+to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's
+clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time
+what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men
+otherwise so dissimilar.
+
+With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of
+territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I
+wondered how much it amused her. Not many women can resist the
+age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I
+should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want
+admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the
+first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her
+object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of
+jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this
+were even her motive.
+
+We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a
+word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to
+be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see,
+grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he
+came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening
+that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at
+eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had
+just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.
+
+"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the
+room to themselves.
+
+"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"
+
+The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing
+three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the
+Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.
+
+"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.
+
+"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."
+
+"Welcome to you?"
+
+"It depends on yourself."
+
+"What must I do?"
+
+Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.
+
+"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."
+
+"I usually am."
+
+"With some startling lapses."
+
+"I'm not aware of any."
+
+Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.
+
+"How have you spent the last week?"
+
+"In a variety of ways."
+
+"In a variety of company?"
+
+"The same nearly all the time."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"This is my objection."
+
+"If _she_ doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned
+him to leave the sentence unfinished.
+
+"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've
+no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate
+carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've
+spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in
+company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every
+one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort
+of notoriety...."
+
+"Can it be avoided?"
+
+"You can drop the woman."
+
+"She's none too many friends."
+
+"She's one too many."
+
+"I cannot agree."
+
+"Then you put yourself on her level."
+
+"I should be proud to rank with her."
+
+Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.
+
+"I've got a temper," she remarked with exaggerated indifference, "it's
+never wise for anybody to rouse it, and many people would be annoyed
+if you talked to them as you're talking to me. I--simply don't think
+it's worth it, but can you wonder if I ask you to choose between her
+and me?"
+
+The Seraph's face and voice were grave.
+
+"The choice seems unnecessary," he said.
+
+"You must take it from me that I have no wish to be seen about with a
+man who allows his name to be coupled with a woman of that kind."
+
+"What kind, Sylvia?"
+
+"You know my meaning."
+
+"But your meaning is wrong."
+
+"I mean an ugly word for an ugly sin. A woman of the kind that breaks
+the Seventh Commandment."
+
+The Seraph began tearing his card in narrow strips.
+
+"Elsie Wylton didn't," he said quietly.
+
+"She told you so?"
+
+"I didn't need telling."
+
+Sylvia's expression implored pity on the credulity of man. The Seraph
+was still nervously fingering his card, but no signs of emotion
+ruffled her calm. The face was slightly flushed, but she bent her head
+to hide it.
+
+"Part friends, Seraph," she said at last, "if you're not coming to the
+Carstens'. Think it over, and you'll find every one will give you the
+same advice."
+
+"I dare say." He pocketed the torn card and prepared to accompany her.
+"What would you do in my place if you believed the woman innocent?"
+
+Sylvia shirked the question.
+
+"Innocent women don't get into those positions."
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"How can she prove her innocence?"
+
+"How do you prove her guilt?"
+
+"I don't attempt to go behind what the Court finds."
+
+At the door the Seraph hesitated.
+
+"To-night's only an armistice, Sylvia," he stipulated. "I must have
+time to think. I'm not committed either way."
+
+She gave him her old friendly smile.
+
+"If you like." Then the smile melted away. "My ultimatum comes in
+force to-morrow morning, though. You must make up your mind then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HENLEY--AND AFTER
+
+      "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a
+      disappointed woman."--COLLEY CIBBER: "Love's Last Shift."
+
+
+Henley Regatta was something of a disappointment to me. I had
+furbished up the memories of twenty years before--which was one
+mistake--and was looking forward to it--which was another. In great
+measure the glory had departed from the house-boats, every one poured
+into the town by train or car, and the growth of _ad hoc_ riverside
+clubs had reduced the number of punts and canoes on the river itself.
+Being every inch as much a snob as my neighbour, I regretted to find
+Henley so deeply democratised....
+
+I think, in all modesty, my own party was a success. Our houseboat was
+the "Desdemona," a fair imitation of what the papers call "a floating
+hotel": we brought my brother's cook from Pont Street and carried our
+cellar with us from town. And there was a pleasant, assiduous
+orchestra that neither ate nor slept in its zeal to play us all the
+waltzes we had grown tired of hearing in London. A Mad Hatter's
+luncheon started at noon and went on till midnight. Any passing boat
+that liked the "Desdemona's" looks, moored alongside and boarded her:
+no one criticised the food or cigars, many dropped in again for a
+second or third meal in the course of the afternoon, and if they did
+not know Gladys or myself, they no doubt had a friend among my guests
+or waiters.
+
+Both those that slept on board and those that visited us at their
+stomachs' prompting were cheery, light-hearted, out to enjoy
+themselves. I admit my own transports were moderated by the necessity
+of having to dance attendance on Lady Roden. The air became charged
+with Rutlandshire Morningtons, and our conversation showed signs of
+degenerating into a fantastic Burke's Auction Bridge. Two earls
+counted higher than three viscounts; I called her out with one
+marquis, she took the declaration away with a duke, I got it back
+again with a Russian prince: she doubled me.... Apart from this, I
+enjoyed myself. All the right people turned up, except Gartside who
+was kept in town discussing Governorships with the India Office.
+
+There were Rodens to right of us, Rodens to left of us: in a field
+behind us, unostentatiously smoking Virginia cigarettes, loitered a
+watchful Roden bodyguard. The Regatta started on July 3rd and on the
+previous day Rawnsley had given the House its time-table. There would
+be no Autumn Session, but the House would sit till the end of the
+third week in August to conclude the Third Reading of the Poor Law
+Bill; no fresh legislation would be introduced. The New Militants had
+their answer without possibility of misconstruction, and the families
+of Cabinet Ministers moved nowhere without a lynx-eyed, heavy-booted,
+plain-clothes escort.
+
+I summoned Scotland Yard out of its damp, cheerless meadow, gave it
+bottled beer and a pack of cards, and told it to treat the "Desdemona"
+as its own and to ring for anything likely to contribute to its
+comfort. Though we had never met before and were only to meet once
+again, I felt for those men as I should feel for any one deputed to
+bear up the young Rodens lest at any time they dashed their feet
+against stones....
+
+Sylvia was laconic and decisive. She had engaged and defeated her
+father, met and routed her brothers. Any one who guarded her reckless
+person did so at their peril; she declined to argue the point. I fancy
+Lady Roden accepted a detective more or less as part of her
+too-often-withheld due; Philip was constitutional, guided by
+precedent, anxious to help peace and order in the execution of their
+arduous duties. The only active molestation came from Robin: left to
+himself he would have ignored the detectives' very existence, but at
+the fell suggestion of Culling I discovered him whiling away the
+morning by bursting into the guard-room at five-minute intervals with
+hysterical cries of "Save me! Oh, my God! save me!"
+
+The saturnine, enigmatic Michael pursued his own methods. How he had
+escaped from Winchester in the midst of the terminal examinations, I
+never discovered. His telegram said, "What about me for Henley, old
+thing? Michael." I wired back, "Come in your thousands," and he came
+in a dove-grey suit, grey socks and buckskin shoes, grey tie, silk
+handkerchief and Homburg hat. I appreciated Michael more and more at
+each meeting. Of a detached family he was the most detached member.
+Observing me staring a trifle unceremoniously at his neck-tie, he
+produced a note-book and pencil and invited my written opinion. "On
+Seeing my New Tie" was inscribed on the front page, and the
+comments--so far as I remember the figures--were:--
+
+(1) "Oh, my God!" (forty per cent.).
+
+(2) "_Have_ you seen Michael's tie?" (forty per cent.).
+
+(3) "Michael _darling_!" (Sylvia's _cri de coeur_, ten per cent.).
+
+(4) "It's a devilish good tie" (my own verdict, perhaps not altogether
+sincere). (Ten per cent.).
+
+"Come and shew yer ticket o' leave," urged Culling with derisory
+finger outstretched to indicate the forces of law and order.
+
+"No bloody peelers for this child," Michael answered in a voice
+discreetly lowered to keep the offending epithet from his sister's
+ears.
+
+I noticed an exchange of glances between Culling and himself, but was
+too busy to think much of it at the time. Eleven minutes later,
+however, the majesty of Scotland Yard had been incarcerated in its own
+stronghold. Culling sat outside their door improvising an oratorio on
+an accordion. "The Philistines are upon thee," I heard him thunder as
+I passed that way. Michael was lying prone on the deck of the
+house-boat, dangling at safe distance the key of the cabin at the end
+of a Japanese umbrella.
+
+"_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_" he asked, as an official hand shot
+impotently out of the cabin window. The question may have been
+imperfectly understood.
+
+"_Sanguineos quis custodes custodiet ipsos?_" he ventured.
+
+As there was still no answer, common humanity ordained that I should
+possess myself of the key and hold a gaol delivery. The detectives
+were near weeping with humiliation, but I comforted them in some
+measure, won a friendship that was to serve me in good stead, and was
+at length free to resume my duties as host.
+
+From time to time perfunctory racing took place, without arousing
+either interest or resentment. We all had our own ways of passing the
+time between meal and meal; one would study the teeth and smile of a
+musical-comedy star, another would watch Culling at the Three Card
+Trick, a third would count the Jews on a neighbouring house-boat....
+There was no sign of Elsie or the Seraph, but that was only to be
+expected. He was to provide her with luncheon and publicity at Phyllis
+Court, and give the "Desdemona" a wide berth. Those, at least, were
+his sailing orders if he came; but Elsie had been over-tired and
+over-excited for some weeks past, and I should not have been surprised
+to hear she had stayed in town at the last moment.
+
+It is one thing to set a course, and another to steer it--of Henley
+this is probably truer than of any other stretch of water in the
+world. When half the punts are returning from island to post after
+luncheon, and the other half paddle down stream to look at the
+house-boats, the narrow water midway between start and finish becomes
+hopelessly, chaotically congested. One or two skiffs and
+dinghies--which should never be allowed at any regatta--make confusion
+worse confounded till a timely collision breaks their sculls, or the
+nose of a racing punt turns them turtle; and with the closing of the
+booms, three boats begin to sprout where only one was before.
+
+Through a forest of dripping paddles, I watched punt, dinghy and canoe
+fighting, pressing, yielding; up-stream, down-stream, broad side on,
+they slid and trembled like a tesselated pavement in an earthquake.
+The fatalists shipped their poles and paddles, and abandoned
+themselves to the line of least resistance. Faces grew flushed, but
+tempers remained creditably even....
+
+"Mary, mother of God! it's our sad, bad, mad Seraph!"
+
+Having exhausted the possibilities of the Three Card Trick, and being
+unable to secure either a pea or two thimbles, Paddy Culling had
+wandered to my side and was watching the crowd like a normal man.
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. The Seraph had turned fatalist
+and was being squeezed nearer and nearer the "Desdemona." A last
+vicious thrust by a boatload of pierrots jammed the box of his punt
+under our landing-stage. He waved a hand to me and began distributing
+bows among my guests.
+
+"Droppit sthraight from Hiven," cried Culling with unnecessary
+elaboration of his already strong brogue. "The tay's wet, Mrs. Wylton,
+and we waiting for some one would ask a blessing. Seraph, yer
+ambrosia's on order."
+
+They would not leave the punt, but we brought them tea; and a fair
+sprinkling of my guests testified to the success of our last few
+weeks' campaign by coming down to the raft and being civil to Elsie.
+There was, of course, no commotion or excitement of any kind; of those
+who lingered on deck or in the saloon, fully half, I dare say, were
+unconscious of what was going on below. Such was certainly the case
+with Sylvia. While Paddy and I served out strawberries to the crew of
+the punt, she had been washing her hands for tea, and as we crowned a
+work of charity with a few cigars and a box of matches, she came out
+onto the raft for assistance with the clasp of a watch-bracelet.
+
+Paddy volunteered his services, I looked on. Her eyes travelled idly
+over the crowded segment of river opposite my boat, and completed
+their circuit by resting on the punt and its occupants. Elsie bowed
+and received a slight inclination of the head in return. The Seraph
+bowed, and was accorded the most perfect cut I have ever witnessed.
+Sylvia looked straight through him to a dinghy four yards the other
+side. It was superbly, insolently done. I have always been too lazy to
+cultivate the art of cutting my friends, but should occasion ever
+arise, I shall go to Sylvia for the necessary tuition.
+
+As soon as the congestion was in some measure relieved, the Seraph
+waved good-bye to me and started paddling up stream towards Henley
+Bridge. Elsie had seen all that was to be seen in the cut,
+and--womanlike--had read into it a variety of meanings.
+
+"I hope you're not tired," the Seraph said, as they landed and walked
+down to the station.
+
+"I've had a lovely time," she answered. "Thanks most awfully for
+bringing me, and for all you've done these last few weeks. And before
+that." She hesitated, and then added with a regretful smile, "We must
+say good-bye after to-day."
+
+"You're not going away?"
+
+"Not yet; but you've got into enough trouble on my account without
+losing all your friends," she answered.
+
+"But I haven't."
+
+"You're risking one."
+
+"On your account?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He had not the brazenness to attempt a direct denial.
+
+"Why should you think so?" he hedged.
+
+"Seraph, dear child, I couldn't help seeing the way she took your bow.
+I got you that cut."
+
+"She doesn't cut Toby," he objected. "And he and I are equally
+incriminated."
+
+"There is a difference."
+
+"Is there?"
+
+"She's quite indifferent how much _he_ soils his wings."
+
+The Seraph was left to digest the unspoken antithesis. His face
+gradually lost the flush it had taken on after their encounter at the
+raft, his eyes grew calmer and his hands steadier; on the subject of
+their contention, however, he remained impenitent.
+
+"I shan't say good-bye till you honestly tell me you don't want to see
+me again."
+
+"You know I can't say that, Seraph."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+"But it isn't! The good you do me is simply not worth the harm you do
+yourself. It didn't matter so much till Sylvia came to be reckoned
+with."
+
+The Seraph shifted impatiently in his corner.
+
+"Neither Sylvia Roden nor any other woman or man in the world is going
+to dictate who I may associate with, or who I mayn't."
+
+"You must make an exception to the rule in her case."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Every man has to make an exception to every rule in the case of one
+woman."
+
+His chin achieved an uncompromising angle.
+
+"To quote the Pharisee of blessed memory," he said, "I thank God I am
+not as other men."
+
+Elsie was well enough acquainted with his moods to know nothing was to
+be gained by further direct opposition.
+
+"I should like you to come to Chester Square," she compromised; "but
+you mustn't be seen with me in public any more."
+
+"I shall ride in the Park to-morrow as usual," he persisted.
+
+"I shan't be there, Seraph."
+
+A surprise was awaiting me when Gladys and I returned to Pont Street
+in the early hours of Sunday morning, after waiting to see the
+fireworks--by immemorial tradition--extinguished by a tropical
+downpour. Brian notified me by wireless that he was on his way home
+and halfway through the Bay. He was, in fact, already overdue at
+Tilbury, but had been held up while the piston of a high-compression
+cylinder divested itself of essential portions of its packing.
+
+"Who's going to tell him about Phil?" Gladys asked in consternation
+when I read her the message. We were getting on so comfortably without
+my brother that I think the natural affection of us both was tinged
+with resentment that he was returning by an earlier boat than he had
+threatened.
+
+"As you are the offender," I pointed out.
+
+"You were responsible for me."
+
+"Why not leave it to Phil?" I suggested, with my genius for
+compromise.
+
+"That's mean."
+
+"Well, will you tell him yourself? No! I decline to be mixed up in it.
+I shan't be here. The day your parents land, I shall shift myself bag
+and baggage to an hotel. Isn't the simplest solution to break off the
+engagement? Well, you're very hard to please, you know."
+
+I really forget how we settled the question, but the news was
+certainly not broken by me. The Seraph dropped in to dinner on the
+last night of my guardianship, and I asked him whether he thought I
+could improve on the Savoy as my next house of entertainment.
+
+"But you're coming to stay with _me_," he said.
+
+"My dear fellow, you've no experience of me as a guest. I don't know
+how long I'm staying in London."
+
+"The longer the better, if you don't mind roughing it."
+
+I knew there would be no "roughing it" in his immaculate mode of
+living, but the question was left undecided for the moment as I really
+felt it would be better for us both to run independently. Ten weeks of
+domesticity shared even with Gladys gave me a sensation of clipped
+wings after my inconsiderate, caravanserai existence, and--without
+wishing to be patronising--I had to remember that he was a man of very
+moderate means and would feel the cost of housing me more than I
+should feel it myself. The following afternoon I called round at
+Adelphi Terrace to acquaint him with my decision, but something seemed
+to have upset him; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window and I
+had not the heart to bother him with my own ephemeral arrangements. At
+the door of the flat his man apologetically asked my advice on the
+case; his master was eating, drinking, and smoking practically
+nothing, wandering about his room instead of going to bed, and gazing
+out into space instead of his usual daily writing.
+
+I thought over the symptoms on my way to the Club, and decided to
+employ a portion of the afternoon in playing providence with Sylvia.
+It is a part for which I am unfitted by inclination, instinct,
+experience, and aptitude.
+
+Some meeting of political stalwarts was in progress when I arrived at
+Cadogan Square, but I was mercifully shewn into Sylvia's own room and
+allowed to spend an interesting five minutes inspecting her books and
+pictures. They formed an illuminating commentary on her character. One
+shelf was devoted to works of religion, the rest to lives and
+histories of the world's great women. Catherine of Siena marched in
+front of the army, Florence Nightingale brought up the rear; in the
+ranks were queens like Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia, and Joan of
+Arc, the great uncrowned; writers from Madame de Sévigné to George
+Eliot, actresses from Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry, artists like Vigée le
+Brun, reformers like Mary Woolstonecraft. It was a catholic library,
+and found space for Lady Hamilton among the rest. My inspection was
+barely begun when the door opened and Sylvia came in alone.
+
+"'Tis sweet of you to come," she said. "Have you had tea? Well, d'you
+mind having it here alone with me? I'm sure you won't want to meet all
+father's constituents' wives. I hope I wasn't very long."
+
+"No doubt it seemed longer than it was," I answered. "Still, I've had
+time to look at some of your books and make a discovery about you. If
+you weren't your father's daughter, you'd be a raging militant."
+
+From the sudden fire in her eyes I thought I had angered her, but the
+threatening flame died as quickly as it had arisen.
+
+"There's something in heredity after all, then," she said with a
+smile. "Do I--look the sort of person that breaks windows and burns
+down houses?"
+
+So far as looks went the same question might have been asked of Joyce
+Davenant. That I did not ask it was due to a prudent resolve to keep
+my friendship with Rodens and Davenants in separate watertight
+compartments.
+
+"You look the sort of person that has a great deal of ability and
+ambition, and wants a great deal of power."
+
+"Without forgetting that I'm still a woman."
+
+"Some of the militants are curiously feminine."
+
+"'Curiously,' is just the right adverb."
+
+"Joan of Arc rode astride," I pointed out.
+
+"Florence Nightingale didn't break windows to impress the War Office."
+
+"As an academic question," I said, "how's your woman of personality
+going to make her influence effective in twentieth-century England?"
+
+"Have you met many women of personality?"
+
+"A fair sprinkling."
+
+"So I have; you could feel it as if they were mesmerising you, you had
+to do anything they told you. But they'd none of them votes."
+
+The arrival of tea turned our thoughts from politics, and at the end
+of my second cup I advanced delicately towards the purpose of my call.
+
+"You like plain speaking, don't you, Sylvia?" I began.
+
+"As plain as you like."
+
+"Well, you're not treating the Seraph fairly."
+
+I leant back and watched her raising her little dark eyebrows in
+amused surprise.
+
+"Has he sent you here?" she asked.
+
+"I came on my own blundering initiative," I said. "I don't know what
+the trouble's about."
+
+"But whatever it is, I'm to blame?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+Sylvia was delighted. "If a man doesn't think highly of women I do
+like to hear him say so!"
+
+"As a matter of fact I'm not concerned to apportion blame to either of
+you. You're both of you abnormal and irrational; as likely as not
+you're both of you wrong. I wanted to tell you something about the
+Seraph you may not have heard before."
+
+In a dozen sentences I told her of my first meeting with him in
+Morocco.
+
+"Thanks to you," I said, "he's pretty well got over it. Remember that
+I saw him then, and you didn't; so believe me when I tell you he was
+suffering from what the novelists call a 'broken heart.' He won't get
+over it a second time."
+
+"You're sure it was broken?" she asked dispassionately. "Um. It sounds
+to me like a dent; press the other side, the dent comes out."
+
+I produced a cigarette case, and flew a distress signal for
+permission.
+
+"I should like you to be serious about this," I said.
+
+"I? Where do I come in?"
+
+I searched vainly for matches, and eventually had to use one of my
+own.
+
+"He's in love with you," I said.
+
+Sylvia dealt with the proposition in a series of short sentences
+punctuated by grave nods.
+
+"Gratifying. If true. Seems improbable. Irrelevant, anyway. Unless I
+happen to be in love with him."
+
+"I was not born yesterday," I reminded her. "Or the day before."
+
+"You might have been."
+
+I bowed.
+
+"I mean, you're so deliciously young. Do you usually go about talking
+to girls as you've been talking to me?"
+
+I buttoned up my coat, preparatory to leaving. "Being a friend of you
+both," I said, "if a word of advice----"
+
+"But you haven't given it."
+
+Literally, I suppose that was true.
+
+"Well, if your generosity's greater than your pride, you can apologise
+to him: if your pride's greater than your generosity, waive the
+apology and sink the past. I've a fair idea what the quarrel's about,"
+I added.
+
+"I see." Sylvia brought flippancy into her tone when speaking of
+something too serious to be treated seriously: the flippancy was now
+ebbing away, and leaving her implacable and unyielding. "Is there any
+reason why I should do anything at all?" she asked.
+
+I stretched out my hand to bid her good-bye. "I've not done it well,"
+I admitted, "but the advice was not bad, and the spirit was really
+good."
+
+"Admirable," she answered ironically. "I should be glad of such a
+champion. Have you given _him_ any advice?"
+
+"What d'you suggest?"
+
+Sylvia knelt on the edge of a sofa, clasping her hands lazily behind
+her head.
+
+"I ride in the Park every morning," she began. "I ride alone because I
+prefer to be alone. My father objects, and Phil doesn't like it,
+because they don't think it's safe. I think I'm quite capable of
+taking care of myself, so I disregard their objection. Your friend
+also rides in the Park every morning, sometimes with a rather
+conspicuous woman and the last few mornings alone. I don't know
+whether it's design, I don't know whether it's chance--but he rides
+nearer me than I like."
+
+I waited for her to point the moral, mentioning incidentally that
+England was a free country and the Park was open to the public.
+
+"He may have the whole of it," she answered, "except just that little
+piece where I happen to be riding at any given moment."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't keep him out of even that."
+
+Her eyes broke into sudden blaze. "I can flog him out of it as I'd
+flog any man who followed me when I forbade him."
+
+There was nothing more to be said, but I said it as soon as I dared.
+
+"We're friends, Sylvia?" She nodded. "And I can say anything I please
+to you?"
+
+"No one can do that."
+
+"Anything in reason? Well, it's this--you're coming a most awful
+cropper one of these fine days, my imperious little queen."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I do. You're half woman, and half man, and half angel, and
+three-quarters devil."
+
+Sylvia had been counting the attributes on her fingers.
+
+"When I was at school," she interrupted, "they taught me it took only
+two halves to make a whole."
+
+"I've learnt a lot since I left school. One thing is that you're the
+equivalent of any three ordinary women. Now I really am going. Queen
+Elizabeth, your most humble servant."
+
+Her hand went again to the bell, but I was ready with a better
+suggestion.
+
+"It would be a graceful act if you offered to show me downstairs," I
+said. "It'll be horribly lonely going down two great long flights all
+by myself."
+
+She took my arm, led me down to the hall, and presented me with my hat
+and stick.
+
+"Are you walking?" she asked as we reached the door. "If not, you may
+have my private taxi. Look at him." She pointed to an olive-green car
+at the corner of the Square. "I believe I must have made a conquest,
+he's always there, and whenever I'm in a hurry I can depend on him. I
+think he must refuse to carry any one else. It's an honour."
+
+I ran through my loose change, and lit upon a half-sovereign, which I
+held conspicuously between thumb and first finger.
+
+"He'll carry me," I said.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Oh, of course, if you offer to buy the car!"
+
+"You haven't the courage of your convictions," I said severely.
+"Good-bye, Queen Elizabeth."
+
+It was well for me she declined the wager. I walked to the corner and
+hailed the taxi; but the driver shook his head.
+
+"Engaged, sir," he said.
+
+"Your flag's up," I pointed out.
+
+"My mistake, sir."
+
+Nonchalantly pulling down the flag, he retired behind a copy of the
+_Evening News_. I was sorry, because his voice was that of an educated
+man, and I am always interested in people who have seen better days;
+they remind me of my brother before he was made a judge. I had only
+caught a glimpse of dark eyes, a sallow complexion and bushy black
+beard and moustache. England is so preponderatingly clean-shaven that
+a beard always arouses my suspicions. If the wearer be not a priest of
+the Orthodox Church, I like to think of him as a Russian nihilist.
+
+After dinner the following night I mentioned to the Seraph that I had
+run across Sylvia, and hinted that his propinquity to her in the Park
+each day was not altogether welcome.
+
+"So she told me this morning," he said.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my handing on an impression for what it
+was worth," I added with vague floundering.
+
+"Oh, not at all. I shall go there just the same, though."
+
+"You'll annoy her."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "That's as may be. This is not
+the time for her to be running any unnecessary risks."
+
+"You can hardly kidnap a grown woman--on horseback--in broad
+daylight--in a public park," I protested.
+
+"The place is practically deserted at the hour she rides."
+
+The following day the Seraph rode as usual. Sylvia entered the Park at
+her accustomed time; saw him, cut him, passed him. For a while they
+cantered in the same direction, separated by a hundred and fifty
+yards; then the Seraph gradually reduced the distance between their
+horses. His quick eyes had marked a group of men moving furtively
+through a clump of trees to the side of the road. Their character and
+intentions will never be known, for Sylvia abruptly drew
+rein--throwing her horse on his haunches as she did so--then she
+turned in her own length, and awaited her gratuitous escort. The
+Seraph had to swerve to avoid a cannon. As he passed, her hand flashed
+up and cut him across the face with a switch; an instinctive pull at
+the reins gave his horse a momentary check and enabled her to deal a
+second cut back-handed across his shoulders. Then both turned and
+faced each other.
+
+Sylvia sat with white face and blazing eyes.
+
+"It was a switch to-day, and it will be a crop to-morrow," she told
+him. "It seems you have to be taught that when I say a thing I mean
+it."
+
+The Seraph bowed and rode away without answering. Physically as well
+as metaphorically he was thin-skinned, and the switch had drawn blood.
+Three weeks passed before his face lost the last trace of Sylvia's
+castigation. A purple wale first blackened and then turned yellowish
+green. When I saw him later in the day, his face was swollen, and the
+mark stretched diagonally from cheekbone to chin, crossing and cutting
+the lips on its way. He gave me the story quietly and without
+rancour.
+
+"I can't go again after this," he concluded, "but somebody ought to.
+If you've got any influence with her, use it, and use it quickly. She
+doesn't know--you none of you know--the danger she's in at present!"
+
+He jumped up to pace the room in uncontrollable nervous excitement.
+
+"What's going to happen, Seraph?" I asked, in a voice that was
+intended to be sympathetic, sceptical, and pacifying at one and the
+same moment.
+
+"I don't know--but she's in danger--I know that--I know that--I'm
+certain of that--I know that."
+
+His overstrung nerves betrayed themselves in a dozen different ways.
+It occurred to me that the less time he spent alone in his own society
+the better.
+
+"I'll see if I can do anything," I said in off-hand fashion.
+"Meantime, I dropped in to know if your invitation held good for a bed
+under your hospitable roof-tree."
+
+"Delighted to have you," he answered; and then less conventionally,
+"it's very kindly intended."
+
+"Kindness all on _your_ side," I murmured, pretending not to see that
+he had plumbed the reason for my coming.
+
+The old, absent thought-reading look returned for an instant to his
+eyes.
+
+"All my razors are on my dressing-table," he said. "Don't hide them. I
+shan't commit suicide, but I shall want to shave. I never keep
+firearms."
+
+I had intended to supervise my removal from Pont Street in person; on
+reflection I thought it would be wiser to send instructions over the
+telephone, and give the Seraph the benefit of my company for what it
+was worth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE THIRD ROUND
+
+    "When we two parted
+      In silence and tears,
+    Half broken-hearted
+      To sever for years,
+    Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
+      Colder thy kiss;
+    Truly that hour foretold
+      Sorrow to this."
+
+            LORD BYRON: _When We Two Parted_.
+
+
+Though the flat in Adelphi Terrace became my home from this time until
+the end of my residence in England, I saw little of the Seraph for the
+week following my change of quarters. I think he liked my company at
+meals, and whenever we were together I certainly worked hard to
+distract his mind from the unhappy quarrel with Sylvia. But I will not
+pretend that I sat by him day and night devising consolatory speeches;
+I am no good at that kind of thing, he would have seen through me, and
+we should speedily have got on one another's nerves. For the first day
+or two, then, I purposely measured out my companionship in small
+doses; later on, when he had got used to my presence, I became more
+assiduous. Those were the days when I could see reflected in his eyes
+the fast approaching nightmare of his dreams.
+
+My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the
+curious journal he had started at Brandon Court and continued in
+Oxford. I called--and still call--it the third volume of Rupert
+Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for
+though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same,
+and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the
+great tragedies of the book-world that--at least in his life-time--the
+third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion--for
+what that is worth--it is the finest work Aintree has ever
+accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to
+withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was
+allowed to read the manuscript.
+
+He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the
+flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander
+into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when
+I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as
+each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it
+were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind
+at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was
+describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my
+imagination to browse on the significance of each successive
+"soul-brush." Yet--I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing!
+His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I
+had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and
+gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like
+Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a
+later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse
+and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth
+dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts of
+two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls
+stripped bare--I am not sure that I wish to repeat it--there comes a
+point where a painful "study of mankind is man."
+
+While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant.
+Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a
+certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since
+Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication
+between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable--though
+I say it in no carping spirit--that Philip sought my company a shade
+less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys.
+Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie
+adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in
+company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was
+impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's
+resentment.
+
+The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it
+came to be relieved--to his honour be it said!--by Gartside. I gave
+him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at
+dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I
+knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave
+offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with
+the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled
+himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most
+sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want
+of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure
+that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to
+confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated
+him seriously; but with Gartside it was different. At a time when
+Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of
+the India Office--and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood
+high on the list of possible successors--it required some courage to
+incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did
+incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting
+the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect
+Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.
+
+In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a
+little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time
+when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am
+not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her
+house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning
+to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that
+nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as
+recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration
+of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the
+head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she
+was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our
+meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard
+me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my
+vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My
+foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher
+would only have involved me in a headlong fall.
+
+And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the
+attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but
+would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant and
+theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do,
+would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I
+had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I
+managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was
+shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was
+standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.
+
+"I've run you to earth at last," I said.
+
+Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was
+looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and
+under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been
+there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny
+flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as
+children smile in their sleep.
+
+"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the
+head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."
+
+I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned
+with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first
+time.
+
+"What have you been doing to get yourself into this state?" I asked
+severely.
+
+"Working."
+
+"There you are!" I said. "Something always happens when people take to
+work. I shall now read you a short lecture on female stamina."
+
+"You're sure you wouldn't prefer to smoke?"
+
+"I can do both."
+
+"Oh, that's not fair."
+
+Joyce Davenant and Sylvia Roden have only two characteristics in
+common; one is that I am very fond of both, the other, that I can do
+nothing with either. I capitulated, and selected a cigarette.
+
+"A live dog's worth a good many dead lions," I reminded her as a final
+shot.
+
+"Are _you_ trying to convince me of the error of my ways?"
+
+"I am not your Suffragan Bishop," I answered in the tone Robert
+Spencer adopted in telling a surprised House of Commons that he was
+not an agricultural labourer.
+
+"I'm so glad. I couldn't bear an argument to-night."
+
+The effort she had made on my arrival had spent itself, and I was not
+at all certain whether I ought to stay.
+
+"Look here," I said, "if you're too tired to see me, I'll go."
+
+"Please, don't!" she laid a restraining hand on my sleeve. "I'm all
+right if you don't argue or use long words; but I've had such a
+headache the last few days that I haven't been able to sleep, and now
+I don't seem able to fix my attention properly, or remember things."
+
+I had met these symptoms before; the first time in India with men who
+were being kept too long at work in the hot weather.
+
+"In other words, you want a long rest."
+
+She nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why don't you take it?"
+
+"I simply can't. I've put my hand to the plough, and you know what we
+are. Obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes, the whole family of us. I've got
+other people to consider, I mustn't fail them."
+
+"And the benighted, insignificant people who don't happen to be your
+followers? Some of them may cherish a flickering interest in your
+existence."
+
+"Oh! they don't count."
+
+"Thank you, Joyce."
+
+She held out a pacifying hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be
+ungracious. But those women---- You know, you get rather attached to
+people when you've spoken and fought and been imprisoned side by side
+with them. I always feel rather mean; any one of them 'ud die for me,
+and I'm not at all sure I'd do the same for them. Everything's been
+different since Elsie got her freedom; it's easier to fight for a
+person than a principle."
+
+"Are you weakening?"
+
+"Heavens! No! I'm just showing you I should be honour-bound to stand
+by my fellows even if I lost all faith in the cause. I say, don't go
+on smoking cigarettes; ring the bell and make Dick give you a cigar.
+He's in the house somewhere. I heard him come in a few minutes ago."
+
+"I came to see you," I pointed out.
+
+"But I'm dreadfully poor company to-night."
+
+"I take you as I find you, in sickness and health, weal and woe----"
+
+"Mr. Merivale!"
+
+Her voice was very stern.
+
+"You remember our wager?" I said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"It was a joke," she retorted. "And not in very good taste. Oh, I was
+as much to blame as you were."
+
+"But I was quite serious."
+
+"Did you seriously think I should give up the Cause?"
+
+"I offered very long odds. A twopenny ring--but you remember what they
+were."
+
+"Are you any nearer winning?"
+
+"I should like to think so."
+
+"Because we haven't answered Mr. Rawnsley's time-arrangements in the
+House?"
+
+"Oh, I've no doubt the reply has been posted."
+
+She nodded significantly. "And they haven't found their hostages yet."
+
+"But they've paid no ransom."
+
+"It's an indurance test."
+
+I got up to find myself a match. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of
+her left hand, wearing the scarab-ring; it disappeared for a moment,
+and to my surprise reappeared without the ring.
+
+"Suppose we call the bet off?" she suggested. "It was all rather
+silly."
+
+"Odds offered and taken and horses running. It's too late now. How did
+you find out the secret?"
+
+"I didn't. My finger shrank and the ring came off three days ago when
+I was washing my hands."
+
+"You didn't pull?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Show me."
+
+"It was like this," she began, slipping the ring back on to the third
+finger. "Rather loose----"
+
+I tightened the couplings before she saw what I was about.
+
+"That's soon remedied. Come to me when the finger's nice and plump
+again, and I'll let it out."
+
+A shadow of annoyance crossed her face.
+
+"Now I shall have it cut," she said.
+
+"You could have had that done three weeks ago. You could have thrown
+the thing away three days ago. You didn't do either."
+
+A smile dimpled its way into her cheeks. "How old are you? Over
+forty?"
+
+"What a way of looking at things!" I exclaimed. "Marlborough was fifty
+before he started his campaigns, Wren nearer fifty than forty before
+ever he put pencil to paper. You don't know the possibilities of
+virgin soil."
+
+"I was wondering how long it was since you left school."
+
+I got up and dusted the flecks of cigarette ash from my shirt.
+
+"I'm going now," I said. "It's time you were in bed. Just one word
+before I go. You want to win this wager, don't you? So do I. Well, if
+you don't give yourself a holiday, you're going to break down and lose
+it."
+
+Smiling mischievously, she got up and took my proffered hand.
+
+"It'll be an ill-wind, then----"
+
+"Damn the wager!" I burst out. "I don't want to win it at that price.
+Joyce, if I say I'm beaten, will you be a good girl and go to bed and
+stay there? Win or lose, I can't bear to see you looking as ill as you
+are now."
+
+She shook her head a little sadly. "I can't take a holiday now."
+
+"You'll lose the wager."
+
+She looked up swiftly into my face, and lowered her eyes.
+
+"I don't know that I mind that much."
+
+"Joyce!"
+
+"But I can't take a holiday," she repeated.
+
+I opened the door, and on the threshold waved my hand in farewell.
+
+"Won't you wait till Elsie comes back?" she asked.
+
+"I will wait for no one."
+
+"But where are you off to?"
+
+I scratched my chin, as one does when one wishes to appear reflective.
+
+"I am going to break the Militant Suffrage Movement."
+
+"A good many people have failed," she warned me.
+
+"They never tried."
+
+"How will you begin?"
+
+I walked downstairs thoughtfully, weighed Dick's tall hat in the
+balance, and decided in favour of my own.
+
+"I have no idea," I called back to the figure at the stair-head.
+
+The Seraph had marked his confidence in me by the bestowal of a
+latch-key. I let myself in at Adelphi Terrace and wandered round the
+flat in search of him. He was not in the library or dining-room, but
+at length I discovered him in pyjamas sitting in the balcony outside
+his bedroom, and gazing disconsolately out over the river. He knew
+where I had been before I had time to tell him, and was able to make a
+fairly accurate guess at the nature of my conversation with Joyce.
+Perhaps there was nothing very wonderful in that, but it fitted in
+with the rest of his theory: I remember he summarised her mental
+condition by saying that a certain sub-conscious idea was coming to be
+consciously apprehended. It was a cumbrous way of saying that both
+Joyce and I had made rather an important discovery; what puzzled me
+then, and puzzles me still, is that at my first meeting with her
+either of us should have given him grounds for forming any theory at
+all. Even admitting that I may have been visibly impressed, I could
+see no response in her; but I have almost given up trying to
+understand the Seraph's mind or mode of thought.
+
+"You've not got her yet," he warned me.
+
+"No one knows that better than I do."
+
+"Her mind's still very full of her cause."
+
+"Yes, damn it."
+
+"Almost as full of it as of you. She's torn between you, and you'll
+have to fight if you want to keep your foothold."
+
+I told him, as I had told Joyce, that I proposed to break the Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"I thought you might be able to help. What _is_ going to be the end of
+it?"
+
+He shook his head moodily, and picked up a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not a prophet."
+
+"You've prophesied to some purpose before now," I reminded him.
+
+He paused to look at me with the cigarette in one hand and a lighted
+match in the other.
+
+"Guesswork," I heard him murmur.
+
+"But it worked out right?"
+
+"Coincidence."
+
+"_You_ don't think that."
+
+"I may think the world's flat if it amuses me," he answered, blowing
+out the match.
+
+The abruptness of his tone was unusual.
+
+"What's been worrying you, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing. Why?"
+
+I lay back in my chair and looked him up and down.
+
+"You've forgotten to light your cigarette," I pointed out. "You're
+shaking as if you'd got malaria, and wherever your mind may be, it's
+not in this room and it's not attending to me."
+
+"I'm sorry," he apologised, sitting down. "I'm rather tired."
+
+To belie his words he jumped up again and began pacing feverishly up
+and down before the open balcony window.
+
+"Let's hear about it," I urged.
+
+"You can't do any good."
+
+"Let _me_ judge of that."
+
+He paused irresolutely and stood leaning his head against the frame
+of the window and looking out at the flaming sky-signs on the far side
+of the river.
+
+"It won't do any good," he repeated over his shoulder. "Nobody 'ud
+believe you, but--I don't know, you might try. She must be warned.
+Sylvia, I mean. She's absolutely on the brink, and if some one doesn't
+save her, she'll be over. I can't interfere, I should only precipitate
+it. Will you go, Toby? She might listen to you. It's worth getting
+your face laid open to keep her out of danger. Will you go?"
+
+He turned and faced me, wild-eyed and excited. His lips were white,
+and his fingers locked and unlocked themselves in uncontrollable
+nervous restlessness.
+
+"What's the danger?" I asked, with studied deliberation.
+
+"I don't know. How should I? But it's there; will you go?"
+
+"I don't mind trying," I answered, taking out my watch.
+
+"You must go now!"
+
+It was a quarter to one, and I told him so. Nobody can be less
+sensitive than I to the charge of eccentricity, but I refuse to
+disturb a Cabinet Minister's household at one in the morning to
+proclaim that an overstrung nervous visionary has a premonition that
+peril of a vague undefined order is menacing the daughter of the
+house.
+
+"We must wait till Christian hours," I insisted.
+
+"Ah, you don't believe it; no one does!"
+
+At eleven o'clock next morning--as soon, in fact, as I had drunk my
+coffee and was comfortably shaved and dressed--I drove round to
+Cadogan Square in search of Sylvia. I had no very clear idea what
+warning I was to give her when we met; indeed I felt wholly
+ridiculous and slightly resentful. However, my word had gone forth,
+and I was indisposed to upset the Seraph by breaking it. I left him in
+the library, silent and pale, writing hard and accumulating an
+industrious pile of manuscript against my return. By morning light no
+trace remained of his overnight excitement.
+
+To my secret relief Sylvia was not in when I arrived. The man believed
+she was shopping and would be out to luncheon, but if I called again
+about three I should probably find her at home. It hardly seemed worth
+my while to return to Adelphi Terrace, so I ordered some cigars, took
+a turn in the Park, lunched at the Club, and talked mild scandal with
+Paddy Culling. At three I presented myself once more in Cadogan
+Square.
+
+The door stood open, and Sylvia appeared in sight as I mounted the
+steps.
+
+"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed as she gave me a hurried shake of the
+hand. "I was so sorry to be out when you called this morning. Look
+here, will you go inside and tell mother you're coming to dinner
+to-night."
+
+"But I'm dining out already."
+
+"Oh, well, when will you come? Ring up and fix a night. I must simply
+fly now."
+
+"It won't take a minute."
+
+"Honestly I can't wait! I've got to go down to Chiswick of all
+unearthly places! My poor old darling of a fräulein's been taken ill
+and she's got no one to look after her. I _must_ just see she's got
+everything she wants. It's horribly rude, but you will forgive me,
+won't you? She rang up at half-past twelve, and I've only just got
+back."
+
+Touching my hand with the tips of her fingers, she flashed down the
+steps before I could stop her. The bearded Orthodox Church retainer
+was waiting at the kerb, and I heard her call out "Twenty-seven,
+Teignmouth Road, Chiswick," as he slammed the door and clambered into
+his seat. I caught my last glimpse of her rounding the corner into
+Sloane Street, the same black and white study that I had admired when
+I first visited Gladys--white dress, black hat; white skin, dark hair,
+and soft unfathomable brown eyes; a splash of red at the throat, a
+flush of colour in her cheeks. Then I hailed a taxi on my own account
+and drove back to Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph was still in the library, sitting as I had left him more
+than four hours before. An empty coffee cup at his elbow marked the
+only visible difference. He was writing quicker than I think I have
+ever seen a man write, and allowed me to enter the room and drop into
+an armchair by the window without raising his eyes or appearing to
+notice my presence. I had been there a full five minutes before he
+condescended--still without looking up from his writing--to address
+me.
+
+"You couldn't stop her, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you saw her?"
+
+"Just for a moment."
+
+"'Just for a moment.' Those were the words I had used."
+
+He stopped writing, drew a line under the last words, blotted the page
+and threw it face-downwards on the pile of manuscript. Then for the
+first time our eyes met, and I saw it was only by biting his lips and
+gripping the arms of the chair that he could keep control over
+himself.
+
+"You'd like some tea," he said, in the manner of a man recalling his
+mind from a distance. "Can you reach the bell?"
+
+"Is this the end of the chapter?" I asked as he tidied the pile of
+manuscript and bored it with a paper fastener.
+
+"It's the end of everything."
+
+"How far does it carry you?"
+
+"To your parting from Sylvia."
+
+"Present time, in fact?"
+
+"Forty minutes ago."
+
+I checked him by my watch. "And what now?" I asked.
+
+He looked up at me, looked through me, I might say, and sat staring at
+the window without answering.
+
+The next two hours were the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. If
+in old age my guardian angel offers me the chance of living my whole
+life over again, I shall refuse the offer if I am compelled to endure
+once again that silent July afternoon. The Seraph sat from four till
+six without speech or movement. As the sun's rays lengthened, they
+fell on his face and lit it with cold, merciless limelight. He had
+started pale and grew gradually grey; the eyes seemed to darken and
+increase in size as the face became momentarily more pinched and
+drawn. I could see the lips whitening and drying, the forehead dewing
+with tiny beads of perspiration.
+
+I made a brave show of noticing nothing. Tea was brought in; I poured
+him out a cup, drank three myself, and ostentatiously sampled two
+varieties of sandwich and one of cake. I cut my cigar noisily, damned
+with audible good humour when the matches refused to strike, picked up
+a review and threw it down again, and wandered round the room in
+search of a book, humming to myself the while.
+
+At six I could stand it no longer.
+
+"I'm going to play the piano, Seraph," I said.
+
+"For pity's sake don't!" he begged me, with a shudder; but I had my
+way.
+
+When the _City of Pekin_ went down in '95 as she tried to round the
+Horn, one of my fellow-passengers was a gigantic, iron-nerved man from
+one of the Western States. I suppose we all of us found it trying work
+to sit calm while the boats were lowered away: no one knew how long we
+could keep our heads above water and we all had a shrewd suspicion that
+the boat accommodation was insufficient. We should have been more
+miserable than we were if it had not occurred to the Westerner to
+distract our minds. In spite of a thirty-degree list he sat down to the
+piano and I helped hold him in position while we thundered out the old
+songs that every one knows without consciously learning--"Clementine,"
+"The Tarpaulin Jacket," "In Cellar Cool." We were taking a call for
+"The Tavern in the Town" when word reached us that there was room in
+the last boat.
+
+I set myself to distract the Seraph's mind, and gave him a tireless
+succession of waltzes and ragtimes till eight o'clock. Then the bell
+of the telephone rang, and I was told Philip Roden wished to speak to
+me.
+
+"It's about Sylvia," he began. "She hasn't come back yet, and we don't
+know where she is. The man says you had a word with her as she started
+out: did she say where she was going?"
+
+I told him of the message from Chiswick, and repeated the address I
+had heard her give the chauffeur.
+
+"I don't know what the matter was," I added. "Sylvia may have found
+the woman worse than she expected. Hadn't you better inquire who took
+the message and see if he or she can throw any light on the mystery?"
+
+I was half dressed for dinner when Philip rang me up again, this time
+with well-marked anxiety in his voice.
+
+"I say, there's something very fishy about this," he began. "I've just
+rung up the Chiswick address and the Fräulein answered in person. She
+wasn't ill, she hadn't been ill, and she certainly hadn't sent any
+message to Sylvia."
+
+"Well, but who----?" I started.
+
+"Lord knows!" he answered. "It might be any one. The address is a
+boarding house with a common telephone: any one in the house could
+have used it. You said twelve-thirty, didn't you? The Fräulein was out
+in Richmond Park at twelve-thirty."
+
+"What about Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+"That's the devil of it: Sylvia hadn't been near the place. When was
+it exactly that you saw her? Three-five, three-ten? And she turned
+into Sloane Street? North or South? Well, North's the Knightsbridge
+end. And that's all you can say?"
+
+I mentioned the invitation she had given me, and asked if I could be
+of any assistance in helping to trace her. Philip told me he was going
+at once to Chiswick to investigate the mystery of the telephone, and
+promised to advise me if there was anything fresh to report. Then he
+rang off, and I gave a _résumé_ of our conversation to the Seraph. He
+had just come out of the bath and was sitting wrapped in a towel on
+the edge of the bed. I remember noticing at the time how thin he had
+gone the last few weeks: he had always been slightly built, but the
+outline of his collarbones and ribs was sharply discernible under the
+skin.
+
+"I think it would be rather friendly if I went round after dinner to
+see if there's any news of her," I concluded.
+
+"There won't be," he answered.
+
+"Well, that of course we can't say."
+
+"_I_ can. They won't have found her, they don't know where she is."
+
+"Philip may hear something in Chiswick; it looks like a silly
+practical joke."
+
+"But you know it isn't."
+
+"I don't know what to think," I answered, as I returned to my room and
+the final stages of my toilet. I soon came back, however, to tie my
+tie in front of his glass and propound a random question. "I suppose
+_you_ don't know where she is?"
+
+"How should I?"
+
+"You sometimes do."
+
+"So do other people."
+
+"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't--and when
+you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."
+
+He was still sitting on the bed in _déshabille_, his hands clasped
+round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.
+For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again
+without speaking.
+
+"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.
+
+"Guess-work," he answered.
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"
+
+"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's
+concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."
+
+"There _is_ no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy
+at Brandon."
+
+"Not to my satisfaction--or yours."
+
+The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.
+
+"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.
+
+"Meaning that you did once?"
+
+"You _say_ I did."
+
+"You know you did."
+
+"There's not much sign of it now."
+
+"May be in abeyance. It may come back."
+
+I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting
+dress-socks.
+
+"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I
+heard him murmur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION
+
+    "Selina! The time has arrived to impart
+    The covert design of my passionate heart.
+    No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,
+    No common ambition deprives me of rest....
+    My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublime
+    As ever was carved on the tablets of time.
+    To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ring
+    The echo and crash of a notable thing.
+    I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,
+    Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...
+      Hither to the rescue, ladies!
+        Let not fear your spirits vex.
+      On the plan by me that made is
+        Hangs the future of your sex...
+      Shall she then be left to mourn her
+        Isolation and her shame?
+      Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,
+        Every true Belgravian dame."
+
+      SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN: "The Modern Ecclesiazusæ."
+
+
+I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next
+morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone;
+and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same
+time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as
+part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my
+overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news
+to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my
+journey.
+
+Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip
+had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel
+Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland
+Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and
+Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper,
+loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching
+inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were
+described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I
+afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking
+down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties
+of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.
+
+I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics
+scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him--and
+of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public
+pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and
+defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no
+menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a
+national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical,
+cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it
+would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only
+child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I
+know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members
+of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so
+generously.
+
+Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have
+no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through
+the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. I admit I
+expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for
+quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated,
+I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of
+abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter,
+uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations.
+Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been
+lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel
+confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own
+children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged
+every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender,
+Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their
+wives' bodies.
+
+"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his
+plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is
+what I have received."
+
+He threw me a typed sheet of paper.
+
+"We shall be glad to know _within the next ten days_ (expiring
+Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a
+bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is
+enjoyed by men."
+
+"How are you answering this?" I asked.
+
+"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and
+will go forward in due course."
+
+"And Sylvia?"
+
+"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand
+pounds reward...."
+
+"Are you making the whole thing public?"
+
+"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as
+you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've
+advertised themselves by broad hints in the _New Militant_; the
+gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other
+half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the _Times_, and you'll have the
+whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham
+next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library
+table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the
+length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story
+comes out."
+
+The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved
+his sagacity as a prophet.
+
+"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I
+asked.
+
+"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these
+women, very clever."
+
+"No clue?"
+
+"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look
+for the perpetrators."
+
+"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice
+of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."
+
+"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.
+
+"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the
+Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've
+publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old
+Militants, too--the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too
+stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows
+in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the
+nerve...."
+
+"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed,
+probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over
+the widest possible area.
+
+"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the
+Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she
+visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage
+you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from
+the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was
+another."
+
+"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutional _New
+Militant_," I said as I prepared to leave.
+
+"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save
+them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."
+
+"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"
+
+"You could advise them as a friend."
+
+"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I
+fear they wouldn't listen."
+
+"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered
+as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most
+significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a
+house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had
+reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or
+you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."
+
+"What cynics you public men are!" I exclaimed as I ran down the steps
+and turned in the direction of Chester Square.
+
+I have said that "Providence" is not one of my star _rôles_, and I had
+every reason to know that my eloquence was unavailing when set to the
+task of converting Joyce from her militant campaign. However, I have
+seen stones worn away by constant dripping.... And in any case I had
+not been near the house for nearly two days.
+
+"I'm afraid you can't see Joyce," Elsie told me as we shook hands.
+"She wouldn't go to bed when the doctor told her, and now she's really
+rather bad."
+
+I was more upset by the news than I care to say, but Elsie hastened to
+assure me.
+
+"It's nothing much so far," she said. "But she's got a temperature and
+can't sleep, and worries a good deal."
+
+"Can't we get her away?" I exclaimed impatiently.
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"I've tried, but she simply won't leave town."
+
+"But what's to keep her?"
+
+"There's the paper every week."
+
+It always annoys me to find any one thinking the world will come to an
+end unless run on his or her own favourite lines.
+
+"If she died, some one else would have to edit it," I pointed out.
+"Who's doing it now?"
+
+"Mrs. Millington. I'm afraid it's no use telling people that till they
+_are_ dead."
+
+"And then it's a little late in the day," I answered irritably.
+
+Elsie proceeded to give me the real reason for Joyce's obstinacy.
+
+"When you're dead you don't have to take responsibility for your
+deputy's mistakes."
+
+"That's it, is it? Mrs. Millington setting the Thames on fire?"
+
+"Her zeal sometimes outruns her discretion," said Elsie with a smile.
+"That's what's chiefly worrying Joyce."
+
+I picked up my hat and stick and moved towards the door.
+
+"And Joyce is losing her nerve?" I hazarded.
+
+"She's not up to her usual form," was all Elsie would answer.
+
+"Give her my love," I said at the door, "and best wishes for a quick
+recovery. If she isn't well in two days' time, I shall carry her off
+by main force and put her into a nursing home."
+
+Then I went off to lunch at the Club, and found fault with the food,
+the wine, the cigars and all creation. Paddy Culling opened a
+subscription list to buy me a box of liver pills. The Seraph--after I
+had been two minutes at Adelphi Terrace--said he was sorry Joyce was
+no better.... I thanked him for his sympathy, and sat down to read the
+current copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+In my careless, hot-blooded youth I made a collection of inanimate
+journalistic curiosities. It was my sole offence against the wise rule
+that to collect anything--from wives up to postage stamps--is a mark
+of incipient mental decay. There was the _Punch_, with the cartoon
+showing the relief of Khartoum; and I remember I had a copy of the
+suppressed issue of the _Times_, when the compositors usurped control
+of Empire and edited one of Harcourt's Budget speeches on lines of
+their own. There was also a pink _Pall Mall Gazette_, bought wet from
+the machine at a shilling the copy, when paper ran out and they
+borrowed the pink reserve rolls of the _Globe_. I had a copy of
+another journal that described in moving language the massacre of the
+Peking Legations. The Legations were, in fact, never massacred, but
+they should have been on any theory of probability, and, for aught I
+know, the enterprising journalist may have believed with Wilde that
+Nature tends to copy Art.
+
+I also had several illustrated weeklies depicting--by the pen of Our
+Special Artist--that first Coronation Ceremony of Edward the Seventh,
+and the verbal account of it given by "A Peeress" who had been
+present. More lately I acquired the original American paper which sent
+the _Titanic_ to her grave with the band playing "Nearer, my God, to
+Thee."...
+
+I am half sorry the collection is dispersed. I should have liked to
+add the one historic number of the _New Militant_ that appeared under
+Mrs. Millington's fire-and-brimstone editorship. To the collector it
+is curious, as being the last issue of the paper; by the mental
+pathologist it is regarded as an interesting example of what is by
+common consent called "Militant Hysteria." The general public will
+remember it as the documentary evidence which at last enabled the
+police to secure a warrant of arrest against the "proprietors,
+printers and publishers of the newspaper called and known as the _New
+Militant_," to raid the printing office in Clerkenwell, and lay bare
+the private memoranda of the New Militant organisation.
+
+My own copy did not survive my departure from England, and I could not
+do Mrs. Millington the injustice of trying to reproduce her deathless
+periods. I remember there was a great deal of "Where is Miss Rawnsley?
+Where is Master Jefferson? Where is Miss Roden?" Such questions
+implicated no one, and only annoyed inconsequential persons like
+myself, who detest being set conundrums of which I do not know the
+answer by some one who obviously does. The practice is futile and
+vexatious.
+
+The incriminating words came heavy-typed in the last paragraph of the
+leading article, and contained an unmistakable threat that the policy
+of abduction would continue until female suffrage had been secured.
+
+After dinner that night I strolled round to the Club to hear what
+people were saying.
+
+"They've done for themselves this time," Gartside told me with much
+assurance when I ran across him in the hall. "Don't ask me where I got
+it from, and don't let it go any further, but there's a warrant out
+against some one."
+
+I was conscious of a very uncomfortable sensation of hollowness.
+
+"Is it indiscreet to ask who?"
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know. I fancy you proceed against
+the whole lot, printers included."
+
+"They've not wasted much time," I said.
+
+It was Tuesday night. The _New Militant_ went to press at midday and
+was on sale next morning throughout the country. In London, of course,
+it could be obtained overnight, and I had secured an early copy by
+calling at the office itself.
+
+I stood in the middle of the hall wondering exactly what I could do to
+prevent the arm of the law stretching out and folding Chester Square
+in its embrace. I was still wondering when Paddy Culling bounded up
+the steps and seized Gartside and myself by either hand.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there," he panted, momentarily
+releasing my arm in order to mop a red, dripping forehead. His broken
+collar and caved-in hat suggested a fight: his brogue reminded me that
+the offer of a golden throne in heaven will not avail to keep an
+Irishman out of a brawl. "Down Clerkenwell way ut was, the War of the
+Woild Women. The polis...."
+
+He was settling down to a narrative of epic proportions. The Irish are
+this world's finest raconteurs as they are its finest fighters, riders
+and gentlemen. It was an insult, but I could not wait.
+
+"Have they raided the place, Paddy?" I asked.
+
+"They have." His eyes reproached me for my interruption. "The
+polis...."
+
+"Did they get any one?"
+
+"Am I telling ye or am I not? Answer me that."
+
+"I know, Paddy," I said with all the contrition at my command. "But
+I've got to go, and I just wanted the main outline...."
+
+"They got Mrs. Millington," he began again, "and she fighting the way
+ye'd say she'd passed her born days being evicted. There was one had
+the finger bitten off him and another scratched in the face till the
+gutters ran blood. Five strong men held her down and stamped out the
+life of her, and five more dragged her down the road by the hair of
+her head and droppit her like a swung cat over the railings of the
+common mortuary. The vultures...."
+
+"Did they get any one else?" I interrupted.
+
+"It's the fine tale ye're spoiling," he complained.
+
+"But just tell me that," I pleaded.
+
+"They did not," he answered with ill-concealed disgust. "Unless ye'd
+be calling a printer's devil one of God's fine men and women. But the
+polis...."
+
+I hurried down the steps and jumped into a taxi. I thought first of
+calling to warn them at Chester Square. Then I decided to communicate
+by telephone. If Joyce had not already been arrested, and if I was to
+be of any assistance later on, I could not afford to be discovered in
+the incriminating neighbourhood of her house.
+
+I gave the Seraph the heads of my story as I looked up the number and
+waited for my call.
+
+"You're through," the Exchange told me after an interminable delay.
+
+"Hallo, hallo!" I kept calling, for what seemed like half an hour.
+"Will you give another ring, please, Exchange?"
+
+A further age dragged its course, and I was told that there did not
+seem to be any one at the other end.
+
+"Now will you tell me what we're to do, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+We sat and stared at each other for the best part of five minutes.
+Then the decision was taken out of our hands. I saw him prick up his
+ears to catch a sound too faint for my grosser senses.
+
+"Some one coming upstairs," he whispered. "It's a woman, and she's
+coming slowly. Now she's stopped. Now she's coming on again."
+
+I rose from my chair and tiptoed across the room.
+
+"Can it be Joyce?" I asked, sinking my own voice to a whisper.
+
+"She's going on to the next floor," he answered with a shake of the
+head; and then with sudden excitement, "Now she's coming back."
+
+"She mustn't ring the bell," I cried, running out into the hall.
+
+"It's all right, there's nobody here but ourselves," he called out as
+I opened the door and ran out onto the landing.
+
+Ten feet in front of me, leaning back against the banisters, stood
+Joyce Davenant. One hand covered her eyes and the other was pressed to
+her heart. She was trembling with fever and panting with the exertion
+of climbing four flights of stairs. A long fur coat stretched down to
+bare feet thrust into slippers, her head was covered by a shawl,
+though the hair fell loosely inside her coat. At the neck I could see
+the frilled collar of a nightdress.
+
+"Joyce!" I exclaimed.
+
+She uncovered her face and showed eyes preternaturally bright, and
+white cheeks lit by a single spot of brilliant colour.
+
+"I said I'd come when there was a warrant out," she panted with game,
+gallant attempt at a smile. Then I caught her in my arms as she fell
+forward, and carried her as gently as I could inside the flat.
+
+I left it to the Seraph to take off her coat and lay her in his own
+bed. He did it as tenderly as any woman. Then we went to the far side
+of the room and held a whispered consultation. I am afraid I could
+suggest nothing of value, and the credit of our arrangement lies
+wholly at his door.
+
+"We must get a nurse," he began. "Elsie mustn't be seen coming near
+the place or the game's up. What about that woman who helped you bring
+Connie Matheson home from Malta this spring? Can you trust her? Have
+you got her address? Well, you must see if you can get her to-night.
+No, not yet. We want a doctor. Her own man? No! It would give us away
+at once. Look out Maybury-Reynardson's address in the telephone book,
+somewhere in Cavendish Square. He's a sportsman; he'll do it if you
+say it's for me. You must go and see him in person; we don't want the
+Exchange-girls listening. Anything more? I'll square my man and his
+wife when they come in. Oh, tell your nurse the condition this poor
+child's come in; say it's a bachelor establishment and we haven't got
+a stitch of anything, and can't send to Chester Square for it. Tell
+her to bring...."
+
+He paused to listen as heavy feet ascended the stairs. The noise was
+loud enough even for me this time. There was a ring at the door.
+
+"Wine cellar. Locked. Haven't got key," he whispered turning out the
+light and locking himself inside the room with Joyce.
+
+I opened the front door and found myself faced with the two Roden
+detectives I had corrupted with bottled beer at Henley.
+
+"Why, this is like old times!" I said. "Have you been able to find any
+trace of Miss Roden?"
+
+They had not, and I see now that my question was singularly tactless.
+They bore no resentment, however, and told me they had called on other
+business. There was a warrant out against Miss Davenant. She was not
+to be found at the Clerkenwell printing office, and while Chester
+Square was being searched, a woman had slipped out of the house by a
+side door, entered a car and driven away.
+
+"Could you follow her?" I asked, with all the Englishman's love of the
+chase.
+
+That, it appeared, had been difficult, as the number of the car seemed
+to have been wilfully obscured.
+
+"That's an offence, isn't it?" I asked.
+
+It was, and the driver--if traced--would find himself in trouble. They
+had followed a likely-looking car and seen it turn southward out of
+the Strand. When they reached Adelphi Terrace, however, there was only
+one car in sight, drawn up outside our door and presenting a
+creditably clear number-plate. Its driver had vaguely seen another
+car, but had not particularly noticed it. They called on chance, as
+this was the only suite with lights in it. Had I seen or heard
+anything of the car or a woman getting out of it?
+
+"I've only just come in myself," I told them. "Half an hour, to be
+exact. That was possibly my taxi you saw outside. I didn't notice the
+number. How long ago did you see your suspected car turn into Adelphi
+Terrace? Ten minutes? Oh, then I should have seen any one who came up
+here, shouldn't I? Would you like to look round to make sure?"
+
+The senior man stepped back and glanced up at the name painted over
+the door.
+
+"It's Mr. Aintree's flat," I explained. "I'm staying with him."
+
+The man hesitated uncertainly.
+
+"I haven't any authority," he began.
+
+"Oh, hang the authority!" I said. "Mr. Aintree wouldn't mind.
+Dining-room, wine-cellar, library.... Won't you come in? Not even for
+a drink? Sure? Well, good-night. Oh, it's no trouble."
+
+Detectives--or such few of them as I have met--remind me of
+Customs-house officials: if you offer your keys and go out of your way
+to lay bare your secrets before their eyes, they will in all
+probability let you through without opening a single trunk. They are
+perverse as women--and simple as children.
+
+I tapped at the Seraph's door and told him I had disposed of the
+police without uttering a single falsehood. It was almost the last
+time I was able to make that boast. We gave our friends ten minutes'
+start, and I then set out in search of nurse and doctor. Joyce looked
+shockingly ill when I left, but her breathing was peaceful.
+Occasionally she moved or moaned in her sleep; as I turned at the door
+for a last look, the Seraph was rearranging her pillow and smoothing
+the hair back from her face.
+
+I had to walk into the Strand to find a taxi. Outside the Vaudeville I
+met my brother and his wife, and was bidden to sup with them at the
+Savoy. I refused for many reasons, the first being that a man who
+starts a career of crime at the age of forty-two must not for very
+decency be seen eating in company with a judge of the High Court. My
+meeting did good in giving me the idea of establishing a succession of
+_alibis_. When I had made the necessary arrangements with
+Maybury-Reynardson and the nurse, I looked in once more at the Club.
+
+Culling, Gartside and Nigel Rawnsley had the north smoking-room to
+themselves. They seemed to be discussing some plan of campaign, and
+the rescue of Sylvia was its object. Perhaps I should not say
+"discussing": Nigel was holding forth in a way that made me think he
+must have been a Grand Inquisitor in some previous incarnation. The
+ruthlessness of a Torquemada was directed by Napoleonic statecraft and
+brought down to date by the terrorism of a brow-beating counsel. The
+combination was highly impressive; his own contribution consisted in
+an exquisite choice of epithets.
+
+"Talk to the Chief," I heard him say in summary of his plan of
+campaign. "Get him to arrange for Merivale, J., to try the case, and
+you'll find the woman Millington will exhibit surprising celerity in
+imparting whatever information she may have gathered in respect of the
+whereabouts of Mavis and Sylvia and the Jefferson boy."
+
+"King's Evidence, d'you mean?" asked Gartside. "Not she!"
+
+"Inconceivably less ornate than that. I agree with you that she might
+withhold her consent. It is therefore more expedient to coax her into
+the confessional without implicating her fellow conspirators. If you
+were being tried by Merivale and saw seven years' penal servitude
+stretching in pleasing prospect before you, you'd want to start the
+day on terms of reasonable amity with your judge. If you knew
+Merivale's daughter was engaged to marry a man whose sister had been
+spirited away, would you not strive to acquire merit in the eyes of
+your judge's family by saying where the sister could be found? It is
+approximately equivalent to a year's reduction of sentence."
+
+Paddy Culling scratched his head thoughtfully with a paper knife.
+
+"If Miss Davenant's afther hiding herself in one of the coops where
+the other little chicken's stored away...." he began.
+
+"She's not," Nigel interrupted decisively. "The risk's too
+considerable; she wouldn't want to betray herself and her hostages at
+the same moment. She's in London...."
+
+"Is she?" asked Gartside.
+
+"She was to-day at lunch-time, because her doctor called at the house.
+Of course, the police in their infinite sagacity must needs start
+searching at the wrong end and afford her opportunities of escape."
+
+"Out of London if she wanted to," persisted Gartside.
+
+"Not by train," said Nigel. "Every station's watched...."
+
+"By car."
+
+"By airship, equally. The woman's seriously ill; you'd kill her."
+
+Paddy Culling looked at his friend a little enviously.
+
+"You know a lot about the inside of that house," he said.
+
+"By the simple expedient of the sovereign in season to the
+kitchen-maid, who, like the rest of her class, was unquestionably
+loyal, but more unquestionably impecunious. The woman Davenant's in
+London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell
+you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow
+morning. Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman
+Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant
+will have to."
+
+"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.
+
+"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater
+knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."
+
+Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.
+
+"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. "For
+example, when it's seriously ill. I fancy I could make the woman
+Davenant tell me all I wanted in three minutes."
+
+The tone was extraordinarily sinister. I seemed to realise in a flash
+why Sylvia, with a woman's quicker, deeper insight, kept the speaker
+at a distance.... However, I had come to the Club to establish an
+_alibi_, not to reflect on the character of Sylvia's admirers. And I
+wanted to get back to Adelphi Terrace as soon as my purpose was
+effected.
+
+"I was sorry to run away in the middle of your story, Paddy," I said.
+"I'd promised to meet a man, and I was rather late as it was. You'd
+got as far as the disposal of Mrs. Millington's body in the common
+mortuary and the arrest of a poor, mean printer's devil. What happened
+then? Was any one else caught?"
+
+Paddy looked at me almost with affection, his eyes alight with
+oratorical fire.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there to see it," he began, grasping
+my arm with one hand and making his points with the other. "The polis
+and red coats was there, and the newspaper men in their thousands, and
+the gravediggers in their tens of thousands...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE
+
+      "My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give
+      me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the
+      most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper
+      atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation. That is why
+      I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather
+      created it, for I am the only one in the world ... the
+      only unofficial consulting detective.... I am the last
+      and highest court of appeal in detection.... I examine
+      the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's
+      opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures
+      in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding
+      a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest
+      reward."--SIR A. CONAN DOYLE: "The Sign of Four."
+
+
+Premonitions--so far as my gross person is concerned--are a matter of
+digestion, nerves and liver. If I woke up on the morning after Joyce's
+flight to Adelphi Terrace with a dull sense of impending disaster, I
+ascribe it to the fact that I had passed a more than ordinarily
+hideous night. Unlike the Seraph, who never went to bed, I had
+sufficient philosophy to turn in when the doctor had left and the
+nurse was comfortably established. It had been made clear to me that I
+could do no manner of good by staying up and getting in people's
+way....
+
+I started in my own room, but quickly took refuge in the library. If
+there are two sounds I cannot endure, one is that of a crying child,
+and the other of a woman--or man for that matter--moaning in pain.
+Even in the library I could hear Joyce suffering. Maybury-Reynardson
+had told us she was all right, and there is no point in calling in
+experts if you are going to disbelieve them. But I do not want to
+experience another night of the same kind.
+
+And in the morning the papers were calculated to heighten the horror
+of the worst premonitions I could experience. I opened the _Times_,
+noted in passing that Gartside had fulfilled popular expectation by
+being appointed to the Governorship of Bombay, and turned to the
+account of the Clerkenwell raid. Culling was right in saying Mrs.
+Millington's had been the only arrest of importance; but he had left
+the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and had not waited to see
+the conquerors march into the citadel.
+
+I felt myself growing chilled and old as I read of the discoveries in
+the printing office. Mrs. Millington would stand charged with
+incitement to crime and public threat of abduction; serious enough, if
+you will, but her debt was discharged as soon as she had paid the
+penalty for a single article in a single paper. Her threats were
+embryonic, not yet materialised. Joyce stood to bear the burden of the
+three abductions carried out to date....
+
+I am no criminologist, and can offer neither explanation nor theory of
+the mental amblyopia that leads criminals to leave one weak link, one
+soft brick, one bent girder, to ruin a triumph of design and
+construction. They always do--men and women, veterans and tiros--and
+Joyce was no exception. When the police broke open the safe in her
+editorial office, the first document they found was the half sheet of
+Chester Square notepaper that the journalists agreed to christen "The
+Time Table."
+
+It was written in Joyce's hand, and her writing could be identified
+by a short-sighted illiterate at ten yards' distance. I have forgotten
+the dates by this time, and can only guess at them approximately;
+words and names have been added in full where Joyce put only initials.
+This was the famous Time Table:--
+
+
+                                        500, Chester Square, S.W.
+
+  May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.
+
+  May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).
+
+  June 17. P.--(private) M. (members') Day. [This was ruled
+    through.]
+
+  June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.
+
+  June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley
+    and Jefferson).
+
+  June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) & R.
+    (Roden).
+
+  July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.
+
+  July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter
+    Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board
+    of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne,
+    daughter of the Marquis of Berwick--of the India Office. Both
+    Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a
+    mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does
+    not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the
+    usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].
+
+"So far the police have been unable to discover the whereabouts of
+Miss Davenant," the article concluded. That was the sole, poor
+consolation I could offer to a white, tired Seraph as I threw him the
+paper and went back to my gloomy premonitions.
+
+As he read, I thought over my last _alibi_ in the north smoking-room
+at the Club. I wondered what story my friends, the Henley detectives,
+were concocting in their report, and what action Nigel Rawnsley would
+take when he had digested it.
+
+It is not entirely my "wisdom after the event" that made me select
+Nigel as our most formidable opponent, nor altogether my memory of the
+lead he had taken in the discussion overnight; I was beginning to
+appreciate his character. When he is Prime Minister of England, like
+his father before him, it will be in virtue of the same qualities. A
+brain of steel and a ruthless, iron resolution will force the οἱ
+φύσει ἀρχόμενοι to follow and obey him. He will be feared, possibly
+even hated, but the hatred will leave him indifferent so long as power
+is conceded him. I have met no young man so resolute or successful in
+getting his own way; few who give me the impression of being so
+ruthless and, perhaps, unscrupulous in their methods. He is still
+preserved from active mischief by his astonishing self-consciousness
+and lack of humour; when he has outgrown these juvenilities, he will
+be really formidable. His wife--when she comes--will have my sympathy,
+for what that is worth; but there will be many women less discerning
+than Sylvia to strive for the privilege.
+
+It was noon before the Amateur Detective invaded us. The Seraph's
+man--who had already been admitted to our secret, and would at any
+time have been crucified head-downwards for his master--flung open the
+library door with the words--
+
+"Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, Lord Gartside, Mr. Culling, Mr. Philip Roden."
+
+The Seraph rose and offered chairs. You could to some extent weigh
+and discriminate characters by the various modes of entry. Nigel
+refused to be seated, placed his hat on the table and produced a
+typewritten transcript of the two detectives' reports in the
+traditional manner of a stage American policeman--which in passing, I
+may say, is nothing like any American policeman I have ever met
+anywhere in America or the civilised world. Philip and Gartside were
+self-conscious and uncomfortable; Culling strove to hide his
+embarrassment by more than usual affability.
+
+"It's ill ye're looking, Seraph," he remarked, as he accepted a
+cigarette. "And has this great ugly brute Toby been slashing the face
+off you?"
+
+Then the inquiry began, with Philip as first spokesman.
+
+"Sorry to invade you like this, Seraph," he began, "but it's about my
+sister. You know she's disappeared? Well, we were wondering if you
+could help us to find her."
+
+"I'll do anything I can...." the Seraph started.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" Nigel cut in.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't."
+
+"Do you know any one who does?" Philip asked.
+
+"I don't know that I do."
+
+Philip hesitated, started a sentence, and closed his lips again
+without completing it. Nigel took up the examination.
+
+"You know Miss Davenant, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does she know where Sylvia and Mavis are?"
+
+"I have no idea. You must ask her."
+
+"I propose to."
+
+The Seraph turned to Philip, glancing at the clock as he did so.
+
+"I'm afraid the limits of my utility are soon reached. If there's
+anything I can do...."
+
+"You can tell us where Miss Davenant is hiding," said Nigel.
+
+"Can I?"
+
+"You can and will."
+
+The Seraph treated him to a long, unhurried scrutiny, starting from
+the boots and working up to the freckled face and sandy hair. Then he
+turned away, as though the subject had no further interest for him.
+
+Nigel tried to return the stare, but broke into a blush and took
+refuge in his typewritten transcripts.
+
+"I have here," he said, "a copy of the reports of the two detectives
+who watched Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square last night. They
+saw a woman, with her hair loose, and a long coat over whatever
+clothes she was wearing, jump into a car and drive to Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"They were certain of the identity of the car?" I asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"They weren't when I talked to them last night," I said. "No
+number--no nothing. They thought it was the same car and called in on
+chance, as there was a light here, to see if we knew anything. I
+offered to show them round, but they wouldn't come in, so we prayed
+for mutually sweet dreams and parted."
+
+Nigel tapped his papers.
+
+"I have here their sworn statement that the car which left Chester
+Square was the car that turned into Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Perjury--like joy--cometh in the morning," I observed.
+
+"That is as may be. I happen to know that Miss Davenant is seriously
+ill; I imagine, wherever she has gone, she has not gone far. The
+number of houses within easy reach of Chester Square--houses that
+would take her in when there's a warrant out for her arrest--is
+limited. These considerations lead me to believe that the statement of
+these men is not perjured."
+
+"I will apologise when next we meet," I said. When a young man like
+Nigel becomes stilted and dignified, I cannot repress a natural
+inclination to flippancy.
+
+Philip intervened before Nigel could mature a crushing repartee.
+
+"Look here, Seraph," he began. "Just as a favour, and not because we
+have any right to ask, will you say whether Miss Davenant's anywhere
+in this flat? If you say she is, I'm afraid we shall have to tell the
+police; if you say she isn't, we'll go away and not bother you any
+more."
+
+"You must speak for yourself," Nigel interposed, before the Seraph
+could answer.
+
+We sat for a moment in silence. Then Nigel continued his statement
+with unmistakable menace in his tone.
+
+"If once the police intervene, the question becomes more serious and
+involves any one found harbouring a person for whom a warrant of
+arrest has been issued. I naturally do not wish to go to extremes." He
+turned to me: "You offered to show the detectives round these rooms
+last night; will you make me the same offer?"
+
+I pointed to the Seraph.
+
+"They aren't my rooms. I'm only a guest. I took it upon myself to make
+the offer in the Seraph's absence."
+
+He repeated his request in the proper quarter, but was met with an
+uncompromising refusal.
+
+"May I ask your reason?" he said.
+
+"It is a question of manners," answered the Seraph.
+
+"Then you wish me to apply for a search-warrant?"
+
+"I am entirely indifferent. If you think it worth while, apply for one.
+As soon as it is presented, the police--are--welcome--to--any--
+discoveries--they--may--make."
+
+The Seraph spoke with the quiet scorn of injured innocence. I saw a
+shadow of uncertainty settle on Nigel's face. The Seraph must have
+seen it, too; we preserved a strategic silence until uncertainty had
+matured into horrid doubt. I felt sorry for Nigel, as I feel sorry for
+any successful egoist in the toils of anticipated ridicule.
+
+"It would be quicker to clear the matter up now," he said.
+
+"My whole day is at your disposal."
+
+"But mine is not. What is that room?"
+
+"A spare bedroom, now occupied by Toby, if you ask for information."
+
+Nigel started to cross the room.
+
+"I like to check all verbal information," he remarked.
+
+The Seraph had shorter distance to cover, and was standing with his
+back to the door when Nigel got there.
+
+"I allow no unauthorised person to search my rooms without my leave,"
+he said.
+
+"You cannot always prevent it."
+
+"I can in this case."
+
+"We are four to one."
+
+"You are one to two."
+
+"My mistake, no doubt." He waved a hand round the room to indicate his
+allies.
+
+"Assuredly your mistake, if you think Toby will stand by and let you
+search my rooms without my leave, or that any one of the others would
+raise a finger to help you."
+
+Not one of his three allies had moved a step to support him. Nigel was
+impressed. Without retreating from his position he tried the effect of
+bluff.
+
+"You forget the circumstances are exceptional. My sister has been
+spirited away, and so has Phil's. If we think you know the whereabouts
+of the woman who kidnapped them, we shall neither of us hesitate to
+employ timely physical force on you, perhaps inflict salutary physical
+pain."
+
+"You may try, if you like."
+
+"If I try, I shall succeed."
+
+"You don't really think that, you know."
+
+Gartside felt it was time to restore the peace. Walking up to Nigel,
+he led him firmly back to his place at the table and motioned the
+Seraph to his old position in the armchair by the fireplace. There was
+a long, awkward silence. Then Culling crossed the room, and sat on the
+arm of the Seraph's chair.
+
+"Ye're white and ill, Seraph," he said, "and ye know I'm not the man
+would badger you. We're in a hole, and maybe ye can give us a hoist
+out of it. Do ye, or do ye not, know where Miss Davenant's hiding
+herself?"
+
+The Seraph looked him steadily in his eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, is she, or is she not, in these rooms?"
+
+"Would _you_ like to search them?"
+
+"Damn it, no, man! Give us yer word, and that's enough."
+
+For a fraction of time the Seraph gazed at the faces of Culling,
+Philip and Gartside, weighing the characters and measuring the men.
+
+"It's not enough for Rawnsley," he said.
+
+"It'ull have to be."
+
+"He likes to check all verbal information."
+
+Culling shook his clenched fists in the air and involved us all in a
+comprehensive curse. The Seraph lit himself a cigarette, blew out the
+match with a deliberation Nigel could not have surpassed, and
+addressed the company.
+
+"We seem to have reached a deadlock," he began. "Shall I offer a
+solution? The four of you come here and charge me with harbouring the
+woman who is supposed to have made away with Miss Rawnsley and Miss
+Roden. Very good. Every man is free to entertain any suspicions he
+likes, and to ventilate them--provided he doesn't forget his manners.
+Three of you behaved like gentlemen, the fourth followed his own
+methods. I should like to oblige those three. Rawnsley, you have
+menaced me with personal violence, and threatened me with a search
+warrant. You have done this in my own library. If you will apologise,
+and undertake not to enter these rooms again or to molest me here or
+anywhere else, and if you will further undertake not yourself to
+apply--or incite any one else to apply--for a warrant to search the
+flat, I shall have pleasure in accompanying Gartside wherever he
+chooses to go, unlocking any doors that may be locked, and offering
+him every facility in inspecting every nook and cranny in these rooms.
+As you may not accept verbal information even from him, I shall have
+pleasure in extending my offer to Culling. The one will be able to
+check the other."
+
+He blew three smoke-rings and waited for an answer.
+
+There was another moment of general discomfort. Nigel jibbed at the
+idea of apologising, Gartside and Culling would have done anything to
+avoid accepting the offer; from Philip's miserable fidgeting I could
+see that he had been persuaded into coming against his better
+judgment. For myself, I waited as a condemned man waits for the drop
+to fall. It was bound to come in a few seconds' time, but--illogically
+enough--I had ceased to dread it. My one fear was that Joyce should
+betray herself by one of those pitiful moans that had mingled with my
+dreams and vexed my sleep throughout the night. To this hour I can
+remember thinking how horror-stricken I should be if that sound broke
+out again. It had begun to get on my nerves.... The discovery itself
+was inevitable; I could imagine no trick or illusion that would enable
+the Seraph to steer his inquisitors past one of the principal rooms in
+the flat.
+
+"I apologise for any offence I may have given, and I undertake all
+that you ask."
+
+It was not gracefully done, but the Seraph accepted the words for the
+spirit.
+
+"Come on, and let's get it over!" Culling exclaimed, jumping up and
+cramming his hat on the back of his head. With sinking heart I saw the
+three of them framed in the doorway, Gartside's huge form towering
+over the other two.
+
+"Devilish sorry about the whole business," I heard him begin as the
+door closed. It was opened again for a moment as the Seraph reminded
+me where the drinks were kept, and suggested I should compound a
+cocktail. Then it closed finally.
+
+Outside in the hall Culling added his contribution to the general
+apology.
+
+"Come quietly," was all the Seraph would answer. "I hope she's
+sleeping."
+
+Both men paused abruptly and gazed first at the Seraph and then at
+each other. He returned their gaze unwaveringly, surprised apparently
+that they should be surprised. Then he led them wide-eyed with
+expectation across the hall; wide-eyed they watched him bend and
+listen, tap and gently open a bedroom door. The nurse rose from her
+chair at the bedside and placed a finger on her lips--
+
+"Praise God, she's sleeping!" murmured Paddy Culling, with instinctive
+reverence removing his hat. Gartside looked for a moment at the
+flushed cheeks and parched lips, then turned away as the Seraph closed
+the door.
+
+"Mustn't go back yet," he said. "We'd better look at one or two more
+rooms just to fill in time."
+
+One of the shortest recorded councils of war was held in the bathroom.
+Culling, with his quick, superficial sympathy had already made up his
+mind, but Gartside stood staring out of the window with head bent and
+hands locked behind his back, struggling and torn between an
+unwillingness to hurt Joyce and a deep hungry desire to bring Sylvia
+safely out of her unknown hiding-place.
+
+"You'll kill her if you move her," the Seraph remarked,
+dispassionately but with careful choice of time. Gartside's foot
+tapped the floor irresolutely. "Toby's engaged to marry her," he added
+softly.
+
+With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders Gartside turned to Culling,
+nodded without speaking, and linked arms with the Seraph.
+
+"You're a good little devil," he said with a forced smile. "When this
+poor girl's better, get her to say where Sylvia is. She'll tell you.
+And let me know when the whole damned thing's straightened out. I'm
+off to Bombay in ten days' time. And it isn't very cheerful going off
+without knowing where Sylvia is. Now we've been out long enough," he
+added in firm, normal tones.
+
+All three of us looked up quickly as the door opened. Culling's hat
+was once more on his head, and he was trying to pull on a pair of
+gloves and light a cigarette at the same time.
+
+"All over but the cheering," he began abruptly. "High and low we've
+searched, and not found enough of a woman would make a man leave Eden,
+and she the only woman in the world."
+
+"You've searched every room?" asked Nigel with a suspicious glance at
+the Seraph.
+
+"Cellar to garret," answered Culling serenely, "and no living creature
+but a pair of goldfinches, and one of them dead; unless you'd be
+counting the buxom matron that the Seraph dashes my hopes by sayin'
+has a taste for drink like the many best of us, and she married
+already, and the mother of fourteen brace of twins and a good plain
+cook into the bargain."
+
+Nigel picked up his papers and turned to Gartside for corroboration.
+
+"We searched every room," he was told, "and Miss Davenant's not here.
+Seraph, we owe you...."
+
+The apology was cut short, as speaker and listeners paused to catch a
+sound that floated through the silent hall and in at the open library
+door. A long, troubled moaning it was, the sound I had heard all night
+and dreaded all the morning.
+
+"I shall have to check the verbal information after all," said Nigel
+as he put back his hat and papers on the table.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Gartside as he approached the door.
+
+"It seems I must search the house myself."
+
+"You undertook to accept our finding."
+
+"I thought I could trust you."
+
+"I have said Miss Davenant is not in these rooms," said Gartside in a
+warning voice.
+
+"If you said it a hundred times I should still disbelieve you. Let me
+pass, please."
+
+He raised a hand to clear himself a passage, but in physical strength
+he had met more than his match. Seizing both wrists in one hand and
+both ankles in the other, Gartside carried him like a child's doll
+across the room to the open library window, thrust him through it, and
+held him for ninety seconds stretched at arm's length three storeys
+above the level of the street. The veins stood out on his forehead,
+and I heard his voice rumbling like the distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"When I say a thing, Nigel, you have to believe me. The moon's of
+green cheese if I tell you to believe it, and when I say Miss
+Davenant's not in this flat, she's not and never has been, and never
+will be. You see?"
+
+Stepping back from the window, he dropped his burden on a neighbouring
+sofa. Nigel straightened his tie, brushed his clothes, and once more
+gathered up his hat, his papers, and the remains of his dignity.
+
+"Culling says there is no woman but a cook in the house," he began,
+with the studied tranquillity of an angry man. "He clearly lies.
+Gartside says Miss Davenant is not in the flat. He probably lies, but
+it is always possible that the sound we heard may have come from some
+woman Aintree thinks fit to keep in his rooms. In either event, I do
+not feel bound by the undertaking I have given." He pulled out a
+note-book and pretended to consult it. "To-day's Wednesday. If my
+sister and Sylvia have not been restored to their families by midday
+on Monday, I shall apply for a warrant to have these rooms searched.
+They will, of course, be watched in the interval. If Lord Gartside or
+any other person presumes to lay a finger on me, I shall summon him
+for assault."
+
+Pocketing the note-book he passed out of the flat with the air I
+suspect Rhadamanthus of assuming, when he is leaving the court for the
+luncheon interval, and has had a disagreeable morning with the
+prisoners. Culling accompanied him to prevent a sudden bolt at a
+suspicious-looking door, Philip followed with the Seraph, I brought up
+the rear with Gartside. All of us were smarting with the Englishman's
+traditional dislike of a "scene."
+
+"I never congratulated you on the Bombay appointment," I said, with
+praiseworthy design of scrambling onto neutral territory. "How soon
+are you off?"
+
+"Friday week," he answered.
+
+"It's little enough time--nine days."
+
+"Oh, I've known for some little while beyond that. It was only made
+public to-day."
+
+"It's a pleasant post," I said reflectively. "In a tolerably pleasant
+country. I shall probably come to stay with you; I'm forgetting what
+India's like."
+
+"I wish you would," he said warmly.
+
+"How are you going? P. and O. I suppose?"
+
+"No, I shall go in my own yacht."
+
+Culling turned round to reprove me for my forgetfulness.
+
+"We Gartsides always take our own yachts when we cross the ocean to
+take up our new responsibilities of Empire," he explained.
+
+"Where do you sail from?" I ask. "Marseilles?"
+
+"Southampton. Are you coming to see me off?"
+
+"I might. It depends whether I can get away. Half London will be
+there, I suppose?"
+
+Candidly I cannot say whether my questions were prompted by what the
+Seraph would call a sub-conscious plan of campaign. Gartside
+undeniably thought they were, and met me gallantly.
+
+"I'm eating a farewell dinner every night till I sail," he said. Then,
+sinking his voice, he added, "You know the yacht--she's roomy, and
+there will be only my two aide-de-camps and myself. No one will be
+seeing me off, because I haven't told them when I'm sailing. It's the
+usual route--anywhere in the Mediterranean. But I can't sail before
+Friday week."
+
+"I see. Well," I held out my hand, "if I _don't_ see you again, I'll
+say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye. Best of luck!" he answered, and waved a hand as I walked
+back and rejoined the Seraph in the hall.
+
+He was so white that I expected every moment to see him faint, and his
+clothes were wet with perspiration. I, who am not so fine-drawn, had
+found the last hour a little trying.
+
+"You're going to bed in decent time to-night," I told him. "I'm going
+to see Nurse, and find out if she knows of any one she can trust to
+come and help her. And I'm going to keep you out of the sick-room at
+the point of a bayonet if you've got one."
+
+I had expected a protest, but none came. He sat with closed eyes,
+resting his head on his hand.
+
+"I suppose that will be best," he assented at last.
+
+"And now you're coming to get something to eat," I said, leading him
+into the dining-room.
+
+"I'm not hungry," he complained.
+
+"But you're going to eat a great deal," I said, pushing him into his
+chair and selecting a serviceable, sharp-pronged pickle-fork.
+
+After luncheon I had my usual siesta, prolonged rather beyond my usual
+hour. It was five o'clock when I awoke, and I found the Seraph playing
+with a sheet of paper. He had written "Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+Sunday, Monday" on it, and after "Monday," "12.0 P.M."
+
+"What's all this?" I asked.
+
+"Our days of grace."
+
+I added "Friday week" to the calendar.
+
+"If we can get Joyce well enough to move away from Nigel's damned
+cordon of police," I said, "and if we can hide her somewhere till
+Friday week, friend Gartside's yacht is going to solve a good many
+problems."
+
+"It's not going to find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+That was unquestionably true.
+
+"I don't know how that's going to be managed," I said.
+
+We sat without speaking until dinner-time, and ate a silent dinner. At
+eleven o'clock he left the room, changed out of his dress clothes into
+a tweed suit, and put on a hat and brown walking boots.
+
+"Where are you off to?" I asked when he came back.
+
+"I'm going to find Sylvia."
+
+The expression in his eyes convinced me--if I wanted any
+convincing--that the strain of the last few days had proved too much
+for him.
+
+"Leave it till the morning," I said in the tone one adopts in talking
+to lunatics and drunken men.
+
+"She wants me now."
+
+"A few hours won't make any difference," I urged. "You'll start
+fresher if you have a night's rest to the good."
+
+The Seraph held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye. You think I'm mad. I'm not. No more than I ever am. But
+Sylvia wants me, and I must go to her."
+
+"Where is she?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Then how are you going to find her?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, where will you start looking?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He was already halfway across the hall. I balanced the rival claims of
+Joyce and himself. She at least had a doctor and nurse, and a second
+nurse was coming in the morning. He had no one.
+
+"Damn you, Seraph!" I said under my breath, and then aloud: "Wait a
+bit and I'll come too."
+
+"Hurry up then!" he answered chafing visibly at the delay.
+
+I spoke a hurried word to the nurse, took a last look at Joyce,
+changed my clothes and joined him on the landing.
+
+"Which way first?" I asked, and received the answer I might have
+expected.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+      "There was no sound at all within the room. But ... he
+      saw a woman's face.
+
+      "He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the
+      face rising white from the white column of the throat, the
+      dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved lips
+      which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and troubled,
+      which seemed to hint a prayer for help which they
+      disdained to make--for five seconds, perhaps, the illusion
+      remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him ...
+      lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so
+      vanished."
+
+                   A.E.W. MASON: "Miranda of the Balcony."
+
+
+Neither by inclination nor habit am I more blasphemous or foul-mouthed
+than my neighbour, but I should not relish being ordered a year in
+Purgatory for every occasion on which I repeated "Damn you, Seraph!"
+in the course of the following nineteen or twenty hours.
+
+It was nearly midnight when we left Adelphi Terrace, and I had in my
+own mind fixed one hour as the maximum duration of my patience or
+willingness to humour a demented neurotic. Thirty minutes out, thirty
+minutes back, and then the Seraph would go to bed, if I had to keep
+him covered with my revolver. _En parenthèse_, I wish I could break
+myself of the habit of carrying loaded firearms by night. In the
+settled, orderly Old Countries it is unnecessary; in the West it is
+merely foolish. I should be the richer by the contents of six
+chambers before I had time to draw on the quick, resourceful child of
+a Western State.... Nevertheless, my revolver and I are inseparable.
+
+We started down the Strand, along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace,
+and through Eaton Square to the Cadogan Estate. This was what I ought
+to have expected, if I had had time to sort out my expectations. The
+Seraph stood for a few minutes looking up at the Rodens' slumbering
+house, and then walked slowly eastward into Sloane Street.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested, in the voice one uses to deceive
+a child.
+
+"I'm not mad, Toby," he answered, like a boy repeating a lesson. "I
+must find Sylvia."
+
+He wandered into Knightsbridge, hesitated, and then set out at an
+uncertain three miles an hour along the border of the park towards
+Kensington. I realized with a sinking heart that he was heading for
+Chiswick.
+
+"Better leave it till the morning, Seraph," I urged, with a hand on
+his shoulder. "She'll be in bed, and we mustn't disturb her."
+
+He shook me off, and wandered on--hands in pocket and eyes to the
+ground. Twice I thought he would have blundered into an early
+market-cart, but catastrophe was averted more by the drivers' resource
+than any prudence on his own part. As we left Kensington and trudged
+on through the hideous purlieus of Hammersmith, I began to visualize
+our arrival at the Fräulein's house, and my stammering, incoherent
+apologies for my companion's behaviour.
+
+The deferential speech was not required. On entering Chiswick High
+Street we should have turned to the right up Goldhawk Road, and then
+taken the second or third turning to the left into Teignmouth
+Terrace. The Seraph plodded resolutely on, looking neither to the
+right nor left, through Hounslow, past the walls of Sion Park and the
+gas-works of Brentford, into Colnbrook and open country. There was no
+reason why he should not follow the great road as far as the Romans
+had built it--and beyond. Night was lifting, and the stars paled in
+the blue uncertain light of early dawn.
+
+I gripped him by the shoulders and made him look me in the face.
+
+"We're going back now," I said.
+
+"_You_ can."
+
+"You're coming with me."
+
+"I must find Sylvia."
+
+"If you'll come back now, I'll take you to her in the morning."
+
+"I'm not a child, Toby, and I'm not mad."
+
+"You're behaving as if you were both."
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he repeated, as though that were an answer to
+every conceivable question.
+
+"If you're sane," I said, "you can appreciate the insanity of walking
+from London to Bath in search of a girl who may be in Scotland or on
+the Gold Coast for all you know. She's as likely to be in the Mile End
+Road as on the Bath Road. Why not look there? It's nearer Adelphi
+Terrace, at all events."
+
+He looked at me for a moment reproachfully, as though his last friend
+had failed him, then turned and plodded westward....
+
+"God's truth!" I cried. "Where are you off to?"
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+"But where? Where?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why this God-stricken road rather than another?"
+
+"She came along here."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She did," was all he would answer.
+
+It was near Langley that I threatened him with personal injury. He had
+quickened his pace and shot slightly ahead of me. I have never been of
+a fleshy build, and with the exception of excessive cigar-smoking, my
+tastes are moderate. On the other hand, I never take exercise save
+under compulsion, or walk a mile if I can possibly ride, drive, or
+fly. We had covered some twenty miles since leaving home, my feet
+seemed cased in divers' boots, my mouth was parched with thirst, and I
+was ravenously hungry.
+
+"Are you sane?" I asked, as I caught him up.
+
+"As sane as I ever am."
+
+"Then you will understand my terms. We are going to leave the main
+road and walk straight to Langley Station. We are going to take the
+first train back to town, and we are...."
+
+"You can," he interrupted.
+
+"You will come with me. Don't tell me you have to find Sylvia, because
+it will be waste of breath. I have here a six-chambered revolver,
+loaded. Unless you come to the station with me, here and now, I shall
+empty one chamber into each of your legs. And if any one thinks I'm
+murdering you, I shall say I'm in pursuit of a dangerous lunatic. And
+when they see you, they'll believe me."
+
+He looked at me for perhaps half a second, and then walked on. It was,
+I suppose, the answer I deserved.
+
+It came as a surprise to me when he accepted my breakfast proposition
+at Slough. I put his assent down to sheer perversity, for I should
+have breakfasted in any case. My mind was made up. I would ask him for
+the last time to accompany me back to London, and if he refused I
+would return to Adelphi Terrace and bed, leaving him to follow the
+sun's path till he pitched head-foremost into the Bristol Channel....
+
+I breakfasted unwashed, unshaven, dusty, at full length on a sofa in a
+private room, simmering with grievance and irritability.
+
+"_Now_ then," I said, as I lit a cigar, threw the Seraph another, and
+turned to a Great Western time-table.
+
+"I must be getting on," he answered, giving me back my cigar.
+
+"Just a moment," I said. "Up-trains, Sundays. Up-trains, week-days.
+Ten-fifteen. Horses and carriages only. Ten-thirty; that'ull do me.
+I'll walk with you as far as the cross-roads."
+
+I was so angry with myself and him that we parted without a word or
+shake of the hand. I watched him striding westward in the direction of
+Salt Hill, and carried my temper with me towards the station. The
+first twenty yards were covered at a swinging, resolute pace, the
+second more slowly. I was still far from the station when an absurd,
+irritating sensation of shame brought me to a standstill. Mad,
+unreasonable as I knew him to be, the more I thought of the Seraph,
+the less I liked the idea of leaving him in his present state. The
+sight of a garage, with cars for hire, decided me. I ordered one for
+the day, with the option of renewing on the same terms as long as I
+wanted it.
+
+"Take the money while you can get it," I warned the proprietor, with
+the petulance of a tired man. "With luck you'll next hear of me from
+the inside of a padded cell. Now!" I said to the driver, "listen very
+carefully. I'm about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns
+for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may
+hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a
+young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the
+ground. You're to keep him in sight wherever he goes. _He's_ mad, and
+_I'm_ mad, and _everybody's_ mad. Follow him, and address a remark to
+me at your peril. I've been up all night, I've walked from London to
+Slough, and I'm now going to sleep."
+
+My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The
+difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds
+sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his
+heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case
+there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.... My driver
+left me to slumber undisturbed.
+
+I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph,
+pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to
+come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke,
+asking the driver what had come of our quarry.
+
+"He's following, sir," he told me.
+
+I was struck with an ingenious idea.
+
+"At the next cross-roads," I said, "turn off to the right or left,
+drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we'll lead him round
+in a circle and draw him back to London."
+
+We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight
+trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full
+view, and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so
+much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.
+
+"Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!" I said, as I ordered the
+driver to start once more in pursuit.
+
+At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a
+three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood
+flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he
+once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he
+stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge,
+into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street.
+Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too
+absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.
+
+It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead
+Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an
+hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting
+as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun
+brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.
+
+"Wait here," I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the
+Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead
+of us lay Reading and Bath.
+
+The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled
+on towards Reading.
+
+"Forward!" I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and
+bade him wait.
+
+Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was
+casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him
+pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked
+back to the fork of the road, gazed north-west towards Henley, and
+stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and
+arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.
+
+I waited for him to fall. I say "waited" advisedly, for I could have
+done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the
+driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to
+London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the
+afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My
+own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and
+leaving him to his fate. His madness ... as I watched the strained
+pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.
+
+With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head
+fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the
+road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes,
+and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.
+
+"Stop where you are!" I called to the driver as I ran down the road
+and turned into the bridle-path.
+
+The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He
+was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported
+him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.
+
+"This way!" he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I
+caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow--picturesque, peaceful,
+inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new
+corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of
+green tins of motor spirit.
+
+"She's there--Sylvia!" he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we
+walked down the bridle-path. "Go in and get her. Make them give her
+up!"
+
+I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At
+the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was
+another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an
+unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought
+not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of
+felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not
+there.... I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.
+
+"We can't," I said weakly. "It's a strange house; we don't know that
+she's there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander...."
+
+He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of
+my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover
+behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window
+opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching.
+Then the door opened.
+
+"I have come for Miss Roden," I heard him say.
+
+"Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here."
+
+The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face.
+I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.
+
+"I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden."
+
+The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.
+
+"You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away,
+or I'll call a man and have you given in charge."
+
+The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added
+something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my
+walnut-tree, pushed open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door
+as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck
+of bright red froth.
+
+"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.
+
+She looked at me in surprise.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize
+for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your
+name. We have called...."
+
+"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous
+finger at the Seraph.
+
+"He is. We have called for Miss Roden."
+
+"She is not here."
+
+"One minute gone," said the Seraph, watch in hand.
+
+Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I
+think the name was "John."
+
+"I am armed," I warned her.
+
+She paid no attention.
+
+"One minute and a half," said the Seraph.
+
+I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.
+
+"I don't think you appreciate the strength of our position," I began.
+"You are no doubt aware that the office of the _New Militant_ has been
+raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a
+warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant."
+
+"They haven't caught her," said Miss Draper, defiantly.
+
+I could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity
+that the mention of Joyce's name brought into her eyes.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" asked the Seraph.
+
+"I shan't say."
+
+"I think it probable that you do _not_ know," I answered. "Miss
+Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my
+friend's flat."
+
+"You expect me to believe that?"
+
+"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already
+suspected and watched."
+
+"Why don't they search it?"
+
+"Because England is a corrupt country," I said, boldly inventing. "I
+have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant's sister--Mrs.
+Wylton--is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of
+seeing Miss Davenant arrested--in a critical condition--if it can be
+avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of
+a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their
+families before midnight to-night. I may say in passing that if Miss
+Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than
+she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me.
+Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say
+how we found Miss Roden was being kept here----"
+
+"She is not."
+
+I sighed resignedly.
+
+"You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?"
+
+"You don't know where Miss Davenant is, and I do."
+
+It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old
+lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination,
+pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could,
+waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.
+
+"I am now going to search the house," I told Miss Draper. "This is
+your last chance. Tell me where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a
+felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a
+single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested.
+Which is it to be?"
+
+She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step
+across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle
+was over.
+
+"Where is she?" I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my
+lot to fight with women.
+
+Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in
+the lock.
+
+"No tricks?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You had better make yourself scarce."
+
+Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the
+house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see
+if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless
+and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat
+my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard
+somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.
+
+I returned to the hall--where the Seraph was sleeping upright against
+the wall--opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew
+accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and
+drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood
+in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by
+the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but
+blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.
+
+I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly
+to her feet. Then I shut the door and stood awkwardly at the window,
+while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
+
+It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink
+three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared
+that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last
+twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with
+the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark
+room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal
+with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the
+pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the
+voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were
+frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.
+
+"You didn't expect to see me, Sylvia," I said, as I buttered the stale
+crusts to make them less unappetizing.
+
+She shook her head without answering.
+
+"Did you think no one was ever coming?"
+
+She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.
+
+"No."
+
+The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been
+expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.
+
+"How did you find me?"
+
+"The Seraph brought me here."
+
+Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked.
+
+"Outside."
+
+"I must go to him!" she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying
+dizzily.
+
+I pressed her back into her chair.
+
+"Wait till you've had some food," I said, "and then I'll bring him
+in."
+
+"But I don't want any more."
+
+"Sylvia," I said firmly, "if you're not a good girl we shan't rescue
+you another time."
+
+She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline
+of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The
+Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a
+heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and
+laid him on the bed in Sylvia's prison. His heart was beating, but he
+seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed
+the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running
+diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the
+chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of
+brandy.
+
+I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that
+there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the
+tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and
+waiting for the eyes to open.
+
+"Your prison doesn't run to brandy," I told her. "We must get him to
+Maidenhead, and I'll give him some there. I've got a car waiting about
+half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?"
+
+"Don't be long," she said, with an anxious look at the white, still
+face.
+
+"No longer than I can help. Here's a revolver in case any one wants to
+abduct either of you. It's loaded, so be careful."
+
+I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.
+
+"Sylvia!" I said at the door.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Can you be trusted to look after him properly?"
+
+She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.
+
+"I think so," she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away.
+"He's rather precious."
+
+The car was brought to the door, and the driver--who, after all, had
+been paid not to be surprised--looked on unemotionally as we carried
+the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing
+the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped
+up in the other.
+
+On the way back I was compelled to repeat _in extenso_ the whole story
+of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment
+when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced
+my way into the darkened prison cell.
+
+Sylvia's face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative
+proceeded.
+
+"But how could he _know_?" she asked in a puzzled tone when I had
+ended. "You must explain that. I don't see how it's possible."
+
+"Madam, I have provided you with a story," I replied in the manner of
+Dr. Johnson; "I am not obliged to provide you with a moral."
+
+As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the
+moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly
+cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with
+its present angry wale.
+
+Of course, if you point morals before there's a story to hang them
+from, you must expect to see them disregarded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE
+
+      "If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always
+      a rash thing to do--he never dreams of considering
+      whether the idea is right or wrong. The one thing he
+      considers of any importance is whether one believes it
+      oneself.... The inherited stupidity of the race--sound
+      English common sense...."
+
+                OSCAR WILDE: "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
+
+
+If the Seraph's quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences
+of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest
+memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists
+and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the
+menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She
+had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson
+to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the
+S.Y. _Ariel_.... I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking
+more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there
+was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would
+have forestalled me.
+
+I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on
+Sylvia's character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes;
+I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender
+and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an
+Oxford summer evening; I could recognise her from the Seraph's
+description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I
+ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met--before
+her last parting from the Seraph--she had gone back to the earlier
+hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her
+least when she was regal.
+
+And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my
+tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her
+relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the
+manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of
+what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening
+interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.... I had watched the
+Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity--uneasiness--
+belief and disbelief--ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it
+must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her
+presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before
+they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to
+appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul
+in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.
+
+I remember it all, but I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of
+committing it to paper. No girl has ever spoken her heart to me as
+Sylvia then spoke it; I am not sure that I want to be again admitted
+to such confidences. It is all strange, and sad, and unsatisfactory;
+but above all it is sacred. Her imprisonment had taken the fire out of
+Sylvia's blood; and her meeting with the Seraph had worked on her
+emotions. At another time she would have been more reticent. As after
+our return from Oxford, I sometimes think we were punished by an
+extreme of cold for having been injudiciously admitted to bask in an
+extreme of heat. That is the way with the English climate, and with a
+certain number of reserved, proud girls who grow up under its
+influence....
+
+I dropped Sylvia at Cadogan Square without going in, and carried the
+Seraph straight back to Adelphi Terrace. Maybury-Reynardson was paying
+Joyce an evening visit; the report was satisfactory so far as it went,
+but indicated that we must exercise great patience before a complete
+cure could be expected. I asked--on a matter of life and
+death--whether she could be moved in a week's time. He preferred to
+give no opinion, and reminded me that I must not attempt to see or
+speak to the patient. Then I turned him over to the Seraph, ordered
+myself some dinner, and went to bed.
+
+In the morning a telephone message informed me that Arthur Roden would
+like us both to go round to Cadogan Square. I answered that it was out
+of the question so far as the Seraph was concerned; and it was not
+till late on the Saturday afternoon that I felt justified in letting
+him get out of bed and accompany me. He still looked perilously white
+and ill, and though one strain had been removed by the discovery of
+Sylvia, and another by the departure of the search-warrant bogey, I
+could see no good purpose in his being called in to assist at an
+affecting reconciliation, and having to submit to a noisy chorus of
+congratulation.
+
+We were spared both. I suppose I shall never know the true reason for
+the reception that awaited us, but I distribute the responsibility in
+equal shares between Lady Roden and Nigel Rawnsley. And of course I
+have to keep reminding myself that I had been present at the search,
+while they were not; that they were plain, matter-of-fact
+materialists with a rational cause for every effect, while I--well, I
+put myself out of court at once by asking them to believe in an
+absurdity called a Sixth Sense.
+
+I find it hard, however, to forgive Nigel his part in the scene that
+followed; so far as I can see he was actuated first by jealousy on
+Sylvia's account, secondly by personal venom against the Seraph as a
+result of the unauthorised search-party, and lastly by the obstinate
+anger of a strong-willed, successful egoist, who has been driven to
+dwell even temporarily in the shade of unsuccess. Lady Roden, it must
+never be forgotten, had to sink the memory of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, and the quarterings and armorial devices of an entire
+Heralds' College, before she could be expected to do justice to a man
+like the Seraph.
+
+We were shown into the library, and found Arthur, Nigel and Philip
+seated before us like the Beasts in Revelation. Lady Roden and Sylvia
+entered later and sat to one side. There was much bowing and no
+hand-shaking.
+
+The story of the search was already known--Sylvia had told it as soon
+as she got home, probably in my own words; and in the first, fine,
+careless rapture, I have no doubt she had spoken of the Seraph in the
+strain I had heard in the car. If this were the case, Lady Roden's
+eyes must have been abruptly and painfully opened. I felt sorry for
+her. Rutlandshire Morningtons frowned sour disfavour from the walls at
+the possibility of her daughter--with her daughter's faith and
+wealth--allying herself with an infidel, unknown, relationless vagrant
+like Lambert Aintree. Rationalism in the person of Nigel Rawnsley was
+called in to discredit the story of the search and save Sylvia from
+squandering herself on a common adventurer.
+
+"You remember the terms of our agreement last Wednesday?" he began. "I
+undertook to suspend application for a search warrant...."
+
+"If we discovered Sylvia," I said. "Yes?"
+
+"And my sister Mavis."
+
+I hope Nigel did not see my jaw drop. Save for the moment when I
+looked casually through the other rooms in the Maidenhead bungalow I
+had completely forgotten the Mavis stipulation. Every plan and hope I
+had cherished in respect of Joyce had been cherished in vain.
+
+"The time was to expire on Monday, at noon," said the Seraph.
+
+"Exactly. I thought I would remind you that only half the undertaking
+had been carried out. That is all."
+
+Nigel would make an admirable proctor; he is to the manner born. I had
+quite the old feeling of being five shillings the poorer for straying
+round the streets of Oxford at night without academical dress.
+
+I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.
+
+"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."
+
+I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him
+to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having
+to submit to examination by an old K.C.
+
+"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are
+suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the
+police on a most serious charge...."
+
+"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an
+impatient glance at Nigel.
+
+"No arrangement you may have made on Wednesday is binding on me."
+
+"It was binding on your son, who sits on one side of you," I said,
+"and on Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, who sits on the other."
+
+Arthur drew himself up, no doubt unconsciously.
+
+"As a Minister of the Crown I cannot be a party to any connivance at
+crime."
+
+"Philip and Nigel," I said. "As sons of Ministers of the Crown, I hope
+you will take that to heart."
+
+"What I have to say----" Arthur began.
+
+"One moment!" I interrupted. "Are you speaking as a Minister of the
+Crown or a father of a family? Sylvia's been restored to you as the
+result of your son and Nigel conniving at what you hope and believe to
+be a crime. You wouldn't have got her back without that immoral
+compromise."
+
+"The flat would have been searched," said Nigel.
+
+"It was. Paddy and Gartside searched it and declared themselves
+satisfied...."
+
+"They lied."
+
+"Will you repeat that to Gartside?" I asked invitingly. "I fancy not.
+They searched and declared themselves satisfied. I offered to show the
+detectives round ten minutes after--by all accounts--this woman ought
+to have taken refuge there. Anybody could have searched it if they'd
+approached the owner properly."
+
+He ignored my implied reproof and stuck to his guns.
+
+"There was a woman there when Gartside said there was not."
+
+"Gartside only said Miss Davenant wasn't there."
+
+It was the Seraph speaking, slowly and almost for the first time. His
+face flushed crimson as he said it. I could not help looking at
+Sylvia; I looked away again quickly.
+
+"There was _some_ woman there, then?" said Nigel.
+
+My cue was plain, and I took it.
+
+"Miss Davenant is the only person whose name is before the house," I
+interposed. "Gartside said she was not there. Were you satisfied,
+Phil? I thought so. It's no good asking you, Nigel; you won't be
+satisfied till you've searched in person, and that you can't do till
+after Monday. Every one who agreed to Wednesday's compromise is bound
+by it till Monday midday. If after that Nigel _still_ thinks it worth
+while to conduct Scotland Yard over the flat, of course we shan't
+attempt to stop him. As for any one who was not present or personally
+bound by Wednesday's compromise, that is to say, you, Arthur--do you
+declare to win by 'Father of a Family' or 'Minister of the Crown'? You
+must take one or the other."
+
+"The two are inseparable," he answered shortly.
+
+"You must contrive to separate them. If you declare 'Father of a
+Family,' you must hold yourself bound by Phil's arrangement. If you
+declare 'Minister of the Crown,' you oughtn't to have profited by the
+compromise, you oughtn't to have allowed us to restore Sylvia to you.
+Common schoolboy honour tells you that. Incidentally, why haven't you
+had the flat searched already? As a Minister of the Crown, you
+know...."
+
+If my heart had not been beating so quickly, I should have liked to
+study their faces at leisure. The history of the last two days was
+written with tolerable clearness. Nigel had told Arthur--and possibly
+his own father--the story of his visit to Adelphi Terrace; he had
+hinted sufficient to incite one or both to take the matter up
+officially. Then Philip had intervened and depicted himself as bound
+in honour to take no step until the expiration of the armistice. Their
+faces told a pretty tale of "pull devil, pull baker," with Nigel at
+the head, Philip at the feet, and Arthur twisting and struggling
+between them.
+
+I had no need to ask why the flat had not yet been searched, but I
+repeated my question.
+
+"And when _are_ you going to search it?" I added.
+
+Arthur attempted a compromise.
+
+"If you will give me your word...." he began.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" I said. "Are you bound or are you not? Sylvia's in
+the room to settle any doubts on the subject."
+
+He yielded after a struggle.
+
+"I will take no steps to search the flat until after midday on Monday,
+provided Mavis is restored by then."
+
+I made another attempt to rise, but Arthur waved me back into my seat.
+
+"I have not finished yet. As you point out, Sylvia is in the room. I
+wish to know how she got here, and I wish still more to know how she
+was ever spirited away in the first instance."
+
+"I know nothing about the getting away. She may be able to throw light
+on that. Hasn't she told you how we found her?"
+
+"She has given me your version."
+
+"Then I don't suppose I can add anything to it."
+
+"You might substitute a story that would hold a little more water."
+
+"I am afraid I am not naturally inventive."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+His tone told me that I had definitely lost Arthur as a friend--which
+was regrettable, but if I could play the part of whetstone to his
+repartee I was content to see him draw profit from the _débris_ of our
+friendship.
+
+"It is only fair to say that you and Aintree are regarded with a good
+deal of suspicion," he went on. "Apart from the question of the
+flat...."
+
+"Not again!" I begged.
+
+"I have not mentioned the report of the officers who watched Miss
+Davenant's house in...."
+
+"Nigel has," I interrupted. "_Ad nauseam._ My interview was apparently
+very different from their report. Suppose we have them in?"
+
+"They are not in the house."
+
+"Then hadn't we better leave them out of the discussion? What else are
+we suspected of?"
+
+Arthur traced a pattern on the blotting-pad, and then looked up very
+sternly.
+
+"Complicity with the whole New Militant campaign."
+
+I turned to the Seraph.
+
+"This is devilish serious," I said. "Incitement to crime, three
+abductions, more in contemplation. I shouldn't have thought it to look
+at you. Naughty boy!"
+
+Arthur was really angry at that. I knew it by his old habit of growing
+red behind the ears.
+
+"You appear to think this is a fit subject for jesting," he burst out.
+
+"I laugh that I may not weep," I said. "A charge like this is rather
+upsetting. Have you bothered about any evidence?"
+
+"You will find there is perhaps more evidence than you relish. Apart
+from your intimacy with Miss Davenant...."
+
+"She's a very pretty woman," I interrupted.
+
+"...you have successfully kept one foot in either camp. You were
+present when Rawnsley told me of the abduction of Mavis, and added
+that the matter was being kept secret. Miss Davenant at once
+published an article entitled 'Where is Miss Rawnsley?'"
+
+"If she really abducted the girl, she'd naturally notice it was being
+kept quiet," I objected.
+
+"On the day after Private Members' time had been appropriated,
+Jefferson's boy disappeared; Miss Davenant must have been warned in
+time to have her plans laid. She referred to my midland campaign, and
+had an accomplice lying in wait for my daughter with a car, the same
+day that Rawnsley made his announcement that there would be no autumn
+session."
+
+"You will find all this on the famous Time Table," I reminded him.
+
+"She got her information from some one who knew the arrangements of
+the Government."
+
+"I'm surprised you continued to know me," I said, and turned to the
+Seraph. "It's devilish serious, as I said before, but it seems to be
+my funeral."
+
+Arthur soon undeceived me.
+
+"You are both equally incriminated. Aintree, is it not the case that
+on one occasion in Oxford and another in London, you warned my
+daughter that trouble was in store for her?"
+
+The Seraph had been sitting silent and with closed eyes since his
+single intervention. He now opened his eyes and bowed without
+speaking.
+
+"I suggest that you knew an attempt would be made to abduct her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are quite certain?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Then why the warning?"
+
+"I knew trouble was coming; I didn't know she would be abducted."
+
+"What form of trouble did you anticipate?"
+
+"No form in particular."
+
+"Why trouble at all?"
+
+"I knew it was coming."
+
+"But how?"
+
+He hesitated, and then closed his eyes wearily.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Arthur balanced a quill pen between the first fingers of both hands.
+
+"On Wednesday last your rooms were visited, and the question of a
+search-warrant raised. You obtained a promise that the warrant would
+not be applied for if my daughter and Miss Rawnsley were restored
+within five days. Did you know at that time where they were?"
+
+"No."
+
+"When did you find out?"
+
+"I don't know where Miss Rawnsley is. I didn't know where your
+daughter was till we came to the house."
+
+"We none of us know our hats are in the hall till we look to make
+certain," Nigel interrupted; "but you found her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No one told you where she was?" Arthur went on.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how did you find her?"
+
+"I believe she has told you."
+
+"She has given me Merivale's version. I want yours."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How did you start?"
+
+"She's told you. I walked out of the house, and went on till I found
+her."
+
+"How did you know where to look?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles,
+passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house--a
+house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This
+was pure coincidence?"
+
+"I knew she was there."
+
+"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you
+mean?"
+
+"I felt sure she _was_ there."
+
+"You felt that when you left London?"
+
+"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."
+
+"No one had told you where to look?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of
+the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one.
+You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the
+right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"
+
+"I ask you to believe nothing."
+
+"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given
+five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's
+whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"
+
+"No."
+
+Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of
+self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.
+
+"Do you know where my sister is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you--er--_feel_ where she is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you walk from this house and find her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How soon will you be able to do so?"
+
+With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.
+
+"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."
+
+"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how do you propose to find her?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You know the consequences?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy
+fidelity.
+
+"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden
+is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"
+
+"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."
+
+"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"
+
+"That is so."
+
+"You suggest no reason for the difference?"
+
+For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia.
+Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much.
+I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same
+expression that had come over her face when he suggested the
+possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous
+Wednesday morning.
+
+"I suggest no reason," he said at last.
+
+Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a
+window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes
+melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a
+discreet distance from her mother.
+
+"Not worth saving, Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed
+in him.
+
+"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How
+_could_ he, if he didn't know all along?"
+
+"Remember Brandon Court," I said.
+
+"Why didn't he mention it?"
+
+I pointed to the Bench.
+
+"My dear child, look at them! Why not talk higher mathematics to a
+boa-constrictor?"
+
+"If he can't make them believe it, why should I?"
+
+"Because you _know_."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything. You know he's in love with you, and you're in love with
+him."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+Her voice quivered with passion; there was nothing for it but a bold
+stroke. And one risk more or less hardly mattered.
+
+"Can you keep a secret, Sylvia?"
+
+"It depends."
+
+"No. Absolutely?"
+
+"All right."
+
+I lowered my voice to a whisper.
+
+"There _was_ a woman in his rooms last Wednesday, and she is the woman
+I am engaged to marry."
+
+Her look of scorn was caused less by concern for my morals than by
+pity for my simplicity in thinking she would believe such a story.
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You must. It's your last chance. If you let him go now, you'll lose
+him for ever, and I'm not going to let you blight your life and his,
+if I can stop it. You must make up your mind now. Do you believe me?"
+
+Her expression of scorn had vanished and given place to one of painful
+perplexity.
+
+"I'm not...."
+
+"Do you believe me, Sylvia?"
+
+She hesitated in an agony of indecision, until the moment was lost.
+The water had arrived, and Arthur was dismissing me from the Presence.
+
+"You're not going to arrest us, then?" I said.
+
+"I reserve perfect freedom of action," he answered, in the Front Bench
+manner.
+
+"Quite right," I said. "I only wish you'd reserved the inquisition
+till this boy was in a better state to receive it. Would it interfere
+with your liberty of action if I asked you to say a word of thanks
+either to Aintree, myself, or both? I believe it is usual when a man
+loses his daughter and has her restored to him."
+
+A few minutes more would have tried my temper. Arthur sat down again
+at his table, opened a drawer, and took out a cheque-book.
+
+"According to your story it was Aintree who was chiefly instrumental
+in making the discovery?"
+
+"That was the lie we agreed on," I said.
+
+Arthur wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds, and handed it to the
+Seraph with the words--
+
+"That, I think, clears all obligations between us."
+
+"Except that of manners," I exclaimed. "The House of Commons----"
+
+But he had rung the bell, and was tidying his papers into neat,
+superfluous bundles.
+
+Philip had the courage to shake me by the hand and say he hoped to see
+me again soon. I am not sufficiently cynical to say it was prompted by
+the reflection that Gladys was my niece, because he was every whit as
+cordial to the Seraph.
+
+I shook hands with Sylvia, and found her watching the Seraph fold and
+pocket the two thousand pound cheque.
+
+"He's taking it!" she said.
+
+"Your father should have been ashamed to make the offer. It serves him
+right if his offer's accepted. Don't blame the Seraph. If Nigel and
+your father proceed on the lines they've gone on this afternoon, one
+or both of us will have to cut the country. The Seraph's not made of
+money; he'll want all he can lay hands on. Now then, Sylvia, it's two
+lives you're playing with."
+
+She had not yet made up her mind, and indecision chilled the warmth of
+her eyes and the smile on her lips. I watched the effort, and wondered
+if it would suffice for the Seraph. Then question and answer told
+their tale.
+
+"When shall we see you again?" I heard her ask as I walked to the
+door.
+
+"I can hardly say," came the low reply. "I'm leaving England shortly.
+I shall go across India, and spend some time in Japan--and then visit
+the Islands of the South Seas. It's a thing I've always wanted to do.
+After that? I don't know...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
+
+      "The instant he entered the room it was plain that all
+      was lost....
+
+      "'I cannot find it,' said he, 'and I must have it. Where
+      is it?... Where is my bench?... Time presses; and I must
+      finish those shoes.'
+
+      "They looked at one another, and their hearts died within
+      them.
+
+      "'Come, come!' said he, in a whimpering miserable way:
+      'let me get to work. Give me my work.'
+
+      "...Carton was the first to speak:
+
+      "'The last chance is gone: it was not much....'"
+
+                  CHARLES DICKENS: "A Tale of Two Cities."
+
+
+As I helped the Seraph out of the house and into a taxi, I was trying
+to string together a few words of sympathy and encouragement. Then I
+looked at his face, and decided to save my breath. Physically and
+mentally he was too hard hit to profit by any consolation I could
+offer. As a clumsy symbol of good intention I held out my hand, and
+had it gripped and retained till we reached Adelphi Terrace.
+
+"Never mind me," he said, in a slow, sing-song voice, hesitating like
+a man speaking an unfamiliar language. "It's you and Joyce we've got
+to consider."
+
+"Don't worry your head, Seraph," I said. "We'll find a way out. You've
+got to be quiet and get well."
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"I've no idea," I answered blankly.
+
+The Seraph sighed and lifted his feet wearily on to the seat opposite.
+
+"You played that last hand well, Toby. I'm afraid you'll have to go on
+playing without any support from me. I'm dummy, I'm only good for two
+possible tricks."
+
+I waited to see the hand exposed.
+
+"I can't find Mavis," he went on. "You see that?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You must ask Joyce to tell you. She spoke a few words this morning,
+and she's getting stronger. If she refuses ... but she won't if you
+ask her."
+
+"If she does?"
+
+"You must go on bluffing Nigel. He doesn't know who's in the flat, and
+old Roden doesn't know either. They'd have searched three days ago,
+they'd have arrested us to-day on suspicion if they hadn't been afraid
+of making fools of themselves. Keep bluffing, Toby. The keener you are
+to get the search over and done with, the more they'll be afraid of a
+mare's nest." The words trailed off in a sigh. "If there's anything I
+can do I'll do it, but I'm afraid you'll find me pretty useless."
+
+"You're going quietly to bed for forty-eight hours," I told him.
+
+He raised no protest, and I heard him murmur, "Saturday night. Sunday
+night. Monday night. It'll be all over then, one way or the other."
+
+On reaching the flat I carried him upstairs, ordered some soup, and
+smoked a cigarette in the hall. Maybury-Reynardson was completing his
+evening inspection, and when he came out I asked for the bulletin.
+
+"It's in the right direction," he told me, "but very, very slow. The
+mind's working back to normal whenever she wakes, and she's been
+talking a little. I'm afraid you must go on being patient."
+
+"Could she answer a question?"
+
+"You mustn't ask any."
+
+"I'm afraid it's absolutely necessary."
+
+"What d'you want to know?"
+
+"The police will search this flat on Monday if we don't find out
+before then where Miss Rawnsley was taken to when she disappeared."
+
+Maybury-Reynardson shook his head.
+
+"You mustn't think of bothering her with questions of that kind. If
+you did, I don't suppose she could help you."
+
+"But you said the mind was normal?"
+
+"Working back to normal. Everything's there, but she can't put it in
+order. The memory larder is full, but her hands are too weak to lift
+things down from the shelves."
+
+"It's a matter of life and death," I urged.
+
+"If it was a matter of eternal salvation I doubt if she could help
+you. Do you dream? Well, could you piece together the fragments of all
+you dreamt last night? You might have done so a moment after waking,
+little pieces may come back to you when some one suggests the right
+train of thought. That's Miss Davenant's condition. To change the
+parallel, her eyes can see, but they see 'through a glass darkly.'"
+
+I thought the matter over while he was examining and prescribing for
+the Seraph.
+
+"We're in a tight corner, Seraph," I said when he had gone. "I don't
+see any other way out, I'm going to take the responsibility of
+disobeying him."
+
+He offered no suggestion, and I walked to the door of Joyce's room and
+put my fingers to the handle. Then I came back and made him open his
+eyes and listen to me.
+
+"I'll take the blame," I said; "but will you see if you can make her
+understand? She's known you longer."
+
+It was not the true reason. When I reached the door I was smitten with
+the fear that she would not recognise me, and my nerve failed.
+
+We explained our intentions to a reluctant nurse; I fidgeted outside
+in the hall and heard the Seraph walk up to the bedside and ask Joyce
+how she was.
+
+"I'm better, thanks," she answered. "Let me see, do I know you?" There
+was a weak laugh. "I should like to be friends with you, you've got
+such nice eyes."
+
+The Seraph took her hand and asked if she knew any one named Mavis
+Rawnsley.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know her. Her father's the Prime Minister. Mavis, yes, I
+know her."
+
+"Do you know where she is?"
+
+"Mavis Rawnsley? She was at the theatre last night. What theatre was
+it? She was in the stalls, and I was in a box. Who else was there?
+Were you? She was with her mother. Where is she now? Yes, I know Miss
+Rawnsley well."
+
+"Do you know where she is now?"
+
+"I expect she's at the theatre."
+
+She closed her eyes, and the Seraph came back to the door, shaking his
+head. I tiptoed into the room, looked round the screen and watched
+Joyce smiling in her sleep. As I looked, her eyes opened and met mine.
+
+"Why, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're my husband. You took me to
+the theatre last night, when we saw Mavis Rawnsley. We were in a box,
+and she was in the stalls. Some one wanted to know where Mavis was.
+Tell them we saw her at the theatre, will you?"
+
+She held out her hand to me; I bent down, kissed her forehead, and
+crept out of the room. The Seraph was lying on the bed we had made up
+for him in my room. I helped him to undress, and retired to the
+library with a cigar--to forget Joyce and plan the bluffing of Nigel.
+
+My first act was to get into communication with Paddy Culling on the
+telephone.
+
+"Will you do me another favour?" I began. "Well, it's this. I want you
+to get hold of Nigel and take him to lunch or dine to-morrow--Sunday--at
+the Club. Let me know which, and the time. When you've finished eating,
+lead him away to a quiet corner--the North Smoking Room or the
+Strangers' Card Room. Hold him in conversation till I come. I shall
+drop in accidentally, and start pulling his leg. You can help, but do
+it in moderation; we mustn't make him savage--only uncomfortable. You
+understand? Right."
+
+Then I went to bed.
+
+On Sunday morning I started out in the direction of Chester Square,
+and made two discoveries on the way. The first was that our house was
+being unceasingly watched by a tall Yorkshireman in plain clothes and
+regulation boots; the second, that the Yorkshireman was in his turn
+being intermittently watched by Nigel Rawnsley. His opinion of the
+Criminal Investigation Department must have been as low--if not as
+kindly--as my own. On two more occasions that day I found him engaged
+on a flying visit of inspection--to keep Scotland Yard up to the
+Rawnsley mark and answer the eternal question that Juvenal propounded
+and Michael Roden amended for his own benefit and mine at Henley.
+
+Elsie received me with anxious enquiries after her sister. I gave a
+full report, propounded my plan of campaign, and was rewarded by being
+shown the extensive and beautiful contents of her wardrobe. I should
+never have believed one woman could accumulate so many clothes; there
+seemed a dress for every day and evening of the year, and she could
+have worn a fresh hat each hour without repeating herself. My own rule
+is to have one suit I can wear in a bad light, and four that I cannot.
+With hats the practice is even simpler; I flaunt a new one until it is
+stolen, and then wear the changeling until a substitute of even
+greater seediness has been supplied. My instincts are conservative,
+and my hats more symbolical than decorative; for me they typify the
+great, sad law that every change is a change for the worse.
+
+My only complaint against Elsie was that her wardrobe contained too
+much of what university authorities would call the "subfuse" element.
+The most conspicuous garments I could find were a white coat and
+skirt, white stockings and shoes, black hat and veil, and heliotrope
+dust coat. I am no judge whether they looked well in combination, but
+I challenge the purblind to say they were inconspicuous. To my eyes
+the _tout ensemble_ was so striking that I laid them on a chair and
+gazed in wondering admiration until it was time to call up Gartside
+and warn him that I stood in need of luncheon.
+
+Carlton House Terrace had a depressing, derelict appearance that
+foreboded the departure of its lord. All the favourite pictures and
+ornaments seemed to have been stowed away in preparation for India,
+neat piles of books were distributed about the library floor, and
+every scrap of paper seemed to have been tidied into a drawer. We sat
+down a pleasant party of three, and I made the acquaintance of
+Gartside's cousin and aide-de-camp, Lord Raymond Sturling. An
+agreeable fellow he seemed, who put himself and his services entirely
+at my disposal in the event of my deciding to come for a part or all
+of the way. I could only avail myself of his offer to the extent of
+sending him to see if Mountjoy's villa at Rimini was still in the
+market, and if so what his figure was for giving me immediate
+possession.
+
+Gartside himself was as hospitable as ever in offering me every
+available inch on the yacht for the accommodation of myself and any
+friends I might care to bring with me. I ran through the list and
+found myself wondering if Maybury-Reynardson could be persuaded to
+come. I had hardly known him long enough to call him a friend, but he
+had gone out of his way to oblige me in coming to attend Joyce, and on
+general principles I think most big London practitioners are the
+better for a few days at sea at the close of the London season.
+
+I called round in Cavendish Square for a cup of tea, and told him he
+was pulled down and in need of a change.
+
+"Look at the good it did my brother," I said. "Just to Marseilles and
+back. Or if you'll come to Genoa and overland to Rimini, I shall be
+very glad to put you up for as long as you can stay. It's Gartside's
+own yacht, and I'm authorised by him to invite whom I please. He's a
+capital host, and you'll be done to a turn. The only fault I have to
+find with his arrangements is that he carries no doctor, and I'm
+sufficiently middle-aged to be fussy on a point like that. Anybody
+taken ill, you know, anybody coming on board ill, and it would be
+devilish awkward. I shall insist on a doctor. He'll be Gartside's
+guest, but I shall pay his fees, of course, and he can name his own
+figure. What do you think of the idea? We shall be to all intents and
+purposes a bachelor party."
+
+When Maybury-Reynardson's name was first mentioned to me on the
+evening of Joyce's flight, the Seraph had justly described him as a
+"sportsman." Under the grave official mask I could see a twinkling eye
+and a flickering smile.
+
+"It depends on one case of nervous breakdown that I've got on hand at
+present," he said. "If my patient's well enough...."
+
+"She's got to be," I said.
+
+"When do you sail?"
+
+"Friday."
+
+"You can't make it later?"
+
+"Absolutely impossible."
+
+"This is Sunday. I'll tell you when we're a little nearer the day."
+
+"She must be moved on Thursday afternoon."
+
+"Must? Must?" he repeated with a smile. "Whose patient is she?"
+
+"Whose wife's she going to be?" I asked in my turn.
+
+"I suppose it'll be pretty hot," he said. "First week in August. I
+must get some thin clothes."
+
+"Include them in the fee," I suggested.
+
+"Damn the fee!" he answered, as we walked to the door.
+
+Paddy Culling had arranged to give Nigel his dinner at eight. I had
+comfortable time to dress and dine at Adelphi Terrace, and nine-thirty
+found me wandering round the Club in search of company.
+
+"Praise heaven for the sight of a friendly face!" I exclaimed as I
+stumbled across Paddy and Nigel in the North Smoking Room.
+
+"Where was ut ye dined?" asked Paddy, as I pulled up a chair and rang
+for cigars. To a practised ear his brogue was an eloquent war signal.
+
+"In the sick-house," I told him, "Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Is ut catching?" he inquired. "It's not for my own self I'm asking,
+but Nigel here. I owe ut to empire and postherity to see he runs no
+risks."
+
+I reassured him on the score of posterity.
+
+"He's just knocked up and over-tired," I said, "and I'm keeping him in
+bed till Wednesday or Thursday."
+
+"Then he'll not be walking ye into the Lake District to find Miss
+Mavis for the present," Paddy observed with an eye on Nigel.
+
+"He'll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest," I said with
+great determination.
+
+Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.
+
+"I'd have ye remember the days of grace," he grumbled.
+
+I shrugged my shoulders without answering.
+
+"Where's me pound of flesh?" he demanded. "Manin' no disrispec' to
+Miss Mavis," he added apologetically to Nigel.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't help you to find her," I said.
+
+"Can the Seraph?"
+
+"I don't suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present."
+
+Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked
+up the threads where they had been dropped.
+
+"You say Aintree's ill," he began cautiously. "If I were disposed to
+regard the time of illness as so many _dies non_, would he be in a
+position to find my sister by the end of the week?"
+
+"Frankly, I see no likelihood."
+
+"It's an extra five days."
+
+"What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?"
+
+"You should know best."
+
+"I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better
+means of finding out."
+
+"And Aintree?"
+
+"In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means
+of finding out he'd tell me."
+
+Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.
+
+"When the days of grace have expired, ye'll have yer contract
+unfulfilled?"
+
+"And we shall be prepared to face the consequences."
+
+"Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?"
+
+"He can't help himself." I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no
+profit in staying longer. "I shall see you both to-morrow at noon?"
+
+"Not me," said Paddy. "I've searched the place once."
+
+"You, Nigel?"
+
+"If I think fit," he answered loftily.
+
+"I only ask, because you mustn't worry the Seraph. You can search his
+rooms, but you mustn't try to cross-question him. He's not equal to
+it."
+
+"I think you'd be wise to accept the extension of time."
+
+"My dear man, what's the good? If we can't find your sister, we can't.
+Saturday's no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time,
+you'd better stick to it and get your search over."
+
+"If Aintree's ill...."
+
+"Humbug! Nigel," I said. "If you believe we're harbouring a criminal,
+it's your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach
+Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your
+superior wisdom. Bring 'em to-morrow; bring 'em to-night if you like,
+and as many as you can get. The more there are," I said, turning at
+the door to fire a last shot, "the more voices will be raised in
+thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley."
+
+The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need
+expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain
+other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning
+to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy's villa at
+Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all
+formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton
+House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up
+odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious
+invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On
+Thursday I called at Chester Square.
+
+Elsie's car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid
+me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on
+the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat
+and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce.
+The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she
+dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might
+have belonged to either sister.
+
+I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to
+Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of
+attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after
+Joyce, they would not be there for ever. As we crossed Trafalgar
+Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.
+
+"Just as I thought," I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My
+plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite
+side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman
+from the corner of the Terrace.
+
+"Bow to him," I said to Elsie. "He may not deign to recognise you, but
+he can't help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained
+ankle!"
+
+With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half
+carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The
+ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to
+run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out
+of my Yorkshire friend's field of vision.
+
+I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce's room. I never
+waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time,
+weak, suffering and heart-broken--two large blue eyes gazing at me out
+of a white immobile face--I half regretted we had ever met, and
+heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could
+have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all,
+he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting
+out solitary and unfriended--to forget....
+
+Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed
+before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and
+heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little
+smile, bent over the Seraph's bed and kissed him, and then suffered me
+to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the
+footman and I took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My
+Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in
+my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough
+padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his
+present scrutiny told him was that a woman's veil was up when she
+entered a house, and down when she left it.
+
+We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond
+Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us,
+and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch
+already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in
+the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.
+
+"A _mariage de convenance_," Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw
+me inspecting the labels.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. _Ariel_, Southampton," was the name and
+destination I found written.
+
+"It may save trouble," he added apologetically. "I thought you
+wouldn't mind."
+
+His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and
+arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson,
+Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and
+railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce's age and figure,
+and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.
+
+"My wife," Sturling explained brusquely. "Yes, be as quick as you can,
+please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible.
+Sturling--aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht.
+There she is, the _Ariel_, sailing to-morrow. These gentlemen? Mr.
+Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That
+all?"
+
+"All in order, my lord."
+
+"Right away."
+
+As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the
+_Ariel_. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought
+of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have
+kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of
+the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember
+the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed
+direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag
+flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to
+correct a popular delusion.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling's" nurses arrived by an early train on Friday
+morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at
+three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and
+five: "Sursum corda" was the first; "Keep your tails up" the second;
+and "Haste to the Wedding" completed the series.
+
+I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters.
+Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air
+and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has
+returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were
+already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was
+wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of
+the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears
+that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there
+would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning,
+and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been
+ruffled.
+
+While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce his nightly visit, I paced
+the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar.
+As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as
+reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several
+years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had
+tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.
+
+"How did you find Sylvia?" he asked in a tone that showed how his
+thoughts had been occupied.
+
+I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of
+the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.
+
+"Perhaps I'm not leaving so much behind after all," was his comment.
+"Good luck to the Seraph! He's a nice boy."
+
+"He'll need all the luck he can get," I answered. "You'll get oil and
+water to mingle quicker than you'll bring those two together. Tell me
+how it's to be done, Gartside, and you'll put the coping-stone on all
+your labours."
+
+In the darkness I heard him sigh.
+
+"I can't help you. I'm not a diplomatist, I'm just a lumpy,
+good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!" he added
+softly. "He's as fond of her as we any of us were."
+
+I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.
+
+"That's like Paddy," he said with a laugh. "Well, he's right. You're
+the only one that's come out on top, and good wishes to you for the
+future!"
+
+We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.
+
+"You don't want thanks," I said, "but if you do you know where to come
+for them."
+
+"Oh well!" I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes
+when the light of the chart-room lamp fell on his face. "If I can't
+get what I want, there's some satisfaction in helping a friend to get
+what _he_ wants."
+
+"I'll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass," I said. "I
+shall want that text during the next few months."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together," I answered in the
+same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"And how are you going to do that?"
+
+"God knows!" I replied with a woeful shake of the head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE RAID
+
+      "I can see you flying before the laughter like ...
+      tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter will
+      pursue you to Paris, where they'll make little songs
+      about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera, where
+      they'll sell your photographs on picture postcards. I can
+      see you fleeing across the Atlantic to ... the immensity
+      of America, and there the Yellow Press, pea-green with
+      frenzy, will pile column of ridicule upon column of
+      invective. Oh, ... do you think it isn't worth while to
+      endure six months' hard labour to amuse the world so
+      profoundly?"
+
+                               W.S. MAUGHAM: "Jack Straw."
+
+
+The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited
+by the Individualist.
+
+Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and
+better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and
+habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the
+Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her
+efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce
+in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that
+reputation back.... Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her
+loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained
+her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness,
+imprisonment and--well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was
+calling down on her foolish young head.
+
+It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism--the kind that sets
+your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your
+throat--but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night
+Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to
+the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce's bedroom, watched them meet and
+kiss.... "Gods of my fathers," I murmured, "what have you won, the
+pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?"
+
+The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you
+tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our
+escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all;
+You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the
+nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was
+no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of
+command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more
+troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been
+less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my
+grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit
+between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.
+
+I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will
+for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or
+chagrined--only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen
+her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her
+campaign to win a reputation.
+
+When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and
+earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not
+mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday
+at three, and at three-thirty Culling was to post a letter I had
+written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of
+persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her
+again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to
+avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but
+she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to
+overcome the Seraph's curious bent of self-depreciation.
+
+Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph's
+condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down
+during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of
+finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and
+the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing
+when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great
+a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.
+
+I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was
+getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him.
+Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening,
+catch the nine o'clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa
+at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the
+fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea
+of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her
+husband to look after him.
+
+Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks
+no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our
+departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous,
+undisciplined outlet. Nine o'clock came and went without bringing her
+a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting
+by his bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he began to
+grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she
+steal away to her sister's deserted room and lie down for a few hours'
+sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been
+administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like
+slumber.
+
+He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my
+letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to
+swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what
+she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and
+courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to
+Adelphi Terrace and going alone.
+
+Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade
+her going, reminding her--I have no doubt--of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph's entire
+unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently
+tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely
+resolute. The homily ended--as is the way of most sermons--when her
+mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled
+and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her
+hat, called at a florist's on the way, and presented herself at
+Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph's man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that
+the patient was still sleeping.
+
+"I've brought him some flowers," she said. "I suppose it's no good
+waiting? You can't say how soon he's likely to wake up?"
+
+Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the
+man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and
+withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.
+
+Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures
+and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted
+by the sound of men's voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared
+to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.
+
+"Here's the warrant," said a voice, "properly signed, all in order. If
+you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you
+do so at your own risk."
+
+Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The
+voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.
+
+"One of you stay here," he went on, "and see that nobody leaves the
+flat. The other come with me. Take the library first."
+
+The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the
+library's sole occupant.
+
+"Sylvia!" he exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here?"
+
+His tone so resembled her mother's that all Sylvia's latent opposition
+and obstinacy were called into play.
+
+"Have you any objection to my being here?" she asked.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It was rather a surprise."
+
+"As I don't always warn you beforehand, I'm afraid a good many things
+I do must come as a surprise to you."
+
+"And to yourself?"
+
+"You must explain that."
+
+"Surely no explanation is needed?"
+
+"No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn't bother to
+explain my presence here."
+
+Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.
+
+"I imagine Aintree could supply that," he said.
+
+She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to
+use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his
+expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.
+
+"I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister,
+and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect
+of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead."
+
+"Do you imagine he had any hand in that?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"He knew where to look for you," was the significant answer, "and he
+found that out from the woman he's been hiding in these rooms. As it's
+too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I've called
+to gain that information from the lady herself."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Search the flat."
+
+"And if she isn't here?"
+
+"She _was_."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, I admit I didn't see her. It may have been any one. But there's a
+very strong probability, and I'm going on that."
+
+"And if there's no one here now?"
+
+"She must have got away."
+
+"Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"What are you going to do if you find no one?"
+
+"If there's no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If
+Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant...." He paused delicately.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm afraid he'll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to
+sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment."
+
+"You'll have him arrested?"
+
+"That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. _I_
+shan't do anything."
+
+"Except rub your hands?" she taunted.
+
+"Not even that," he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing
+no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his
+voice to summon the detectives into the library. "We'll take this room
+first," he told her, "and then leave you undisturbed."
+
+The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to
+fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with
+surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their
+conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she
+entered the library and in the Seraph's interests requested Nigel to
+carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.
+
+"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night,
+so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll
+stay here and talk to Miss Roden."
+
+Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement,
+humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually
+fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."
+
+"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern
+authority.
+
+"It's some time now...."
+
+"And how long have you been here?"
+
+There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie's thoughts had
+been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in
+readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in
+the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open;
+outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.
+
+"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.
+
+The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to
+boiling point in Sylvia's mind.
+
+"How long?" she repeated.
+
+Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak,
+the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared
+in the doorway.
+
+"She's not here," he announced.
+
+"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at
+his untimely return.
+
+"Your sister."
+
+"Oh, I could have told you that."
+
+"She _was_ here."
+
+"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale
+invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm
+afraid you and the--er--gentleman outside have had your journey in
+vain."
+
+Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect
+of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had
+undertaken to educate.
+
+"Not altogether," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"We've found Aintree."
+
+"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to
+move yet."
+
+"He may have to."
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well--and away."
+
+Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening
+tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly
+becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier
+losings.
+
+"So you're arresting him?" she said.
+
+"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he
+answered with a lift of the eyebrows.
+
+"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my
+sister?"
+
+Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.
+
+"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."
+
+"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.
+
+"Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested."
+
+A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on
+Elsie's face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.
+
+"Possibly he won't be arrested," she remarked.
+
+"You will prevent it?"
+
+"I leave that to you."
+
+"It's a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it."
+
+Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.
+
+"You'll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation
+like the present," she told him with a wise shake of the head. "It's
+ridiculous enough to search a man's rooms for a woman who isn't there,
+but you can't--you really can't arrest a man for harbouring a woman
+when there's no shred of evidence to show she was ever under the same
+roof."
+
+Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel's thin skin to an angry spot
+of red on either cheek.
+
+"You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss
+Roden disappeared," he answered.
+
+Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I have every reason to remember it."
+
+"Your sister was here then."
+
+"You saw her?"
+
+"I heard her."
+
+"You heard _a_ woman."
+
+"It was your sister or yourself."
+
+"Or one of a million others."
+
+Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.
+
+"I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday.
+Barring two nurses, and they're accounted for. You or your sister must
+have left here yesterday."
+
+"And not come back?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, that makes it much easier, doesn't it? If one went out and
+never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it
+looks ... I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think,
+that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind."
+
+"Exactly. And it's on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be
+arrested."
+
+Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves.
+It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed
+and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.
+
+"All the same, what a pity you didn't come before the bird was
+flown!" Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.
+
+"It's something to have found Aintree at home," Nigel returned.
+
+"And you're going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?" Elsie
+walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the
+door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be
+betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the
+Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the
+immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb
+her: she was filled with pity and doubt--pity for Sylvia, and doubt
+whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. "I suppose--you're quite
+certain--he wasn't harbouring--_me_?"
+
+Nigel's unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.
+
+"There's no warrant against you."
+
+"Fortunately not."
+
+"Then why should he harbour you?"
+
+Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she
+turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of
+desperation.
+
+"It's a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+There was a moment's silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with
+cheeks aflame.
+
+"D'you mean you were here the whole time?"
+
+"Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+"Were you?"
+
+"D'you think it likely?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome rôle to its bitter end.
+
+"You know my character, you've not had time to forget my divorce or
+the way I thrust myself under the noses of respectable people. Have I
+got much more bloom to lose?"
+
+"It's not true! The Seraph ... he _wouldn't_!"
+
+"You used to see us about together."
+
+"There's nothing in that!"
+
+"Enough to make you cut him at Henley." Each fresh word fell like a
+lash across Sylvia's cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely
+at the door it was impossible to end the torture.
+
+"_Will_ you say whether you were here the whole time?" she demanded of
+Elsie.
+
+"'Course she wasn't," Nigel struck in. "There are convenances even in
+this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time."
+
+"_Was_ he?" Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper
+down.
+
+"I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes."
+
+"You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from
+time to time? It's important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I
+was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn't happen to
+be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn't have been
+harbouring my sister, but it's good-bye to the remains of my good
+name. And if Mr. Merivale _was_ here, I couldn't have been living here
+too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which
+was it? I don't like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me
+confidentially what you believe yourself."
+
+Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.
+
+"As the conduct of the case is not in my hands," he answered loftily,
+"my opinion is of no moment."
+
+Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling
+mischievously to herself.
+
+"So there's nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, _che sera
+sera_: I suppose it'll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall
+be let out in time to see the fun. It'll be worth it. I wish women
+were admitted to your Club, it 'ud be so amusing to hear your friends
+chaffing you about your great mare's nest. 'Well, Rawnsley, what's
+this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?'
+Men are such cats, aren't they? Every one would start teasing you at
+the House, the thing 'ud get into the papers, they'd hear of it in
+your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting
+and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the
+great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One
+or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and
+grow louder as every one joined in. They'd laugh at you in private
+houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They'd laugh at you in the
+streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on
+at the music halls and imitate you. They'd laugh and laugh till their
+sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you'd try to
+live it down and find you couldn't, and in the end you'd have to leave
+England and live abroad, until they'd found something else to laugh
+at. You're going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven't got
+the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come
+back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!"
+
+The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a
+little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that
+would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her
+voice and the laughter out of her eyes.
+
+"Shall I go and see if the Seraph's awake yet?" she temporised, "or
+would you prefer to leave a message?"
+
+Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come--only a dry, choking
+sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed
+to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.
+
+"Miss Roden! Sylvia!"
+
+"_Don't_ call me that!"
+
+"I'm sorry. Miss Roden, I've got something to say to you!"
+
+"I don't want to hear it, I only want to get away!"
+
+"You must listen, your whole life's at stake--and the Seraph's, too."
+
+The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded.
+
+"You must shut that door."
+
+"I won't."
+
+Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three
+paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to
+light a cigarette.
+
+"It's about--the woman who was here," she whispered as he began to
+descend the stairs.
+
+"Was it you?"
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"No, say it! say it! Yes or no."
+
+The sound of Nigel's descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the
+angle of the stairs.
+
+"For God's sake come back inside here a minute!" Elsie implored her.
+
+"I won't, it's no good; I shouldn't believe you whatever you said. If
+you weren't here, why did you say you were? And if you were---- Oh,
+let me go, let me go!"
+
+With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie's restraining hand and
+rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with
+her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed
+the door and walked with a heavy heart into the library. On a table by
+the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had
+brought--lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph
+loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and
+across the hall to the Seraph's door. He was still sleeping, but awoke
+in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.
+
+"The search-party," Elsie told him, forcing a smile.
+
+"Who was there?"
+
+"Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.
+
+"Wasn't it enough?" she asked indifferently.
+
+The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.
+
+"I don't know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other
+people--some people--were near me. I fancied--when I was asleep--I
+suppose it must have been a dream--I don't know--I fancied there was
+some one else quite close."
+
+He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie's fingers in a
+bloodless, wasted hand.
+
+"How did you keep the search-party out?" he inquired.
+
+"I didn't. They came in, and looked into every room. For some
+unaccountable reason," she added ironically, "Joyce was nowhere to be
+found."
+
+"Were they surprised to see you here?"
+
+"A little. I told them you were seedy and I'd called to inquire."
+
+The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go
+on talking.
+
+"I suppose they really thought you'd been here the whole time?"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"But how else...."
+
+"I don't know," Elsie interrupted quickly. "You must ask _them_ who
+the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They
+couldn't say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both
+compromised."
+
+She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.
+
+"Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you
+well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in
+August isn't good for little boys."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini."
+
+The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.
+
+"I can't go there yet. They'll be--frightfully happy--wrapped up in
+each other--all that sort of thing. I don't want to see them yet."
+
+Elsie dropped no hint of the time that must elapse before Joyce was
+strong again or "frightfully happy."
+
+"Where shall it be then?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph pressed her fingers to his lips.
+
+"You go there, Elsie. I must travel alone. I shall go to the East. I
+shan't come back for some time. If ever."
+
+The effort of talking and the trend of the conversation had made him
+restless. Elsie smoothed his pillow, and rose to leave the room.
+
+As he watched her walk to the door, his eyes fell for the first time
+on the bouquet of roses and lilies.
+
+"Who brought those?" he inquired.
+
+"I found them in the library," she answered.
+
+"Is there no name?"
+
+For a moment she pretended to look for a card, then shook her head
+without speaking. As she saw him lying in bed, she wondered if he
+would ever know the price at which his freedom from arrest had been
+purchased. Of her own sacrifice she thought little; it was but
+generous payment of a long outstanding debt. All her imagination was
+concentrated on Sylvia--her sanguine, happy arrival, the morning's
+long agony, her hopeless, agonised departure.
+
+"And no message?" the Seraph persisted with a mixture of eagerness and
+disappointment.
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder who they can be from."
+
+"One of your numerous admirers, I suppose," Elsie answered carelessly.
+Then she opened the door, walked wearily to her own room, and
+tried--unsuccessfully--to cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+RIMINI
+
+    "We left our country for our country's good."
+
+              GEORGE BARRINGTON: _Prologue_.
+
+
+We arrived in Rimini at the end of the first week in August--Joyce,
+her two nurses, Maybury-Reynardson and I. Elsie joined us as soon as
+we were comfortably settled in the villa, and has stayed on week after
+week, month after month, tending her poor sister with a devotion that
+touched my selfish, hardened old heart. Dick came for a few days
+before the beginning of the law term; otherwise we have been a party
+of three, as the doctor and nurses returned to England as soon as
+Joyce appeared to be out of danger.
+
+Rimini turns cold at the beginning of November, and we have had to
+make arrangements for going into winter quarters. Cairo and the
+Riviera are a little public for two escaped criminals, but I hear
+there is a tolerable hotel at Taormina; and as Joyce has never been in
+Sicily before, we might spend at least the beginning of our honeymoon
+there. For myself, I do not mind where we go so long as we can escape
+from Rimini. I want no unnecessary reminders of the last three months,
+the weary waiting, the frequent false dawns of convalescence, the
+regular relapses. They have been bad months for Joyce, but I venture
+to think they were worse for Elsie and myself. In my own case there
+definitely came an early day when my nervous system showed signs of
+striking work; it was then that I embarked on my first and last
+venture in prose composition.
+
+When she is well enough to be bothered with such vain trivialities, I
+shall present my manuscript to Joyce. I hope she will read it, for I
+have intended it for her eyes alone; and if she rejects the task, I
+shall feel guilty of having wasted an incredible amount of good sermon
+paper. And when she has read it, she must light a little fire and burn
+every sheet of it; not even Elsie must see it, though she has been
+instrumental in giving me information over the last chapters that I
+should not otherwise have obtained.
+
+I think my decision is wise and necessary. In part the book is too
+intimate an account of Sylvia's character and the Seraph's feelings
+for me to be justified in making it public: in part, the pair of us
+have already done sufficient injury to Rodens and Rawnsleys without
+giving the world our candid opinion of either family: in part, we have
+to remember that during the last eight months, wherever we found the
+law of England obtruding itself on our gaze, we broke it with a light
+heart and untroubled conscience. There is not the least good in taking
+the world into our confidence in the matter of these little
+transgressions.
+
+In a week's time there will be a quiet wedding at the British
+Consulate; it will take place in the presence of a Consul who has
+treated me with such uniform kindness that I have sometimes wondered
+if he has ever heard of such things as extradition orders. Our
+marriage will be the last chapter of one phase in my life. It opened
+on a day when I walked up the steps of the Club, and paused for a
+moment to gaze at the altered face of Pall Mall and read on a
+contents-bill that the old militants had broken every window on the
+east side of Bond Street, interrupted a meeting, and burnt down an
+Elizabethan house in Hertfordshire. "Shocking," I remember thinking,
+"and quite unimpressive." Before I was twelve hours older, Fate had
+introduced me to a young woman whose machinations may or may not have
+been infinitely more shocking; they were certainly not unimpressive.
+
+The closing scenes of the Militant campaign are soon given. Elsie left
+London and joined us here as soon as the Seraph was fit to travel.
+That was three days after Nigel's second raid. They must have been
+anxious days, as our rising young statesman seems to have been torn
+between a quite bloodthirsty lust for revenge and a morbid horror of
+another fiasco as humiliating as his search-party. Elsie went round by
+Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for
+Bombay and came overland to Rimini. When I met her and heard the
+details of her flight, I could tell her that all danger was over,
+and--if Justice had not been done--the stolen goods had at least been
+restored.
+
+The news reached us as we came out of the Bay. Gartside and I were on
+deck, watching the sun strike golden splinters out of the hock-bottle
+towers of the royal palace at Cintra. The wireless operator came down
+with a tapped message that Mrs. Millington had revealed the
+whereabouts of Mavis Rawnsley and young Paul Jefferson. He added that
+the police had so far discovered no trace of that hardened
+criminal--Miss Joyce Davenant.
+
+When Elsie joined us and told me the story of the Rawnsley raid, I
+could not help thinking once again, "_Plus ça change, plus c'est la
+même chose_." The gallant fight she had made for freedom and
+reputation ended in disaster, and she left England branded with the
+stigma that the Divorce Court had striven to impose and we had fought
+tooth and nail to remove. Joyce's struggle for the suffrage ended, as
+she now knows, in putting the suffrage further from the forefront of
+practical politics than it has been for a generation. When the
+recording angel allots to each one of us our share of responsibility
+in moulding the face of history, what effective change will be
+credited to the united or separate efforts of Rawnsleys and Rodens,
+Seraphs, Davenants and Merivales?
+
+Two results stand out. The first is a marriage that will be celebrated
+at the Consulate in a week's time, the second is a listless letter
+penned in exile, signed by the Seraph and dated from Yokohama. Joyce
+knows I am tolerably fond of her, and will acquit me of speaking
+rhetorically if I say that I would wipe the last eight months--and all
+they mean to us both--from the pages of Time, if I could spare the
+Seraph what he has been through since I dined with him that first
+evening at the Ritz. Here is the letter, and no one will be surprised
+to learn that I spent a melancholy day after reading it.
+
+"I send you the last chapters of Volume III. As you've waded through
+the earlier stuff, you may care to see the record brought up to date.
+I call it 'The End' because there's nothing more to write, and if
+there were, I shouldn't write it. Some day I suppose I may have to
+write again, when my present money (Roden's money) is exhausted. Not
+till then.
+
+"India was one disappointment, and Japan another, though the fault, I
+imagine, lay in my lack of appreciation. The South Seas will be a
+third. '_Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_.' I don't
+want to move on, but I can't stand Yokohama any longer.
+
+"When I get to San Francisco I shall probably cross the States,
+arriving in New York at the end of December. Then I suppose one has to
+see this Panama Canal. After that, God knows.
+
+"Before I left England I was looking for the MS. of the earlier
+chapters of Vol. III. I couldn't find them. Did you by any chance get
+them mixed up in your luggage? If so, please destroy them at once,
+with the new chapters, as soon as you have read them. Don't let
+anybody see them, even Joyce. In this I depend on your friendship and
+honour.
+
+"I hope Joyce is all right again now. Give my love to her and Elsie,
+and take my best wishes for yourself. You--I suppose--are a fixture at
+Rimini, or at any rate out of England. I can't answer for myself, but
+I don't expect we shall meet again. You must have found me a
+depressing host in London. I'm sorry. Good-bye."
+
+He said that even Joyce was not to see the third volume--put me on my
+honour, in fact--and see it she shall not. There is another reason. I
+read those last chapters and then went through the whole volume from
+beginning to end. Without exaggeration the effect was overwhelming--his
+style is so artless, his pathos so unpremeditated. I felt as if I had
+been re-reading Hardy's most poignant novels--"Tess" and "Jude" and "A
+Pair of Blue Eyes." It was horrible. I went up to my room, lit the fire
+and prepared for the holocaust.
+
+Then I was tempted. Yes, he puts me on my honour, depends on my
+friendship, all that sort of thing.... But I did not burn a sheet. It
+was a chilly evening, I lit a cigar, and waited for the pyre to burst
+into destructive flame. As I watched and meditated, Sylvia's little
+face seemed to look at me out of the fire, the black coals crowning
+her forehead as I used to see it crowned with her own lustrous hair. I
+thought of our last meeting when she struggled with her devils of
+pride and unbelief; and of her meeting with Elsie when she came in
+hope and left in humiliation. I confess I love Sylvia very
+dearly--love her as all men love her--for her beauty, her queenliness
+and clean, passionate pride; love her because I know something of her
+loneliness, her passion for service, and the repeated rejections of
+her sacrifices. And I love her a little more on my own account,
+because she talked to me as if I had been her own sister, and I
+perhaps know--better than any one--what she must have been through
+during those sad, mad months in England.
+
+Well, I broke faith with the Seraph and wrote her a line of overture.
+I was perhaps a fool to do it, as I had already had evidence in plenty
+of my incompetence to play the _rôle_ of Providence. "I am sending you
+the MS. of a book," I told her. "It is the third volume of Gordon
+Tremayne's 'Child of Misery'. I know you have read the first two
+volumes, for we have discussed and admired them together a dozen
+times. Did you ever suspect who the author was?
+
+"In telling you it was the Seraph, I am breaking my word to him and
+running the risk of being branded and disowned. I must tell you,
+though, to explain the existence of the third volume. I watched it
+being written, day by day. That evening on the Cher, when he
+anticipated some words you were going to say, the words had already
+been written down as part of the current chapter. I saw him brought up
+short when you were spirited away and the connection was broken. Most
+wonderful of all, I was present when the connection was re-established
+and he jumped up like one possessed, exclaiming, 'Sylvia wants me!'
+
+"When you have read these pages, you will not be in a position to
+doubt any longer. He loves you as no woman was ever loved before, and
+in him you have found the half that completes and interprets your
+'_âme incomprise_.' Get him back, Sylvia. I don't know how it's to be
+done, but you must use your woman's wit to find a way. I'm asking for
+his sake and yours, not for mine--though I would give much to see 'The
+Child of Misery' growing to happier manhood.
+
+"I am afraid you will say I am hardly the man to ask anything of you
+or yours. The Rodens and Merivales have hardly made a success of their
+recent relationship. But I should like to be forgiven. What is my
+crime? That I helped to keep justice from touching a woman who had
+done you and your family a great wrong. Well, Sylvia, you'd have done
+the same thing and told the same lies, had you been in my place and
+had you wanted Joyce as badly as I wanted her. So will you forgive me
+and be friends? And if you forgive me, will you forgive the woman
+who's going to be my wife in a few days' time? I must reconcile myself
+to the idea of being estranged from the rest of your family, but
+(between ourselves) I'll let 'em all go if you'll write and say Joyce
+and I are not quite such monsters of iniquity as you may have thought
+us.
+
+"One thing more. When you've read the third volume, you will no longer
+doubt that Mrs. Wylton's presence in Adelphi Terrace was due to
+charitable impulse towards Joyce and the Seraph. And you ought to
+think well of any one who played the Good Samaritan to the Seraph.
+Don't try to rehabilitate her character in public; it can only be done
+at a risk to the Seraph's personal safety. And in any case you won't
+convince a man like Nigel or the men he's already told the story to.
+
+"Return me the MS. when you've read it, will you? I was entrusted with
+its destruction, and put on honour not to let another soul read it.
+You see how I keep my trust. The worst thing you can say of me is what
+I've already said of myself--that most damning of all judgments--that
+I meant well."
+
+I sent that letter to Sylvia nine days ago, and received her reply
+this morning. She returned me the MS., and I burnt it--with the
+knowledge that I was destroying one of the greatest literary treasures
+of this generation.... Well, they had to do the same with some of
+Ruskin's letters.
+
+"I wish you had not told me to send you back the book," she began. "I
+should have liked to keep it. Or rather--I don't know--I half wish you
+hadn't sent it at all. The time that has passed since the beginning of
+August has been rather hard to bear, and the book has only turned
+misgiving into certainty.
+
+"Of course I forgive you! As if there were anything to forgive! And
+Miss Davenant too. I hope she is better now. Will you ask her to
+accept my love and best wishes for the future? And of course I include
+you. We were good friends, weren't we? As I said we should be the
+first time we met. Only I said then that you would find me worth
+having as a friend, and I'm afraid I did everything I could to
+disprove it. You stood me awfully well. I think you knew most of the
+dark corners in my mean little soul--and if you did, perhaps you see
+that I didn't do much beyond showing my true nature.
+
+"This isn't a pose--I'm really--well, I was going to say 'broken'--but
+I hope I'm a little more tolerant. You'd hardly recognise me if you
+saw me, there's little enough of the 'Queen Elizabeth' about me now.
+It's a horrid, flat world, and I wish I could find something in it to
+interest me. May I ask for just one good mark? You wrote to me when
+you left England, telling me to swallow my pride and go to see the
+Seraph. Well, it was a struggle, but I did go--as you know. When I got
+there, I seemed to find more than I could bear, and so of course
+everything went wrong. But I did try, and you will give me my one
+little good mark, won't you? I want it.
+
+"Mother says I'm run down and in need of a change, so Phil's taking me
+over to the United States at the beginning of December. There's a sort
+of Parliamentary Polytechnic Tour to Panama, every one who can get
+away is going to see the Canal. I don't in the least want to go, but I
+suppose the States can hardly be duller than England, and as long as
+mother thinks I must have a change, change I must have. If it isn't
+Panama it will be somewhere worse.
+
+"We shall spend Christmas in New York. Will you send me a letter of
+good wishes to the Fifth Avenue Hotel? And tell me where you are going
+to settle permanently and whether you will let me come and see you. If
+your wife will not mind, I should like to see you both again--well and
+happy, I hope. Somebody must be happy in this world, or it wouldn't go
+on. I don't want to lose you as a friend; I'm feeling lonely enough as
+it is.
+
+"I am hardly likely to see the Seraph again, but if you meet him, I
+should like you to give him a message. Say it is from a woman who did
+him a great wrong: say she now knows the wrong she did him and has
+been punished for it. Tell him you know how much she hates ever
+apologising or admitting she was wrong, but that she wants him to know
+of her apology before she finally passes out of his memory. Will you
+tell him that? It won't do any good, but it will make me more
+comfortable in my mind."
+
+At the bottom of the page six words had been scratched out. I did not
+mean to read them, but the obliteration was incomplete, and the
+firelight shining up through the paper enabled me to decipher: "Oh, my
+God, I am miserable." Then followed the signature: "Affectionately
+yours (may I sign myself 'affectionately'?) Sylvia."
+
+After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question
+how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and
+bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of
+attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and
+wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember
+the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons
+and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on
+the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect
+assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.
+
+On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had
+agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a
+suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought
+it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a
+villa at our leisure. Ambling out of the bank, I wandered in the
+direction of the telegraph office.
+
+Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging
+berths on the Wagon-Lits--I knew it would. As soon as our places were
+booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph
+at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired.
+"All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day,
+one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.--TOBY."
+
+Then I came back to the Villa Monreale.
+
+Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time.
+Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every
+moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the
+Seraph, and as husbands and wives _in posse_ should have no secrets
+from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a
+study.
+
+"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to
+see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."
+
+"Quite so," I assented.
+
+"Did you order rooms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then we can't go to New York."
+
+"I never proposed to."
+
+"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Toby!"
+
+She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by
+word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable
+sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim
+originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined
+it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I
+only borrowed it for the nonce.
+
+"Will--you--lunch--Christmas Day----" I pointed out. "It doesn't say
+we shall be there to receive him."
+
+"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since
+honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are
+married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little
+stratagem.
+
+"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.
+
+"Who?" she asked.
+
+"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.
+
+And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+            TRISTRAM.
+
+    "Raise the light, my page! that I may see her--
+      Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen?
+    Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever;
+      Late thou comest, cruel hast thou been."
+
+            ISEULT.
+
+    "Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried;
+      Bound I was, I could not break the band.
+    Chide not with the past, but feel the present!
+      I am here--we meet--I hold thy hand."
+
+            MATTHEW ARNOLD: "Tristram and Iseult."
+
+
+I had intended to write no more, but as we left the Consulate to-day
+after our wedding, a cable was handed me by my smiling Italian valet.
+
+"Paddy Culling for a bob!" I said, as I opened it and prepared for
+some whimsical message of congratulation.
+
+I was wrong. The cable was my reply from Yokohama.
+
+"No offence intended," it ran. "Delighted lunch as
+suggested.--SERAPH."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+       
+       
+       
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page   4: repellant replaced with repellent               |
+    | Page  52: "ths same advice" replaced with                 |
+    |           "the same advice"                               |
+    | Page  90: been been replaced with been                    |
+    | Page  95: torso replaced with trio                        |
+    | Page 119: "because its unique" replaced with              |
+    |           "because it's unique"                           |
+    | Page 125: femineity replaced with femininity              |
+    | Page 127: dispise replaced with despise                   |
+    | Page 217: Accent corrected from φυσεῖ to φύσει            |
+    | Page 233: Fraülein replaced with Fräulein                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  66: A sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance    |
+    |           and Baroque eras.                               |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
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+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sixth Sense, by Stephen McKenna
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Sixth Sense
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Stephen McKenna
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2011  [eBook #37164]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIXTH SENSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's note:                                        |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and dialect spelling in the       |
+    | original document has been preserved.                      |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Greek text is enclosed by plus signs (+Greek+)             |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For      |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.      |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN McKENNA
+
+Author of "The Reluctant Lovers" "Sheila Intervenes"
+
+
+   "The World is a Comedy to those that think, a tragedy
+   to those who feel."
+        _Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+� L'INTROUVABLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+        PROLOGUE. LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS                     1
+
+     I. WAR � OUTRANCE                                         25
+
+    II. SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC                                   46
+
+   III. BRANDON COURT                                          62
+
+    IV. THE FIRST ROUND                                        84
+
+     V. COMMEMORATION                                         103
+
+    VI. THE SECOND ROUND                                      123
+
+   VII. A CAUSE C�L�BRE                                       140
+
+  VIII. HENLEY--AND AFTER                                     160
+
+    IX. THE THIRD ROUND                                       178
+
+     X. THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION                      197
+
+    XI. THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE                                 214
+
+   XII. THE SIXTH SENSE                                       232
+
+  XIII. OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE                            247
+
+   XIV. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY                                263
+
+    XV. THE RAID                                              279
+
+   XVI. RIMINI                                                296
+
+        EPILOGUE                                              308
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS
+
+    "As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+I paused, with my foot on the lowest step of the Club, to mark the
+changes that had overtaken Pall Mall during my twenty years' absence
+from England.
+
+The old War Office, of course, was gone; some of the shops on the
+north side were being demolished; and the Automobile Club was new and
+unassimilated. In my day, too, the Athen�um had not been painted
+Wedgwood-green. Compared, however, with the Strand or Mall, Piccadilly
+or Whitehall, marvellously little change had taken place. I made an
+exception in favour of the character and velocity of the traffic: the
+bicycle boom was in its infancy when I left England: I returned to
+find the horse practically extinct, and the streets of London as
+dangerous as the railway stations of America.
+
+I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the London of
+1913.... Then I wondered if I should find anything to keep me long
+enough to grow acclimatised. Chance had brought me back to England,
+chance and the "wandering foot" might as easily bear me away again. It
+has always been a matter of indifference to me where I live, what I
+do, whom I meet. If I never seem to get bored, it is perhaps because I
+am never long enough in one place or at one occupation. There was no
+reason why England should not keep me amused....
+
+A man crossed the road and sold me a _Westminster Gazette_. I opened
+it to see what was engaging the England of 1913, remembering as I did
+so that the _Westminster_ was the last paper of importance to be
+published before I went abroad. As I glanced at the headlines, twenty
+years seemed to drop out of my life. Another Home Rule Bill was being
+acclaimed as the herald of the Millennium; Ulster was being told to
+fight and be right: the Welsh Church was once more being
+disestablished, while in foreign politics a confederation of Balkan
+States was spending its blood and treasure in clearing Europe of the
+Turk, to a faint echoing accompaniment of Gladstone's "bag and
+baggage" trumpet call. At home and abroad, English politics repeated
+themselves with curiously dull monotony.
+
+Then I turned to the middle page, and saw I had spoken too hastily.
+"Suffragette Outrages" seemed to fill three columns of the paper. My
+return to England had synchronised with a political campaign more
+ruthless, intransigeant and unyielding than anything since the Fenian
+outrages of my childhood. I read of unique fifteenth-century houses
+burnt to the ground, interrupted meetings, assaults on Ministers,
+sabotage in public buildings, and the demolition of plate-glass
+windows at the hands of an uncompromising, fearless and diabolically
+ingenious army of destroyers. On the other side of the account were
+entered long sentences, hunger-strikes, forcible feeding and something
+that was called "A Cat and Mouse Act." I was to hear more of that
+later: it was indeed the political parent of the "New Militant
+Campaign" whose life coincided with my own residence in England. I
+fancy the supporters of the bill like Roden, Rawnsley or Jefferson
+genuinely believed they had killed hunger-striking--and with it the
+spirit of militancy--when the Government assumed the power of
+imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning at will. The event proved
+that they had only driven militancy into a fresh channel....
+
+It is curious to reflect that as I at last mounted the steps and
+entered the Club, I was wondering where it would be possible to meet
+the resolute, indomitable women who formed the Council of War to the
+militant army. It would be a new, alluring experience. I was so
+occupied with my thoughts that I hardly noticed the hall porter
+confronting me with the offer of the New Members' Address Book.
+
+"Surely a new porter?" I suggested. At ten guineas a year for twenty
+years, it was costing me two hundred and ten pounds to enter the
+Club, and I did not care to have my expensive right challenged.
+
+"Seventeen years, sir," he answered with the gruff, repellent
+stiffness of the English official.
+
+"I must have been before your time, then," I said.
+
+Of course he disbelieved me, on the score of age if for no other
+reason; and the page boy who dogged my steps into the Cloak Room, was
+sent--I have no doubt--to act as custodian of the umbrellas. My age is
+forty-two, but I have never succeeded in looking more than about eight
+and twenty: perhaps I have never tried, as I find that a world of
+personal exertion and trouble is saved by allowing other people to do
+my trying, thinking, arranging for me ... whatever I am, others have
+made me.
+
+There was not a single familiar face in the hall, and I passed into
+the Morning Room, like a ghost ascending from Hades to call on �neas.
+Around me in arm-chair groups by the fire, or quarrelsome knots
+suspended over the day's bill of fare, were sleek, full-bodied
+creatures of dignified girth and portentous gravity--fathers of
+families, successes in life. These--I told myself--were my
+contemporaries; their faces were for the most part unknown, but this
+was hardly surprising as many of my friends are dead and most of the
+survivors are to be found at the Bar. A barrister with anything of a
+practice cannot afford time to lunch in the spacious atmosphere of
+Pall Mall, and the smaller the practice, the greater his anxiety to
+conceal his leisure. For a moment I felt painfully insignificant,
+lonely and unfriended.
+
+I was walking towards the Coffee Room when a heavy hand descended on
+my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out----
+
+"Toby, by Gad!"
+
+No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to
+find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face
+extending a diffident palm.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of
+surprise. "I thought for a moment...."
+
+"You were right," I interrupted.
+
+"Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you
+were dead."
+
+The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning.
+
+"That's not original," I objected.
+
+"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
+
+"You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was
+before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's
+Attorney-General."
+
+"By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a
+second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing
+with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?"
+
+"As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began.
+
+"'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he
+interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for
+the third of a lifetime...."
+
+"You've not ordered yourself any lunch."
+
+"Oh, hang lunch!"
+
+"But you haven't ordered any for me, either."
+
+My poor story--for what it was worth--started with the plovers' eggs,
+and finished neck-to-neck with the cheese. I told him how I had gone
+down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to
+India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying
+him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines
+of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the
+Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months
+when we all lay _perdus_ wondering what course the Government was
+going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the
+war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in
+despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in
+between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene
+of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation,
+during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or
+sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another.
+
+"What brings you home now?" he asked.
+
+"Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and
+when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a
+touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come
+himself, so suggested I should take charge. _J'y suis_...."
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to
+make...."
+
+"Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire."
+
+"Done."
+
+"You're not married?"
+
+"'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray believes Dr. Johnson ought
+to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be
+indecent.'"
+
+"And never will be, I suppose."
+
+"I've no plans. You, of course...."
+
+I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me
+all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me
+remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my
+absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of
+children before I left England; I had no idea how far the
+ramifications went.
+
+It appeared that his wife--who was still living--had presented him
+with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and
+member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and
+unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and
+Michael, an _enfant terrible_ of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy
+there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in
+Cadogan Square or Brandon Court.
+
+In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful
+man. I remember him during the barren first few years of practice, but
+soon after my departure from England reports used to reach me showing
+the increasing volume of his work, until he became one of the busiest
+juniors on the Common Law side, reading briefs at four in the morning,
+and sending a clerk out to buy his new clothes. After taking silk at
+an early age, he had entered the House and been made Attorney-General
+in 1912.
+
+"I was appointed the same day your brother was raised to the Bench,"
+he told me.
+
+"I should think he makes a pretty bad Judge," I suggested.
+
+"Resolute," said Arthur. "We want firmness."
+
+I knew what that meant. According to unsympathetic papers, Mr. Justice
+Merivale had conducted a Bloody Assize among the Militants of the
+Suffrage Army. When Roden prosecuted in person, there was short shrift
+indeed.
+
+"We've killed militancy between us," he boasted.
+
+"And I understand you're burnt together in effigy."
+
+His face grew suddenly stern.
+
+"They haven't stopped at that. There've been two attempts to fire
+Brandon Court, and one wing of your brother's house was burnt down a
+few weeks ago. I expect you found him rather shaken."
+
+"I haven't seen him yet."
+
+Arthur looked surprised.
+
+"Oh, you ought to," he said. "I'm afraid he won't be able to last out
+the rest of the term without a change. It's got on his nerves. Got on
+his wife's nerves, too. Your niece is the only one who doesn't seem to
+care; but then I think girls have very little imagination. It's the
+same with Sylvia. By the way, I suppose you know you've got a niece?"
+
+We paid our bills, and walked upstairs to the Smoking Room.
+
+"What'll be their next move?" I asked.
+
+"I don't think there will be a next move," he answered slowly. "What
+can they do?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"I'm only an onlooker, but d'you believe this Cat and Mouse Act is
+going to stop them? My knowledge is mere newspaper knowledge, but to
+be beaten by a device like that--it isn't in keeping with the
+character of the women who've organised the Militant Campaign so far."
+
+"What _can_ they do?" he repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"They don't either. One or two of the most determined law breakers are
+in reality spies; they've kept us posted in the successive steps of
+the campaign up to the present. Now they report that there's no plan
+for the future. They know it would be futile to start assassination;
+if they go on burning and breaking, a proportion of them get caught
+and punished. Hunger striking's been killed by the Cat and Mouse Act.
+Well, militancy's dead, Toby. If you come down to the House to-night,
+you'll be present at the funeral."
+
+"What's happening?"
+
+"It's the division on the Suffrage amendment to the Electoral Reform
+Bill. Hullo! here's Philip. Let me introduce my eldest son."
+
+I made friends with Philip as we crossed the Park and entered the
+House. He was curiously like the Arthur I had known twenty years
+before--tall, dark-haired, clean-featured, with an exuberant zest for
+life tempered to an almost imperceptible degree by the reserve of the
+responsible public man. The physical and mental vigour of father and
+son left me silently admiring; as they hurried along at a swinging
+five miles an hour, I took stock of their powerful, untiring frames,
+quick movements, and crisp, machine-made speech. They were hard,
+business-like, unimaginative, with the qualities of those defects and
+the defects of those qualities; trained, taught, and equipped to play
+the midwife to any of the bureaucratic social reforms that have been
+brought into the English political world the last few years, but
+helpless and impotently perplexed in face of an idea outside their
+normal ken. They were highly efficient average English politicians.
+Either or both would reform you the Poor Law, nationalise a railway,
+or disestablish a Church; but send Philip to India, set Arthur to
+carry out Cromer's work in Egypt, and you would see English dominion
+driven from two continents as speedily as North drove it from America.
+It was one of the paradoxes of English politics that Arthur should
+have been entrusted with the problem of Suffrage militancy, a paradox
+of the same order as that whereby Strafford grappled with the problem
+of a parliamentary system.
+
+"You'll stay a few minutes," Philip urged as I abandoned him to Empire
+and wandered off to pay my belated respects to my brother.
+
+I glanced round me and shook my head. I would not grow old all at
+once, and yet--Gladstone was Prime Minister when I left England: his
+statue now dominated the public lobby. And Salisbury, Harcourt,
+Chamberlain, Parnell, Labby--their voices were sunk in the great
+silence. In my day Committee Room Number Fifteen used to be an object
+of historic interest....
+
+    "They say the lion and the lizard keep
+    The Halls where Jamshyd gloried, and drank deep:
+      And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass
+    Stamps o'er his head, and he lies fast asleep."
+
+I quoted the lines to Philip apologetically, reminding him that the
+Omar Khayyam vogue had not come in when I left England. "I shall see
+you at Brandon Court," I added.
+
+"What are you going to do till then?" he asked.
+
+"Heaven knows! I never make arrangements. Things just happen to me. I
+always contrive to be in the thick of whatever's going on. I don't
+know how long I shall stay in England, or where I shall go to
+afterwards. But whether it's a railway strike or a coronation, I shall
+be there. I don't like it, I'm a peaceful man by nature, but I can't
+help it. I always get dragged into these things."
+
+Philip scratched his chin thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't know that we've got any great sensations at the present
+time," he said.
+
+"Something will turn up," I answered in the words of one greater than
+myself, as I waved my hand in farewell and started back in the
+direction of the Club.
+
+I knew my brother would not leave Court till at least four o'clock, so
+I had to dispose of an hour before it was time to call round in Pont
+Street. The Club had emptied since luncheon, and I drew blank in one
+place after another until fate directed my steps to the Card Room.
+There were two men playing b�zique, one of them poor Tom Wilding whom
+I had left lame and returned to find half paralysed and three parts
+blind. The other--who played with a wonderful patience, calling the
+names of the cards--I recognised as my young friend Lambert Aintree
+who had parted from me in Morocco five years before. I reminded them
+both of my identity, and we sat gossiping till an attendant arrived to
+wheel poor Wilding away for his afternoon drive.
+
+Leaving the card-table, Aintree joined me on the window-seat and
+subjected my face, clothes and general appearance to a rapid scrutiny.
+It was the practised, comprehensive glance of an old physician in
+making diagnosis, and I waited for him to pronounce on my case. Five
+years ago in Morocco he had exhibited a disconcerting and almost
+uncanny skill in reading character and observing little forgotten
+points that every one else missed. The results of his observation were
+usually shrouded in the densest veils of uncommunicativeness: I
+sometimes wonder if I have ever met a more silent man. When you could
+get him to talk, he was usually worth hearing: for the most part,
+however, talking like every other form of activity seemed too much of
+an exertion. I understand him now better than I did, but I am not so
+foolish as to pretend that I understand him completely. I am a man of
+three dimensions: Aintree, I am convinced, was endowed with the
+privilege of a fourth.
+
+"Well?" I said invitingly, as he brought his examination to an end and
+looked out of the window.
+
+His answer was to throw me over a cigarette and light one himself.
+
+"Take an interest in me," I said plaintively. "Say you thought I was
+dead...."
+
+"Everyone's said that."
+
+"True," I admitted.
+
+"And they've all asked you when you landed, and how long you were
+staying, and what brought you to England."
+
+"It would be rather friendly if you did the same."
+
+"You couldn't tell me--any more than you could tell them."
+
+"But I could. It was Sunday morning."
+
+"About then. I knew that. You've been here long enough to get English
+clothes, and," he gave me another rapid look, "to have them made for
+you. How long you're here for--you don't know."
+
+"Not to a day," I conceded. "Well, why did I come?"
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"Pardon me." I told him of my visit to Malta and the charitable
+guardianship of my friend's convalescent wife.
+
+"But that wasn't the real reason."
+
+"It was the only reason."
+
+"The only one you thought of at the time."
+
+I was amazed at the certainty of his tone.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said. "I am a more or less rational creature, a
+reason comes along and compels me to do a thing. If I were a woman, no
+doubt I should do a thing and find reasons for it afterwards."
+
+"Don't you ever do a thing on impulse, instinctively? And analyse your
+motives afterwards to see what prompted you?"
+
+"Oh, possibly. But not on this occasion."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"What are you driving at?" I asked.
+
+"You'll find out in time."
+
+"I should like to know now."
+
+Aintree inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and answered with eyes
+half-closed.
+
+"Most men of your age wake up one morning to find they've turned
+forty. They feel it would be good to renew their youth, they play with
+the idea of getting married."
+
+"Is this to my address?" I asked.
+
+"D'you feel it applies to your case?"
+
+"I can solemnly assure you that such an idea never crossed my mind."
+
+"Not consciously."
+
+"Nor unconsciously."
+
+"What do you know of the unconscious ideas in your own mind?"
+
+"Hang it," I said, "what do _you_ know of the unconscious ideas in
+my--or any one else's mind?"
+
+"I'm interested in them," he answered quietly. "Tell me if you ever
+feel my prophecy coming true."
+
+"You shall be best man," I promised him. "Married! One doesn't marry
+at my age."
+
+It was a glorious spring afternoon, and I suggested that he should
+accompany me part of my way to Pont Street.
+
+"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself since you stayed with me
+five years ago," I said as we stepped into Pall Mall.
+
+He seemed to shiver and retreat into his shell as soon as the
+conversation became focussed on himself.
+
+"I've done nothing," he answered briefly, and relapsed into one of his
+wonted spells of silence.
+
+In the blazing afternoon sunlight I returned him the compliment of a
+careful scrutiny. He had come to Morocco five years before as a boy of
+one-and-twenty just down from Oxford. A girl to whom he had been
+engaged had died of consumption a few months before, and he was
+straying into the Desert, broken, unnerved, and hopeless, to forget
+her. I must have seemed sympathetic, or he would not have unburdened
+himself of the whole pitiful little tragedy. At twenty-one you feel
+these things more keenly perhaps than in after life; there were
+moments when I feared he was going to follow her....
+
+Five years may have healed the wound, but they left him listless,
+dispirited, and sore. He was more richly endowed with nerves than any
+man or woman I know, and all the energy of his being seemed
+requisitioned to keep them under control. Less through love of mystery
+than for fear of self-betrayal his face wore the expressionless mask
+of a sphynx. He was fair, thin, and pale, with large frightened eyes,
+sapphire blue in colour, and troubled with the vague, tired
+restlessness that you see in overwrought, sensitive women. The nose
+and mouth were delicate and almost ineffeminate, with lips tightly
+closed as though he feared to reveal emotion in opening them. You see
+women and children with mouths set in that thin, hard line when they
+know a wickering lip or catch in the breath will give the lie to their
+brave front. And there were nerves, nerves, nerves everywhere, never
+so much present as when the voice was lazily drawling, the hands
+steady, and the eyes dreamily half-closed. I wonder if anything ever
+escaped those watchful, restless eyes; his entire soul seemed stored
+up and shining out of them; and I wonder what was the process of
+deduction in his curious, quick, feminine brain. Before I left England
+I tried to evolve a formula that would fit him; "a woman's senses and
+intuition in a man's body" was the best I could devise, and I am
+prepared at once to admit the inadequacy of the label. For one thing
+his intuition transcended that of any woman I have ever known.
+
+As he would not talk about himself, I started to wile away the time by
+telling him of my meeting with the Rodens, and their invitation to
+Hampshire.
+
+"I was asked too," he told me. "I shan't go."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Unsociability, I suppose. I don't go out much."
+
+"It's a bachelor's party, I understand."
+
+"That's the best thing I've heard about it. Did they say who'd be
+there? If you're not careful you'll have politics to eat, politics to
+drink, and politics to smoke."
+
+"Come and create a diversion," I suggested.
+
+"I'll think about it. Is Phil going to be there? Oh, then it won't be
+a bachelor party. I could name one young woman who will be there for
+certain, only I mustn't make mischief. Did you find Roden much
+changed?"
+
+I tried to sort out my impressions of Arthur.
+
+"Harder than he used to be. I shouldn't care to be a militant
+prosecuted by him."
+
+Aintree raised his eyebrows slightly.
+
+"I don't think they mind him; they can look after themselves."
+
+"I've never met one."
+
+"Would you like to?"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Joyce Davenant, the queen bee of the swarm. Dine with me to-night at
+the Ritz; seven o'clock, I'm afraid, but we are going to a first
+night."
+
+"Is she a daughter of old Jasper Davenant? I used to shoot with him."
+
+"The younger daughter. Do you know her sister, Mrs. Wylton? She's
+coming too. You'd better meet her," he went on with a touch of acidity
+in his tone, "you'll hear her name so much during the next few months
+that it will be something to say you've seen her in the flesh."
+
+I only remembered Elsie Wylton as a young girl with her hair down her
+back. Of her husband, Arnold Wylton, I suppose every one has heard; he
+enjoys the reputation of being a man who literally cannot be flogged
+past a petticoat. How such a girl came to marry such a man no rational
+person has ever been able to explain; and it never sweetens the
+amenities of debate to talk vaguely of marriages being made in heaven.
+I met Wylton twice, and on both occasions he was living in retirement
+abroad. I have no wish to meet him a third time.
+
+"How did she ever come to marry a fellow like that?" I asked.
+
+Aintree shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Her father was dead, or he'd have stopped it. Nobody else felt it
+their business to interfere, and it wouldn't have made the slightest
+difference if they had. You know what the Davenants are like--or
+perhaps you don't. Nothing shakes them when they've made up their
+minds to do a thing."
+
+"But didn't she know the man's reputation?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't suppose so. Wylton had never been mixed up in any overt
+scandal, so the women wouldn't know; and it's always a tall order for
+a man to lay information against another man when a girl's engaged to
+marry him. She just walked into it with her eyes shut."
+
+"And now she's divorcing him at last?"
+
+"The other way about."
+
+I felt sure I could not have heard him correctly.
+
+"The other way about," he repeated deliberately. "Oh, she'd have got
+rid of him years ago if he'd given her the chance! Wylton was too
+clever; he knew the divorce law inside out; he was alive to all its
+little technicalities. He's sailed close to the wind a number of
+times, but never close enough to be in danger."
+
+"And what's happening now?" I asked.
+
+"She's forced his hand--gone to some trouble to compromise herself.
+She couldn't divorce him, it was the only way, she's making him
+divorce her. Rather a burlesque of justice, isn't it? Elsie Wylton,
+the respondent in an undefended action! The daughter of Jasper
+Davenant--one of the finest, cleanest, bravest women I know. And the
+successful petitioner will be Arnold Wylton, who ought to have been
+thrashed out of half the houses and clubs in London. Who ought to have
+been cited as a co-respondent half a dozen times over if he hadn't
+been so clever in covering up his tracks. I wonder if he's got
+sufficient humour to appreciate the delicate irony of _his_ coming
+sanctimoniously into court to divorce _her_. It's a sickening
+business, we won't discuss it--but it will be the one topic of
+conversation in a few weeks' time."
+
+We walked in silence for a few yards.
+
+"Was the man any one of note?" I asked. "The co-respondent?"
+
+"Fellow in the Indian Army," Aintree answered. "I don't suppose you
+know him. It was a bogus case; he just lent his name."
+
+I sniffed incredulously.
+
+"The world won't believe _that_," I said.
+
+"Elsie's going to make it."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"She can't. Would you?"
+
+"Most certainly. So will you when you've met her. You knew the father
+well? She's her father's own daughter."
+
+The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a
+horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of
+married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his
+true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper,
+never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North
+American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with
+little loss of essential characteristics.
+
+"I look forward to meeting them both," I said as we parted at
+Buckingham Gate. "Seven o'clock? I'll try not to be late."
+
+Walking on alone through Sloane Square, something set me thinking of
+my boast to Philip Roden. Within three hours I was apparently going to
+meet one woman whose name was mixed up with the most prominent _cause
+c�l�bre_ of the year, and another who was a _cause c�l�bre_ in
+herself--the redoubtable Miss Joyce Davenant of the Militant Suffrage
+Union. That my introduction should come from the peace-loving,
+nerve-ridden Aintree, was in accordance with the best ironical
+traditions of life. I was not surprised then: I should have still less
+reason to be surprised now. In the last six months he has placed me
+under obligations which I shall never be able to meet: in all
+probability he expects no repayment; the active side of his unhappy,
+fatalistic temperament is seen in his passionate desire to make life
+less barren and melancholy for others. Tom Wilding can testify to this
+at the b�zique table: Elsie and Joyce and I can endorse the testimony
+in a hundred ways and half a hundred places.
+
+As I turned into Pont Street a private car was drawn up by the kerb
+opposite my brother's house. I dawdled for a few steps while a pretty,
+brown-eyed, black-haired girl said good-bye to a friend at the door
+and drove away. It was no more than a glimpse that I caught, but the
+smiling, small-featured face attracted me. I wondered who she was, and
+who was the girl with auburn hair who persisted in standing on my
+brother's top step long after the car was out of sight, instead of
+retiring indoors and leaving me an unembarrassed entry.
+
+I pretended not to see her as I mounted the steps, but the pretence
+was torn away when I heard her addressing me as "Uncle Simon."
+
+"You must be Gladys," I said, wondering if I looked as sheepish as I
+felt. "How did you recognise me?"
+
+"By your photograph," she said. "You haven't altered a bit."
+
+On the whole I carried it off fairly well, though I was glad Arthur
+Roden was not present after my implied familiarity with my niece's
+existence. Of course I knew I had a niece, and that her birthday
+fell--like the Bastille--on July 14th. Usually I remembered the date
+and sent her some little trifle, and she would write me a friendly
+letter of thanks. If I had kept count of the number of birthdays, I
+should have known she was now nineteen, but then one never does keep
+count of these things. Frankly, I had imagined her to be about seven
+or eight, and her handwriting--by becoming steadily more unformed and
+sporadic the older she grew--did nothing to dispel the illusion.
+Instead of curious little pieces of jewellery I might easily have sent
+her a doll....
+
+"Where's the Judge?" I asked as she kissed me and led the way upstairs
+to her room.
+
+"He's not home yet," she answered to my relief.
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+But my sister-in-law also was out, and I reconciled myself without
+difficulty to the prospect of taking tea alone with my niece. Possibly
+as a romantic reaction from her father, possibly with her mother Eve's
+morbid craving for forbidden fruit, Gladys had elevated me into a
+Tradition. The whole of her pretty, sun-splashed room seemed hung with
+absurd curios I had sent her from out-of-the-way parts of the world,
+while on a table by the window stood a framed photograph of myself in
+tweeds that only an undergraduate would have worn, and a tie loosely
+arranged in a vast sailor's knot after the unsightly fashion of the
+early 'nineties. My hair was unduly long, and at my feet lay a large
+dog; it must have been a property borrowed for the purpose, as I hate
+and have always hated dogs.
+
+"A wasted, unsatisfactory life, Gladys," I said as my tour of
+inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd
+known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."
+
+"Would you like to now?"
+
+In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so
+literally or promptly.
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Your father and mother...."
+
+"Would you if I were left an orphan?"
+
+"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in
+joke."
+
+Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a
+menacing angle.
+
+"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.
+
+"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I
+prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan
+in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."
+
+I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in
+domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden
+had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his
+person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted
+violence, had seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he
+was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose
+at Whitsun.
+
+"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's
+going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want
+to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to
+take me through the Bay."
+
+"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother
+has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable
+family of two.
+
+"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping.
+"The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on
+Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."
+
+"I can imagine worse fates."
+
+"For her? or for me?"
+
+"Either or both."
+
+"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll
+adopt me, I'll introduce you."
+
+"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon
+Court improving my acquaintance with her."
+
+Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.
+
+"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just
+as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my
+guardian...."
+
+"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents
+to decide. You can guess my feelings."
+
+I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was
+then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree
+and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the
+following night.
+
+"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll
+only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got
+a book?"
+
+I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of
+late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the
+head.
+
+"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was
+incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.
+
+Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me
+reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged
+to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble,
+nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions
+or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For
+a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in
+England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is
+one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in
+England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into
+effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor
+points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory,
+but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.
+
+It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I
+had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now
+shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this
+date--to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant,
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my
+first glimpse of Sylvia....
+
+Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then
+natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander
+abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil
+and excitement of the following six months.
+
+I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAR � OUTRANCE
+
+      "RIDGEON: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I
+      cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart;
+      sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me,
+      but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is
+      going to happen....
+
+      SIR PATRICK: You are sure there are no voices?
+
+      RIDGEON: Quite sure.
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Then it's only foolishness.
+
+      RIDGEON: Have you ever met anything like it before in your
+      practice?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the
+      ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on
+      again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see.
+      It's not serious--if you're careful.
+
+      RIDGEON: About my food?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going
+      to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."
+
+                  BERNARD SHAW: "The Doctor's Dilemma."
+
+
+I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had
+quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of
+the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin
+and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and
+South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I
+associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it
+must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet
+returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by
+the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair
+and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real
+life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are
+cherishing an illusion.
+
+I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of
+the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by
+flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant
+brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I
+was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and
+Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still
+unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut
+hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted
+to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as
+they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large
+enough to hold a rein.
+
+When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young
+draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie
+was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a
+subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball
+at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the
+hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as
+they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked,
+golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father
+to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with
+pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth
+it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper
+to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to
+establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off
+this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me
+again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate
+shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd
+better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.
+I've had my fun."
+
+The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of
+the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half
+moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to
+compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with
+uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had
+run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the
+hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third;
+but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had
+a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a
+poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the
+day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen
+and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and
+Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve
+hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name
+before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in
+the suffrage agitation.
+
+"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as
+Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I
+shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"
+
+"Twenty years," I said. "You have--grown, rather."
+
+She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright
+golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered
+in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure,
+and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.
+
+I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness
+between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band
+of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and
+wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only
+differences--until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw
+that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of
+her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went
+out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I
+hardly know what to call it--homage, allegiance, devotion. She
+impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this
+life--Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more--with the feeling that
+I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would
+always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among
+straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was
+twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim
+and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.
+
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.
+
+"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared
+to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we _did_
+meet?"
+
+"The last time I heard of you...." I began.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some
+pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait
+a bit--'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach
+to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a
+compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant
+hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at
+the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front--he's too good
+for this world--he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm
+afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed--that is, if we ever did
+meet."
+
+"As I was saying...."
+
+"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of
+interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time
+we met...."
+
+"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came
+to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary
+to your happiness. It was an _id�e fixe_, you were a fanatic, you
+broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When
+I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an
+insufficient allowance of bread and water."
+
+Joyce shook her head sadly.
+
+"I was an awful child."
+
+"Was?"
+
+She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.
+
+"Haven't I improved?"
+
+"You were a wonderfully pretty child."
+
+"Oh, never mind looks!"
+
+"But I do. They're the only things worth having."
+
+"They're not enough."
+
+"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."
+
+"In any case they don't last."
+
+"And while they do, you slight them."
+
+"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room
+to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow,
+childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."
+
+"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a
+dinner-service to get a pony."
+
+"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"
+
+"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. _Plus �a change, plus
+c'est la m�me chose._ You are still not content with looking extremely
+nice, you _must_ break a dinner-service now and again."
+
+Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident
+proposition.
+
+"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.
+
+"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince
+you of your error."
+
+"I get condemned to that now."
+
+"Dull eating, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't know. I've never tried."
+
+"You did then?"
+
+"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."
+
+We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.
+
+"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful
+child of five that I remember so well."
+
+"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.
+
+How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an
+admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much
+to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs.
+Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was
+approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the
+Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table,
+living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in
+its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the
+present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out
+of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the
+future as the past....
+
+I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like
+dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written
+and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told
+her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she
+had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when
+sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one
+to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a
+determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into
+the Prime Minister's private room.
+
+The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the
+ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and
+hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the
+Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling
+campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without
+the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been
+decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and
+then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a
+General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain
+Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into
+the scale of the Opposition candidate.
+
+Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had
+promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced
+to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by
+an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh
+terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the
+institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible
+Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat
+and Mouse" Bill.
+
+I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been
+against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often
+that Joyce herself would stick at nothing--fire, flood or dynamite--to
+secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be
+thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right,
+responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt
+pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof
+from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her
+countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of
+art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and
+burning down unique, priceless houses.
+
+"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I
+renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me
+down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant
+movement."
+
+Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of
+mankind.
+
+"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't
+you?"
+
+"He seemed quite certain of the result."
+
+"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he
+had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one
+at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."
+
+I reminded her that she had not answered my question.
+
+"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers,"
+I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the
+constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"
+
+Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her
+head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through
+the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks
+breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be
+serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.
+
+"What would _you_ do?" she asked.
+
+"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to _force majeure_. I've lived long
+enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."
+
+"But if we _won't_ give it up?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to
+be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the
+Amendment's rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the
+first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the _New
+Militant_, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most
+of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign,
+rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No
+more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just
+where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she
+concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."
+
+Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.
+
+"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to
+grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away,
+or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you
+adopted militant tactics."
+
+"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I
+requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the
+name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better
+description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened
+eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like
+it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full
+of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you
+like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."
+
+"I don't know that I can."
+
+Joyce turned to her sister.
+
+"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"
+
+"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.
+
+"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, laying her hand on
+my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very
+little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on
+either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to
+refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There
+are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all
+get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because
+the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial
+franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory
+workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who
+bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and
+leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you
+say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an
+impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further
+forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your
+head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."
+
+She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted
+almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.
+
+"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted
+one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still
+the stronger."
+
+"And woman the more resourceful."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished
+her coffee and drew on her gloves.
+
+"War _� outrance_," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what
+after the war?"
+
+"When we've got the vote...." she began.
+
+"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.
+
+"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win,
+do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share
+of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality
+with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.
+
+"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce
+Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"
+
+"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her
+father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and
+fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was
+very angry and whipped her with a crop."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's all. Only--he said afterwards that she took it rather well,
+there was no crying."
+
+I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way
+appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.
+
+"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.
+
+"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she
+interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.
+
+"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."
+
+Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out
+of the dining-room with Aintree.
+
+"_She's_ worth some sacrifice."
+
+"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation.
+She's up against the existing divorce law, and that's buttressed by
+every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're
+starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."
+
+Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.
+
+"Joyce?" she repeated.
+
+"You were Joyce when last we met."
+
+"That was twenty years ago."
+
+"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."
+
+"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"
+
+"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with
+laborious antithesis.
+
+"Then I haven't improved?"
+
+"You're perfect--off duty, in private life."
+
+"I have no private life."
+
+"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."
+
+"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I
+say good-bye to you."
+
+"But not for good?"
+
+"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If
+you like to come in as an ally...?"
+
+"Do you think you could convert me?"
+
+She looked at me closely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.
+
+"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're
+dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."
+
+"How long will you be in England?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Six months? In six months I'll make you the Prince Rupert of the
+militant army. Then when we're sent to prison--Sir Arthur Roden's a
+friend of yours--you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and
+we'll tap on the dividing wall."
+
+I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on
+segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however,
+for captious criticism.
+
+"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from
+your militant army."
+
+"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"
+
+"I've never found anything worth doing before."
+
+"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."
+
+"They haven't the monopoly of that."
+
+Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the
+word "Cheek!"
+
+"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of
+the law."
+
+"I don't expect to hear _you_ calling the law and the prophets in
+aid."
+
+"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she
+answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.
+
+"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I
+am going to make the best of it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."
+
+"How?" she repeated.
+
+"I'll tell you in six months' time."
+
+Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her
+sister vanished from sight.
+
+"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.
+
+"Which?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.
+
+"They are astonishingly alike," I said _� propos_ of nothing.
+
+"They're often mistaken for each other."
+
+"I can well believe it."
+
+"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.
+
+I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was
+thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his
+mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping
+imperceptibly away."
+
+I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.
+And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph
+interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and
+my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy
+directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her
+audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to
+do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the
+graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless
+front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the
+laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when
+one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready
+to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.
+It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of
+Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English
+imagination....
+
+"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"
+
+"What influence have _I_ got over her?"
+
+"Some--not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, _I_'ve no
+control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I
+say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."
+
+"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I
+objected.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."
+
+The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was _The Heir-at-Law_,
+and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my
+residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may
+still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic
+success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of
+characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a
+masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going,
+and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know;
+possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats,
+possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as _virtuosi_, and
+say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had
+had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually
+had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were
+often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted
+substantial cutting.
+
+"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were _The
+Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and _A Woman of No Importance_."
+
+Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we
+thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely
+of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many
+revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little
+out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to
+understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed
+in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with
+fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the
+inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....
+
+"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.
+
+"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.
+
+"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote
+plays."
+
+"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"
+
+"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the
+coming men."
+
+I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across
+Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had
+read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from
+the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage:
+then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his
+"Child of Misery."
+
+I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece
+of self-revelation--"Jean Christophe"--which in many ways it so
+closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and
+"Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than
+"Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero--for want of a better
+name--was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers
+with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme
+would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you
+the childhood and upbringing of Rupert--and incidentally revealed to
+my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive
+boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage
+to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental
+prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how
+the third volume would shape....
+
+"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by
+jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.
+
+From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or
+two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived
+from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were
+in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one
+quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was
+pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a
+moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we
+had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous
+explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the
+box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing
+mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious
+that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of
+nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that
+occasion for the first, last and only time.
+
+_The Heir-at-Law_ went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end
+of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain
+while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of
+"Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the
+curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.
+
+"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager
+had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was
+not in the house.
+
+We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.
+
+"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.
+Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as
+a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in
+turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be
+credited with the dominant mind of the party.
+
+"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop
+short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a
+wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening
+paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill
+were four gigantic words:--
+
+        DEFEAT OF SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.
+
+Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.
+
+"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I
+go to bed."
+
+"When shall I see you again?" I asked.
+
+She held out a small gloved hand.
+
+"You won't. It's good-bye."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"It's war _� outrance_."
+
+"That's no concern of mine."
+
+"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."
+
+I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.
+
+"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head provokingly.
+
+"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason,
+justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when
+I think of my wasted chances...."
+
+"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."
+
+"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put
+the two women inside it.
+
+"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.
+
+"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."
+
+"I shall convert you."
+
+"If there's any conversion...."
+
+"When are you coming?" she interrupted.
+
+"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun
+with the Rodens."
+
+Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and
+then abruptly congratulated me.
+
+"What on?" I asked.
+
+"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked
+itself epileptically away from the kerb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC
+
+      "I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ...
+      I see your soul."--JOHN MASEFIELD, "The Tragedy of Nan."
+
+
+I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it
+disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an
+invitation to supper.
+
+"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me
+alone," I heard him murmuring.
+
+At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down
+by myself, and think--think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion
+of thinking.
+
+"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the
+direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose,
+I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at
+dinner."
+
+"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a
+minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
+
+I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a
+powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many
+years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of
+what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of
+six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little
+grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the
+need.
+
+"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.
+
+"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled
+to-night."
+
+He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for
+the powders had trembled more than was necessary.
+
+"You were all right at dinner," I said.
+
+"That was some time ago," he answered.
+
+"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."
+
+"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.
+
+Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge
+dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as
+silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of
+other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the
+arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told
+him to talk to me.
+
+"What about?" he asked.
+
+"Anything."
+
+"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past
+three hours in particular."
+
+"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.
+
+He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs
+crossed.
+
+"Don't you think it strange and--unsettling? Three months ago life
+was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day
+was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt
+lonely--lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four
+hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten
+it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the
+vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on?
+You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent,
+that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then
+you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then
+exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not
+going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to
+find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to
+save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now
+you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think
+that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall
+tell you how I know."
+
+I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials
+with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.
+
+"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Suppose it was?"
+
+His shoulders gave a slight shrug.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."
+
+I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.
+
+"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that
+I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"
+
+"Not the world."
+
+"You?"
+
+"As a rule. Not more than other people."
+
+"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"
+
+"I can with a good many men."
+
+"Not women?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and
+starts--jerkily; it's hard to follow them."
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the
+expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in
+succession--you just _see_."
+
+"I'm hanged if I do."
+
+"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening
+dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction
+of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't
+it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes
+between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken
+at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to
+go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be.
+You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're
+flabbergasted that _I_ should be the person. You're impotently angry.
+Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're
+going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether
+I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little
+thought--will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head
+because it'll hurt more. Still another thought--how hard to hit? You
+don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide
+to be on the safe side and hit rather gently. Then--then at last
+you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"
+
+I thought it over very carefully.
+
+"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each
+other. There isn't time."
+
+The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.
+
+"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was
+introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly
+assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into
+such attitudes."
+
+"How do you account for it?" I asked.
+
+"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."
+
+I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather
+than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then
+I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh--er--porter, taxi,
+please."
+
+"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.
+
+"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"
+
+"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.
+
+He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."
+
+I jumped up and ran into the hall.
+
+"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.
+
+"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.
+
+I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.
+
+"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get
+interested."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Why not?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot
+more that I haven't told you about. I only----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking
+drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather--abnormal."
+
+"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"Occupy your mind more."
+
+"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as
+we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.
+
+As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace,
+our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we
+had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in
+aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm
+that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two
+thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side
+like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent
+conversation.
+
+As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh
+train of thought.
+
+"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness
+one employs in advancing these general propositions.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young
+friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going
+on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to
+paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that
+gets published, the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my
+question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six
+psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James
+there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power
+that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and
+observation, comes to you--by some freak of nature--ready made. You
+could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"
+
+"I might try."
+
+"I know what that means."
+
+"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your
+advice."
+
+"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.
+
+"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."
+
+"I'm still waiting to see the result."
+
+"You've seen it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."
+
+"In my sleep?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."
+
+"I didn't write in my own name."
+
+"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.
+
+His lips opened, and then shut in silence.
+
+"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.
+
+"It won't go any further," I promised.
+
+"I don't want even you to know."
+
+"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."
+
+We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us
+thought of turning in.
+
+"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the
+Wellington Street crossing and were waiting for a stream of traffic
+to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.
+
+"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.
+
+"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.
+
+"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.
+
+"Try something a little less well--known: get hold of a book that's
+been published anonymously."
+
+"'Gretchen' was published over a _nom de plume_."
+
+"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."
+
+"You don't know him?"
+
+"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you
+didn't."
+
+"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.
+
+"A mere quibble," I protested.
+
+"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who _has_ met
+him?"
+
+I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a
+smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was
+borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.
+
+"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.
+
+"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he
+answered in parenthesis.
+
+He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had
+reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the
+fantastic tangle was straightened out.
+
+Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in
+Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of
+"Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name
+through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with
+the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the
+same way: even the _Heir-at-Law_ I had just witnessed came to a
+similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without
+criticism or suggestion from the author.
+
+I could see no reason for a _nom de plume_ in the case of "Gretchen"
+or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was
+different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the
+second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out
+of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert
+and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but
+the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering
+termination, had taken place a few months--a few weeks, I might
+say--before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I
+was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke
+through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
+
+"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
+
+He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to
+have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth
+century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all
+time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
+
+"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
+
+"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon
+Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
+
+Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona
+Macleod.'"
+
+"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence.
+"You think after what's passed...."
+
+"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he
+hesitated.
+
+"I know. 'Tisn't that--altogether. It's the future."
+
+"What's going to happen?"
+
+"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him
+writing plays."
+
+Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know
+the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was
+trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with
+friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for
+minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was
+always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously
+from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before
+mustering resolution to take a step forward....
+
+"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed
+Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.
+
+"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out;
+as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I
+do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind
+on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.
+
+"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days
+you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....
+
+I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a
+credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the
+belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope
+or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the
+close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a
+costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian
+mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through
+the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse
+drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse
+seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been
+manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.
+
+The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat
+armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard
+peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken
+by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his
+memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the
+peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
+
+In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She
+was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black
+hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far
+apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore
+an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met,
+but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her
+walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the
+Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and
+once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror
+changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire
+and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and
+frightened.
+
+It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a
+fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and
+intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always
+interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched
+away. Gradually--like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist--the
+outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open
+with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.
+
+The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at
+almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple
+Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on
+the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters,
+with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.
+
+"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean?
+Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know
+her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And
+it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've
+never felt so ... so _conscious_ of anybody in my life. I saw her for
+those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall
+meet her again----"
+
+"Don't you want to?"
+
+He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once
+more in mine.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up
+Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy
+curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's
+some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ...
+she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
+
+When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink.
+He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was
+reluctant to be left to his own company.
+
+"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your
+dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to
+change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The
+Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"
+
+He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.
+
+"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
+
+"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I
+shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a
+diversion. Come to oblige me."
+
+He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat
+and jerking it out straight.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+"You will be my salvation."
+
+"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
+
+"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
+
+"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered,
+turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
+
+For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's
+premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from
+Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and
+in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be
+concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of
+reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In
+the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the
+careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was
+held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the
+question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my
+brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by
+reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in
+store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered
+occasional pangs of disappointment?
+
+Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed.
+Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and
+arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South
+Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing
+the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More
+charitable than the Psalmist--from whom indeed he differs in all
+material respects--Brian could not bring himself to believe that any
+one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked.
+At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be
+attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in
+the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.
+
+For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial
+good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my
+curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I
+was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was
+inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common
+fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade
+manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should
+have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge;
+indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.
+
+When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my
+sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with
+her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would
+cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not
+to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other
+mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived
+for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the
+code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have
+had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle";
+"Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation
+successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist
+nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or
+even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps
+needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they
+sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian
+and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I
+had passed out of the life of all three--presumably for ever.
+
+In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that
+my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter
+would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the
+weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in
+contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and
+position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and
+independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to
+know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.
+
+I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present
+regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She
+was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited--tasting life for the first
+time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it
+could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before
+wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday
+world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless
+courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's
+passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side
+with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she
+was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those
+thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched
+Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England
+has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice
+over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my
+happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.
+
+I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board
+the _Bessarabia_. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of
+instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My
+niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.
+
+"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her
+ingenious explanation.
+
+As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went
+abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to
+be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a
+bachelor party."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BRANDON COURT
+
+      "I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do
+      you?"
+
+      "At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
+
+      "Do _you_ call it that too?" ...
+
+      ... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
+      all my life!"--RUDYARD KIPLING, "The Brushwood Boy."
+
+
+The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed
+myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
+
+"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she
+had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the
+rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be
+there."
+
+As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second
+reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
+
+"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the
+Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last
+minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own
+account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley
+or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize
+him...."
+
+"Do you _know_ him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.
+
+"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he
+had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the
+Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."
+
+Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to
+gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several
+years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the
+sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly
+respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public
+position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for
+his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do
+so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the
+waters returned to me after not many days.
+
+"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.
+
+"Oh, a topper!"
+
+I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.
+
+"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, _per obscurans ad
+obscurantius_; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of
+the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent
+specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in
+weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the
+kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of
+speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might
+starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your
+plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was
+brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and
+followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination
+he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and
+unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose
+he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him,
+and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a
+Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity
+Eight.
+
+I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.
+
+"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He
+is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not
+comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime
+Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime
+Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise
+him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you
+with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on
+five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and
+finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also
+his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious
+enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic
+instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously;
+he is making a mark in the House."
+
+"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the
+Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a
+very general feeling.
+
+I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of
+the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more
+than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable,
+I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I
+have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to
+size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. Nigel
+went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an
+abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of
+personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those
+who--like the Jews--trample that they be not trampled on. He became
+overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for
+fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his
+tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House
+christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was
+not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom
+to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when
+he was sure of his ground.
+
+I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have
+been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff,
+make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness.
+Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own
+case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him
+no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will
+carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and
+humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the
+youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and
+figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not
+now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery
+of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still
+able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I
+laughed--though he had all the trumps in his hand--he must needs think
+I had reason for my laughter.
+
+"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat
+Culling. He is an irrepressible Irishman of some thirty summers, with
+a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ
+it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless
+face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument
+from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to
+Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in
+Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I
+know.
+
+"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he
+will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing
+that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a
+special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be
+losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He
+is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your
+hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him
+gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable
+foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will
+deal himself five aces with the utmost _sang froid_."
+
+"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in
+my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.
+
+"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her
+belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole
+time."
+
+I reminded myself that I stood _in loco parentis_, shook hands with
+Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.
+
+The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip
+conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my
+presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told
+me how life had treated him since our parting in Asia Minor; while
+Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated
+history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Av�nement de
+Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily
+summoned to be informed of the birth--I noticed that the ministers
+were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi--it concluded with
+the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For
+reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived
+of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the
+badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable
+as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry
+when we arrived at Brandon Junction.
+
+We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being
+collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and
+from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I
+recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long
+rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour
+of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony
+must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from
+Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect
+without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.
+
+When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at
+the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud
+youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the
+ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling
+black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft,
+unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge
+hovered round her small, straight mouth, as though she were conscious
+of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile
+there lurked--or so I fancied--a suggestion of weariness as with one
+whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling
+blend of frankness and reserve. The _camaraderie_ of her greeting
+reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers;
+fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by
+her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the
+man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It
+was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends
+were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr.
+Culling."
+
+Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach
+Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were
+astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in
+trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be
+filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other
+people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick
+movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I
+remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical
+energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame
+could contain such fire without eruption.
+
+Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....
+
+"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands.
+"And where's the wicked uncle?"
+
+My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.
+
+"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a
+hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."
+
+"I feel even younger," I began.
+
+"Face massage," Culling murmured.
+
+"A good conscience," I protested.
+
+"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.
+
+It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other
+than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would
+outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched
+Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an
+excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his
+arrangements.
+
+"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in
+desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come
+to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in,
+everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."
+
+"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage,"
+objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one
+else.
+
+"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.
+
+"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good
+enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.
+
+Philip was seized with inspiration.
+
+"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"
+
+"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes,"
+his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."
+
+My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was
+shod with neat, serviceable brogues.
+
+"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the
+way."
+
+Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia
+and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across
+the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon
+Court.
+
+"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.
+
+"What was?" she asked.
+
+"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand,
+but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."
+
+We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a
+temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking
+down on me.
+
+"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"I sincerely hope so."
+
+"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time
+to go back and get a cab at the station."
+
+"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.
+
+"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake
+of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to
+make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them.
+Will you promise?"
+
+"The flesh is weak," I protested.
+
+"Am I worth a little promise like that?"
+
+"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."
+
+"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar,
+as you call them. You know you're really--you won't mind my saying
+it?--you're old enough...."
+
+"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was
+perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the
+subject. So far as I can see, my declining years will be one long
+riot of senile infidelity.
+
+"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I
+don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood
+facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine.
+"You're not in love with me, are you?"
+
+I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot
+tapped the ground with impatience.
+
+"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known
+me five minutes. Well,"--her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may
+have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm--"please
+don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till
+I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've
+knocked about the world, you're seasoned----"
+
+I held out my hand to seal the bargain.
+
+"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence.
+"I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."
+
+"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.
+
+"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she
+added with a flash of pride.
+
+"I think I saw that the moment we met."
+
+"I wonder."
+
+It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before
+I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty
+years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and
+troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared
+with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them
+had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and
+Sylvia had been in attendance at every important match in which he
+was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a
+prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an
+end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of
+Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and
+Sylvia, whose one cry--like Kundry's--had ever been, "Let me serve,"
+found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household,
+when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without
+an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding.
+Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had
+slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his
+place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the
+world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her
+devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am
+convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an
+outlet for her activities in militancy.
+
+"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her
+eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be
+friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."
+
+"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate
+them all!"
+
+"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Did you know her?"
+
+I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by
+her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came
+afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was
+reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.
+
+"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.
+
+"You think so?" she asked without conviction.
+
+It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions;
+they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was
+being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had
+troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers
+superfluous.
+
+"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden
+standstill.
+
+"I _say_, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.
+
+"He didn't come," I reassured her.
+
+"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept
+invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably
+polite."
+
+"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.
+
+"Why?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"Shyness, I suppose."
+
+"I hate shy people."
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I don't know him. What's he like?"
+
+"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the
+Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I
+ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather
+haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very
+nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."
+
+"Sounds like a degenerate poet."
+
+"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia.
+Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."
+
+"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."
+
+"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time
+to hate!"
+
+"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate
+myself more than anybody else."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't
+control myself."
+
+On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden
+was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the
+household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained
+Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as
+Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in
+prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget
+that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect
+for Morningtons--or any other pre-Conquest families--whether they come
+from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn
+reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have
+possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon
+Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for
+pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the
+Judge?" she said when we met. "Then--let me see--your sister-in-law
+was a Hylton."
+
+I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench
+politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion
+quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt.
+Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"--it
+now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square--rescued the conversation
+from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had to arrange
+for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was
+coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought
+over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia
+volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while
+the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon
+Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.
+
+"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me,
+when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a
+cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that
+high, and now--God knows--it's in a decline you'd say he was taken.
+You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has
+his heart broken."
+
+I did not know what answer to give.
+
+"Just a passing mood," I suggested.
+
+"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.
+
+He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those
+feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world
+and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other
+business--a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost
+to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel
+moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy
+kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and
+the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.
+
+"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came
+towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his
+thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we dragged the depths
+of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick
+and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual,
+and his manner restless.
+
+"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.
+
+"I was giving up hope."
+
+"I _had_ to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into
+one of his longest silences.
+
+We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens,
+reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming
+masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve
+rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth
+in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun,
+and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We
+drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymph�as
+closing their eyes for the night.
+
+Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom,
+Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old
+spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.
+
+"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we
+approached.
+
+"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it,"
+said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of
+us did to improve or debase our minds.
+
+"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two
+glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and
+Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind
+as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his
+head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"
+
+Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At
+two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and
+passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as
+many minutes.
+
+"He _knows_ it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance.
+If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"
+
+"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If _you_ were blind,
+you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."
+
+"Not enough," said Gartside.
+
+"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ.
+You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive
+surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive
+organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing,
+hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."
+
+Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.
+
+"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."
+
+"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.
+
+"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the
+sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the
+moment he got into the room."
+
+"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.
+
+"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather,"
+Gartside went on.
+
+"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't
+coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere
+on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute
+touch sense."
+
+I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the
+fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.
+
+"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.
+
+"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling,
+infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.
+
+"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called
+'premonition.'"
+
+Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.
+
+"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."
+
+"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.
+
+"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's
+dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What
+about all those other mornings...."
+
+"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.
+
+"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure
+coincidence."
+
+I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.
+
+"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my
+observation in the East--the power possessed by many natives of
+foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came
+across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had
+been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One
+morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature
+was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I
+congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die
+punctually at eight that evening.
+
+In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the
+relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme
+unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect
+health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his
+assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be
+morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at
+hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on
+his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.
+
+"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating
+illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to
+fancies. An idea--from a dream, perhaps--that death will take place at
+a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body
+is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm
+going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I
+shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an
+unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick
+to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and
+dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."
+
+"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from
+the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in
+his voice.
+
+We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had
+a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.
+
+"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my
+bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know--it's your livelihood."
+
+"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."
+
+"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"
+
+Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or
+verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.
+To write an entirely imaginative work would be--as the poet said of
+love--"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like
+keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal
+length.
+
+"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when
+I put this view before him.
+
+"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.
+
+"You'd lose the psychology of expectation--uncertainty."
+
+"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.
+
+"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."
+
+"What form does it take?"
+
+His lips parted, and closed again quickly.
+
+"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.
+
+Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and
+after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the _entr�e_, it
+was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in
+my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were
+unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away
+from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between
+Philip and the Seraph.
+
+"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.
+
+He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words
+the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.
+I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and
+whisper something to Arthur.
+
+"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.
+
+"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she
+had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.
+
+"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.
+
+"The man only said...."
+
+Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia
+framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress,
+and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed
+with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle
+of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study
+in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into
+relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared
+unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my
+forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through
+bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted
+lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into
+the room.
+
+"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair
+by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be
+sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.
+Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she
+ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She
+hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and
+as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.
+Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."
+
+"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be
+sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.
+
+Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph
+as she did so.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him
+with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood
+likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I
+came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"
+
+I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the
+one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.
+
+"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was
+ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."
+
+Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at
+last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had
+already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant
+tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood
+about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table
+with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation
+for a stroll on the terrace.
+
+He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time
+and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and
+a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the
+face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that
+at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and
+unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's
+many feminine characteristics.
+
+It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he
+and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only
+house in England--till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found
+two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.
+Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had
+been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty
+years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or
+other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.
+
+It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open
+library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he
+would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it
+would have enlightened neither of us.
+
+On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the
+frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed
+herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair
+braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no
+portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the
+fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to
+judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable
+temperament....
+
+I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or
+twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately--almost before I
+had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the
+adjoining room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FIRST ROUND
+
+      "BRASSBOUND: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Prisoner?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: I warned you. You should have taken my
+      warning.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a
+      brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom
+      you.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Then what do you expect to gain by this?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: Justice...."
+
+            BERNARD SHAW: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."
+
+
+But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the
+following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily
+placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the
+Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay
+scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding
+of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent
+pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.
+
+"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.
+"Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun
+it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."
+
+As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly
+arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason
+for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and
+for some years I have found that other people tend to be somewhat
+irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in
+the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that
+the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it
+difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the
+first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical
+student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own
+person.
+
+"Seraph up yet?" I asked.
+
+"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first
+time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept
+in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had,
+further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and
+escorted Sylvia to the early service.
+
+"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.
+
+"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in
+disgrace over something."
+
+The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter
+Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time
+and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any
+known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to
+their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth
+doing. Sylvia--like most _d�v�tes_--could not believe in the existence
+of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people
+should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my
+comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion
+only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for
+the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other--and to
+tell me all about it.
+
+"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.
+
+"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."
+
+Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and
+admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a
+strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and
+brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but
+Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He
+was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and
+brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his
+handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most
+enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use
+of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The
+first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy
+of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of
+our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I
+tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I
+forget who won; he certainly had the note.
+
+A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence.
+Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few
+days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of
+perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last
+Commemoration.
+
+"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced.
+"House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."
+
+"Who's paying?" asked Michael.
+
+"Guv'nor, I hope."
+
+"_Je_ ne _pense pas_," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the
+library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.
+
+"You come," Robin went on regardless of the interruption. "I've got
+six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."
+
+"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance
+together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead
+necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University
+dancing costume, I believe it's called."
+
+"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already
+depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for
+the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and
+Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates
+from Carfax.
+
+"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."
+
+"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was
+unpinning a motor-veil.
+
+"Oh, _yes_, darling Sylvia!" Robin--I know--was both fond and proud of
+his sister, but the tone of _ad hoc_ blandishment suggested that
+experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll
+come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully
+averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."
+
+"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd
+you like?" he asked me.
+
+"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any
+one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I
+shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me
+drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to
+mischief."
+
+Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just
+entered the room, and turned to his sister.
+
+"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.
+
+"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.
+
+"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and
+misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to
+hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me
+know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the
+driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."
+
+Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's
+chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing
+up the drive, cutting all corners.
+
+"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."
+
+Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with
+the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime
+Minister's sudden appearance.
+
+"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise
+God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."
+
+"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.
+
+"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the
+selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a
+viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and
+fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make
+him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How
+perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."
+
+We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the
+inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's
+suggestion we began to retreat through the open French windows into
+the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file
+and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could
+escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had
+to be introduced afresh.
+
+"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement
+towards the window. "You may be able to help us."
+
+I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a
+spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met
+him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade,
+coming to Oxford to address some political club.
+
+"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato
+voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into
+three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance
+without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now.
+My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you
+know her by sight?"
+
+I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.
+
+"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter
+to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to
+Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the
+day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the
+four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The
+eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything
+of her before you left?"
+
+I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting
+old friends and being introduced to new ones that I had had neither
+time nor eyes....
+
+"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you
+know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten
+yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles
+beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by
+the slip?"
+
+The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the
+A.B.C. with an impatient slap.
+
+"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left
+London."
+
+"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.
+
+"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.
+
+"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been
+called away suddenly?"
+
+"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter
+makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place--with a
+view to tracing her."
+
+He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by
+first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western
+District Office at Victoria."
+
+The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows:
+
+        "DEAR SIR,
+
+    "This is to inform you that your daughter is well and in safe
+    keeping, but that she is being held as a hostage pending the
+    satisfactory settlement of the Suffrage Question. As you are
+    aware, Sir George Marklake has secured second place in the
+    ballot for Private Member's Bills. Your daughter will be
+    permitted to communicate with you by post, subject to
+    reasonable censorship; on the day when you promise special
+    facilities and Government support for the Marklake Bill, and
+    again at the end of the Report Stage and Third Reading. The same
+    privilege will be accorded at the end of each stage in the House
+    of Lords, and she will be restored to you on the day following
+    that on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent.
+
+    "You will hardly need to be reminded that the Marklake Bill is
+    to be taken on the first Private Member's night after the
+    Recess. Should you fail to give the assurances we require, it
+    will be necessary for us to take such further steps as may seem
+    best calculated to secure the settlement we desire."
+
+It took me some minutes to digest the letter before I was in a
+condition to offer even the most perfunctory condolence. Now that the
+blow had been struck, I found myself wondering why it had never been
+attempted before.
+
+"You've no clue?" I asked.
+
+Rawnsley inspected the letter carefully and held it up to the light.
+
+"Written with a Remington, I should say. And a new one, without a
+single defect in type or alignment. And the paper is made by
+Hitchcock. That's all I have to go on."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Advise Scotland Yard, I suppose. Then await developments. I don't
+wish what I've told you this morning to go any further; no good
+purpose will be served by giving the militants a free advertisement.
+When I am in town, it is to be understood that Mavis is with her
+mother at Hanningford; and when I am at Hanningford, Mavis must be at
+Downing Street."
+
+One has no business in private life to badger ministers with political
+questions, but I could not help asking what line Rawnsley proposed to
+take with the Marklake Bill. His grey eyes flashed with momentary
+fire.
+
+"It won't be taken this session," he declared. "I'm moving to
+appropriate all Private Members' time for the Poor Law Bill. And
+that's all, I think; I must be getting back to my wife, she's--a good
+deal upset. Can you spare Nigel, Roden? I should like to take him if I
+may. Good-bye, Mr. Merivale. Good-bye, Mr. ---- Oh, by the way, Roden,
+remember you're tarred with the same brush. As soon as the Recess is
+over, you'll have to keep a close watch on your family. Harding's
+another; I shall have to warn him."
+
+Rawnsley's departure left me with a feeling of anti-climax and vague
+discomfort. Short of assassination, which would have defeated its own
+object, a policy of abduction was the boldest and most effective that
+the militants could devise at a time when--in Joyce's words--all
+arguments had been exhausted on both sides and war _� outrance_ was
+declared by women who insisted on a vote against men who refused to
+concede it. I had every reason to think I knew whose brain had evolved
+that abduction policy; its reckless simplicity and directness were
+characteristic. Then and now I wondered, and still wonder, whether the
+author of that policy had sufficient imagination and perspective to
+appreciate the enormity of her offence, or the seriousness of the
+penalty attendant on non-success.
+
+"Ber-luddy day!" exclaimed Michael, rejoining us in the library and
+delicately brushing occasional drops of moisture from his immaculate
+person. A heavy downpour of rain was starting, and though I looked
+like being spared initiation into the mysteries of golf--which I am
+not yet infirm enough to learn--it was not very clear how we were to
+kill time between meal and meal. Gladys was spending the morning
+quietly in her room, Philip wandered to and fro like a troubled
+spirit, and Sylvia had mysteriously departed.
+
+In time Michael condescended to give us the reason. It appeared that
+while we were closeted with Rawnsley in the library, Robin had decided
+that rest and relaxation before his Schools could best be secured by
+the organisation of an impromptu Calico Ball, to be given that night
+to all who would come. While he sat at the telephone summoning the
+County of Hampshire to do his bidding, Sylvia had departed in her
+little white runabout to purchase masks and a bale of calico from
+Brandon Junction, and scour the neighbourhood in search of piano,
+violin, and 'cello. The wet afternoon was to be spent by the women of
+the party in improvising costumes, by the men in French-chalking the
+floor of the ball-room.
+
+I took the precaution of calling on Gladys to acquaint her with the
+day's arrangements, and beg her to see that I was not compelled to
+wear any costume belittling to the dignity of a middle-aged uncle.
+Then after writing a bulletin to catch my brother at Gibraltar, I felt
+I had earned rest and a cheroot before luncheon. Brandon Court was one
+of those admirably appointed houses where you could be certain of
+finding wooden matches in every room; it was not, however, till I got
+back to the library that I found companionship and the Seraph. He was
+lying on a sofa writing slowly and painfully with his left hand.
+
+"If that's volume three," I said, "I won't interrupt. If it's
+anything else, we'd better smoke and talk. I will do the smoking."
+
+"I'm only scribbling," he answered. "There's no hurry about volume
+three."
+
+"Your public--_quorum pars non magna sum_--is growing impatient."
+
+"There won't be any volume three," he said quietly.
+
+"But why not? I mean, a mere temporary hitch...."
+
+"It's not that. If it wasn't for this hand I could write like, well,
+like you _do_ write once in a lifetime."
+
+"What's to stop you?"
+
+"Nothing. I only said there wouldn't be a volume three. I shan't
+publish it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+His big blue eyes looked up at me thoughtfully for a moment from under
+their long lashes. Then he crumpled up the half-covered sheet of
+paper, remarking--
+
+"There are some things you can't make public."
+
+"But with a _nom de plume_...."
+
+"I might let _you_ see it," he conceded.
+
+There we had to leave the subject, as the library was soon afterwards
+invaded by zealous seekers after luncheon, first Lady Roden and
+Gartside, then the rest of the party with the single exception of
+Sylvia. Lady Roden walked over to the window and gazed in dismay at
+the unceasing downpour.
+
+"Is Sylvia back yet, does anybody know?" she asked.
+
+"She came in about a quarter of an hour ago," volunteered the Seraph.
+
+"Was she very wet?"
+
+"I didn't see her."
+
+Lady Roden bustled out of the room to make first-hand investigation.
+
+"She took a Burberry with her," Robin called out; then springing up he
+seized an ebony paper knife and advanced on Michael who was reclining
+decoratively on a Chesterfield sofa. "Talking of Burberries," he went
+on, with menace in his tone, "what the deuce d'you mean by stealing
+mine, Michael?"
+
+"Wouldn't be seen dead in your bloody Burberry," Michael responded
+with delicate languor.
+
+The Roden boys were all much of a size, and on the subject of raided
+and disputed garments a fierce border warfare raged unintermittently
+round their bedroom doors. It was so invariable a rule with Michael to
+meet all direct charges with an equally direct denial that his
+brothers placed but slight reliance on his word.
+
+"What was it doing in your room, then?" persisted Robin, as he applied
+the paper-knife to the soles of Michael's feet.
+
+"That was Phil's," said Michael ingenuously.
+
+Robin turned to his elder brother with the suggestion of a little
+disciplinary boiling-oil.
+
+"It'll be enough if we just ruffle him," answered the humane Philip.
+"Keep the door, Pat. Now, Robin!"
+
+The perfect harmony of their attack argued long practice. Almost
+before I had time to move out of the way, Culling was standing with
+his back to the door while a scuffling trio on the hearthrug indicated
+that castigation was already being meted out. Within two minutes the
+immaculate Michael had been reduced to slim, white nudity, and even as
+the decorous Gartside proffered a consolatory "_Times'_ Educational
+Supplement," the two brothers and Culling had divided the raiment and
+taken their centrifugal course through the house, secreting boots,
+socks, tie and collar in a succession of ingeniously inaccessible
+places as they went. Then the gong sounded, and Gartside took me in to
+luncheon.
+
+Such little breezes, as I afterwards discovered, were characteristic
+of Brandon Court when the three brothers were at home and Philip had
+forgotten his public dignity. I could have spared the present
+outbreak, as the inflammatory word "Burberry" had kept me from putting
+a certain question to the Seraph. At one-thirty he had told Lady Roden
+that Sylvia had come in about a quarter of an hour before: to be
+strictly accurate, she had entered the yard as the stable clock struck
+one-fifteen, and had come into the house three minutes later by a side
+door and gone straight to her room by a side staircase. The Seraph and
+I had been sitting in the library since twelve-forty-five. The library
+looked out over a terrace on to the lawn: stable yard, side door and
+side staircase were at the diametrically opposite angle of the house.
+It was impossible for any one, even with the Seraph's uncannily acute
+senses, to hear a sound from the stable yard; even had it been
+possible, he could not have identified it as the sound of Sylvia's
+return.
+
+I put my question in the smoking-room after luncheon, but got no
+satisfactory answer. Meeting Sylvia in the hall a few minutes later, I
+took my revenge by setting her to find out.
+
+The afternoon was spent in polishing the ball-room floor. Others
+worked, I offered advice. At one point, Michael, too, showed a
+tendency to offer advice, but the threat that his young body would be
+dragged up and down till the bones cut through the skin and scratched
+the floor, was effectual in persuading him to swathe his feet in
+towels and wade through uncharted seas of French chalk to the infinite
+detriment of the blue colour-scheme he had been forced into adopting
+for luncheon.
+
+Mrs. Roden, Sylvia and Gladys retired with their three maids and a
+bale of calico. From time to time one of us would be summoned to have
+our measurements taken, but no indication was manifested of the guise
+in which we were to appear. At eight we retired to our rooms with
+sinking hearts; at eight-thirty a group of sheepish men loitered at
+the stair-head, waiting for one less self-conscious than the rest to
+give a lead to the others.
+
+The ball--when it came and found us filled and reckless with
+dinner--proved an unqualified success. My indistinct memory of it
+recalls a number of pretty girls who danced well, talked very quickly,
+and called me--without exception--"my dear." I sat out two with
+Sylvia, and was cut three times by Gladys, who disappeared with Philip
+at an early stage. Further, I supped twice with two creditably hungry
+girls, discussed the lineage of the county with Lady Roden, and smoked
+a sympathetic cigarette with a nice-looking shy boy of fifteen, who
+was always being cut by Gladys when he was not being cut by some one
+else. His name was Willoughby, and I hope some girl has smiled on him
+less absent-mindedly than my niece.
+
+In my few spare moments I watched Sylvia dealing with her male guests.
+Culling approached and was rewarded with a smile and one dance.
+Gartside followed and received an even sweeter, Tristan-und-Isolde
+smile, and the same proportion of her programme. The Seraph,
+arm-in-sling, hung unostentatiously on the outskirts of the crowd, and
+with much hesitation summoned courage to ask if she could spare him
+one to sit out. She gave him two, and extended it later to three.
+
+I heard afterwards that at the end of the third he prepared to return
+to the ball-room.
+
+"Who are you taking this one with?" she asked him.
+
+"No one," he told her.
+
+"Why not stay here, then?"
+
+"Haven't you promised it to young Willoughby?"
+
+"He'll survive the disappointment," said Sylvia lightly.
+
+The Seraph shook his head. "May I have one later?" he asked. "You
+oughtn't to cut Willoughby, he's been looking forward to it."
+
+Sylvia was not accustomed or inclined to dictation from others.
+
+"Have you asked him?" she said, uncertain whether to be amused or
+angry.
+
+"It wasn't necessary. Haven't you felt his eyes on you while you were
+dancing? He thinks you're the most wonderful girl in the world. There
+he's right. He'll treasure up every word you speak, every smile you
+give him; he'll send himself to sleep picturing ways of saving your
+life at the cost of his own. And he'll dream of you all night."
+
+The Seraph's tranquil, unemotional voice had grown so earnest that
+Sylvia found herself growing serious in spite of herself.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't discuss me with boys like that," she said, more
+to gain time than administer reproof.
+
+"Should I have discussed you?" exclaimed the Seraph. "And would he
+have told me? Why can't you, why can't any girl understand the mind of
+a boy of fifteen? You'd make such men of them if you'd only take the
+trouble. Look at him now, he's thinking out wonderful speeches to make
+to you...."
+
+"I _hope_ not," said Sylvia ruefully.
+
+"He'll forget them all when he meets you. I was fifteen once."
+
+"I wonder if you'll ever be more."
+
+The Seraph made no answer.
+
+"That wasn't meant for a snub," said Sylvia reassuringly.
+
+"I know that."
+
+Sylvia looked at him curiously. "Is there anything you _don't_ know?"
+she asked as they descended the stairs to the ball-room.
+
+"I don't even know if you're going to let me take you in to supper."
+
+"I'm glad there's something."
+
+"That's not an answer."
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"You ought to know that without asking."
+
+"I'm afraid there's a great deal about you I _don't_ know."
+
+Supper was ended and their table deserted before Sylvia put the
+question with which I had primed her that afternoon.
+
+"Is there anything I _don't_ know? to use your own words," said the
+Seraph evasively.
+
+"That's not an answer, to use yours."
+
+"It's the only answer I can give," he replied, with that curious
+expression in his dark eyes that did duty for a smile.
+
+"Why won't you tell me? I'm interested. It's about myself, so I've a
+right to know."
+
+"But I can't explain; I don't know. It never happened before."
+
+"Never?"
+
+The Seraph thought over his first meeting with her the previous day.
+
+"Never with any one else," he answered.
+
+Sylvia shook her head in perplexity.
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Either it was just coincidence and
+you were talking without thinking, or else ... I don't know. It's
+rather funny. D'you want to smoke? Let's go out on to the terrace."
+
+"The detectives are there."
+
+"No, father said they weren't to appear to-night."
+
+"They're out there."
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I can hear them."
+
+Sylvia looked round at the closed plate-glass windows.
+
+"You _can't_," she said incredulously.
+
+"Will you bet? No, I don't want to rob you. Shall I tell you something
+else? You opened a fresh bottle of scent to-night when you dressed for
+dinner. It's Chaminade, the same kind that you were using before, but
+this is fresher. Had you noticed it?"
+
+The Seraph was considerably less impressed by his powers than Sylvia
+appeared to be.
+
+"Anything else?" she asked after a pause.
+
+The Seraph wrinkled his brows in thought.
+
+"Gladys Merivale was coughing last night," he said. "Some one passed
+my door at two o'clock and went into her room. I don't know who it
+was, but it wasn't you. The coughing stopped for a time, but started
+again just before three. Then you passed by and went in."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I heard you."
+
+"You may have heard some one; you didn't know it was me. I went once
+and mother went once. You couldn't tell which was which."
+
+The Seraph lit a cigarette and walked with her to the door of the
+supper-room.
+
+"Oh, it was your mother?" he said. "Then she went the first time."
+
+"But how do you know?" Sylvia repeated.
+
+"I can't explain, any more than about the car coming back this
+morning."
+
+Sylvia shook her head a little uneasily.
+
+"You're abnormal," she pronounced.
+
+"Because I...?"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Because I know a fraction more about you than other people?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Only a fraction. It would take time to understand you."
+
+"How much? I hate to be thought a sphinx."
+
+"However little I wanted, we should be parted before I got it."
+
+"Why? How? How parted?"
+
+The Seraph shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Don't ask me to read the future," he said with a sigh.
+
+At the end of the ball I found the Roden boys congratulating
+themselves on the success of the evening. I added my quota of praise,
+and was pressed to state if I now felt equal to three successive
+nights at Commemoration.
+
+"Which reminds me!" Robin exclaimed, flying off at his usual tangent.
+"Where's Sylvia? Sylvia, my angel, what about Commem.?"
+
+His sister looked tired but happy, and in some way excited.
+
+"I'll come if you want me," she answered, putting her arm round
+Robin's neck and kissing him good-night. "Yes, all right--I will. Oh,
+Mr. Rawnsley told me this morning that Mavis wouldn't be able to come,
+so you must get another girl."
+
+Robin dropped his voice confidentially.
+
+"See if you can persuade Cynthia to come. And we're still a man
+short."
+
+Sylvia looked slowly round the room with thoughtful, unsmiling
+eyes--past Culling, past Gartside....
+
+"Will you come, Seraph?" she asked.
+
+Less than a day and a half had passed since I had noticed her practice
+of avoiding Christian names. For some reason I had supposed nicknames
+to fall into the same category.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COMMEMORATION
+
+      "Oxford ... the seat of one of the most ancient and
+      celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid
+      picturesque environs at the confluence of the Cherwell
+      and the Thames.... Oxford is on the whole more attractive
+      than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor.... The best time
+      for a visit is the end of the Summer term.... This period
+      of mingled work and play (the latter predominating) is
+      named _Commemoration_.... It is almost needless to add
+      that an introduction to a 'Don' will greatly add to the
+      visitor's pleasure and profit."
+
+      KARL BAEDECKER: "Handbook for Travellers: Great Britain."
+
+
+Of the weeks that passed between my return to London from Brandon
+Court and our departure from London to Oxford, I have only the most
+indistinct recollection. My engagement book earned many honourable
+scars before I carried it away into my present exile, but for May and
+the first half of June there appears a black, undecipherable smudge
+that my memory tells me should represent a long succession of late
+nights and crowded days. Individual items are blurred out of
+recognition; my general sense of the period is that I pretended to be
+preternaturally young, and was punished by being made to feel
+prematurely old.
+
+It was the busiest part of the London season, and Gladys appeared to
+receive cards for an average of three balls a night on five nights of
+the week. I accompanied her everywhere, growing gradually broken to
+the work and relieved of my more serious responsibilities by the fact
+that Philip Roden was too busy at the House to waste his nights in a
+ball-room. We seemed to move in the midst of a stage army, the same
+few hundred men, women, and dowagers reappearing in an endless
+march-past. With the advent of the big hotels, hospitality had changed
+in character since the days when I counted myself a Londoner: there
+was more of it and it was less hospitable. The rising generation, and
+more particularly the female portion of it, seemed to have taken
+matters into its own hands.
+
+Regularly each morning, after a late breakfast, Gladys would set me to
+write a series of common-form letters: "Dear Mr. Blank," I would say,
+"My niece and I shall be so pleased if you will dine with us here
+to-night at 8.30 and go on to Lady Anonym's ball." Then Gladys would
+bring unknowing guest and unknown hostess into communication. "Can I
+speak to Lady Anonym?" I would hear her call down the telephone. "Oh,
+good morning! I say, do you think you could _possibly_ do with another
+man for your ball to-night? Honest? It _is_ sweet of you. Oh, quite a
+nice thing--Mr. Incognito Blank, 101, Utopia Chambers, St. James.
+Thanks, most awfully. Oh no, not _him_, he's the most awful stiff;
+this is a dear thing. Well, I would have, only he's only just got back
+to England, he's been shooting big game...."
+
+This was the retail method. In the case of intimate friends, Gladys
+would be encouraged to send in her own list of desirable invitees.
+Because I am old-fashioned and unacquainted with English ways, I trust
+I am not inaccessible to new ideas. I would carry the policy of
+promiscuity to its logical conclusion. An announcement in the _Times_
+with draft _m�nu_, name of band and programme of music--even a
+placard outside Claridge's--would save endless postage and stationery,
+and could not pack the ball-room tighter than on a dozen occasions I
+remember. Hostesses who believe that numbers are the soul of
+hospitality, could be certain beforehand of the success of their
+efforts; superior young men would continue to remark, "Society gettin'
+very mixed, what?" exactly as they have done ever since I entered my
+first ball-room at the age of seventeen. Everybody, in short, would be
+pleased.
+
+We saw a good deal of Sylvia during those weeks, as for reasons of her
+own she would frequently drop in at Pont Street and conduct her share
+of the arrangements over our telephone. Occasionally Gladys would be
+called in as an accomplice, I would hear "Mr. Aintree's" name added to
+Lady Anonym's list, and Gladys would remark with fine carelessness,
+"Oh, just send him the card, if you will; don't bother to say who it
+comes from." The Seraph may have suspected, but he never had
+documentary proof of the originating cause of some of his invitations.
+
+In making our arrangements for Commemoration, I decided to take the
+greater part of my charges to Oxford by road. Robin, of course, was
+still in residence, and Philip promised to come down by the first
+possible train. Gladys, Sylvia, the Seraph, and a _pis-aller_ of
+Robin's named Cynthia Bargrave constituted my flock; we motored
+quietly down to Henley, where we lunched and chartered a houseboat for
+the Regatta, and arrived in Oxford with ample time for the three girls
+to have a comfortable rest before dinner. I made rather a point of
+this, as they were going to have three very tiring days and would
+naturally wish to look their best; moreover, I wanted to roam round
+the town with the Seraph.
+
+Even Oxford, that I thought could never alter, had changed during my
+years of absence. The little, nameless back-street colleges I would
+gladly sacrifice to the Destroyer, for they serve no purpose beyond
+that of breeding proctors, and I know we counted it an indignity to be
+fined by the scion of a college we had to reach by cab. But the High
+should have been inviolate; there wanted no new colleges breaking
+through its immemorial sides.... Univ. men, standing at their lodge
+gate and looking northward, have told me the High already contains one
+college in excess.
+
+While the Seraph sought out Robin's rooms in Canterbury, I wandered
+through the college--guiltily, I admit--looking for traces of a
+popular outbreak that occurred when a ball took place at Blenheim and
+House men asked in vain for leave to attend it. In time I came to my
+own old rooms in Tom, and gazed rather in sorrow than anger at the
+strange new name painted over the door. Twice my fingers went to the
+handle, twice I told myself that "Mr. R.F. Davenant" had as much right
+to privacy as I should have claimed in his place.... I wandered out
+through Tom Gate, across St. Aldates, and down Brewer Street to those
+pleasant digs in Micklem Hall, where I once spent an all-too-short
+twelve months. Then I returned to college, crept furtively back to the
+old familiar door, knocked, listened, entered....
+
+"R.F. Davenant" was far more civil than I should have been at a like
+intrusion. He showed me round the rooms, offered me whisky and
+cigarettes, wanted to know when I had been up, whether I was going to
+the Gaudy.... We were friends in a minute. I liked his fair,
+neatly-parted hair and clean, fresh colouring; I liked his Meissonier
+artist proofs; I liked the way the left back leg of the sofa
+collapsed unless you underpinned it with a Liddle and Scott. Not a
+thing was changed but the photographs on the mantelpiece. I walked
+over and surveyed them critically. Then one of those things happened
+that convince me an idle Quixotic Providence is watching over my least
+movements: I was staring at the picture of a girl on horseback when he
+volunteered the information that it was his sister.
+
+"Your married sister?" I suggested.
+
+"Do you know her?"
+
+He fed me on Common-room tea and quarter-pound wedges of walnut cake.
+Joyce was coming up for two of the three balls I was attending, coming
+unprovided with partners to chaperone some girl who had captured her
+brother's wandering fancy. These elder sisters earn more crowns than
+they are ever accorded; it seemed that Joyce who trampled on the world
+would stretch herself out to be trampled on by her heedless only
+brother. I wonder wherein the secret lies.
+
+"Come and dine," suggested Dick Davenant.
+
+I told him of my own party, and lost no time in working the Cumberland
+days with his father for all they were worth. What happened to the
+Seraph I never discovered. As I hurried back to the Randolph for
+dinner, Robin met me with an apology in advance for the dull evening
+before me.
+
+"'Fraid you'll have rather a rotten time," he opined. "I wish you had
+let me find you some old snag or other."
+
+"I shall be all right, Robin," I said.
+
+"There's sure to be bridge _somewhere_. Or look here, what about a
+roulette-board? Combine business with pleasure--what?"
+
+"I shall be able to amuse myself," I assured him.
+
+Our dinner that night was one of the gayest meals I have eaten; we
+were all expectant, excited, above our usual form--with the single
+exception of Philip. If I were a woman, I suppose I should notice
+these things; as it was I put his silent preoccupation down to
+overwork. When he approached Robin with other-world gentleness and
+suggested a stroll up St. Giles after dinner "just to keep me company,
+old boy," I ought to have suspected something; but it was not till the
+Seraph, smoking a lonely cigar, murmured something about "_Consul
+videat ne respublica detrimentum capiat_," that I saw my authority
+over Gladys was being threatened.
+
+The girls had been despatched for their last mysterious finishing
+touches, and we had the hall of the Randolph to ourselves.
+
+"What the deuce ought I to do, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why do anything?"
+
+That is the question I always ask myself when I have no definite idea
+what is expected of me.
+
+"I wish he'd had the consideration to wait till my brother came back,"
+I grumbled.
+
+"These little emotional crises never _do_ wait till we're ready for
+them, do they?"
+
+"From the fulness of the heart...."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, I was not speaking of myself."
+
+"I thought you were."
+
+The Seraph shook his head at me.
+
+"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or
+any one but your own self."
+
+I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.
+
+"No emotional crises have come _my_ way," I protested.
+
+"Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this
+afternoon."
+
+I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my
+chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will
+you...? No! sorry."
+
+"Will I what?"
+
+"It's no business of mine."
+
+"Why d'you start talking about it, then? Will I what?"
+
+The Seraph knocked the ash off his cigar, finished his coffee, and sat
+silent. I repeated my question.
+
+"Well...." he hesitated nervously. "Are you going to propose to her
+to-night?"
+
+"Really, Seraph!"
+
+"You're going to--some time or other...."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense!"
+
+"...I was wondering if it would be to-night."
+
+I felt myself growing rather annoyed and uncomfortable.
+
+"Not very good form to talk like this," I said stiffly. "After all,
+she's a friend of yours and mine. A joke's all very well...."
+
+"But I'm quite serious!"
+
+"My dear Seraph, d'you appreciate that I've met the girl once--a few
+weeks ago--and once only since she was a child of five?"
+
+"Oh yes. And do you remember my telling you what was bringing you back
+to England? Do you remember the impression she made on you that night?
+If you're going to marry her...."
+
+"Seraph, drop it!"
+
+He withdrew into his shell, and we smoked without speaking until I
+began to be sorry for snubbing him.
+
+"I didn't mean to be rude," I said apologetically. "But she's a nice
+girl; I may see her to-night for all I know to the contrary, and this
+coupling of names.... You see my point?"
+
+The Seraph suddenly developed a nervous, excited earnestness.
+
+"Let me give you a word of advice. If you're going to propose to
+her--oh, all right; if X. is going to propose to her, he'd better do
+it now--before the crash comes. There's going to be a very big crash;
+she's going down under it. If you--if X. proposed now, she might be
+got out of the way before it's too late. You--X. won't like to see the
+woman he's going to marry...."
+
+"X. marries her then?" I asked in polite incredulity. "Oh, he should
+certainly lose no time."
+
+"She may not accept you at once."
+
+"Come and get your coat, Seraph."
+
+"But she will later."
+
+"Come and get your coat," I repeated.
+
+"Ah--you don't believe me--well...."
+
+I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.
+
+"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of
+Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I
+have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday
+fortnight?"
+
+The Seraph shook his head without answering.
+
+"Very well, then," I said decisively.
+
+"But you don't know either."
+
+Of course he was right.
+
+"I may not know _now_," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due
+course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do--whether it's
+choosing a tie or...."
+
+"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more
+than what's in your own mind."
+
+"You talked about the woman X. was going to _marry_, not merely
+propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."
+
+"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"
+
+"Does she know herself?"
+
+"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so
+disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve,
+seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you
+at once."
+
+"You know her mind better than she does?"
+
+As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.
+
+"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that
+a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as
+part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you
+wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you
+come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."
+
+I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.
+
+"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.
+
+"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he
+answered.
+
+I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across
+Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was
+half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated
+and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening
+extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and
+white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow
+zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the
+Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H.
+contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.
+
+My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at
+the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various
+inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found
+her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air,
+flushed--or so I fancied--and occasionally passing a hand across eyes
+that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her
+to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the
+luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven
+undergraduate generations.
+
+"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said,
+after telling her of my meeting with Dick.
+
+"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,"
+she answered.
+
+"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So--for that matter--have others."
+
+"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean.
+If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the
+staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"
+
+I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.
+
+"If you _will_ espouse unpopular political causes," I began.
+
+"I'm not complaining! _This_ was nothing to what I've been through in
+the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"
+
+I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I
+used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand
+along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I
+used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable
+precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while
+like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my
+affection.
+
+"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I
+said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time
+was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their
+hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as
+I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who
+know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise
+me."
+
+"Perhaps they don't know you."
+
+"That," I said, "is not very helpful."
+
+"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know
+me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."
+
+"But what did you expect?"
+
+"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."
+
+It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I
+told her--what was no more than the truth--that I owed no allegiance
+to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in
+politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing
+if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise
+question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was
+granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace
+and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of
+hostility.
+
+"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I
+refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and
+enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could
+persuade you to accept the _fait accompli_. You're up against _force
+majeure_, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"
+
+"Why give up at all?"
+
+"You're striking at an immovable body."
+
+"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"
+
+"Is it an irresistible force?"
+
+"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"
+
+The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.
+
+"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight
+of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."
+
+"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern
+hemisphere? Yes."
+
+"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen
+her since."
+
+"Has her father?"
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour
+reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this
+week's _New Militant_, I had such fun writing it."
+
+"What was the rumour?"
+
+"We--ell!" Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her
+memory. "Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in
+that, of course; _you_'ve disappeared before now. Then some one else
+said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the
+suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about
+it; you'd have thought Mr. Rawnsley was making a mystery of it.
+However, I wanted to know, so I'm asking the question in the leading
+article. Perhaps he'll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to
+give me a match?"
+
+I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul's good.
+
+"As I say, my law's pretty rusty," I told her in conclusion, "but you
+may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather
+severe."
+
+"Brutally," Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. "But you've got
+to catch your criminal before you can imprison him."
+
+"Or her."
+
+"And you can't catch without evidence."
+
+I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one,
+but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.
+
+"That's the most banal remark I've ever heard from you," I told her.
+"There never was a criminal yet that didn't think he'd left no traces,
+never one that didn't think he was equal to the strain of sitting
+waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened
+or become reckless----"
+
+"Which am I?"
+
+"Neither as yet. You'll become reckless, because I don't think you
+know what fear means."
+
+"Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial
+room of the _New Militant_, will you climb up and see my moderating
+influence at work? If it hadn't been for me, we should have been
+prosecuted over the first number."
+
+"I suppose that's Mrs. Millington?" I hazarded. An echo of her fiery
+pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson
+and sabotage campaign.
+
+"What's in a name?" Joyce asked sweetly.
+
+"Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there's _some one_ who has to be
+restrained. I tell you you'll be arrested the day after your
+restraining influence is withdrawn...."
+
+Joyce bowed her assent.
+
+"And that will happen when you're invalided home from the front."
+
+Joyce bowed again. "Me that never had a day's illness in my life," I
+heard her murmur.
+
+"It'll be a new experience, and you'll have it very shortly if I know
+anything of what a woman looks like when she's overworked,
+over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways,
+you're man's inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues
+of life...."
+
+"But this wasn't!" The interruption came quickly in a tone that had
+lost its early banter. "Elsie's case comes on at the end of this week.
+I've been with her, I didn't want to come to-night, but she made
+me--so as not to disappoint Dick. It's not very pleasant to sit
+watching any one going through.... However, don't let's talk about it.
+You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It's cheap...."
+
+"And so very filling? I'll give no more."
+
+"Don't stop, it's a wonderful index. As long as people give me good
+advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more."
+
+I weighed the remark rather deliberately.
+
+"You were nearer being spiteful then than I've ever heard you," I
+said.
+
+"But wasn't it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give
+me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph."
+
+"The only three who'll give you anything more?"
+
+"Among the non-politicals. I've got politicals who'd go through fire
+and water for me," she declared proudly.
+
+"I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?"
+
+"Those three." She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a
+mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. "My friend,
+you're not suggesting _yourself_?"
+
+"I'm waiting to be asked."
+
+"It would be waste of time. You've not been living your own sinful
+selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came--it's
+kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six
+months before I could be certain of you."
+
+"You won't get six months."
+
+"Then it's hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win
+without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to
+the ball-room?"
+
+I exhibited my unfinished cigar.
+
+"When you're tired of oakum and a plank bed," I began....
+
+"Caught, tried _and_ condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn't
+leave it as late as that."
+
+"The sooner the better."
+
+"I'll come as soon as there's a warrant out."
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"Faithfully. But there won't be any warrant if the cause succeeds."
+
+"I pray you'll fail," was my fervent answer.
+
+Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.
+
+"You've spoilt _every_thing by that!"
+
+"My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause."
+
+"We can't be separated."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Anything you like!"
+
+She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The
+flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope
+of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited
+breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that
+moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the
+background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible.
+Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was
+hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun
+gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and
+shoulders.
+
+"Anything you like!" she repeated in confident gay challenge.
+
+"I hold you to that."
+
+Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it
+once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings
+so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight
+and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt,
+my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of
+those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian
+jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the
+ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.
+
+"Hold out your hand, Joyce," I said. "No, the other one. There!"
+
+I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table,
+and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.
+
+Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.
+
+"No good," I said. "You may cut the ring, which would be a pity
+because it's unique; and it's not yours till you've won the wager. Or
+you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too
+... well, anyway, it won't be yours to amputate if I win the bet."
+
+Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.
+
+"Will you take it off, please?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"You said I might fix the wager."
+
+"Take it off, please!" she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me.
+Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well
+when she disapproves.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested. "I've finished my cigar."
+
+"A joke may be carried too far," she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I
+remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.
+
+"Heaven witness I'm not joking!" I protested. "Nothing I could say
+would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my
+chance. It's a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you
+separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long
+as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I'm
+backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me."
+
+Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some
+difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.
+
+"How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?" she asked.
+
+I had not considered that.
+
+"Till my death?" I suggested.
+
+"Sooner than that, I hope."
+
+"Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back."
+
+Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as
+she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elated and quite
+deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm bound up with the cause more intimately than you
+think," she began with unexpected gentleness. "For--let me see--three
+years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and
+I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a
+Suffragan Bishop...."
+
+"Quite a proper distinction," I interrupted. "Neither fish, flesh,
+fowl, nor good red herring."
+
+"...and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire."
+
+"But this is where I come in."
+
+"Too late, I'm afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my
+own. I've sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the
+_New Militant_. I'm living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That
+looks like business, doesn't it?"
+
+I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and
+mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.
+
+"Living out in the East," I said, "I have learnt the virtue of
+infinite patience."
+
+Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important
+question unasked.
+
+"When I win my wager," I began.
+
+"You won't."
+
+"Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object
+to the consequences?"
+
+Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.
+
+"I've never given the matter a thought," she answered.
+
+"Subconsciously?" I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, give it a thought now," I begged.
+
+"It wouldn't make much difference whether I objected or not."
+
+"If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing's a joke in
+questionable taste, I'll take the ring off here and now."
+
+Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I
+suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes
+were soft and kind.
+
+"I think any girl 'ud be very lucky...." she began. I bowed, and as I
+did so an imp of mischief took possession of her tongue. "...very
+lucky indeed--to engage your roving affection."
+
+"That wasn't what you started to say."
+
+"I never know what I _am_ going to say. That's why I'm so good on a
+platform."
+
+"Shall I take the ring off?"
+
+"I prefer to win it in fair fight."
+
+"If you can," I rejoined, as we pressed our way into the bright warmth
+of the ball-room.
+
+My charges appeared to be profiting by my absence. Couple after couple
+floated by with touching heads and dreamy eyes; half-way down the room
+Philip was whispering in Gladys' ear and making her smile; I caught a
+glimpse of Robin and Cynthia; then Sylvia and the Seraph glided past.
+
+"Don't they look sweet together?" said Joyce, half to herself, as our
+faces were subjected to a quick, searching glance.
+
+"What about a turn before supper?" I suggested.
+
+"Am I having it with you?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"I should like to."
+
+We started round the room, half-way through the waltz. Joyce was a
+beautiful dancer, easy, light, and rhythmical. It was too good to
+spoil with talking; I contented myself with one final remark.
+
+"After all," I said, "you may as well start getting used to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND ROUND
+
+    "One sleeps, indeed, and wakes at intervals,
+    We know, but waking's the main part with us,
+    And my provision's for life's waking part.
+    Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
+    All day, I build, scheme, study and make friends;
+    And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
+    Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
+    The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
+    What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
+    You, the philosopher that disbelieve,
+    That recognise the night, give dreams their weight--
+    To be consistent--you should keep your bed,
+    Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
+    For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
+    And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
+    Live through the day and bustle as you please.
+    And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
+    To unbelieve as I to still believe?
+    Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
+    Bedridden,--and its good things come to me."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+The Bullingdon Ball took place on the Tuesday night, and Joyce
+returned to town the following morning. Her brother may have mentioned
+the time, or it may have been pure coincidence that I should be buying
+papers and watching the trains when she arrived at the station with
+the girl she was chaperoning. We met as friends and exchanged papers:
+I gave her the _Morning Post_ and received the _New Militant_ in
+return. As the train slipped away from the platform, she waved
+farewell with a carefully gloved left hand. Then Dick and I strolled
+back to the House.
+
+In drowsy, darkened chamber Robin was sleeping the sleep of the just.
+As I voyaged round his rooms, I reflected that undergraduate humour
+changes little through the ages, and in Oxford as elsewhere the
+unsuspecting just falls easy prey to wakeful, prowling injustice. An
+enemy had visited that peaceful home of slumber. Half-hidden by
+disordered bed-clothes, a cold bath prematurely awaited Robin's foot,
+and on his table was spread a repast such as no right-thinking man
+orders for himself after two nights' heavy dancing. Moist, indecorous
+slabs of cold boiled beef, beer for six, two jars of piccalilli and a
+round of over-ripe Gorgonzola cheese, offered piteous appeal to a
+jaded, untasting palate. Suspended from the overmantel--that soul
+might start on equal terms with body--hung the pious aspiration--"God
+Bless our Home."
+
+"Garton, for a bob!" Robin exclaimed when I described the condition of
+his rooms.
+
+Flinging the bed-clothes aside, he fell heavily into the bath,
+extricated himself to the accompaniment of low, vehement muttering
+that may have been a prayer, and bounded across the landing to render
+unto Garton the things that were Garton's. I followed at a
+non-committal distance, and watched the disposal of two pounds of
+boiled beef in unsuspected corners of Garton's rooms. Three slices
+were hidden in the tobacco jar, the rest impartially distributed
+behind Garton's books--to mature and strengthen during sixteen weeks
+of Long Vacation. Balancing the jug of beer on the door-top--whence it
+fell and caved in the fraudulent white head of a venerable
+scout--Robin hastened back to his own quarters and sported the oak.
+
+"I was thinking of a touch of lunch on the Cher," he observed,
+exchanging his dripping pyjamas for a dressing-gown and making for a
+window-seat commanding Canterbury Gate, a cigarette in one hand and a
+Gorgonzola cheese in the other. "If you wouldn't mind toddling round
+to Phil and the Seraph and routing the girls out, we might all meet at
+the House barge at one. I'll cut along and dress as soon as I've given
+Garton a little nourishment. I suppose the pickles 'ud kill him," he
+added with a regretful glance at the two-pound glass jars.
+
+I communicated the rendezvous to Philip, threw an eye over the "Where
+is Miss Rawnsley?" article as I crossed the Quad, and dropped anchor
+in the Seraph's rooms. His quaint streak of femininity showed itself
+in the bowls of "White Enchantress" carnations with which the tables
+and mantelpiece were adorned. A neat pile of foolscap covered with
+shorthand characters indicated early rising and studious method. I
+found him working his way through the _Times_ and _Westminster
+Gazette_ for the last three days.
+
+"I suppose there is no news?" I said when I had told him Robin's
+arrangements for the day and described the Battle of the Beef.
+
+"Nothing to-day," he answered. "Have you seen yesterday's _Times_?"
+
+I had been far too busy with Joyce and my three wards to spare a
+moment for the papers. I now read for the first time that the Prime
+Minister had moved for the appropriation of all Private Members' days.
+The Poor Law Reform Bill would engage the attention of the House for
+the remainder of the Session, to the exclusion of Female Suffrage and
+every other subject.
+
+"That's Rawnsley's answer to _this_," I said, giving the Seraph my
+copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+"I wonder what the answer of the _New Militant_ will be to Rawnsley,"
+he murmured when he had read the article.
+
+"That is for you to say," I told him. "You read the Heavens and
+interpret dreams and forecast the future...."
+
+"Fortunately I can't."
+
+This was an unexpected point of view.
+
+"Wouldn't you if you could?" I asked.
+
+"Would any one go on living if he didn't cheat himself into believing
+the future was not going to be quite as black as the present?"
+
+This was not the right frame of mind for a man who had spent two
+nights dancing with Sylvia--to the exclusion of every one else, and I
+told him so.
+
+"Come along to the Randolph," he exclaimed impatiently. "To-day,
+to-night; and to-morrow all will be over. I was a fool to come. I
+don't know why I did."
+
+We picked up our hats and strolled into King Edward Street.
+
+"You came because Sylvia invited you," I reminded him. "I heard the
+invitation. Young Rawnsley was not there, but Culling and Gartside
+were, and a dozen more I don't know by name. Any of them might have
+been chosen instead, but--they weren't. You should be more grateful
+for your advantages, my young friend."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+I linked my arm in his, and tried to find out what was upsetting him.
+
+"You've been having some senseless, needless quarrel with her...." I
+hazarded.
+
+"How can two people quarrel when they've not a single point in common?
+Our lives are on parallel lines, continue them indefinitely and
+they'll never meet. Therefore--it's a mistake to bring the parallels
+so close together that one can see the other."
+
+For a moment I wondered whether he had put his fortune to the test and
+received a rebuff.
+
+"Does Sylvia think your lives are on parallel lines?" I asked.
+
+"What experience or imagination do you think a girl like that's got?
+It never occurs to them that everybody's not turned out of the same
+machine as themselves, with the same ideas, beliefs, upbringing,
+position, means. D'you suppose Sylvia appreciates that she spends more
+money on dress in six months than I earn in a year? Can she imagine
+that I hate and despise all the little conventions that she wouldn't
+transgress for all the wealth of the Indies? The doctrines she's
+learnt from her mother, the doctrines she'll want to teach her
+children--can she imagine that I regard them as so much witchcraft
+that I wouldn't imperil my soul by asking any sane child to believe?
+I'm an infidel, a penniless, unconventional Bohemian, and she--well,
+you know the atmosphere of Brandon Court. What's the good of our going
+on meeting?"
+
+"Nigel is neither infidel, unconventional, nor Bohemian," I said.
+"Moreover, he stands on the threshold of a big career...."
+
+"I daresay," said the Seraph as I paused.
+
+"Nigel was not invited. Gartside may be an infidel if he ever troubles
+to think of such things; he is certainly not penniless or Bohemian. He
+is a large-framed, large-hearted hero, with every worldly advantage a
+girl could desire. Gartside was not invited. No more were the others.
+You were."
+
+"She hadn't known me two days; perhaps two days aren't long enough to
+find me out."
+
+"Feminine intuition...." I began.
+
+"Feminine intuition's a woman's power of jumping to wrong conclusions
+quicker than men. Unless you want to get yourself into trouble, you'd
+better not march into Sylvia's presence with a _New Militant_ in your
+hand."
+
+I thanked him for the reminder, and bequeathed the offending sheet to
+the Martyrs' Memorial. The heavy type of the headline, "Where is Miss
+Rawnsley?" reminded me of our earlier conversation.
+
+"I shan't be sorry to get rid of my charges," I remarked. "They're a
+responsibility in these troublous times."
+
+"Sylvia's in no danger," he answered with great confidence.
+
+"I'm not so sure."
+
+"She's absolutely safe."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, and the confidence died out of his eyes.
+
+"I don't. It's--just an opinion."
+
+"Even if you're right, there's still Gladys," I said.
+
+"I'd forgotten her."
+
+"She's a fair mark."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Though not as good as Sylvia."
+
+"I assure you Sylvia's in no danger."
+
+"But how do you know?" I repeated.
+
+"I tell you; it's only an opinion."
+
+"But you don't express any opinion about Gladys."
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"How can you about Sylvia?"
+
+He hesitated, flushed, opened his lips and shut them again in his old
+tantalising way.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we entered the Randolph, and walked to
+the end of the hall where the three girls were awaiting us.
+
+Robin had provided an imposing flotilla for our accommodation. His own
+punt was reserved for Cynthia, himself, and the luncheon-baskets; a
+mysterious reconciliation had placed Garton's at the disposal of
+Philip, Gladys, and myself, while Sylvia and the Seraph were stowed
+away in a Canadian canoe, detached by act of sheer piracy from the
+adjoining Univ. barge. We took the old course through Mesopotamia and
+over the Rollers, mooring for luncheon half a mile above the Cherwell
+Hotel. Hunger and a sense of duty secured my presence for that meal
+and tea; in the interval I retired for a siesta. Distance, I find,
+lends enchantment to a chaperon.
+
+It was in my absence that Philip asked Gladys to marry him. On my
+reappearance at tea-time, Robin shouted the news across a not
+inconsiderable section of Oxfordshire. I affected the usual surprise,
+warned Philip that he must await my brother's approval, and shook
+hands with him avuncularly. Then I watched the orgy of kissing that
+seems inseparable from announcements of this kind. A mathematician
+would work out the possible combinations in two minutes, but his
+calculation would, as ever, be upset by the intrusion of the personal
+equation, for Robin kissed Gladys not once, but many times, less with
+a view to welcoming her as a sister than from a reasonable belief that
+such ill-timed assiduity would exasperate her elder brother.
+
+In time it occurred to some one to make tea, and at six o'clock the
+flotilla started home. Robin ostentatiously transferred me from
+Philip's punt to his own, and with equal ostentation announced his
+intention of starting last so as to round up the laggards. The
+Canadian canoe shot gracefully ahead, and was soon lost to view; a
+fast stream was running, and the boat needed little assistance from
+the paddle. I have no doubt that in the late afternoon sun, and with
+an accompaniment of rippling water gently lapping the sides of the
+boat, time passed all too quickly. Fragments of conversation were
+disinterred for my benefit in the course of the following weeks, to
+set me wondering anew what sympathetic nimbus I must wear that girls
+and boys like Sylvia and the Seraph should unlock their hearts for my
+inspection.
+
+I gather that Sylvia called for the verdict on the success of their
+expedition to Oxford, and that the Seraph found for her, but with
+reluctant, qualified judgment.
+
+"You're not sorry you came?" she asked. "Well, what's lacking? I'm
+responsible for bringing you here; I want everything to be quite
+perfect."
+
+"Everything _is_ perfect, Sylvia."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"_Some_thing's wrong. You're moody and silent and troubled, just like
+you were the first time we met. D'you remember that night? You looked
+as if you thought I was going to bite you. I don't bite, Seraph. Tell
+me what's the matter, there's still one night more; I want to make you
+glad you came."
+
+"You can't make me gladder than I am. But you can't find roses without
+thorns. I wish we weren't all going back to-morrow."
+
+"It's only to London."
+
+"I know, but it'll all be different."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I don't know, but it _will_ be. These three days wouldn't have been
+so glorious if I hadn't remembered every moment of the time that they
+were--just three days."
+
+Shipping his paddle, he lay back in the boat and plunged his arms up
+to the elbow in the cool, reedy water. Sylvia roused him with a
+challenge.
+
+"Four days would have bored you?"
+
+"Have you ever met the man who _was_ bored by four days of your
+company?"
+
+"Don't you sometimes fancy you know me better than most?"
+
+"I've known you since Whitsun."
+
+"You've known me since...."
+
+She stopped abruptly. The Seraph lifted a wet hand, and watched the
+water trickling in zigzag rivulets up his arm.
+
+"Shall I finish it for you?" he asked.
+
+"You don't know what I was going to say."
+
+"You've known me since the day I was born."
+
+"Why do you think I was going to say that?"
+
+"You were, weren't you?"
+
+"I stopped in the middle."
+
+"You'd thought out the end."
+
+"Had I?"
+
+"Unconsciously?"
+
+A hand waved in impatient protest.
+
+"If it was unconscious, how should I know?"
+
+The Seraph glanced quickly up at her face, and turned away.
+
+"True," he answered absently.
+
+"No one could know," she persisted.
+
+"_I_ knew."
+
+"Guessed."
+
+For answer he picked up his coat from the bottom of the boat, and
+extracted a closely written sheet of college note-paper. Folding it so
+that only the last line was visible, he handed it her with the words--
+
+"You'll find it there."
+
+Sylvia read the line, and gazed in perplexity at her companion.
+
+"But I never _said_ it," she persisted.
+
+"You were going to."
+
+She turned the paper over without answering.
+
+"What's on the other side?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph extended an anxious hand.
+
+"Please don't read that!" he implored her. "It's not meant for you to
+see."
+
+"Is it about me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why shouldn't I see it?"
+
+"You may, but not now."
+
+"Well, when?"
+
+The Seraph's manner had grown suddenly agitated. To gain time, he
+produced a cigarette, but his agitation was betrayed in the trembling
+hand that held the match.
+
+"When we meet again," he answered after a pause.
+
+"We meet again to-night."
+
+"When we meet--after parting."
+
+"We part to dress for dinner."
+
+"I mean a long, serious parting," he replied in a low voice.
+
+Sylvia laughed at his suddenly grave expression.
+
+"Are we going to quarrel?" she asked.
+
+He nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why, Seraph?" she asked more gently.
+
+"We can't help it."
+
+"It takes two to make a quarrel. _I_ don't want to."
+
+"We shouldn't--if we were the only two souls in creation."
+
+Sylvia sat silent, fidgeting with a signet ring, and from time to time
+looking questioningly into the troubled blue eyes before her.
+
+"How do you _know_ these things?" she asked at length. "You can't
+know."
+
+"Call it guessing, but I was right over the unfinished sentence,
+wasn't I?"
+
+"Perhaps, but how do you know?"
+
+"I don't. It's fancy. Some people spend their lives awake, others
+dreaming." He shrugged his shoulders. "I dream. And sometimes the
+dream's so real that I know it must be true."
+
+Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face
+before.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't dream we were going to quarrel," she said. "I
+don't want to lose you as a friend."
+
+"You won't. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help
+badly."
+
+Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes
+recovered their disdainful, independent fire.
+
+"Why should I want help?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," was all he could answer. "You will."
+
+Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped
+Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up
+and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly
+through Mesopotamia neither was able--perhaps neither was willing--to
+pick up the threads of the conversation where they had been dropped.
+In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade
+of Addison's Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows.
+Sylvia's mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he
+had spoken.
+
+"Do we meet and make it up?" she asked with assumed lightness of tone
+as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and
+shot clear into the Isis.
+
+"We meet."
+
+"And make it up?" she repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Do you care?"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"If we don't?" The Seraph sat motionless for a moment, and then began
+paddling the boat alongside the barges. "I shall go abroad. I've never
+been to India. I want to go there. And then I shall go on to Japan,
+and from Japan to some of Stevenson's islands in the South Seas. I've
+seen everything else that I want to see."
+
+"And then?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shook his head uncertainly.
+
+"Burial at sea, I hope."
+
+"Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+"There'd be nothing more in life?"
+
+"Not if we quarrelled and never made it up."
+
+"But if we _did_----"
+
+"Ah, that'ud make all the difference in the world."
+
+For a moment they looked into each other's eyes: then Sylvia's fell.
+
+"I don't want to quarrel," she said. "I don't believe we shall, I
+don't see why we need. If we do, I'm prepared to make it up."
+
+"I wonder if you will be when the time comes," he answered.
+
+We were, with a single, noteworthy exception--a subdued party that
+night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and
+little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and
+reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed
+an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished
+conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the
+expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and
+the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of
+his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish
+called forth a new simile.
+
+"Pity oysters aren't in season, Toby," he remarked. "Marriage is like
+your first oyster, horrid to look at, clammy to touch, and only to be
+swallowed at a gulp." "Clear soup for me, please. When I'm offered
+thick, I always wonder what the cook's trying to hide. Thick soup is
+like marriage." "Why does dressed crab always remind me of marriage? I
+suppose because it's irresistible, indigestible, and if carelessly
+mixed, full of little pieces of shell." "Capercailzie is symbolical of
+married life: too much for one, not enough for two." "Matrimony is
+like a cigarette before port: it destroys the palate for the best
+things in life."
+
+No one paid any attention to Robin as he rambled on to his own
+infinite contentment: he would probably still be rambling but for the
+arrival of an express letter directed to me in Arthur Roden's writing.
+We were digesting dinner over a cigar in the hall, and after reading
+the letter I took Sylvia and the Seraph aside, and communicated its
+contents. By some chance it was included in a miscellaneous bundle of
+papers I packed up before leaving England, and I have it before me on
+my table as I write.
+
+"Private and Confidential," it began--
+
+    "MY DEAR TOBY,"
+
+    "If this arrives in time, I shall be glad if you will send me a
+    wire to say all is well with Sylvia and the others. We are a
+    good deal alarmed by the latest move of the Militants. You will
+    have seen that Rawnsley got up in the House the other day and
+    moved to appropriate all Private Members' time till the end of
+    the Session, in this way frustrating all idea of the Suffrage
+    coming up in the form of a Private Member's Bill.
+
+    "The Militants have made their counterstroke without loss of
+    time. Yesterday morning Jefferson's only child--a boy of
+    seven--disappeared. We left J. out when we were running over
+    likely victims at Brandon: he was away in the _Enchantress_
+    inspecting Rosyth at the time, and I suppose that was how we
+    forgot him. We certainly ought not to have done so, as he has
+    been one of the most outspoken of the anti-militants.
+
+    "The child went yesterday with his nurse to Hyde Park. The
+    woman--like all her damnable kind--paid no attention to her
+    duty, and allowed some young guardsman to sit and talk to her.
+    In five minutes' time--she says it was only five minutes--the
+    child had disappeared. No trace of him has been found.
+    Jefferson, of course, is in a great state of worry, but agrees
+    with Rawnsley that no word of the story must be allowed to reach
+    the Press, and no effort spared to convince the electorate of
+    the utter impossibility of considering the claims at present
+    put forward by the Militants. I am arranging a series of
+    meetings in the Midlands and Home Counties as soon as the House
+    rises.
+
+    "And that reminds me. Rawnsley received a second letter
+    immediately after the abduction of J.'s boy, telling him his
+    action in respect of Private Members' time had been noted, and
+    that he would be given till the end of the month [June] to
+    foreshadow an autumn session. There may be an autumn
+    session--that depends on the Committee Stage of the Poor Law
+    Bill--but the Suffrage will not come up during its course, and
+    Rawnsley is purposely withholding his announcement till the
+    month has turned.
+
+    "For the next ten days, therefore, we may hope to be spared any
+    fresh attack. After that they will begin again, and as my
+    Midland campaign is being announced in the course of this week,
+    it is more than probable that the blow may be aimed at me.
+
+    "Please shew this letter to Sylvia and the boys, and explain as
+    much of the Rawnsley affair as may be necessary to make it clear
+    to her. At present she has been told that Mavis is ill in London
+    and may have to undergo an operation. Tell her to use the utmost
+    care not to stir in public without some competent person to
+    escort her. Scotland Yard is increasing its bodyguards, and
+    everything must be done to assist them.
+
+    "You will, of course, see the necessity of keeping this letter
+    private.
+
+                                      "Ever yours,
+                                                  "ARTHUR RODEN."
+
+As I gave the letter to Sylvia and the Seraph to read, I will admit
+that my first feeling was one of unsubstantial relief that Joyce had
+been in Oxford when the abduction took place in London. I did not in
+any way condone the offence, I should not have condoned it even had I
+known that she was mainly responsible for the abduction. Independently
+of all moral considerations, I found myself being glad that she was
+out of town at the time of the outrage. The consolation was flimsy. I
+concede that. But it is interesting to me to look back now and review
+my mental standpoint at that moment. I had already got beyond the
+point of administering moral praise and blame: my descent to active
+participation in crime followed with incredible abruptness.
+
+I felt the "Private and Confidential" was not binding against the
+Seraph, as he had been present when Rawnsley described the
+disappearance of Mavis. While he expounded her father's letter to
+Sylvia, I gave its main points to Philip and Robin. The comments of
+the family were characteristic of its various members. Philip shook a
+statesmanlike head and opined that this was getting very serious, you
+know. Robin inquired plaintively who'd want to abduct a little thing
+like him.
+
+"I don't want any 'competent escort,'" Sylvia exclaimed with her
+determined small chin in the air.
+
+"For less than twenty-four hours," I begged. "I'm responsible for your
+safety till then. After that you can fight the matter out with your
+father."
+
+"But I can look after myself even for the next twenty-four hours."
+
+I assumed my severest manner.
+
+"Have you ever seen me angry?" I said.
+
+"Do you think you could frighten me?" she asked with a demure smile.
+
+"I'm quite sure I couldn't," I answered helplessly. "Seraph, can you
+do anything with her?"
+
+"Nobody can do anything with her...."
+
+"Seraph!"
+
+"...against her will."
+
+"That's better."
+
+I struck at a propitious moment.
+
+"When we leave here," I said to the Seraph, "you're to take her hand
+and not let go till you're back in the hotel again. I give her into
+your charge. Treat her...."
+
+I hesitated, and Sylvia interrogated me with a King's Ransom smile.
+
+"Treat her as she deserves," I said. "If she were my wife, ward or
+daughter, I should slap her and send her to bed. So would you, so
+would any man worthy of the name."
+
+"Would you, Seraph?"
+
+He was helping her into her cloak and did not answer the question.
+Suddenly she turned round and looked into his eyes.
+
+"Would you, Seraph?" I heard her repeat.
+
+"I shall treat you--as you deserve to be treated," he answered slowly.
+
+"That's not an answer," she objected.
+
+"What's the good of asking him?" I said as the rest of our party
+joined us.
+
+In the absence of Joyce I spent large portions of a dull and
+interminably long night smoking excessive cigarettes and leaning
+against a wall to watch the dancers. Towards three o'clock I
+discovered an early edition of an evening paper and read it from cover
+to cover. Canadian Pacifics were rising or falling, and some
+convulsion was taking place in Rio Tintos.
+
+The only other news of interest I found in the Cause List. I remember
+the case of Wylton _v._ Wylton and Sleabury was down for trial one day
+towards the end of that week.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CAUSE C�L�BRE
+
+    "Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological?"
+
+                  GEORGE GISSING: "Born in Exile."
+
+
+I always look back with regret to our return to London after
+Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens' house in Cadogan
+Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful,
+light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first
+careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of
+suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old
+alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping
+unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our
+former frank, trustful footing.
+
+I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time--not even the Seraph,
+for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back
+over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had
+already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much
+that followed.
+
+To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that
+characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have
+warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce
+Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were
+their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of
+demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the
+progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals;
+but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed,
+vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched,
+and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered
+the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the
+suspicions of both belligerents.
+
+Again, the Wylton divorce proved--if proof were ever needed--that when
+English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing
+for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure
+themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of
+moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two
+added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much
+unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that
+Quixotism does not pay in England, while I--well, there is no fool
+like a middle-aged fool.
+
+Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia's tropical
+intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably
+_intrigu�e_, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as
+she might, there was something arresting in his other-world,
+somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were
+too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy
+was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl
+who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt
+that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and
+revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any
+woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt
+that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated
+the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of
+unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.
+
+The Seraph--it is clear--had not responded. I know now--indeed, I knew
+at the time--that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his
+receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence
+had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a
+man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism.
+Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy
+she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate
+his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred
+to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and
+their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he
+could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had
+shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford
+absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his
+curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his
+mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped
+short--for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to
+go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock.
+I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or
+gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.
+
+With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken
+for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were
+always running over to the Rodens' or receiving visits from Sylvia
+and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as
+completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the
+information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further
+inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady
+Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an
+intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination
+into his antecedents. "Who _is_ this Mr. Aintree?" I remember her
+asking in her lifeless, faded voice. "Has he any relations? There used
+to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell."
+
+After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out
+to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to
+Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I
+felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am
+glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to
+proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day
+or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but
+away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I
+called in at the club before trying his flat. The Seraph was not
+there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside's
+benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current "Vie
+Parisienne."
+
+"Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?" I heard him inquire
+with feigned admiration. "In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?"
+Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity.
+"'Corruptio optimi pessima!' I wonder ye've the courage to show
+yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside."
+
+I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph's whereabouts, but the
+question appeared to add fuel to Culling's indignation.
+
+"Where is the Seraph?" he exclaimed. "Well ye may ask! His wings are
+clipped, there's a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings
+broken. The Heavenly Choir----" He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of
+foolscap and resumed his normal tone. "This'll be rather good--the
+Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as
+Gartside here.
+
+    'To bottomless perdition, there to dwell--
+    Why can't the club afford a decent pen?
+    You're our committeeman, Bob, you're to blame.
+    I always use blank verse for my complaints.--
+    To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
+    In adamantine chains and penal fire.'"
+
+            JOHN MILTON: "Paradise Lost, Liber One."
+
+I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the
+Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of
+the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the
+shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had
+been knocked over one eye, and his halo--in Culling's words--was "all
+anyhow." As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the
+Seraph's reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for
+enlightenment.
+
+"It's been going on long enough to be getting serious," I was told. "A
+solid week now."
+
+"_What's_ been going on?" I exclaimed in despair. "Where are we? Above
+all, where's the Seraph?"
+
+"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the
+day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through
+London like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a
+Gentleman--well known in Society--seeking whom he may devour,'" he
+murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And
+it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak
+to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."
+
+I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in
+extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references
+to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.
+
+"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed
+tobacco."
+
+"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married
+a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm
+hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all
+accounts, and Wylton--well, I expect you've heard some queer stories
+about him, they're all true. After they'd been married--how long was
+it, Paddy?"
+
+"Oh, a few years--by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up
+the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to
+work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being
+horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad
+while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new
+partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his
+actions out of court...."
+
+"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.
+
+"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.
+
+Culling warmed oratorically to his work.
+
+"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient
+Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided
+business.' Toby, ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life
+is a _mauvais quart d'heure_ made up of exquisite week-ends. While
+Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be
+the Hungarian correspondent of the _Baptist Family Herald_, Mrs.
+Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."
+
+He paused delicately.
+
+"Girls will be girls," sighed Gartside.
+
+"A gay cavalry major, with that way they have in the army, made a
+flying descent on Deauville. He'd been seen about with her in London
+quite enough to cause comment. Good-natured friends asked Wylton why
+he was vegetating in Pesth when he might be in Deauville; he came, he
+saw, he stayed in the self same hotel as his wife...."
+
+"Which curiously enough had been already chosen by the gay cavalry
+major."
+
+Culling shook his head over the innate depravity of human nature.
+
+"You see the finish?" he inquired rhetorically. "They say the senior
+partner in Morgan and Travers had a seizure when Wylton had finished
+the last batch of cases in his own department, and strolled into the
+private office to instruct proceedings for a petition."
+
+"Six days ago, decree nisi was granted," said Gartside.
+
+"Scene in Court: President expressing sympathy with Petitioner,"
+murmured Culling, with quick pencil already at work on the
+blotting-pad.
+
+I lit a cigar to clear my head.
+
+"Where does the Seraph come in?" I persisted like a man with an _id�e
+fixe_.
+
+"In the sequel," said Gartside. "There is a right way of doing
+everything, also a wrong. When one is divorced, one hides one's
+diminished head...."
+
+"I always do," said Culling.
+
+"One grows a beard and goes to live in Kensington. Mrs. Wylton is
+making the mistake of trying to brazen things out. 'You may cut me,'
+she says, 'but ye canna brek me manly sperrit.' Consequently in every
+place where she can be certain of attracting a crowd, Mrs. Wylton is
+to be found in the front row of the stalls, very pretty, very quiet
+and so unobtrusively dressed that you're almost tempted to damn her as
+respectable."
+
+He lit a cigarette and I took occasion to remind him that we had not
+yet come in sight of the Seraph.
+
+Culling took up the parable.
+
+"Is she alone?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Sir, she is not! Who
+took her to dinner last night at Dieudonn�'s, the night before at the
+Savoy, the night before that at the Carlton? Who has been seen with
+her at the Duke of York's, the Haymarket, the St. James'?"
+
+"Who rides with her every summer morning in the Park?" cut in
+Gartside. "It is our Seraph. Our foolish Seraph, and we lay at your
+door the blame for his demoralisation. Seriously, Toby, somebody ought
+to speak the word in season. He's getting talked about, and that sort
+of flying in the face of public opinion doesn't do one damn's worth of
+good. The woman's got to have her gruel and take her time over it.
+She'll only put people's backs up by going on as she's doing at
+present. Mind you, I'm sorry for her," he went on more gently. "In her
+place I'd have done precisely the same thing, and I'd have done it
+years ago. But I should have had the sense to recognise I'd got to
+face the consequences."
+
+I wondered for a short two seconds if it would be of the slightest
+avail to proclaim my belief in Elsie Wylton's innocence. A glance at
+Culling and Gartside convinced me of the futility.
+
+"Where's the Seraph now?" I asked.
+
+"With her. Any money you like. She lives with her sister in Chester
+Square; you'll find him there."
+
+I sent a boy off to telephone to Adelphi Terrace. Until his return
+with the announcement that the Seraph was still away from home,
+Gartside suggested the lines on which I was to admonish the young
+offender.
+
+"The gay cavalry major's prudently shipped himself back to India," he
+said, "and he was a pretty shadowy figure to most people as it was.
+What the Seraph has to understand is that he'll get all the discredit
+of being an 'and other' if he ties himself to her strings in this way.
+I only give you what everybody's saying."
+
+I promised to ponder his advice, and after being reminded that Gladys
+and I were due at his musical party the following week, and reminding
+him that he was expected to lunch on my house-boat at Henley, we went
+our several ways.
+
+Wandering circuitously round the smoking-rooms and library on my way
+to the hall, I had ample corroboration of what--in Gartside's
+words--everybody was saying. The Wylton divorce was the one topic of
+conversation. For the most part, I found Gartside's own tolerance to
+the woman representative of the general feeling in the club: his
+strictures on the folly of the Seraph's conduct had a good many
+echoes, though two men had the detachment to praise his disinterested
+behaviour. Of the rest, those who did not condemn opined that he was
+too young to know any better.
+
+The one discordant note was struck when I met Nigel Rawnsley in the
+hall. Elsie Wylton was shot hellwards in one sentence and the Seraph
+in another, but the burden of his discourse was reserved for the
+sacramental nature of wedlock and the damnable heresy of divorce. I
+was subjected to a lucid exposition of the Anglican doctrine of
+marriage, initiated into the mysteries of the first three (or three
+hundred) General Councils of the Church, presented with thumbnail
+biographies of Arius and S. Athanasius, and impressed with the
+necessity of unfrocking all priests who celebrated the marriage of
+divorced persons. It was all very stimulating, and I found that half
+my most prosaic friends were living in something that Rawnsley
+damningly described as "a state of sin."
+
+It was tea-time before I arrived at Chester Square. I suppose I had
+never taken Gartside very seriously: the moment I saw Elsie and the
+Seraph, my lot was unconditionally thrown in with the publicans and
+sinners. She greeted me with the smile of a woman who has no care in
+the world: then as she turned to ring the bell for tea, I caught the
+expression of one who is passing through Purgatory on her way to Hell.
+The Seraph's eyes were telegraphing a whole code-book. I walked to the
+window so that she could not see my face, nor I hers.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in," I said as carelessly as
+I could. "It was tea-time for one thing, and for another I wanted to
+tell you that you've done about the pluckiest thing a woman can do.
+Good luck to you! If there's anything I can do...."
+
+Then we shook hands again, and I found her death-like placidity a good
+deal harder to bear than if she had broken down or gone into
+hysterics. I do not believe the Davenant women know how to cry:
+Nature left the lachrymal sac out of their composition. Yet on
+reflection I can see now that she was suffering less than in the days
+six weeks before when the anticipation of the divorce lowered
+menacingly over her head and haunted every waking moment. It is
+curious to see how suspense cards down a woman's spirit while the
+shock of a catastrophe seems actually to brace her and call forth
+every reserve of strength. From this time till the day of my departure
+from England, Elsie was indomitable.
+
+"It's hard work at present," she said with a gentle, tired smile, "but
+I'm going through with it."
+
+That was what her father used to say when I climbed with him in
+Trans-Caucasia. He would say it as we crawled and fought and bit our
+way up a slippery face of rock, sheer as the side of a house. And he
+was five and twenty years my senior.
+
+"What are you doing to-night?" I asked.
+
+"We were trying to make up our minds when you came in," said the
+Seraph.
+
+"Dinner somewhere, I suppose, and a theatre? What's on, Seraph? I'm
+all alone to-night, and I want you and Elsie to dine with me."
+
+Elsie was sitting with closed eyes, bathing her forehead with scent.
+
+"Make it something that starts late," she said wearily. "I don't feel
+I can stand many hours."
+
+After a brief study of the theatrical advertisements in the _Morning
+Post_ the Seraph went off to make arrangements over the telephone. I
+took hold of Elsie's disengaged hand and tried in a clumsy, masculine
+fashion to pump courage into her tired spirit.
+
+"You must stick it out to the end of the Season," I told her. "It's
+only a few more weeks, and then you can rest as long as you like.
+Don't let people think they can drive you into hiding. If you do that,
+you'll lose pride in yourself, and when you lose pride in yourself,
+why should any one believe in you?"
+
+"How many people believe in me now?"
+
+"Not many. That's why I admire your pluck. But there's Joyce for one."
+
+"Yes, Joyce," she assented slowly.
+
+"And the Seraph for another."
+
+"Yes, the Seraph."
+
+"And me for a third."
+
+I felt her trying to draw her hand away.
+
+"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit--hard
+hit."
+
+I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing
+erect--blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired--she was wonderfully
+like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender
+white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.
+
+"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep
+themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or
+untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but
+the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a
+grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to
+conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean.
+I've known three in one generation and one in another."
+
+I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if
+Elsie had had no sister Joyce.
+
+The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to
+join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I
+found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I
+found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried
+meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or
+fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked
+at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a
+weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short
+to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an an�mic girl
+of twenty--a Miss Draper--with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's
+every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of
+agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after
+coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.
+
+That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I
+believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is
+immaterial; wherever we went we found--or so it seemed to our
+over-sensitive, suspicious nerves--a slight hush, a movement of
+turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through
+it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with
+the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled,
+indifferent--best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought
+actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some
+superiority over man....
+
+We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the
+door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of
+course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two
+months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed
+back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into
+talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....
+
+When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that
+none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without
+running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in
+air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister;
+and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that
+night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of
+any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that
+text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct
+underlying such a belief.
+
+At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our
+preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill--and swore a
+private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts,
+and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out--an unexpected
+party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to
+collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from
+Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had
+eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned
+in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.
+
+The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed,
+and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.
+Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened
+itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been
+expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight
+curve. Every one bowed to every one--Robin with his irrepressible,
+instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public
+man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of
+the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her
+cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and
+parted.
+
+The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than
+enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.
+
+"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.
+"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere
+presence of one was distasteful to the other."
+
+"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me,
+they've got to know my friends."
+
+"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right,
+aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up
+visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather
+uncomfortable."
+
+The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to
+Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much
+publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of
+embarrassment to a private gathering.
+
+I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soir�e Musicale three nights
+later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from
+under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House
+Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the
+female side of human nature at work.
+
+Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom
+had led her to dress--as ever--in white, and to wear no jewellery but
+pearls. Her black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever;
+her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.
+Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the
+compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for
+thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies
+called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I
+liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet
+more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there
+was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.
+
+"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.
+
+The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was
+wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel
+approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant
+promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to
+spare--Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one
+who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental
+antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....
+
+They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention,
+preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time
+Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in
+deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him
+to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's
+clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time
+what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men
+otherwise so dissimilar.
+
+With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of
+territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I
+wondered how much it amused her. Not many women can resist the
+age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I
+should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want
+admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the
+first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her
+object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of
+jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this
+were even her motive.
+
+We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a
+word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to
+be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see,
+grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he
+came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening
+that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at
+eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had
+just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.
+
+"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the
+room to themselves.
+
+"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"
+
+The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing
+three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the
+Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.
+
+"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.
+
+"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."
+
+"Welcome to you?"
+
+"It depends on yourself."
+
+"What must I do?"
+
+Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.
+
+"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."
+
+"I usually am."
+
+"With some startling lapses."
+
+"I'm not aware of any."
+
+Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.
+
+"How have you spent the last week?"
+
+"In a variety of ways."
+
+"In a variety of company?"
+
+"The same nearly all the time."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"This is my objection."
+
+"If _she_ doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned
+him to leave the sentence unfinished.
+
+"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've
+no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate
+carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've
+spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in
+company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every
+one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort
+of notoriety...."
+
+"Can it be avoided?"
+
+"You can drop the woman."
+
+"She's none too many friends."
+
+"She's one too many."
+
+"I cannot agree."
+
+"Then you put yourself on her level."
+
+"I should be proud to rank with her."
+
+Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.
+
+"I've got a temper," she remarked with exaggerated indifference, "it's
+never wise for anybody to rouse it, and many people would be annoyed
+if you talked to them as you're talking to me. I--simply don't think
+it's worth it, but can you wonder if I ask you to choose between her
+and me?"
+
+The Seraph's face and voice were grave.
+
+"The choice seems unnecessary," he said.
+
+"You must take it from me that I have no wish to be seen about with a
+man who allows his name to be coupled with a woman of that kind."
+
+"What kind, Sylvia?"
+
+"You know my meaning."
+
+"But your meaning is wrong."
+
+"I mean an ugly word for an ugly sin. A woman of the kind that breaks
+the Seventh Commandment."
+
+The Seraph began tearing his card in narrow strips.
+
+"Elsie Wylton didn't," he said quietly.
+
+"She told you so?"
+
+"I didn't need telling."
+
+Sylvia's expression implored pity on the credulity of man. The Seraph
+was still nervously fingering his card, but no signs of emotion
+ruffled her calm. The face was slightly flushed, but she bent her head
+to hide it.
+
+"Part friends, Seraph," she said at last, "if you're not coming to the
+Carstens'. Think it over, and you'll find every one will give you the
+same advice."
+
+"I dare say." He pocketed the torn card and prepared to accompany her.
+"What would you do in my place if you believed the woman innocent?"
+
+Sylvia shirked the question.
+
+"Innocent women don't get into those positions."
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"How can she prove her innocence?"
+
+"How do you prove her guilt?"
+
+"I don't attempt to go behind what the Court finds."
+
+At the door the Seraph hesitated.
+
+"To-night's only an armistice, Sylvia," he stipulated. "I must have
+time to think. I'm not committed either way."
+
+She gave him her old friendly smile.
+
+"If you like." Then the smile melted away. "My ultimatum comes in
+force to-morrow morning, though. You must make up your mind then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HENLEY--AND AFTER
+
+      "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a
+      disappointed woman."--COLLEY CIBBER: "Love's Last Shift."
+
+
+Henley Regatta was something of a disappointment to me. I had
+furbished up the memories of twenty years before--which was one
+mistake--and was looking forward to it--which was another. In great
+measure the glory had departed from the house-boats, every one poured
+into the town by train or car, and the growth of _ad hoc_ riverside
+clubs had reduced the number of punts and canoes on the river itself.
+Being every inch as much a snob as my neighbour, I regretted to find
+Henley so deeply democratised....
+
+I think, in all modesty, my own party was a success. Our houseboat was
+the "Desdemona," a fair imitation of what the papers call "a floating
+hotel": we brought my brother's cook from Pont Street and carried our
+cellar with us from town. And there was a pleasant, assiduous
+orchestra that neither ate nor slept in its zeal to play us all the
+waltzes we had grown tired of hearing in London. A Mad Hatter's
+luncheon started at noon and went on till midnight. Any passing boat
+that liked the "Desdemona's" looks, moored alongside and boarded her:
+no one criticised the food or cigars, many dropped in again for a
+second or third meal in the course of the afternoon, and if they did
+not know Gladys or myself, they no doubt had a friend among my guests
+or waiters.
+
+Both those that slept on board and those that visited us at their
+stomachs' prompting were cheery, light-hearted, out to enjoy
+themselves. I admit my own transports were moderated by the necessity
+of having to dance attendance on Lady Roden. The air became charged
+with Rutlandshire Morningtons, and our conversation showed signs of
+degenerating into a fantastic Burke's Auction Bridge. Two earls
+counted higher than three viscounts; I called her out with one
+marquis, she took the declaration away with a duke, I got it back
+again with a Russian prince: she doubled me.... Apart from this, I
+enjoyed myself. All the right people turned up, except Gartside who
+was kept in town discussing Governorships with the India Office.
+
+There were Rodens to right of us, Rodens to left of us: in a field
+behind us, unostentatiously smoking Virginia cigarettes, loitered a
+watchful Roden bodyguard. The Regatta started on July 3rd and on the
+previous day Rawnsley had given the House its time-table. There would
+be no Autumn Session, but the House would sit till the end of the
+third week in August to conclude the Third Reading of the Poor Law
+Bill; no fresh legislation would be introduced. The New Militants had
+their answer without possibility of misconstruction, and the families
+of Cabinet Ministers moved nowhere without a lynx-eyed, heavy-booted,
+plain-clothes escort.
+
+I summoned Scotland Yard out of its damp, cheerless meadow, gave it
+bottled beer and a pack of cards, and told it to treat the "Desdemona"
+as its own and to ring for anything likely to contribute to its
+comfort. Though we had never met before and were only to meet once
+again, I felt for those men as I should feel for any one deputed to
+bear up the young Rodens lest at any time they dashed their feet
+against stones....
+
+Sylvia was laconic and decisive. She had engaged and defeated her
+father, met and routed her brothers. Any one who guarded her reckless
+person did so at their peril; she declined to argue the point. I fancy
+Lady Roden accepted a detective more or less as part of her
+too-often-withheld due; Philip was constitutional, guided by
+precedent, anxious to help peace and order in the execution of their
+arduous duties. The only active molestation came from Robin: left to
+himself he would have ignored the detectives' very existence, but at
+the fell suggestion of Culling I discovered him whiling away the
+morning by bursting into the guard-room at five-minute intervals with
+hysterical cries of "Save me! Oh, my God! save me!"
+
+The saturnine, enigmatic Michael pursued his own methods. How he had
+escaped from Winchester in the midst of the terminal examinations, I
+never discovered. His telegram said, "What about me for Henley, old
+thing? Michael." I wired back, "Come in your thousands," and he came
+in a dove-grey suit, grey socks and buckskin shoes, grey tie, silk
+handkerchief and Homburg hat. I appreciated Michael more and more at
+each meeting. Of a detached family he was the most detached member.
+Observing me staring a trifle unceremoniously at his neck-tie, he
+produced a note-book and pencil and invited my written opinion. "On
+Seeing my New Tie" was inscribed on the front page, and the
+comments--so far as I remember the figures--were:--
+
+(1) "Oh, my God!" (forty per cent.).
+
+(2) "_Have_ you seen Michael's tie?" (forty per cent.).
+
+(3) "Michael _darling_!" (Sylvia's _cri de coeur_, ten per cent.).
+
+(4) "It's a devilish good tie" (my own verdict, perhaps not altogether
+sincere). (Ten per cent.).
+
+"Come and shew yer ticket o' leave," urged Culling with derisory
+finger outstretched to indicate the forces of law and order.
+
+"No bloody peelers for this child," Michael answered in a voice
+discreetly lowered to keep the offending epithet from his sister's
+ears.
+
+I noticed an exchange of glances between Culling and himself, but was
+too busy to think much of it at the time. Eleven minutes later,
+however, the majesty of Scotland Yard had been incarcerated in its own
+stronghold. Culling sat outside their door improvising an oratorio on
+an accordion. "The Philistines are upon thee," I heard him thunder as
+I passed that way. Michael was lying prone on the deck of the
+house-boat, dangling at safe distance the key of the cabin at the end
+of a Japanese umbrella.
+
+"_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_" he asked, as an official hand shot
+impotently out of the cabin window. The question may have been
+imperfectly understood.
+
+"_Sanguineos quis custodes custodiet ipsos?_" he ventured.
+
+As there was still no answer, common humanity ordained that I should
+possess myself of the key and hold a gaol delivery. The detectives
+were near weeping with humiliation, but I comforted them in some
+measure, won a friendship that was to serve me in good stead, and was
+at length free to resume my duties as host.
+
+From time to time perfunctory racing took place, without arousing
+either interest or resentment. We all had our own ways of passing the
+time between meal and meal; one would study the teeth and smile of a
+musical-comedy star, another would watch Culling at the Three Card
+Trick, a third would count the Jews on a neighbouring house-boat....
+There was no sign of Elsie or the Seraph, but that was only to be
+expected. He was to provide her with luncheon and publicity at Phyllis
+Court, and give the "Desdemona" a wide berth. Those, at least, were
+his sailing orders if he came; but Elsie had been over-tired and
+over-excited for some weeks past, and I should not have been surprised
+to hear she had stayed in town at the last moment.
+
+It is one thing to set a course, and another to steer it--of Henley
+this is probably truer than of any other stretch of water in the
+world. When half the punts are returning from island to post after
+luncheon, and the other half paddle down stream to look at the
+house-boats, the narrow water midway between start and finish becomes
+hopelessly, chaotically congested. One or two skiffs and
+dinghies--which should never be allowed at any regatta--make confusion
+worse confounded till a timely collision breaks their sculls, or the
+nose of a racing punt turns them turtle; and with the closing of the
+booms, three boats begin to sprout where only one was before.
+
+Through a forest of dripping paddles, I watched punt, dinghy and canoe
+fighting, pressing, yielding; up-stream, down-stream, broad side on,
+they slid and trembled like a tesselated pavement in an earthquake.
+The fatalists shipped their poles and paddles, and abandoned
+themselves to the line of least resistance. Faces grew flushed, but
+tempers remained creditably even....
+
+"Mary, mother of God! it's our sad, bad, mad Seraph!"
+
+Having exhausted the possibilities of the Three Card Trick, and being
+unable to secure either a pea or two thimbles, Paddy Culling had
+wandered to my side and was watching the crowd like a normal man.
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. The Seraph had turned fatalist
+and was being squeezed nearer and nearer the "Desdemona." A last
+vicious thrust by a boatload of pierrots jammed the box of his punt
+under our landing-stage. He waved a hand to me and began distributing
+bows among my guests.
+
+"Droppit sthraight from Hiven," cried Culling with unnecessary
+elaboration of his already strong brogue. "The tay's wet, Mrs. Wylton,
+and we waiting for some one would ask a blessing. Seraph, yer
+ambrosia's on order."
+
+They would not leave the punt, but we brought them tea; and a fair
+sprinkling of my guests testified to the success of our last few
+weeks' campaign by coming down to the raft and being civil to Elsie.
+There was, of course, no commotion or excitement of any kind; of those
+who lingered on deck or in the saloon, fully half, I dare say, were
+unconscious of what was going on below. Such was certainly the case
+with Sylvia. While Paddy and I served out strawberries to the crew of
+the punt, she had been washing her hands for tea, and as we crowned a
+work of charity with a few cigars and a box of matches, she came out
+onto the raft for assistance with the clasp of a watch-bracelet.
+
+Paddy volunteered his services, I looked on. Her eyes travelled idly
+over the crowded segment of river opposite my boat, and completed
+their circuit by resting on the punt and its occupants. Elsie bowed
+and received a slight inclination of the head in return. The Seraph
+bowed, and was accorded the most perfect cut I have ever witnessed.
+Sylvia looked straight through him to a dinghy four yards the other
+side. It was superbly, insolently done. I have always been too lazy to
+cultivate the art of cutting my friends, but should occasion ever
+arise, I shall go to Sylvia for the necessary tuition.
+
+As soon as the congestion was in some measure relieved, the Seraph
+waved good-bye to me and started paddling up stream towards Henley
+Bridge. Elsie had seen all that was to be seen in the cut,
+and--womanlike--had read into it a variety of meanings.
+
+"I hope you're not tired," the Seraph said, as they landed and walked
+down to the station.
+
+"I've had a lovely time," she answered. "Thanks most awfully for
+bringing me, and for all you've done these last few weeks. And before
+that." She hesitated, and then added with a regretful smile, "We must
+say good-bye after to-day."
+
+"You're not going away?"
+
+"Not yet; but you've got into enough trouble on my account without
+losing all your friends," she answered.
+
+"But I haven't."
+
+"You're risking one."
+
+"On your account?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He had not the brazenness to attempt a direct denial.
+
+"Why should you think so?" he hedged.
+
+"Seraph, dear child, I couldn't help seeing the way she took your bow.
+I got you that cut."
+
+"She doesn't cut Toby," he objected. "And he and I are equally
+incriminated."
+
+"There is a difference."
+
+"Is there?"
+
+"She's quite indifferent how much _he_ soils his wings."
+
+The Seraph was left to digest the unspoken antithesis. His face
+gradually lost the flush it had taken on after their encounter at the
+raft, his eyes grew calmer and his hands steadier; on the subject of
+their contention, however, he remained impenitent.
+
+"I shan't say good-bye till you honestly tell me you don't want to see
+me again."
+
+"You know I can't say that, Seraph."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+"But it isn't! The good you do me is simply not worth the harm you do
+yourself. It didn't matter so much till Sylvia came to be reckoned
+with."
+
+The Seraph shifted impatiently in his corner.
+
+"Neither Sylvia Roden nor any other woman or man in the world is going
+to dictate who I may associate with, or who I mayn't."
+
+"You must make an exception to the rule in her case."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Every man has to make an exception to every rule in the case of one
+woman."
+
+His chin achieved an uncompromising angle.
+
+"To quote the Pharisee of blessed memory," he said, "I thank God I am
+not as other men."
+
+Elsie was well enough acquainted with his moods to know nothing was to
+be gained by further direct opposition.
+
+"I should like you to come to Chester Square," she compromised; "but
+you mustn't be seen with me in public any more."
+
+"I shall ride in the Park to-morrow as usual," he persisted.
+
+"I shan't be there, Seraph."
+
+A surprise was awaiting me when Gladys and I returned to Pont Street
+in the early hours of Sunday morning, after waiting to see the
+fireworks--by immemorial tradition--extinguished by a tropical
+downpour. Brian notified me by wireless that he was on his way home
+and halfway through the Bay. He was, in fact, already overdue at
+Tilbury, but had been held up while the piston of a high-compression
+cylinder divested itself of essential portions of its packing.
+
+"Who's going to tell him about Phil?" Gladys asked in consternation
+when I read her the message. We were getting on so comfortably without
+my brother that I think the natural affection of us both was tinged
+with resentment that he was returning by an earlier boat than he had
+threatened.
+
+"As you are the offender," I pointed out.
+
+"You were responsible for me."
+
+"Why not leave it to Phil?" I suggested, with my genius for
+compromise.
+
+"That's mean."
+
+"Well, will you tell him yourself? No! I decline to be mixed up in it.
+I shan't be here. The day your parents land, I shall shift myself bag
+and baggage to an hotel. Isn't the simplest solution to break off the
+engagement? Well, you're very hard to please, you know."
+
+I really forget how we settled the question, but the news was
+certainly not broken by me. The Seraph dropped in to dinner on the
+last night of my guardianship, and I asked him whether he thought I
+could improve on the Savoy as my next house of entertainment.
+
+"But you're coming to stay with _me_," he said.
+
+"My dear fellow, you've no experience of me as a guest. I don't know
+how long I'm staying in London."
+
+"The longer the better, if you don't mind roughing it."
+
+I knew there would be no "roughing it" in his immaculate mode of
+living, but the question was left undecided for the moment as I really
+felt it would be better for us both to run independently. Ten weeks of
+domesticity shared even with Gladys gave me a sensation of clipped
+wings after my inconsiderate, caravanserai existence, and--without
+wishing to be patronising--I had to remember that he was a man of very
+moderate means and would feel the cost of housing me more than I
+should feel it myself. The following afternoon I called round at
+Adelphi Terrace to acquaint him with my decision, but something seemed
+to have upset him; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window and I
+had not the heart to bother him with my own ephemeral arrangements. At
+the door of the flat his man apologetically asked my advice on the
+case; his master was eating, drinking, and smoking practically
+nothing, wandering about his room instead of going to bed, and gazing
+out into space instead of his usual daily writing.
+
+I thought over the symptoms on my way to the Club, and decided to
+employ a portion of the afternoon in playing providence with Sylvia.
+It is a part for which I am unfitted by inclination, instinct,
+experience, and aptitude.
+
+Some meeting of political stalwarts was in progress when I arrived at
+Cadogan Square, but I was mercifully shewn into Sylvia's own room and
+allowed to spend an interesting five minutes inspecting her books and
+pictures. They formed an illuminating commentary on her character. One
+shelf was devoted to works of religion, the rest to lives and
+histories of the world's great women. Catherine of Siena marched in
+front of the army, Florence Nightingale brought up the rear; in the
+ranks were queens like Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia, and Joan of
+Arc, the great uncrowned; writers from Madame de S�vign� to George
+Eliot, actresses from Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry, artists like Vig�e le
+Brun, reformers like Mary Woolstonecraft. It was a catholic library,
+and found space for Lady Hamilton among the rest. My inspection was
+barely begun when the door opened and Sylvia came in alone.
+
+"'Tis sweet of you to come," she said. "Have you had tea? Well, d'you
+mind having it here alone with me? I'm sure you won't want to meet all
+father's constituents' wives. I hope I wasn't very long."
+
+"No doubt it seemed longer than it was," I answered. "Still, I've had
+time to look at some of your books and make a discovery about you. If
+you weren't your father's daughter, you'd be a raging militant."
+
+From the sudden fire in her eyes I thought I had angered her, but the
+threatening flame died as quickly as it had arisen.
+
+"There's something in heredity after all, then," she said with a
+smile. "Do I--look the sort of person that breaks windows and burns
+down houses?"
+
+So far as looks went the same question might have been asked of Joyce
+Davenant. That I did not ask it was due to a prudent resolve to keep
+my friendship with Rodens and Davenants in separate watertight
+compartments.
+
+"You look the sort of person that has a great deal of ability and
+ambition, and wants a great deal of power."
+
+"Without forgetting that I'm still a woman."
+
+"Some of the militants are curiously feminine."
+
+"'Curiously,' is just the right adverb."
+
+"Joan of Arc rode astride," I pointed out.
+
+"Florence Nightingale didn't break windows to impress the War Office."
+
+"As an academic question," I said, "how's your woman of personality
+going to make her influence effective in twentieth-century England?"
+
+"Have you met many women of personality?"
+
+"A fair sprinkling."
+
+"So I have; you could feel it as if they were mesmerising you, you had
+to do anything they told you. But they'd none of them votes."
+
+The arrival of tea turned our thoughts from politics, and at the end
+of my second cup I advanced delicately towards the purpose of my call.
+
+"You like plain speaking, don't you, Sylvia?" I began.
+
+"As plain as you like."
+
+"Well, you're not treating the Seraph fairly."
+
+I leant back and watched her raising her little dark eyebrows in
+amused surprise.
+
+"Has he sent you here?" she asked.
+
+"I came on my own blundering initiative," I said. "I don't know what
+the trouble's about."
+
+"But whatever it is, I'm to blame?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+Sylvia was delighted. "If a man doesn't think highly of women I do
+like to hear him say so!"
+
+"As a matter of fact I'm not concerned to apportion blame to either of
+you. You're both of you abnormal and irrational; as likely as not
+you're both of you wrong. I wanted to tell you something about the
+Seraph you may not have heard before."
+
+In a dozen sentences I told her of my first meeting with him in
+Morocco.
+
+"Thanks to you," I said, "he's pretty well got over it. Remember that
+I saw him then, and you didn't; so believe me when I tell you he was
+suffering from what the novelists call a 'broken heart.' He won't get
+over it a second time."
+
+"You're sure it was broken?" she asked dispassionately. "Um. It sounds
+to me like a dent; press the other side, the dent comes out."
+
+I produced a cigarette case, and flew a distress signal for
+permission.
+
+"I should like you to be serious about this," I said.
+
+"I? Where do I come in?"
+
+I searched vainly for matches, and eventually had to use one of my
+own.
+
+"He's in love with you," I said.
+
+Sylvia dealt with the proposition in a series of short sentences
+punctuated by grave nods.
+
+"Gratifying. If true. Seems improbable. Irrelevant, anyway. Unless I
+happen to be in love with him."
+
+"I was not born yesterday," I reminded her. "Or the day before."
+
+"You might have been."
+
+I bowed.
+
+"I mean, you're so deliciously young. Do you usually go about talking
+to girls as you've been talking to me?"
+
+I buttoned up my coat, preparatory to leaving. "Being a friend of you
+both," I said, "if a word of advice----"
+
+"But you haven't given it."
+
+Literally, I suppose that was true.
+
+"Well, if your generosity's greater than your pride, you can apologise
+to him: if your pride's greater than your generosity, waive the
+apology and sink the past. I've a fair idea what the quarrel's about,"
+I added.
+
+"I see." Sylvia brought flippancy into her tone when speaking of
+something too serious to be treated seriously: the flippancy was now
+ebbing away, and leaving her implacable and unyielding. "Is there any
+reason why I should do anything at all?" she asked.
+
+I stretched out my hand to bid her good-bye. "I've not done it well,"
+I admitted, "but the advice was not bad, and the spirit was really
+good."
+
+"Admirable," she answered ironically. "I should be glad of such a
+champion. Have you given _him_ any advice?"
+
+"What d'you suggest?"
+
+Sylvia knelt on the edge of a sofa, clasping her hands lazily behind
+her head.
+
+"I ride in the Park every morning," she began. "I ride alone because I
+prefer to be alone. My father objects, and Phil doesn't like it,
+because they don't think it's safe. I think I'm quite capable of
+taking care of myself, so I disregard their objection. Your friend
+also rides in the Park every morning, sometimes with a rather
+conspicuous woman and the last few mornings alone. I don't know
+whether it's design, I don't know whether it's chance--but he rides
+nearer me than I like."
+
+I waited for her to point the moral, mentioning incidentally that
+England was a free country and the Park was open to the public.
+
+"He may have the whole of it," she answered, "except just that little
+piece where I happen to be riding at any given moment."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't keep him out of even that."
+
+Her eyes broke into sudden blaze. "I can flog him out of it as I'd
+flog any man who followed me when I forbade him."
+
+There was nothing more to be said, but I said it as soon as I dared.
+
+"We're friends, Sylvia?" She nodded. "And I can say anything I please
+to you?"
+
+"No one can do that."
+
+"Anything in reason? Well, it's this--you're coming a most awful
+cropper one of these fine days, my imperious little queen."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I do. You're half woman, and half man, and half angel, and
+three-quarters devil."
+
+Sylvia had been counting the attributes on her fingers.
+
+"When I was at school," she interrupted, "they taught me it took only
+two halves to make a whole."
+
+"I've learnt a lot since I left school. One thing is that you're the
+equivalent of any three ordinary women. Now I really am going. Queen
+Elizabeth, your most humble servant."
+
+Her hand went again to the bell, but I was ready with a better
+suggestion.
+
+"It would be a graceful act if you offered to show me downstairs," I
+said. "It'll be horribly lonely going down two great long flights all
+by myself."
+
+She took my arm, led me down to the hall, and presented me with my hat
+and stick.
+
+"Are you walking?" she asked as we reached the door. "If not, you may
+have my private taxi. Look at him." She pointed to an olive-green car
+at the corner of the Square. "I believe I must have made a conquest,
+he's always there, and whenever I'm in a hurry I can depend on him. I
+think he must refuse to carry any one else. It's an honour."
+
+I ran through my loose change, and lit upon a half-sovereign, which I
+held conspicuously between thumb and first finger.
+
+"He'll carry me," I said.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Oh, of course, if you offer to buy the car!"
+
+"You haven't the courage of your convictions," I said severely.
+"Good-bye, Queen Elizabeth."
+
+It was well for me she declined the wager. I walked to the corner and
+hailed the taxi; but the driver shook his head.
+
+"Engaged, sir," he said.
+
+"Your flag's up," I pointed out.
+
+"My mistake, sir."
+
+Nonchalantly pulling down the flag, he retired behind a copy of the
+_Evening News_. I was sorry, because his voice was that of an educated
+man, and I am always interested in people who have seen better days;
+they remind me of my brother before he was made a judge. I had only
+caught a glimpse of dark eyes, a sallow complexion and bushy black
+beard and moustache. England is so preponderatingly clean-shaven that
+a beard always arouses my suspicions. If the wearer be not a priest of
+the Orthodox Church, I like to think of him as a Russian nihilist.
+
+After dinner the following night I mentioned to the Seraph that I had
+run across Sylvia, and hinted that his propinquity to her in the Park
+each day was not altogether welcome.
+
+"So she told me this morning," he said.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my handing on an impression for what it
+was worth," I added with vague floundering.
+
+"Oh, not at all. I shall go there just the same, though."
+
+"You'll annoy her."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "That's as may be. This is not
+the time for her to be running any unnecessary risks."
+
+"You can hardly kidnap a grown woman--on horseback--in broad
+daylight--in a public park," I protested.
+
+"The place is practically deserted at the hour she rides."
+
+The following day the Seraph rode as usual. Sylvia entered the Park at
+her accustomed time; saw him, cut him, passed him. For a while they
+cantered in the same direction, separated by a hundred and fifty
+yards; then the Seraph gradually reduced the distance between their
+horses. His quick eyes had marked a group of men moving furtively
+through a clump of trees to the side of the road. Their character and
+intentions will never be known, for Sylvia abruptly drew
+rein--throwing her horse on his haunches as she did so--then she
+turned in her own length, and awaited her gratuitous escort. The
+Seraph had to swerve to avoid a cannon. As he passed, her hand flashed
+up and cut him across the face with a switch; an instinctive pull at
+the reins gave his horse a momentary check and enabled her to deal a
+second cut back-handed across his shoulders. Then both turned and
+faced each other.
+
+Sylvia sat with white face and blazing eyes.
+
+"It was a switch to-day, and it will be a crop to-morrow," she told
+him. "It seems you have to be taught that when I say a thing I mean
+it."
+
+The Seraph bowed and rode away without answering. Physically as well
+as metaphorically he was thin-skinned, and the switch had drawn blood.
+Three weeks passed before his face lost the last trace of Sylvia's
+castigation. A purple wale first blackened and then turned yellowish
+green. When I saw him later in the day, his face was swollen, and the
+mark stretched diagonally from cheekbone to chin, crossing and cutting
+the lips on its way. He gave me the story quietly and without
+rancour.
+
+"I can't go again after this," he concluded, "but somebody ought to.
+If you've got any influence with her, use it, and use it quickly. She
+doesn't know--you none of you know--the danger she's in at present!"
+
+He jumped up to pace the room in uncontrollable nervous excitement.
+
+"What's going to happen, Seraph?" I asked, in a voice that was
+intended to be sympathetic, sceptical, and pacifying at one and the
+same moment.
+
+"I don't know--but she's in danger--I know that--I know that--I'm
+certain of that--I know that."
+
+His overstrung nerves betrayed themselves in a dozen different ways.
+It occurred to me that the less time he spent alone in his own society
+the better.
+
+"I'll see if I can do anything," I said in off-hand fashion.
+"Meantime, I dropped in to know if your invitation held good for a bed
+under your hospitable roof-tree."
+
+"Delighted to have you," he answered; and then less conventionally,
+"it's very kindly intended."
+
+"Kindness all on _your_ side," I murmured, pretending not to see that
+he had plumbed the reason for my coming.
+
+The old, absent thought-reading look returned for an instant to his
+eyes.
+
+"All my razors are on my dressing-table," he said. "Don't hide them. I
+shan't commit suicide, but I shall want to shave. I never keep
+firearms."
+
+I had intended to supervise my removal from Pont Street in person; on
+reflection I thought it would be wiser to send instructions over the
+telephone, and give the Seraph the benefit of my company for what it
+was worth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE THIRD ROUND
+
+    "When we two parted
+      In silence and tears,
+    Half broken-hearted
+      To sever for years,
+    Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
+      Colder thy kiss;
+    Truly that hour foretold
+      Sorrow to this."
+
+            LORD BYRON: _When We Two Parted_.
+
+
+Though the flat in Adelphi Terrace became my home from this time until
+the end of my residence in England, I saw little of the Seraph for the
+week following my change of quarters. I think he liked my company at
+meals, and whenever we were together I certainly worked hard to
+distract his mind from the unhappy quarrel with Sylvia. But I will not
+pretend that I sat by him day and night devising consolatory speeches;
+I am no good at that kind of thing, he would have seen through me, and
+we should speedily have got on one another's nerves. For the first day
+or two, then, I purposely measured out my companionship in small
+doses; later on, when he had got used to my presence, I became more
+assiduous. Those were the days when I could see reflected in his eyes
+the fast approaching nightmare of his dreams.
+
+My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the
+curious journal he had started at Brandon Court and continued in
+Oxford. I called--and still call--it the third volume of Rupert
+Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for
+though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same,
+and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the
+great tragedies of the book-world that--at least in his life-time--the
+third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion--for
+what that is worth--it is the finest work Aintree has ever
+accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to
+withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was
+allowed to read the manuscript.
+
+He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the
+flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander
+into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when
+I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as
+each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it
+were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind
+at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was
+describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my
+imagination to browse on the significance of each successive
+"soul-brush." Yet--I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing!
+His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I
+had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and
+gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like
+Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a
+later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse
+and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth
+dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts of
+two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls
+stripped bare--I am not sure that I wish to repeat it--there comes a
+point where a painful "study of mankind is man."
+
+While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant.
+Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a
+certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since
+Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication
+between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable--though
+I say it in no carping spirit--that Philip sought my company a shade
+less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys.
+Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie
+adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in
+company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was
+impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's
+resentment.
+
+The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it
+came to be relieved--to his honour be it said!--by Gartside. I gave
+him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at
+dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I
+knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave
+offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with
+the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled
+himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most
+sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want
+of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure
+that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to
+confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated
+him seriously; but with Gartside it was different. At a time when
+Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of
+the India Office--and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood
+high on the list of possible successors--it required some courage to
+incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did
+incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting
+the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect
+Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.
+
+In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a
+little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time
+when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am
+not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her
+house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning
+to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that
+nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as
+recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration
+of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the
+head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she
+was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our
+meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard
+me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my
+vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My
+foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher
+would only have involved me in a headlong fall.
+
+And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the
+attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but
+would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant and
+theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do,
+would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I
+had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I
+managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was
+shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was
+standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.
+
+"I've run you to earth at last," I said.
+
+Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was
+looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and
+under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been
+there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny
+flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as
+children smile in their sleep.
+
+"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the
+head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."
+
+I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned
+with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first
+time.
+
+"What have you been doing to get yourself into this state?" I asked
+severely.
+
+"Working."
+
+"There you are!" I said. "Something always happens when people take to
+work. I shall now read you a short lecture on female stamina."
+
+"You're sure you wouldn't prefer to smoke?"
+
+"I can do both."
+
+"Oh, that's not fair."
+
+Joyce Davenant and Sylvia Roden have only two characteristics in
+common; one is that I am very fond of both, the other, that I can do
+nothing with either. I capitulated, and selected a cigarette.
+
+"A live dog's worth a good many dead lions," I reminded her as a final
+shot.
+
+"Are _you_ trying to convince me of the error of my ways?"
+
+"I am not your Suffragan Bishop," I answered in the tone Robert
+Spencer adopted in telling a surprised House of Commons that he was
+not an agricultural labourer.
+
+"I'm so glad. I couldn't bear an argument to-night."
+
+The effort she had made on my arrival had spent itself, and I was not
+at all certain whether I ought to stay.
+
+"Look here," I said, "if you're too tired to see me, I'll go."
+
+"Please, don't!" she laid a restraining hand on my sleeve. "I'm all
+right if you don't argue or use long words; but I've had such a
+headache the last few days that I haven't been able to sleep, and now
+I don't seem able to fix my attention properly, or remember things."
+
+I had met these symptoms before; the first time in India with men who
+were being kept too long at work in the hot weather.
+
+"In other words, you want a long rest."
+
+She nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why don't you take it?"
+
+"I simply can't. I've put my hand to the plough, and you know what we
+are. Obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes, the whole family of us. I've got
+other people to consider, I mustn't fail them."
+
+"And the benighted, insignificant people who don't happen to be your
+followers? Some of them may cherish a flickering interest in your
+existence."
+
+"Oh! they don't count."
+
+"Thank you, Joyce."
+
+She held out a pacifying hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be
+ungracious. But those women---- You know, you get rather attached to
+people when you've spoken and fought and been imprisoned side by side
+with them. I always feel rather mean; any one of them 'ud die for me,
+and I'm not at all sure I'd do the same for them. Everything's been
+different since Elsie got her freedom; it's easier to fight for a
+person than a principle."
+
+"Are you weakening?"
+
+"Heavens! No! I'm just showing you I should be honour-bound to stand
+by my fellows even if I lost all faith in the cause. I say, don't go
+on smoking cigarettes; ring the bell and make Dick give you a cigar.
+He's in the house somewhere. I heard him come in a few minutes ago."
+
+"I came to see you," I pointed out.
+
+"But I'm dreadfully poor company to-night."
+
+"I take you as I find you, in sickness and health, weal and woe----"
+
+"Mr. Merivale!"
+
+Her voice was very stern.
+
+"You remember our wager?" I said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"It was a joke," she retorted. "And not in very good taste. Oh, I was
+as much to blame as you were."
+
+"But I was quite serious."
+
+"Did you seriously think I should give up the Cause?"
+
+"I offered very long odds. A twopenny ring--but you remember what they
+were."
+
+"Are you any nearer winning?"
+
+"I should like to think so."
+
+"Because we haven't answered Mr. Rawnsley's time-arrangements in the
+House?"
+
+"Oh, I've no doubt the reply has been posted."
+
+She nodded significantly. "And they haven't found their hostages yet."
+
+"But they've paid no ransom."
+
+"It's an indurance test."
+
+I got up to find myself a match. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of
+her left hand, wearing the scarab-ring; it disappeared for a moment,
+and to my surprise reappeared without the ring.
+
+"Suppose we call the bet off?" she suggested. "It was all rather
+silly."
+
+"Odds offered and taken and horses running. It's too late now. How did
+you find out the secret?"
+
+"I didn't. My finger shrank and the ring came off three days ago when
+I was washing my hands."
+
+"You didn't pull?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Show me."
+
+"It was like this," she began, slipping the ring back on to the third
+finger. "Rather loose----"
+
+I tightened the couplings before she saw what I was about.
+
+"That's soon remedied. Come to me when the finger's nice and plump
+again, and I'll let it out."
+
+A shadow of annoyance crossed her face.
+
+"Now I shall have it cut," she said.
+
+"You could have had that done three weeks ago. You could have thrown
+the thing away three days ago. You didn't do either."
+
+A smile dimpled its way into her cheeks. "How old are you? Over
+forty?"
+
+"What a way of looking at things!" I exclaimed. "Marlborough was fifty
+before he started his campaigns, Wren nearer fifty than forty before
+ever he put pencil to paper. You don't know the possibilities of
+virgin soil."
+
+"I was wondering how long it was since you left school."
+
+I got up and dusted the flecks of cigarette ash from my shirt.
+
+"I'm going now," I said. "It's time you were in bed. Just one word
+before I go. You want to win this wager, don't you? So do I. Well, if
+you don't give yourself a holiday, you're going to break down and lose
+it."
+
+Smiling mischievously, she got up and took my proffered hand.
+
+"It'll be an ill-wind, then----"
+
+"Damn the wager!" I burst out. "I don't want to win it at that price.
+Joyce, if I say I'm beaten, will you be a good girl and go to bed and
+stay there? Win or lose, I can't bear to see you looking as ill as you
+are now."
+
+She shook her head a little sadly. "I can't take a holiday now."
+
+"You'll lose the wager."
+
+She looked up swiftly into my face, and lowered her eyes.
+
+"I don't know that I mind that much."
+
+"Joyce!"
+
+"But I can't take a holiday," she repeated.
+
+I opened the door, and on the threshold waved my hand in farewell.
+
+"Won't you wait till Elsie comes back?" she asked.
+
+"I will wait for no one."
+
+"But where are you off to?"
+
+I scratched my chin, as one does when one wishes to appear reflective.
+
+"I am going to break the Militant Suffrage Movement."
+
+"A good many people have failed," she warned me.
+
+"They never tried."
+
+"How will you begin?"
+
+I walked downstairs thoughtfully, weighed Dick's tall hat in the
+balance, and decided in favour of my own.
+
+"I have no idea," I called back to the figure at the stair-head.
+
+The Seraph had marked his confidence in me by the bestowal of a
+latch-key. I let myself in at Adelphi Terrace and wandered round the
+flat in search of him. He was not in the library or dining-room, but
+at length I discovered him in pyjamas sitting in the balcony outside
+his bedroom, and gazing disconsolately out over the river. He knew
+where I had been before I had time to tell him, and was able to make a
+fairly accurate guess at the nature of my conversation with Joyce.
+Perhaps there was nothing very wonderful in that, but it fitted in
+with the rest of his theory: I remember he summarised her mental
+condition by saying that a certain sub-conscious idea was coming to be
+consciously apprehended. It was a cumbrous way of saying that both
+Joyce and I had made rather an important discovery; what puzzled me
+then, and puzzles me still, is that at my first meeting with her
+either of us should have given him grounds for forming any theory at
+all. Even admitting that I may have been visibly impressed, I could
+see no response in her; but I have almost given up trying to
+understand the Seraph's mind or mode of thought.
+
+"You've not got her yet," he warned me.
+
+"No one knows that better than I do."
+
+"Her mind's still very full of her cause."
+
+"Yes, damn it."
+
+"Almost as full of it as of you. She's torn between you, and you'll
+have to fight if you want to keep your foothold."
+
+I told him, as I had told Joyce, that I proposed to break the Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"I thought you might be able to help. What _is_ going to be the end of
+it?"
+
+He shook his head moodily, and picked up a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not a prophet."
+
+"You've prophesied to some purpose before now," I reminded him.
+
+He paused to look at me with the cigarette in one hand and a lighted
+match in the other.
+
+"Guesswork," I heard him murmur.
+
+"But it worked out right?"
+
+"Coincidence."
+
+"_You_ don't think that."
+
+"I may think the world's flat if it amuses me," he answered, blowing
+out the match.
+
+The abruptness of his tone was unusual.
+
+"What's been worrying you, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing. Why?"
+
+I lay back in my chair and looked him up and down.
+
+"You've forgotten to light your cigarette," I pointed out. "You're
+shaking as if you'd got malaria, and wherever your mind may be, it's
+not in this room and it's not attending to me."
+
+"I'm sorry," he apologised, sitting down. "I'm rather tired."
+
+To belie his words he jumped up again and began pacing feverishly up
+and down before the open balcony window.
+
+"Let's hear about it," I urged.
+
+"You can't do any good."
+
+"Let _me_ judge of that."
+
+He paused irresolutely and stood leaning his head against the frame
+of the window and looking out at the flaming sky-signs on the far side
+of the river.
+
+"It won't do any good," he repeated over his shoulder. "Nobody 'ud
+believe you, but--I don't know, you might try. She must be warned.
+Sylvia, I mean. She's absolutely on the brink, and if some one doesn't
+save her, she'll be over. I can't interfere, I should only precipitate
+it. Will you go, Toby? She might listen to you. It's worth getting
+your face laid open to keep her out of danger. Will you go?"
+
+He turned and faced me, wild-eyed and excited. His lips were white,
+and his fingers locked and unlocked themselves in uncontrollable
+nervous restlessness.
+
+"What's the danger?" I asked, with studied deliberation.
+
+"I don't know. How should I? But it's there; will you go?"
+
+"I don't mind trying," I answered, taking out my watch.
+
+"You must go now!"
+
+It was a quarter to one, and I told him so. Nobody can be less
+sensitive than I to the charge of eccentricity, but I refuse to
+disturb a Cabinet Minister's household at one in the morning to
+proclaim that an overstrung nervous visionary has a premonition that
+peril of a vague undefined order is menacing the daughter of the
+house.
+
+"We must wait till Christian hours," I insisted.
+
+"Ah, you don't believe it; no one does!"
+
+At eleven o'clock next morning--as soon, in fact, as I had drunk my
+coffee and was comfortably shaved and dressed--I drove round to
+Cadogan Square in search of Sylvia. I had no very clear idea what
+warning I was to give her when we met; indeed I felt wholly
+ridiculous and slightly resentful. However, my word had gone forth,
+and I was indisposed to upset the Seraph by breaking it. I left him in
+the library, silent and pale, writing hard and accumulating an
+industrious pile of manuscript against my return. By morning light no
+trace remained of his overnight excitement.
+
+To my secret relief Sylvia was not in when I arrived. The man believed
+she was shopping and would be out to luncheon, but if I called again
+about three I should probably find her at home. It hardly seemed worth
+my while to return to Adelphi Terrace, so I ordered some cigars, took
+a turn in the Park, lunched at the Club, and talked mild scandal with
+Paddy Culling. At three I presented myself once more in Cadogan
+Square.
+
+The door stood open, and Sylvia appeared in sight as I mounted the
+steps.
+
+"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed as she gave me a hurried shake of the
+hand. "I was so sorry to be out when you called this morning. Look
+here, will you go inside and tell mother you're coming to dinner
+to-night."
+
+"But I'm dining out already."
+
+"Oh, well, when will you come? Ring up and fix a night. I must simply
+fly now."
+
+"It won't take a minute."
+
+"Honestly I can't wait! I've got to go down to Chiswick of all
+unearthly places! My poor old darling of a fr�ulein's been taken ill
+and she's got no one to look after her. I _must_ just see she's got
+everything she wants. It's horribly rude, but you will forgive me,
+won't you? She rang up at half-past twelve, and I've only just got
+back."
+
+Touching my hand with the tips of her fingers, she flashed down the
+steps before I could stop her. The bearded Orthodox Church retainer
+was waiting at the kerb, and I heard her call out "Twenty-seven,
+Teignmouth Road, Chiswick," as he slammed the door and clambered into
+his seat. I caught my last glimpse of her rounding the corner into
+Sloane Street, the same black and white study that I had admired when
+I first visited Gladys--white dress, black hat; white skin, dark hair,
+and soft unfathomable brown eyes; a splash of red at the throat, a
+flush of colour in her cheeks. Then I hailed a taxi on my own account
+and drove back to Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph was still in the library, sitting as I had left him more
+than four hours before. An empty coffee cup at his elbow marked the
+only visible difference. He was writing quicker than I think I have
+ever seen a man write, and allowed me to enter the room and drop into
+an armchair by the window without raising his eyes or appearing to
+notice my presence. I had been there a full five minutes before he
+condescended--still without looking up from his writing--to address
+me.
+
+"You couldn't stop her, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you saw her?"
+
+"Just for a moment."
+
+"'Just for a moment.' Those were the words I had used."
+
+He stopped writing, drew a line under the last words, blotted the page
+and threw it face-downwards on the pile of manuscript. Then for the
+first time our eyes met, and I saw it was only by biting his lips and
+gripping the arms of the chair that he could keep control over
+himself.
+
+"You'd like some tea," he said, in the manner of a man recalling his
+mind from a distance. "Can you reach the bell?"
+
+"Is this the end of the chapter?" I asked as he tidied the pile of
+manuscript and bored it with a paper fastener.
+
+"It's the end of everything."
+
+"How far does it carry you?"
+
+"To your parting from Sylvia."
+
+"Present time, in fact?"
+
+"Forty minutes ago."
+
+I checked him by my watch. "And what now?" I asked.
+
+He looked up at me, looked through me, I might say, and sat staring at
+the window without answering.
+
+The next two hours were the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. If
+in old age my guardian angel offers me the chance of living my whole
+life over again, I shall refuse the offer if I am compelled to endure
+once again that silent July afternoon. The Seraph sat from four till
+six without speech or movement. As the sun's rays lengthened, they
+fell on his face and lit it with cold, merciless limelight. He had
+started pale and grew gradually grey; the eyes seemed to darken and
+increase in size as the face became momentarily more pinched and
+drawn. I could see the lips whitening and drying, the forehead dewing
+with tiny beads of perspiration.
+
+I made a brave show of noticing nothing. Tea was brought in; I poured
+him out a cup, drank three myself, and ostentatiously sampled two
+varieties of sandwich and one of cake. I cut my cigar noisily, damned
+with audible good humour when the matches refused to strike, picked up
+a review and threw it down again, and wandered round the room in
+search of a book, humming to myself the while.
+
+At six I could stand it no longer.
+
+"I'm going to play the piano, Seraph," I said.
+
+"For pity's sake don't!" he begged me, with a shudder; but I had my
+way.
+
+When the _City of Pekin_ went down in '95 as she tried to round the
+Horn, one of my fellow-passengers was a gigantic, iron-nerved man from
+one of the Western States. I suppose we all of us found it trying work
+to sit calm while the boats were lowered away: no one knew how long we
+could keep our heads above water and we all had a shrewd suspicion that
+the boat accommodation was insufficient. We should have been more
+miserable than we were if it had not occurred to the Westerner to
+distract our minds. In spite of a thirty-degree list he sat down to the
+piano and I helped hold him in position while we thundered out the old
+songs that every one knows without consciously learning--"Clementine,"
+"The Tarpaulin Jacket," "In Cellar Cool." We were taking a call for
+"The Tavern in the Town" when word reached us that there was room in
+the last boat.
+
+I set myself to distract the Seraph's mind, and gave him a tireless
+succession of waltzes and ragtimes till eight o'clock. Then the bell
+of the telephone rang, and I was told Philip Roden wished to speak to
+me.
+
+"It's about Sylvia," he began. "She hasn't come back yet, and we don't
+know where she is. The man says you had a word with her as she started
+out: did she say where she was going?"
+
+I told him of the message from Chiswick, and repeated the address I
+had heard her give the chauffeur.
+
+"I don't know what the matter was," I added. "Sylvia may have found
+the woman worse than she expected. Hadn't you better inquire who took
+the message and see if he or she can throw any light on the mystery?"
+
+I was half dressed for dinner when Philip rang me up again, this time
+with well-marked anxiety in his voice.
+
+"I say, there's something very fishy about this," he began. "I've just
+rung up the Chiswick address and the Fr�ulein answered in person. She
+wasn't ill, she hadn't been ill, and she certainly hadn't sent any
+message to Sylvia."
+
+"Well, but who----?" I started.
+
+"Lord knows!" he answered. "It might be any one. The address is a
+boarding house with a common telephone: any one in the house could
+have used it. You said twelve-thirty, didn't you? The Fr�ulein was out
+in Richmond Park at twelve-thirty."
+
+"What about Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+"That's the devil of it: Sylvia hadn't been near the place. When was
+it exactly that you saw her? Three-five, three-ten? And she turned
+into Sloane Street? North or South? Well, North's the Knightsbridge
+end. And that's all you can say?"
+
+I mentioned the invitation she had given me, and asked if I could be
+of any assistance in helping to trace her. Philip told me he was going
+at once to Chiswick to investigate the mystery of the telephone, and
+promised to advise me if there was anything fresh to report. Then he
+rang off, and I gave a _r�sum�_ of our conversation to the Seraph. He
+had just come out of the bath and was sitting wrapped in a towel on
+the edge of the bed. I remember noticing at the time how thin he had
+gone the last few weeks: he had always been slightly built, but the
+outline of his collarbones and ribs was sharply discernible under the
+skin.
+
+"I think it would be rather friendly if I went round after dinner to
+see if there's any news of her," I concluded.
+
+"There won't be," he answered.
+
+"Well, that of course we can't say."
+
+"_I_ can. They won't have found her, they don't know where she is."
+
+"Philip may hear something in Chiswick; it looks like a silly
+practical joke."
+
+"But you know it isn't."
+
+"I don't know what to think," I answered, as I returned to my room and
+the final stages of my toilet. I soon came back, however, to tie my
+tie in front of his glass and propound a random question. "I suppose
+_you_ don't know where she is?"
+
+"How should I?"
+
+"You sometimes do."
+
+"So do other people."
+
+"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't--and when
+you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."
+
+He was still sitting on the bed in _d�shabille_, his hands clasped
+round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.
+For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again
+without speaking.
+
+"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.
+
+"Guess-work," he answered.
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"
+
+"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's
+concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."
+
+"There _is_ no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy
+at Brandon."
+
+"Not to my satisfaction--or yours."
+
+The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.
+
+"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.
+
+"Meaning that you did once?"
+
+"You _say_ I did."
+
+"You know you did."
+
+"There's not much sign of it now."
+
+"May be in abeyance. It may come back."
+
+I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting
+dress-socks.
+
+"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I
+heard him murmur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION
+
+    "Selina! The time has arrived to impart
+    The covert design of my passionate heart.
+    No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,
+    No common ambition deprives me of rest....
+    My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublime
+    As ever was carved on the tablets of time.
+    To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ring
+    The echo and crash of a notable thing.
+    I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,
+    Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...
+      Hither to the rescue, ladies!
+        Let not fear your spirits vex.
+      On the plan by me that made is
+        Hangs the future of your sex...
+      Shall she then be left to mourn her
+        Isolation and her shame?
+      Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,
+        Every true Belgravian dame."
+
+      SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN: "The Modern Ecclesiazus�."
+
+
+I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next
+morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone;
+and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same
+time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as
+part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my
+overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news
+to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my
+journey.
+
+Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip
+had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel
+Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland
+Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and
+Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper,
+loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching
+inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were
+described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I
+afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking
+down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties
+of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.
+
+I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics
+scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him--and
+of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public
+pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and
+defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no
+menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a
+national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical,
+cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it
+would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only
+child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I
+know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members
+of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so
+generously.
+
+Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have
+no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through
+the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. I admit I
+expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for
+quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated,
+I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of
+abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter,
+uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations.
+Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been
+lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel
+confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own
+children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged
+every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender,
+Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their
+wives' bodies.
+
+"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his
+plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is
+what I have received."
+
+He threw me a typed sheet of paper.
+
+"We shall be glad to know _within the next ten days_ (expiring
+Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a
+bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is
+enjoyed by men."
+
+"How are you answering this?" I asked.
+
+"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and
+will go forward in due course."
+
+"And Sylvia?"
+
+"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand
+pounds reward...."
+
+"Are you making the whole thing public?"
+
+"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as
+you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've
+advertised themselves by broad hints in the _New Militant_; the
+gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other
+half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the _Times_, and you'll have the
+whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham
+next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library
+table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the
+length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story
+comes out."
+
+The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved
+his sagacity as a prophet.
+
+"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I
+asked.
+
+"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these
+women, very clever."
+
+"No clue?"
+
+"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look
+for the perpetrators."
+
+"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice
+of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."
+
+"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.
+
+"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the
+Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've
+publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old
+Militants, too--the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too
+stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows
+in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the
+nerve...."
+
+"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed,
+probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over
+the widest possible area.
+
+"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the
+Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she
+visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage
+you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from
+the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was
+another."
+
+"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutional _New
+Militant_," I said as I prepared to leave.
+
+"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save
+them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."
+
+"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"
+
+"You could advise them as a friend."
+
+"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I
+fear they wouldn't listen."
+
+"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered
+as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most
+significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a
+house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had
+reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or
+you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."
+
+"What cynics you public men are!" I exclaimed as I ran down the steps
+and turned in the direction of Chester Square.
+
+I have said that "Providence" is not one of my star _r�les_, and I had
+every reason to know that my eloquence was unavailing when set to the
+task of converting Joyce from her militant campaign. However, I have
+seen stones worn away by constant dripping.... And in any case I had
+not been near the house for nearly two days.
+
+"I'm afraid you can't see Joyce," Elsie told me as we shook hands.
+"She wouldn't go to bed when the doctor told her, and now she's really
+rather bad."
+
+I was more upset by the news than I care to say, but Elsie hastened to
+assure me.
+
+"It's nothing much so far," she said. "But she's got a temperature and
+can't sleep, and worries a good deal."
+
+"Can't we get her away?" I exclaimed impatiently.
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"I've tried, but she simply won't leave town."
+
+"But what's to keep her?"
+
+"There's the paper every week."
+
+It always annoys me to find any one thinking the world will come to an
+end unless run on his or her own favourite lines.
+
+"If she died, some one else would have to edit it," I pointed out.
+"Who's doing it now?"
+
+"Mrs. Millington. I'm afraid it's no use telling people that till they
+_are_ dead."
+
+"And then it's a little late in the day," I answered irritably.
+
+Elsie proceeded to give me the real reason for Joyce's obstinacy.
+
+"When you're dead you don't have to take responsibility for your
+deputy's mistakes."
+
+"That's it, is it? Mrs. Millington setting the Thames on fire?"
+
+"Her zeal sometimes outruns her discretion," said Elsie with a smile.
+"That's what's chiefly worrying Joyce."
+
+I picked up my hat and stick and moved towards the door.
+
+"And Joyce is losing her nerve?" I hazarded.
+
+"She's not up to her usual form," was all Elsie would answer.
+
+"Give her my love," I said at the door, "and best wishes for a quick
+recovery. If she isn't well in two days' time, I shall carry her off
+by main force and put her into a nursing home."
+
+Then I went off to lunch at the Club, and found fault with the food,
+the wine, the cigars and all creation. Paddy Culling opened a
+subscription list to buy me a box of liver pills. The Seraph--after I
+had been two minutes at Adelphi Terrace--said he was sorry Joyce was
+no better.... I thanked him for his sympathy, and sat down to read the
+current copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+In my careless, hot-blooded youth I made a collection of inanimate
+journalistic curiosities. It was my sole offence against the wise rule
+that to collect anything--from wives up to postage stamps--is a mark
+of incipient mental decay. There was the _Punch_, with the cartoon
+showing the relief of Khartoum; and I remember I had a copy of the
+suppressed issue of the _Times_, when the compositors usurped control
+of Empire and edited one of Harcourt's Budget speeches on lines of
+their own. There was also a pink _Pall Mall Gazette_, bought wet from
+the machine at a shilling the copy, when paper ran out and they
+borrowed the pink reserve rolls of the _Globe_. I had a copy of
+another journal that described in moving language the massacre of the
+Peking Legations. The Legations were, in fact, never massacred, but
+they should have been on any theory of probability, and, for aught I
+know, the enterprising journalist may have believed with Wilde that
+Nature tends to copy Art.
+
+I also had several illustrated weeklies depicting--by the pen of Our
+Special Artist--that first Coronation Ceremony of Edward the Seventh,
+and the verbal account of it given by "A Peeress" who had been
+present. More lately I acquired the original American paper which sent
+the _Titanic_ to her grave with the band playing "Nearer, my God, to
+Thee."...
+
+I am half sorry the collection is dispersed. I should have liked to
+add the one historic number of the _New Militant_ that appeared under
+Mrs. Millington's fire-and-brimstone editorship. To the collector it
+is curious, as being the last issue of the paper; by the mental
+pathologist it is regarded as an interesting example of what is by
+common consent called "Militant Hysteria." The general public will
+remember it as the documentary evidence which at last enabled the
+police to secure a warrant of arrest against the "proprietors,
+printers and publishers of the newspaper called and known as the _New
+Militant_," to raid the printing office in Clerkenwell, and lay bare
+the private memoranda of the New Militant organisation.
+
+My own copy did not survive my departure from England, and I could not
+do Mrs. Millington the injustice of trying to reproduce her deathless
+periods. I remember there was a great deal of "Where is Miss Rawnsley?
+Where is Master Jefferson? Where is Miss Roden?" Such questions
+implicated no one, and only annoyed inconsequential persons like
+myself, who detest being set conundrums of which I do not know the
+answer by some one who obviously does. The practice is futile and
+vexatious.
+
+The incriminating words came heavy-typed in the last paragraph of the
+leading article, and contained an unmistakable threat that the policy
+of abduction would continue until female suffrage had been secured.
+
+After dinner that night I strolled round to the Club to hear what
+people were saying.
+
+"They've done for themselves this time," Gartside told me with much
+assurance when I ran across him in the hall. "Don't ask me where I got
+it from, and don't let it go any further, but there's a warrant out
+against some one."
+
+I was conscious of a very uncomfortable sensation of hollowness.
+
+"Is it indiscreet to ask who?"
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know. I fancy you proceed against
+the whole lot, printers included."
+
+"They've not wasted much time," I said.
+
+It was Tuesday night. The _New Militant_ went to press at midday and
+was on sale next morning throughout the country. In London, of course,
+it could be obtained overnight, and I had secured an early copy by
+calling at the office itself.
+
+I stood in the middle of the hall wondering exactly what I could do to
+prevent the arm of the law stretching out and folding Chester Square
+in its embrace. I was still wondering when Paddy Culling bounded up
+the steps and seized Gartside and myself by either hand.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there," he panted, momentarily
+releasing my arm in order to mop a red, dripping forehead. His broken
+collar and caved-in hat suggested a fight: his brogue reminded me that
+the offer of a golden throne in heaven will not avail to keep an
+Irishman out of a brawl. "Down Clerkenwell way ut was, the War of the
+Woild Women. The polis...."
+
+He was settling down to a narrative of epic proportions. The Irish are
+this world's finest raconteurs as they are its finest fighters, riders
+and gentlemen. It was an insult, but I could not wait.
+
+"Have they raided the place, Paddy?" I asked.
+
+"They have." His eyes reproached me for my interruption. "The
+polis...."
+
+"Did they get any one?"
+
+"Am I telling ye or am I not? Answer me that."
+
+"I know, Paddy," I said with all the contrition at my command. "But
+I've got to go, and I just wanted the main outline...."
+
+"They got Mrs. Millington," he began again, "and she fighting the way
+ye'd say she'd passed her born days being evicted. There was one had
+the finger bitten off him and another scratched in the face till the
+gutters ran blood. Five strong men held her down and stamped out the
+life of her, and five more dragged her down the road by the hair of
+her head and droppit her like a swung cat over the railings of the
+common mortuary. The vultures...."
+
+"Did they get any one else?" I interrupted.
+
+"It's the fine tale ye're spoiling," he complained.
+
+"But just tell me that," I pleaded.
+
+"They did not," he answered with ill-concealed disgust. "Unless ye'd
+be calling a printer's devil one of God's fine men and women. But the
+polis...."
+
+I hurried down the steps and jumped into a taxi. I thought first of
+calling to warn them at Chester Square. Then I decided to communicate
+by telephone. If Joyce had not already been arrested, and if I was to
+be of any assistance later on, I could not afford to be discovered in
+the incriminating neighbourhood of her house.
+
+I gave the Seraph the heads of my story as I looked up the number and
+waited for my call.
+
+"You're through," the Exchange told me after an interminable delay.
+
+"Hallo, hallo!" I kept calling, for what seemed like half an hour.
+"Will you give another ring, please, Exchange?"
+
+A further age dragged its course, and I was told that there did not
+seem to be any one at the other end.
+
+"Now will you tell me what we're to do, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+We sat and stared at each other for the best part of five minutes.
+Then the decision was taken out of our hands. I saw him prick up his
+ears to catch a sound too faint for my grosser senses.
+
+"Some one coming upstairs," he whispered. "It's a woman, and she's
+coming slowly. Now she's stopped. Now she's coming on again."
+
+I rose from my chair and tiptoed across the room.
+
+"Can it be Joyce?" I asked, sinking my own voice to a whisper.
+
+"She's going on to the next floor," he answered with a shake of the
+head; and then with sudden excitement, "Now she's coming back."
+
+"She mustn't ring the bell," I cried, running out into the hall.
+
+"It's all right, there's nobody here but ourselves," he called out as
+I opened the door and ran out onto the landing.
+
+Ten feet in front of me, leaning back against the banisters, stood
+Joyce Davenant. One hand covered her eyes and the other was pressed to
+her heart. She was trembling with fever and panting with the exertion
+of climbing four flights of stairs. A long fur coat stretched down to
+bare feet thrust into slippers, her head was covered by a shawl,
+though the hair fell loosely inside her coat. At the neck I could see
+the frilled collar of a nightdress.
+
+"Joyce!" I exclaimed.
+
+She uncovered her face and showed eyes preternaturally bright, and
+white cheeks lit by a single spot of brilliant colour.
+
+"I said I'd come when there was a warrant out," she panted with game,
+gallant attempt at a smile. Then I caught her in my arms as she fell
+forward, and carried her as gently as I could inside the flat.
+
+I left it to the Seraph to take off her coat and lay her in his own
+bed. He did it as tenderly as any woman. Then we went to the far side
+of the room and held a whispered consultation. I am afraid I could
+suggest nothing of value, and the credit of our arrangement lies
+wholly at his door.
+
+"We must get a nurse," he began. "Elsie mustn't be seen coming near
+the place or the game's up. What about that woman who helped you bring
+Connie Matheson home from Malta this spring? Can you trust her? Have
+you got her address? Well, you must see if you can get her to-night.
+No, not yet. We want a doctor. Her own man? No! It would give us away
+at once. Look out Maybury-Reynardson's address in the telephone book,
+somewhere in Cavendish Square. He's a sportsman; he'll do it if you
+say it's for me. You must go and see him in person; we don't want the
+Exchange-girls listening. Anything more? I'll square my man and his
+wife when they come in. Oh, tell your nurse the condition this poor
+child's come in; say it's a bachelor establishment and we haven't got
+a stitch of anything, and can't send to Chester Square for it. Tell
+her to bring...."
+
+He paused to listen as heavy feet ascended the stairs. The noise was
+loud enough even for me this time. There was a ring at the door.
+
+"Wine cellar. Locked. Haven't got key," he whispered turning out the
+light and locking himself inside the room with Joyce.
+
+I opened the front door and found myself faced with the two Roden
+detectives I had corrupted with bottled beer at Henley.
+
+"Why, this is like old times!" I said. "Have you been able to find any
+trace of Miss Roden?"
+
+They had not, and I see now that my question was singularly tactless.
+They bore no resentment, however, and told me they had called on other
+business. There was a warrant out against Miss Davenant. She was not
+to be found at the Clerkenwell printing office, and while Chester
+Square was being searched, a woman had slipped out of the house by a
+side door, entered a car and driven away.
+
+"Could you follow her?" I asked, with all the Englishman's love of the
+chase.
+
+That, it appeared, had been difficult, as the number of the car seemed
+to have been wilfully obscured.
+
+"That's an offence, isn't it?" I asked.
+
+It was, and the driver--if traced--would find himself in trouble. They
+had followed a likely-looking car and seen it turn southward out of
+the Strand. When they reached Adelphi Terrace, however, there was only
+one car in sight, drawn up outside our door and presenting a
+creditably clear number-plate. Its driver had vaguely seen another
+car, but had not particularly noticed it. They called on chance, as
+this was the only suite with lights in it. Had I seen or heard
+anything of the car or a woman getting out of it?
+
+"I've only just come in myself," I told them. "Half an hour, to be
+exact. That was possibly my taxi you saw outside. I didn't notice the
+number. How long ago did you see your suspected car turn into Adelphi
+Terrace? Ten minutes? Oh, then I should have seen any one who came up
+here, shouldn't I? Would you like to look round to make sure?"
+
+The senior man stepped back and glanced up at the name painted over
+the door.
+
+"It's Mr. Aintree's flat," I explained. "I'm staying with him."
+
+The man hesitated uncertainly.
+
+"I haven't any authority," he began.
+
+"Oh, hang the authority!" I said. "Mr. Aintree wouldn't mind.
+Dining-room, wine-cellar, library.... Won't you come in? Not even for
+a drink? Sure? Well, good-night. Oh, it's no trouble."
+
+Detectives--or such few of them as I have met--remind me of
+Customs-house officials: if you offer your keys and go out of your way
+to lay bare your secrets before their eyes, they will in all
+probability let you through without opening a single trunk. They are
+perverse as women--and simple as children.
+
+I tapped at the Seraph's door and told him I had disposed of the
+police without uttering a single falsehood. It was almost the last
+time I was able to make that boast. We gave our friends ten minutes'
+start, and I then set out in search of nurse and doctor. Joyce looked
+shockingly ill when I left, but her breathing was peaceful.
+Occasionally she moved or moaned in her sleep; as I turned at the door
+for a last look, the Seraph was rearranging her pillow and smoothing
+the hair back from her face.
+
+I had to walk into the Strand to find a taxi. Outside the Vaudeville I
+met my brother and his wife, and was bidden to sup with them at the
+Savoy. I refused for many reasons, the first being that a man who
+starts a career of crime at the age of forty-two must not for very
+decency be seen eating in company with a judge of the High Court. My
+meeting did good in giving me the idea of establishing a succession of
+_alibis_. When I had made the necessary arrangements with
+Maybury-Reynardson and the nurse, I looked in once more at the Club.
+
+Culling, Gartside and Nigel Rawnsley had the north smoking-room to
+themselves. They seemed to be discussing some plan of campaign, and
+the rescue of Sylvia was its object. Perhaps I should not say
+"discussing": Nigel was holding forth in a way that made me think he
+must have been a Grand Inquisitor in some previous incarnation. The
+ruthlessness of a Torquemada was directed by Napoleonic statecraft and
+brought down to date by the terrorism of a brow-beating counsel. The
+combination was highly impressive; his own contribution consisted in
+an exquisite choice of epithets.
+
+"Talk to the Chief," I heard him say in summary of his plan of
+campaign. "Get him to arrange for Merivale, J., to try the case, and
+you'll find the woman Millington will exhibit surprising celerity in
+imparting whatever information she may have gathered in respect of the
+whereabouts of Mavis and Sylvia and the Jefferson boy."
+
+"King's Evidence, d'you mean?" asked Gartside. "Not she!"
+
+"Inconceivably less ornate than that. I agree with you that she might
+withhold her consent. It is therefore more expedient to coax her into
+the confessional without implicating her fellow conspirators. If you
+were being tried by Merivale and saw seven years' penal servitude
+stretching in pleasing prospect before you, you'd want to start the
+day on terms of reasonable amity with your judge. If you knew
+Merivale's daughter was engaged to marry a man whose sister had been
+spirited away, would you not strive to acquire merit in the eyes of
+your judge's family by saying where the sister could be found? It is
+approximately equivalent to a year's reduction of sentence."
+
+Paddy Culling scratched his head thoughtfully with a paper knife.
+
+"If Miss Davenant's afther hiding herself in one of the coops where
+the other little chicken's stored away...." he began.
+
+"She's not," Nigel interrupted decisively. "The risk's too
+considerable; she wouldn't want to betray herself and her hostages at
+the same moment. She's in London...."
+
+"Is she?" asked Gartside.
+
+"She was to-day at lunch-time, because her doctor called at the house.
+Of course, the police in their infinite sagacity must needs start
+searching at the wrong end and afford her opportunities of escape."
+
+"Out of London if she wanted to," persisted Gartside.
+
+"Not by train," said Nigel. "Every station's watched...."
+
+"By car."
+
+"By airship, equally. The woman's seriously ill; you'd kill her."
+
+Paddy Culling looked at his friend a little enviously.
+
+"You know a lot about the inside of that house," he said.
+
+"By the simple expedient of the sovereign in season to the
+kitchen-maid, who, like the rest of her class, was unquestionably
+loyal, but more unquestionably impecunious. The woman Davenant's in
+London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell
+you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow
+morning. Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman
+Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant
+will have to."
+
+"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.
+
+"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater
+knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."
+
+Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.
+
+"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. "For
+example, when it's seriously ill. I fancy I could make the woman
+Davenant tell me all I wanted in three minutes."
+
+The tone was extraordinarily sinister. I seemed to realise in a flash
+why Sylvia, with a woman's quicker, deeper insight, kept the speaker
+at a distance.... However, I had come to the Club to establish an
+_alibi_, not to reflect on the character of Sylvia's admirers. And I
+wanted to get back to Adelphi Terrace as soon as my purpose was
+effected.
+
+"I was sorry to run away in the middle of your story, Paddy," I said.
+"I'd promised to meet a man, and I was rather late as it was. You'd
+got as far as the disposal of Mrs. Millington's body in the common
+mortuary and the arrest of a poor, mean printer's devil. What happened
+then? Was any one else caught?"
+
+Paddy looked at me almost with affection, his eyes alight with
+oratorical fire.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there to see it," he began, grasping
+my arm with one hand and making his points with the other. "The polis
+and red coats was there, and the newspaper men in their thousands, and
+the gravediggers in their tens of thousands...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE
+
+      "My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give
+      me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the
+      most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper
+      atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation. That is why
+      I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather
+      created it, for I am the only one in the world ... the
+      only unofficial consulting detective.... I am the last
+      and highest court of appeal in detection.... I examine
+      the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's
+      opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures
+      in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding
+      a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest
+      reward."--SIR A. CONAN DOYLE: "The Sign of Four."
+
+
+Premonitions--so far as my gross person is concerned--are a matter of
+digestion, nerves and liver. If I woke up on the morning after Joyce's
+flight to Adelphi Terrace with a dull sense of impending disaster, I
+ascribe it to the fact that I had passed a more than ordinarily
+hideous night. Unlike the Seraph, who never went to bed, I had
+sufficient philosophy to turn in when the doctor had left and the
+nurse was comfortably established. It had been made clear to me that I
+could do no manner of good by staying up and getting in people's
+way....
+
+I started in my own room, but quickly took refuge in the library. If
+there are two sounds I cannot endure, one is that of a crying child,
+and the other of a woman--or man for that matter--moaning in pain.
+Even in the library I could hear Joyce suffering. Maybury-Reynardson
+had told us she was all right, and there is no point in calling in
+experts if you are going to disbelieve them. But I do not want to
+experience another night of the same kind.
+
+And in the morning the papers were calculated to heighten the horror
+of the worst premonitions I could experience. I opened the _Times_,
+noted in passing that Gartside had fulfilled popular expectation by
+being appointed to the Governorship of Bombay, and turned to the
+account of the Clerkenwell raid. Culling was right in saying Mrs.
+Millington's had been the only arrest of importance; but he had left
+the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and had not waited to see
+the conquerors march into the citadel.
+
+I felt myself growing chilled and old as I read of the discoveries in
+the printing office. Mrs. Millington would stand charged with
+incitement to crime and public threat of abduction; serious enough, if
+you will, but her debt was discharged as soon as she had paid the
+penalty for a single article in a single paper. Her threats were
+embryonic, not yet materialised. Joyce stood to bear the burden of the
+three abductions carried out to date....
+
+I am no criminologist, and can offer neither explanation nor theory of
+the mental amblyopia that leads criminals to leave one weak link, one
+soft brick, one bent girder, to ruin a triumph of design and
+construction. They always do--men and women, veterans and tiros--and
+Joyce was no exception. When the police broke open the safe in her
+editorial office, the first document they found was the half sheet of
+Chester Square notepaper that the journalists agreed to christen "The
+Time Table."
+
+It was written in Joyce's hand, and her writing could be identified
+by a short-sighted illiterate at ten yards' distance. I have forgotten
+the dates by this time, and can only guess at them approximately;
+words and names have been added in full where Joyce put only initials.
+This was the famous Time Table:--
+
+
+                                        500, Chester Square, S.W.
+
+  May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.
+
+  May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).
+
+  June 17. P.--(private) M. (members') Day. [This was ruled
+    through.]
+
+  June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.
+
+  June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley
+    and Jefferson).
+
+  June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) & R.
+    (Roden).
+
+  July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.
+
+  July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter
+    Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board
+    of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne,
+    daughter of the Marquis of Berwick--of the India Office. Both
+    Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a
+    mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does
+    not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the
+    usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].
+
+"So far the police have been unable to discover the whereabouts of
+Miss Davenant," the article concluded. That was the sole, poor
+consolation I could offer to a white, tired Seraph as I threw him the
+paper and went back to my gloomy premonitions.
+
+As he read, I thought over my last _alibi_ in the north smoking-room
+at the Club. I wondered what story my friends, the Henley detectives,
+were concocting in their report, and what action Nigel Rawnsley would
+take when he had digested it.
+
+It is not entirely my "wisdom after the event" that made me select
+Nigel as our most formidable opponent, nor altogether my memory of the
+lead he had taken in the discussion overnight; I was beginning to
+appreciate his character. When he is Prime Minister of England, like
+his father before him, it will be in virtue of the same qualities. A
+brain of steel and a ruthless, iron resolution will force the +hoi
+physei archomenoi+ to follow and obey him. He will be feared, possibly
+even hated, but the hatred will leave him indifferent so long as power
+is conceded him. I have met no young man so resolute or successful in
+getting his own way; few who give me the impression of being so
+ruthless and, perhaps, unscrupulous in their methods. He is still
+preserved from active mischief by his astonishing self-consciousness
+and lack of humour; when he has outgrown these juvenilities, he will
+be really formidable. His wife--when she comes--will have my sympathy,
+for what that is worth; but there will be many women less discerning
+than Sylvia to strive for the privilege.
+
+It was noon before the Amateur Detective invaded us. The Seraph's
+man--who had already been admitted to our secret, and would at any
+time have been crucified head-downwards for his master--flung open the
+library door with the words--
+
+"Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, Lord Gartside, Mr. Culling, Mr. Philip Roden."
+
+The Seraph rose and offered chairs. You could to some extent weigh
+and discriminate characters by the various modes of entry. Nigel
+refused to be seated, placed his hat on the table and produced a
+typewritten transcript of the two detectives' reports in the
+traditional manner of a stage American policeman--which in passing, I
+may say, is nothing like any American policeman I have ever met
+anywhere in America or the civilised world. Philip and Gartside were
+self-conscious and uncomfortable; Culling strove to hide his
+embarrassment by more than usual affability.
+
+"It's ill ye're looking, Seraph," he remarked, as he accepted a
+cigarette. "And has this great ugly brute Toby been slashing the face
+off you?"
+
+Then the inquiry began, with Philip as first spokesman.
+
+"Sorry to invade you like this, Seraph," he began, "but it's about my
+sister. You know she's disappeared? Well, we were wondering if you
+could help us to find her."
+
+"I'll do anything I can...." the Seraph started.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" Nigel cut in.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't."
+
+"Do you know any one who does?" Philip asked.
+
+"I don't know that I do."
+
+Philip hesitated, started a sentence, and closed his lips again
+without completing it. Nigel took up the examination.
+
+"You know Miss Davenant, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does she know where Sylvia and Mavis are?"
+
+"I have no idea. You must ask her."
+
+"I propose to."
+
+The Seraph turned to Philip, glancing at the clock as he did so.
+
+"I'm afraid the limits of my utility are soon reached. If there's
+anything I can do...."
+
+"You can tell us where Miss Davenant is hiding," said Nigel.
+
+"Can I?"
+
+"You can and will."
+
+The Seraph treated him to a long, unhurried scrutiny, starting from
+the boots and working up to the freckled face and sandy hair. Then he
+turned away, as though the subject had no further interest for him.
+
+Nigel tried to return the stare, but broke into a blush and took
+refuge in his typewritten transcripts.
+
+"I have here," he said, "a copy of the reports of the two detectives
+who watched Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square last night. They
+saw a woman, with her hair loose, and a long coat over whatever
+clothes she was wearing, jump into a car and drive to Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"They were certain of the identity of the car?" I asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"They weren't when I talked to them last night," I said. "No
+number--no nothing. They thought it was the same car and called in on
+chance, as there was a light here, to see if we knew anything. I
+offered to show them round, but they wouldn't come in, so we prayed
+for mutually sweet dreams and parted."
+
+Nigel tapped his papers.
+
+"I have here their sworn statement that the car which left Chester
+Square was the car that turned into Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Perjury--like joy--cometh in the morning," I observed.
+
+"That is as may be. I happen to know that Miss Davenant is seriously
+ill; I imagine, wherever she has gone, she has not gone far. The
+number of houses within easy reach of Chester Square--houses that
+would take her in when there's a warrant out for her arrest--is
+limited. These considerations lead me to believe that the statement of
+these men is not perjured."
+
+"I will apologise when next we meet," I said. When a young man like
+Nigel becomes stilted and dignified, I cannot repress a natural
+inclination to flippancy.
+
+Philip intervened before Nigel could mature a crushing repartee.
+
+"Look here, Seraph," he began. "Just as a favour, and not because we
+have any right to ask, will you say whether Miss Davenant's anywhere
+in this flat? If you say she is, I'm afraid we shall have to tell the
+police; if you say she isn't, we'll go away and not bother you any
+more."
+
+"You must speak for yourself," Nigel interposed, before the Seraph
+could answer.
+
+We sat for a moment in silence. Then Nigel continued his statement
+with unmistakable menace in his tone.
+
+"If once the police intervene, the question becomes more serious and
+involves any one found harbouring a person for whom a warrant of
+arrest has been issued. I naturally do not wish to go to extremes." He
+turned to me: "You offered to show the detectives round these rooms
+last night; will you make me the same offer?"
+
+I pointed to the Seraph.
+
+"They aren't my rooms. I'm only a guest. I took it upon myself to make
+the offer in the Seraph's absence."
+
+He repeated his request in the proper quarter, but was met with an
+uncompromising refusal.
+
+"May I ask your reason?" he said.
+
+"It is a question of manners," answered the Seraph.
+
+"Then you wish me to apply for a search-warrant?"
+
+"I am entirely indifferent. If you think it worth while, apply for one.
+As soon as it is presented, the police--are--welcome--to--any--
+discoveries--they--may--make."
+
+The Seraph spoke with the quiet scorn of injured innocence. I saw a
+shadow of uncertainty settle on Nigel's face. The Seraph must have
+seen it, too; we preserved a strategic silence until uncertainty had
+matured into horrid doubt. I felt sorry for Nigel, as I feel sorry for
+any successful egoist in the toils of anticipated ridicule.
+
+"It would be quicker to clear the matter up now," he said.
+
+"My whole day is at your disposal."
+
+"But mine is not. What is that room?"
+
+"A spare bedroom, now occupied by Toby, if you ask for information."
+
+Nigel started to cross the room.
+
+"I like to check all verbal information," he remarked.
+
+The Seraph had shorter distance to cover, and was standing with his
+back to the door when Nigel got there.
+
+"I allow no unauthorised person to search my rooms without my leave,"
+he said.
+
+"You cannot always prevent it."
+
+"I can in this case."
+
+"We are four to one."
+
+"You are one to two."
+
+"My mistake, no doubt." He waved a hand round the room to indicate his
+allies.
+
+"Assuredly your mistake, if you think Toby will stand by and let you
+search my rooms without my leave, or that any one of the others would
+raise a finger to help you."
+
+Not one of his three allies had moved a step to support him. Nigel was
+impressed. Without retreating from his position he tried the effect of
+bluff.
+
+"You forget the circumstances are exceptional. My sister has been
+spirited away, and so has Phil's. If we think you know the whereabouts
+of the woman who kidnapped them, we shall neither of us hesitate to
+employ timely physical force on you, perhaps inflict salutary physical
+pain."
+
+"You may try, if you like."
+
+"If I try, I shall succeed."
+
+"You don't really think that, you know."
+
+Gartside felt it was time to restore the peace. Walking up to Nigel,
+he led him firmly back to his place at the table and motioned the
+Seraph to his old position in the armchair by the fireplace. There was
+a long, awkward silence. Then Culling crossed the room, and sat on the
+arm of the Seraph's chair.
+
+"Ye're white and ill, Seraph," he said, "and ye know I'm not the man
+would badger you. We're in a hole, and maybe ye can give us a hoist
+out of it. Do ye, or do ye not, know where Miss Davenant's hiding
+herself?"
+
+The Seraph looked him steadily in his eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, is she, or is she not, in these rooms?"
+
+"Would _you_ like to search them?"
+
+"Damn it, no, man! Give us yer word, and that's enough."
+
+For a fraction of time the Seraph gazed at the faces of Culling,
+Philip and Gartside, weighing the characters and measuring the men.
+
+"It's not enough for Rawnsley," he said.
+
+"It'ull have to be."
+
+"He likes to check all verbal information."
+
+Culling shook his clenched fists in the air and involved us all in a
+comprehensive curse. The Seraph lit himself a cigarette, blew out the
+match with a deliberation Nigel could not have surpassed, and
+addressed the company.
+
+"We seem to have reached a deadlock," he began. "Shall I offer a
+solution? The four of you come here and charge me with harbouring the
+woman who is supposed to have made away with Miss Rawnsley and Miss
+Roden. Very good. Every man is free to entertain any suspicions he
+likes, and to ventilate them--provided he doesn't forget his manners.
+Three of you behaved like gentlemen, the fourth followed his own
+methods. I should like to oblige those three. Rawnsley, you have
+menaced me with personal violence, and threatened me with a search
+warrant. You have done this in my own library. If you will apologise,
+and undertake not to enter these rooms again or to molest me here or
+anywhere else, and if you will further undertake not yourself to
+apply--or incite any one else to apply--for a warrant to search the
+flat, I shall have pleasure in accompanying Gartside wherever he
+chooses to go, unlocking any doors that may be locked, and offering
+him every facility in inspecting every nook and cranny in these rooms.
+As you may not accept verbal information even from him, I shall have
+pleasure in extending my offer to Culling. The one will be able to
+check the other."
+
+He blew three smoke-rings and waited for an answer.
+
+There was another moment of general discomfort. Nigel jibbed at the
+idea of apologising, Gartside and Culling would have done anything to
+avoid accepting the offer; from Philip's miserable fidgeting I could
+see that he had been persuaded into coming against his better
+judgment. For myself, I waited as a condemned man waits for the drop
+to fall. It was bound to come in a few seconds' time, but--illogically
+enough--I had ceased to dread it. My one fear was that Joyce should
+betray herself by one of those pitiful moans that had mingled with my
+dreams and vexed my sleep throughout the night. To this hour I can
+remember thinking how horror-stricken I should be if that sound broke
+out again. It had begun to get on my nerves.... The discovery itself
+was inevitable; I could imagine no trick or illusion that would enable
+the Seraph to steer his inquisitors past one of the principal rooms in
+the flat.
+
+"I apologise for any offence I may have given, and I undertake all
+that you ask."
+
+It was not gracefully done, but the Seraph accepted the words for the
+spirit.
+
+"Come on, and let's get it over!" Culling exclaimed, jumping up and
+cramming his hat on the back of his head. With sinking heart I saw the
+three of them framed in the doorway, Gartside's huge form towering
+over the other two.
+
+"Devilish sorry about the whole business," I heard him begin as the
+door closed. It was opened again for a moment as the Seraph reminded
+me where the drinks were kept, and suggested I should compound a
+cocktail. Then it closed finally.
+
+Outside in the hall Culling added his contribution to the general
+apology.
+
+"Come quietly," was all the Seraph would answer. "I hope she's
+sleeping."
+
+Both men paused abruptly and gazed first at the Seraph and then at
+each other. He returned their gaze unwaveringly, surprised apparently
+that they should be surprised. Then he led them wide-eyed with
+expectation across the hall; wide-eyed they watched him bend and
+listen, tap and gently open a bedroom door. The nurse rose from her
+chair at the bedside and placed a finger on her lips--
+
+"Praise God, she's sleeping!" murmured Paddy Culling, with instinctive
+reverence removing his hat. Gartside looked for a moment at the
+flushed cheeks and parched lips, then turned away as the Seraph closed
+the door.
+
+"Mustn't go back yet," he said. "We'd better look at one or two more
+rooms just to fill in time."
+
+One of the shortest recorded councils of war was held in the bathroom.
+Culling, with his quick, superficial sympathy had already made up his
+mind, but Gartside stood staring out of the window with head bent and
+hands locked behind his back, struggling and torn between an
+unwillingness to hurt Joyce and a deep hungry desire to bring Sylvia
+safely out of her unknown hiding-place.
+
+"You'll kill her if you move her," the Seraph remarked,
+dispassionately but with careful choice of time. Gartside's foot
+tapped the floor irresolutely. "Toby's engaged to marry her," he added
+softly.
+
+With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders Gartside turned to Culling,
+nodded without speaking, and linked arms with the Seraph.
+
+"You're a good little devil," he said with a forced smile. "When this
+poor girl's better, get her to say where Sylvia is. She'll tell you.
+And let me know when the whole damned thing's straightened out. I'm
+off to Bombay in ten days' time. And it isn't very cheerful going off
+without knowing where Sylvia is. Now we've been out long enough," he
+added in firm, normal tones.
+
+All three of us looked up quickly as the door opened. Culling's hat
+was once more on his head, and he was trying to pull on a pair of
+gloves and light a cigarette at the same time.
+
+"All over but the cheering," he began abruptly. "High and low we've
+searched, and not found enough of a woman would make a man leave Eden,
+and she the only woman in the world."
+
+"You've searched every room?" asked Nigel with a suspicious glance at
+the Seraph.
+
+"Cellar to garret," answered Culling serenely, "and no living creature
+but a pair of goldfinches, and one of them dead; unless you'd be
+counting the buxom matron that the Seraph dashes my hopes by sayin'
+has a taste for drink like the many best of us, and she married
+already, and the mother of fourteen brace of twins and a good plain
+cook into the bargain."
+
+Nigel picked up his papers and turned to Gartside for corroboration.
+
+"We searched every room," he was told, "and Miss Davenant's not here.
+Seraph, we owe you...."
+
+The apology was cut short, as speaker and listeners paused to catch a
+sound that floated through the silent hall and in at the open library
+door. A long, troubled moaning it was, the sound I had heard all night
+and dreaded all the morning.
+
+"I shall have to check the verbal information after all," said Nigel
+as he put back his hat and papers on the table.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Gartside as he approached the door.
+
+"It seems I must search the house myself."
+
+"You undertook to accept our finding."
+
+"I thought I could trust you."
+
+"I have said Miss Davenant is not in these rooms," said Gartside in a
+warning voice.
+
+"If you said it a hundred times I should still disbelieve you. Let me
+pass, please."
+
+He raised a hand to clear himself a passage, but in physical strength
+he had met more than his match. Seizing both wrists in one hand and
+both ankles in the other, Gartside carried him like a child's doll
+across the room to the open library window, thrust him through it, and
+held him for ninety seconds stretched at arm's length three storeys
+above the level of the street. The veins stood out on his forehead,
+and I heard his voice rumbling like the distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"When I say a thing, Nigel, you have to believe me. The moon's of
+green cheese if I tell you to believe it, and when I say Miss
+Davenant's not in this flat, she's not and never has been, and never
+will be. You see?"
+
+Stepping back from the window, he dropped his burden on a neighbouring
+sofa. Nigel straightened his tie, brushed his clothes, and once more
+gathered up his hat, his papers, and the remains of his dignity.
+
+"Culling says there is no woman but a cook in the house," he began,
+with the studied tranquillity of an angry man. "He clearly lies.
+Gartside says Miss Davenant is not in the flat. He probably lies, but
+it is always possible that the sound we heard may have come from some
+woman Aintree thinks fit to keep in his rooms. In either event, I do
+not feel bound by the undertaking I have given." He pulled out a
+note-book and pretended to consult it. "To-day's Wednesday. If my
+sister and Sylvia have not been restored to their families by midday
+on Monday, I shall apply for a warrant to have these rooms searched.
+They will, of course, be watched in the interval. If Lord Gartside or
+any other person presumes to lay a finger on me, I shall summon him
+for assault."
+
+Pocketing the note-book he passed out of the flat with the air I
+suspect Rhadamanthus of assuming, when he is leaving the court for the
+luncheon interval, and has had a disagreeable morning with the
+prisoners. Culling accompanied him to prevent a sudden bolt at a
+suspicious-looking door, Philip followed with the Seraph, I brought up
+the rear with Gartside. All of us were smarting with the Englishman's
+traditional dislike of a "scene."
+
+"I never congratulated you on the Bombay appointment," I said, with
+praiseworthy design of scrambling onto neutral territory. "How soon
+are you off?"
+
+"Friday week," he answered.
+
+"It's little enough time--nine days."
+
+"Oh, I've known for some little while beyond that. It was only made
+public to-day."
+
+"It's a pleasant post," I said reflectively. "In a tolerably pleasant
+country. I shall probably come to stay with you; I'm forgetting what
+India's like."
+
+"I wish you would," he said warmly.
+
+"How are you going? P. and O. I suppose?"
+
+"No, I shall go in my own yacht."
+
+Culling turned round to reprove me for my forgetfulness.
+
+"We Gartsides always take our own yachts when we cross the ocean to
+take up our new responsibilities of Empire," he explained.
+
+"Where do you sail from?" I ask. "Marseilles?"
+
+"Southampton. Are you coming to see me off?"
+
+"I might. It depends whether I can get away. Half London will be
+there, I suppose?"
+
+Candidly I cannot say whether my questions were prompted by what the
+Seraph would call a sub-conscious plan of campaign. Gartside
+undeniably thought they were, and met me gallantly.
+
+"I'm eating a farewell dinner every night till I sail," he said. Then,
+sinking his voice, he added, "You know the yacht--she's roomy, and
+there will be only my two aide-de-camps and myself. No one will be
+seeing me off, because I haven't told them when I'm sailing. It's the
+usual route--anywhere in the Mediterranean. But I can't sail before
+Friday week."
+
+"I see. Well," I held out my hand, "if I _don't_ see you again, I'll
+say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye. Best of luck!" he answered, and waved a hand as I walked
+back and rejoined the Seraph in the hall.
+
+He was so white that I expected every moment to see him faint, and his
+clothes were wet with perspiration. I, who am not so fine-drawn, had
+found the last hour a little trying.
+
+"You're going to bed in decent time to-night," I told him. "I'm going
+to see Nurse, and find out if she knows of any one she can trust to
+come and help her. And I'm going to keep you out of the sick-room at
+the point of a bayonet if you've got one."
+
+I had expected a protest, but none came. He sat with closed eyes,
+resting his head on his hand.
+
+"I suppose that will be best," he assented at last.
+
+"And now you're coming to get something to eat," I said, leading him
+into the dining-room.
+
+"I'm not hungry," he complained.
+
+"But you're going to eat a great deal," I said, pushing him into his
+chair and selecting a serviceable, sharp-pronged pickle-fork.
+
+After luncheon I had my usual siesta, prolonged rather beyond my usual
+hour. It was five o'clock when I awoke, and I found the Seraph playing
+with a sheet of paper. He had written "Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+Sunday, Monday" on it, and after "Monday," "12.0 P.M."
+
+"What's all this?" I asked.
+
+"Our days of grace."
+
+I added "Friday week" to the calendar.
+
+"If we can get Joyce well enough to move away from Nigel's damned
+cordon of police," I said, "and if we can hide her somewhere till
+Friday week, friend Gartside's yacht is going to solve a good many
+problems."
+
+"It's not going to find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+That was unquestionably true.
+
+"I don't know how that's going to be managed," I said.
+
+We sat without speaking until dinner-time, and ate a silent dinner. At
+eleven o'clock he left the room, changed out of his dress clothes into
+a tweed suit, and put on a hat and brown walking boots.
+
+"Where are you off to?" I asked when he came back.
+
+"I'm going to find Sylvia."
+
+The expression in his eyes convinced me--if I wanted any
+convincing--that the strain of the last few days had proved too much
+for him.
+
+"Leave it till the morning," I said in the tone one adopts in talking
+to lunatics and drunken men.
+
+"She wants me now."
+
+"A few hours won't make any difference," I urged. "You'll start
+fresher if you have a night's rest to the good."
+
+The Seraph held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye. You think I'm mad. I'm not. No more than I ever am. But
+Sylvia wants me, and I must go to her."
+
+"Where is she?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Then how are you going to find her?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, where will you start looking?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He was already halfway across the hall. I balanced the rival claims of
+Joyce and himself. She at least had a doctor and nurse, and a second
+nurse was coming in the morning. He had no one.
+
+"Damn you, Seraph!" I said under my breath, and then aloud: "Wait a
+bit and I'll come too."
+
+"Hurry up then!" he answered chafing visibly at the delay.
+
+I spoke a hurried word to the nurse, took a last look at Joyce,
+changed my clothes and joined him on the landing.
+
+"Which way first?" I asked, and received the answer I might have
+expected.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+      "There was no sound at all within the room. But ... he
+      saw a woman's face.
+
+      "He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the
+      face rising white from the white column of the throat, the
+      dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved lips
+      which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and troubled,
+      which seemed to hint a prayer for help which they
+      disdained to make--for five seconds, perhaps, the illusion
+      remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him ...
+      lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so
+      vanished."
+
+                   A.E.W. MASON: "Miranda of the Balcony."
+
+
+Neither by inclination nor habit am I more blasphemous or foul-mouthed
+than my neighbour, but I should not relish being ordered a year in
+Purgatory for every occasion on which I repeated "Damn you, Seraph!"
+in the course of the following nineteen or twenty hours.
+
+It was nearly midnight when we left Adelphi Terrace, and I had in my
+own mind fixed one hour as the maximum duration of my patience or
+willingness to humour a demented neurotic. Thirty minutes out, thirty
+minutes back, and then the Seraph would go to bed, if I had to keep
+him covered with my revolver. _En parenth�se_, I wish I could break
+myself of the habit of carrying loaded firearms by night. In the
+settled, orderly Old Countries it is unnecessary; in the West it is
+merely foolish. I should be the richer by the contents of six
+chambers before I had time to draw on the quick, resourceful child of
+a Western State.... Nevertheless, my revolver and I are inseparable.
+
+We started down the Strand, along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace,
+and through Eaton Square to the Cadogan Estate. This was what I ought
+to have expected, if I had had time to sort out my expectations. The
+Seraph stood for a few minutes looking up at the Rodens' slumbering
+house, and then walked slowly eastward into Sloane Street.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested, in the voice one uses to deceive
+a child.
+
+"I'm not mad, Toby," he answered, like a boy repeating a lesson. "I
+must find Sylvia."
+
+He wandered into Knightsbridge, hesitated, and then set out at an
+uncertain three miles an hour along the border of the park towards
+Kensington. I realized with a sinking heart that he was heading for
+Chiswick.
+
+"Better leave it till the morning, Seraph," I urged, with a hand on
+his shoulder. "She'll be in bed, and we mustn't disturb her."
+
+He shook me off, and wandered on--hands in pocket and eyes to the
+ground. Twice I thought he would have blundered into an early
+market-cart, but catastrophe was averted more by the drivers' resource
+than any prudence on his own part. As we left Kensington and trudged
+on through the hideous purlieus of Hammersmith, I began to visualize
+our arrival at the Fr�ulein's house, and my stammering, incoherent
+apologies for my companion's behaviour.
+
+The deferential speech was not required. On entering Chiswick High
+Street we should have turned to the right up Goldhawk Road, and then
+taken the second or third turning to the left into Teignmouth
+Terrace. The Seraph plodded resolutely on, looking neither to the
+right nor left, through Hounslow, past the walls of Sion Park and the
+gas-works of Brentford, into Colnbrook and open country. There was no
+reason why he should not follow the great road as far as the Romans
+had built it--and beyond. Night was lifting, and the stars paled in
+the blue uncertain light of early dawn.
+
+I gripped him by the shoulders and made him look me in the face.
+
+"We're going back now," I said.
+
+"_You_ can."
+
+"You're coming with me."
+
+"I must find Sylvia."
+
+"If you'll come back now, I'll take you to her in the morning."
+
+"I'm not a child, Toby, and I'm not mad."
+
+"You're behaving as if you were both."
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he repeated, as though that were an answer to
+every conceivable question.
+
+"If you're sane," I said, "you can appreciate the insanity of walking
+from London to Bath in search of a girl who may be in Scotland or on
+the Gold Coast for all you know. She's as likely to be in the Mile End
+Road as on the Bath Road. Why not look there? It's nearer Adelphi
+Terrace, at all events."
+
+He looked at me for a moment reproachfully, as though his last friend
+had failed him, then turned and plodded westward....
+
+"God's truth!" I cried. "Where are you off to?"
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+"But where? Where?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why this God-stricken road rather than another?"
+
+"She came along here."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She did," was all he would answer.
+
+It was near Langley that I threatened him with personal injury. He had
+quickened his pace and shot slightly ahead of me. I have never been of
+a fleshy build, and with the exception of excessive cigar-smoking, my
+tastes are moderate. On the other hand, I never take exercise save
+under compulsion, or walk a mile if I can possibly ride, drive, or
+fly. We had covered some twenty miles since leaving home, my feet
+seemed cased in divers' boots, my mouth was parched with thirst, and I
+was ravenously hungry.
+
+"Are you sane?" I asked, as I caught him up.
+
+"As sane as I ever am."
+
+"Then you will understand my terms. We are going to leave the main
+road and walk straight to Langley Station. We are going to take the
+first train back to town, and we are...."
+
+"You can," he interrupted.
+
+"You will come with me. Don't tell me you have to find Sylvia, because
+it will be waste of breath. I have here a six-chambered revolver,
+loaded. Unless you come to the station with me, here and now, I shall
+empty one chamber into each of your legs. And if any one thinks I'm
+murdering you, I shall say I'm in pursuit of a dangerous lunatic. And
+when they see you, they'll believe me."
+
+He looked at me for perhaps half a second, and then walked on. It was,
+I suppose, the answer I deserved.
+
+It came as a surprise to me when he accepted my breakfast proposition
+at Slough. I put his assent down to sheer perversity, for I should
+have breakfasted in any case. My mind was made up. I would ask him for
+the last time to accompany me back to London, and if he refused I
+would return to Adelphi Terrace and bed, leaving him to follow the
+sun's path till he pitched head-foremost into the Bristol Channel....
+
+I breakfasted unwashed, unshaven, dusty, at full length on a sofa in a
+private room, simmering with grievance and irritability.
+
+"_Now_ then," I said, as I lit a cigar, threw the Seraph another, and
+turned to a Great Western time-table.
+
+"I must be getting on," he answered, giving me back my cigar.
+
+"Just a moment," I said. "Up-trains, Sundays. Up-trains, week-days.
+Ten-fifteen. Horses and carriages only. Ten-thirty; that'ull do me.
+I'll walk with you as far as the cross-roads."
+
+I was so angry with myself and him that we parted without a word or
+shake of the hand. I watched him striding westward in the direction of
+Salt Hill, and carried my temper with me towards the station. The
+first twenty yards were covered at a swinging, resolute pace, the
+second more slowly. I was still far from the station when an absurd,
+irritating sensation of shame brought me to a standstill. Mad,
+unreasonable as I knew him to be, the more I thought of the Seraph,
+the less I liked the idea of leaving him in his present state. The
+sight of a garage, with cars for hire, decided me. I ordered one for
+the day, with the option of renewing on the same terms as long as I
+wanted it.
+
+"Take the money while you can get it," I warned the proprietor, with
+the petulance of a tired man. "With luck you'll next hear of me from
+the inside of a padded cell. Now!" I said to the driver, "listen very
+carefully. I'm about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns
+for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may
+hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a
+young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the
+ground. You're to keep him in sight wherever he goes. _He's_ mad, and
+_I'm_ mad, and _everybody's_ mad. Follow him, and address a remark to
+me at your peril. I've been up all night, I've walked from London to
+Slough, and I'm now going to sleep."
+
+My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The
+difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds
+sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his
+heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case
+there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.... My driver
+left me to slumber undisturbed.
+
+I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph,
+pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to
+come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke,
+asking the driver what had come of our quarry.
+
+"He's following, sir," he told me.
+
+I was struck with an ingenious idea.
+
+"At the next cross-roads," I said, "turn off to the right or left,
+drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we'll lead him round
+in a circle and draw him back to London."
+
+We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight
+trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full
+view, and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so
+much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.
+
+"Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!" I said, as I ordered the
+driver to start once more in pursuit.
+
+At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a
+three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood
+flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he
+once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he
+stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge,
+into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street.
+Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too
+absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.
+
+It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead
+Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an
+hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting
+as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun
+brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.
+
+"Wait here," I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the
+Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead
+of us lay Reading and Bath.
+
+The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled
+on towards Reading.
+
+"Forward!" I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and
+bade him wait.
+
+Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was
+casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him
+pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked
+back to the fork of the road, gazed north-west towards Henley, and
+stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and
+arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.
+
+I waited for him to fall. I say "waited" advisedly, for I could have
+done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the
+driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to
+London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the
+afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My
+own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and
+leaving him to his fate. His madness ... as I watched the strained
+pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.
+
+With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head
+fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the
+road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes,
+and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.
+
+"Stop where you are!" I called to the driver as I ran down the road
+and turned into the bridle-path.
+
+The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He
+was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported
+him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.
+
+"This way!" he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I
+caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow--picturesque, peaceful,
+inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new
+corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of
+green tins of motor spirit.
+
+"She's there--Sylvia!" he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we
+walked down the bridle-path. "Go in and get her. Make them give her
+up!"
+
+I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At
+the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was
+another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an
+unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought
+not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of
+felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not
+there.... I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.
+
+"We can't," I said weakly. "It's a strange house; we don't know that
+she's there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander...."
+
+He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of
+my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover
+behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window
+opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching.
+Then the door opened.
+
+"I have come for Miss Roden," I heard him say.
+
+"Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here."
+
+The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face.
+I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.
+
+"I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden."
+
+The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.
+
+"You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away,
+or I'll call a man and have you given in charge."
+
+The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added
+something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my
+walnut-tree, pushed open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door
+as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck
+of bright red froth.
+
+"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.
+
+She looked at me in surprise.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize
+for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your
+name. We have called...."
+
+"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous
+finger at the Seraph.
+
+"He is. We have called for Miss Roden."
+
+"She is not here."
+
+"One minute gone," said the Seraph, watch in hand.
+
+Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I
+think the name was "John."
+
+"I am armed," I warned her.
+
+She paid no attention.
+
+"One minute and a half," said the Seraph.
+
+I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.
+
+"I don't think you appreciate the strength of our position," I began.
+"You are no doubt aware that the office of the _New Militant_ has been
+raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a
+warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant."
+
+"They haven't caught her," said Miss Draper, defiantly.
+
+I could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity
+that the mention of Joyce's name brought into her eyes.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" asked the Seraph.
+
+"I shan't say."
+
+"I think it probable that you do _not_ know," I answered. "Miss
+Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my
+friend's flat."
+
+"You expect me to believe that?"
+
+"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already
+suspected and watched."
+
+"Why don't they search it?"
+
+"Because England is a corrupt country," I said, boldly inventing. "I
+have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant's sister--Mrs.
+Wylton--is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of
+seeing Miss Davenant arrested--in a critical condition--if it can be
+avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of
+a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their
+families before midnight to-night. I may say in passing that if Miss
+Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than
+she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me.
+Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say
+how we found Miss Roden was being kept here----"
+
+"She is not."
+
+I sighed resignedly.
+
+"You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?"
+
+"You don't know where Miss Davenant is, and I do."
+
+It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old
+lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination,
+pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could,
+waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.
+
+"I am now going to search the house," I told Miss Draper. "This is
+your last chance. Tell me where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a
+felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a
+single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested.
+Which is it to be?"
+
+She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step
+across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle
+was over.
+
+"Where is she?" I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my
+lot to fight with women.
+
+Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in
+the lock.
+
+"No tricks?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You had better make yourself scarce."
+
+Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the
+house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see
+if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless
+and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat
+my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard
+somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.
+
+I returned to the hall--where the Seraph was sleeping upright against
+the wall--opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew
+accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and
+drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood
+in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by
+the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but
+blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.
+
+I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly
+to her feet. Then I shut the door and stood awkwardly at the window,
+while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
+
+It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink
+three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared
+that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last
+twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with
+the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark
+room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal
+with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the
+pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the
+voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were
+frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.
+
+"You didn't expect to see me, Sylvia," I said, as I buttered the stale
+crusts to make them less unappetizing.
+
+She shook her head without answering.
+
+"Did you think no one was ever coming?"
+
+She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.
+
+"No."
+
+The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been
+expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.
+
+"How did you find me?"
+
+"The Seraph brought me here."
+
+Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked.
+
+"Outside."
+
+"I must go to him!" she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying
+dizzily.
+
+I pressed her back into her chair.
+
+"Wait till you've had some food," I said, "and then I'll bring him
+in."
+
+"But I don't want any more."
+
+"Sylvia," I said firmly, "if you're not a good girl we shan't rescue
+you another time."
+
+She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline
+of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The
+Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a
+heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and
+laid him on the bed in Sylvia's prison. His heart was beating, but he
+seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed
+the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running
+diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the
+chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of
+brandy.
+
+I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that
+there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the
+tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and
+waiting for the eyes to open.
+
+"Your prison doesn't run to brandy," I told her. "We must get him to
+Maidenhead, and I'll give him some there. I've got a car waiting about
+half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?"
+
+"Don't be long," she said, with an anxious look at the white, still
+face.
+
+"No longer than I can help. Here's a revolver in case any one wants to
+abduct either of you. It's loaded, so be careful."
+
+I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.
+
+"Sylvia!" I said at the door.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Can you be trusted to look after him properly?"
+
+She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.
+
+"I think so," she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away.
+"He's rather precious."
+
+The car was brought to the door, and the driver--who, after all, had
+been paid not to be surprised--looked on unemotionally as we carried
+the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing
+the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped
+up in the other.
+
+On the way back I was compelled to repeat _in extenso_ the whole story
+of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment
+when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced
+my way into the darkened prison cell.
+
+Sylvia's face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative
+proceeded.
+
+"But how could he _know_?" she asked in a puzzled tone when I had
+ended. "You must explain that. I don't see how it's possible."
+
+"Madam, I have provided you with a story," I replied in the manner of
+Dr. Johnson; "I am not obliged to provide you with a moral."
+
+As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the
+moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly
+cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with
+its present angry wale.
+
+Of course, if you point morals before there's a story to hang them
+from, you must expect to see them disregarded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE
+
+      "If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always
+      a rash thing to do--he never dreams of considering
+      whether the idea is right or wrong. The one thing he
+      considers of any importance is whether one believes it
+      oneself.... The inherited stupidity of the race--sound
+      English common sense...."
+
+                OSCAR WILDE: "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
+
+
+If the Seraph's quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences
+of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest
+memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists
+and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the
+menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She
+had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson
+to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the
+S.Y. _Ariel_.... I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking
+more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there
+was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would
+have forestalled me.
+
+I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on
+Sylvia's character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes;
+I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender
+and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an
+Oxford summer evening; I could recognise her from the Seraph's
+description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I
+ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met--before
+her last parting from the Seraph--she had gone back to the earlier
+hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her
+least when she was regal.
+
+And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my
+tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her
+relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the
+manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of
+what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening
+interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.... I had watched the
+Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity--uneasiness--
+belief and disbelief--ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it
+must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her
+presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before
+they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to
+appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul
+in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.
+
+I remember it all, but I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of
+committing it to paper. No girl has ever spoken her heart to me as
+Sylvia then spoke it; I am not sure that I want to be again admitted
+to such confidences. It is all strange, and sad, and unsatisfactory;
+but above all it is sacred. Her imprisonment had taken the fire out of
+Sylvia's blood; and her meeting with the Seraph had worked on her
+emotions. At another time she would have been more reticent. As after
+our return from Oxford, I sometimes think we were punished by an
+extreme of cold for having been injudiciously admitted to bask in an
+extreme of heat. That is the way with the English climate, and with a
+certain number of reserved, proud girls who grow up under its
+influence....
+
+I dropped Sylvia at Cadogan Square without going in, and carried the
+Seraph straight back to Adelphi Terrace. Maybury-Reynardson was paying
+Joyce an evening visit; the report was satisfactory so far as it went,
+but indicated that we must exercise great patience before a complete
+cure could be expected. I asked--on a matter of life and
+death--whether she could be moved in a week's time. He preferred to
+give no opinion, and reminded me that I must not attempt to see or
+speak to the patient. Then I turned him over to the Seraph, ordered
+myself some dinner, and went to bed.
+
+In the morning a telephone message informed me that Arthur Roden would
+like us both to go round to Cadogan Square. I answered that it was out
+of the question so far as the Seraph was concerned; and it was not
+till late on the Saturday afternoon that I felt justified in letting
+him get out of bed and accompany me. He still looked perilously white
+and ill, and though one strain had been removed by the discovery of
+Sylvia, and another by the departure of the search-warrant bogey, I
+could see no good purpose in his being called in to assist at an
+affecting reconciliation, and having to submit to a noisy chorus of
+congratulation.
+
+We were spared both. I suppose I shall never know the true reason for
+the reception that awaited us, but I distribute the responsibility in
+equal shares between Lady Roden and Nigel Rawnsley. And of course I
+have to keep reminding myself that I had been present at the search,
+while they were not; that they were plain, matter-of-fact
+materialists with a rational cause for every effect, while I--well, I
+put myself out of court at once by asking them to believe in an
+absurdity called a Sixth Sense.
+
+I find it hard, however, to forgive Nigel his part in the scene that
+followed; so far as I can see he was actuated first by jealousy on
+Sylvia's account, secondly by personal venom against the Seraph as a
+result of the unauthorised search-party, and lastly by the obstinate
+anger of a strong-willed, successful egoist, who has been driven to
+dwell even temporarily in the shade of unsuccess. Lady Roden, it must
+never be forgotten, had to sink the memory of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, and the quarterings and armorial devices of an entire
+Heralds' College, before she could be expected to do justice to a man
+like the Seraph.
+
+We were shown into the library, and found Arthur, Nigel and Philip
+seated before us like the Beasts in Revelation. Lady Roden and Sylvia
+entered later and sat to one side. There was much bowing and no
+hand-shaking.
+
+The story of the search was already known--Sylvia had told it as soon
+as she got home, probably in my own words; and in the first, fine,
+careless rapture, I have no doubt she had spoken of the Seraph in the
+strain I had heard in the car. If this were the case, Lady Roden's
+eyes must have been abruptly and painfully opened. I felt sorry for
+her. Rutlandshire Morningtons frowned sour disfavour from the walls at
+the possibility of her daughter--with her daughter's faith and
+wealth--allying herself with an infidel, unknown, relationless vagrant
+like Lambert Aintree. Rationalism in the person of Nigel Rawnsley was
+called in to discredit the story of the search and save Sylvia from
+squandering herself on a common adventurer.
+
+"You remember the terms of our agreement last Wednesday?" he began. "I
+undertook to suspend application for a search warrant...."
+
+"If we discovered Sylvia," I said. "Yes?"
+
+"And my sister Mavis."
+
+I hope Nigel did not see my jaw drop. Save for the moment when I
+looked casually through the other rooms in the Maidenhead bungalow I
+had completely forgotten the Mavis stipulation. Every plan and hope I
+had cherished in respect of Joyce had been cherished in vain.
+
+"The time was to expire on Monday, at noon," said the Seraph.
+
+"Exactly. I thought I would remind you that only half the undertaking
+had been carried out. That is all."
+
+Nigel would make an admirable proctor; he is to the manner born. I had
+quite the old feeling of being five shillings the poorer for straying
+round the streets of Oxford at night without academical dress.
+
+I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.
+
+"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."
+
+I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him
+to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having
+to submit to examination by an old K.C.
+
+"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are
+suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the
+police on a most serious charge...."
+
+"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an
+impatient glance at Nigel.
+
+"No arrangement you may have made on Wednesday is binding on me."
+
+"It was binding on your son, who sits on one side of you," I said,
+"and on Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, who sits on the other."
+
+Arthur drew himself up, no doubt unconsciously.
+
+"As a Minister of the Crown I cannot be a party to any connivance at
+crime."
+
+"Philip and Nigel," I said. "As sons of Ministers of the Crown, I hope
+you will take that to heart."
+
+"What I have to say----" Arthur began.
+
+"One moment!" I interrupted. "Are you speaking as a Minister of the
+Crown or a father of a family? Sylvia's been restored to you as the
+result of your son and Nigel conniving at what you hope and believe to
+be a crime. You wouldn't have got her back without that immoral
+compromise."
+
+"The flat would have been searched," said Nigel.
+
+"It was. Paddy and Gartside searched it and declared themselves
+satisfied...."
+
+"They lied."
+
+"Will you repeat that to Gartside?" I asked invitingly. "I fancy not.
+They searched and declared themselves satisfied. I offered to show the
+detectives round ten minutes after--by all accounts--this woman ought
+to have taken refuge there. Anybody could have searched it if they'd
+approached the owner properly."
+
+He ignored my implied reproof and stuck to his guns.
+
+"There was a woman there when Gartside said there was not."
+
+"Gartside only said Miss Davenant wasn't there."
+
+It was the Seraph speaking, slowly and almost for the first time. His
+face flushed crimson as he said it. I could not help looking at
+Sylvia; I looked away again quickly.
+
+"There was _some_ woman there, then?" said Nigel.
+
+My cue was plain, and I took it.
+
+"Miss Davenant is the only person whose name is before the house," I
+interposed. "Gartside said she was not there. Were you satisfied,
+Phil? I thought so. It's no good asking you, Nigel; you won't be
+satisfied till you've searched in person, and that you can't do till
+after Monday. Every one who agreed to Wednesday's compromise is bound
+by it till Monday midday. If after that Nigel _still_ thinks it worth
+while to conduct Scotland Yard over the flat, of course we shan't
+attempt to stop him. As for any one who was not present or personally
+bound by Wednesday's compromise, that is to say, you, Arthur--do you
+declare to win by 'Father of a Family' or 'Minister of the Crown'? You
+must take one or the other."
+
+"The two are inseparable," he answered shortly.
+
+"You must contrive to separate them. If you declare 'Father of a
+Family,' you must hold yourself bound by Phil's arrangement. If you
+declare 'Minister of the Crown,' you oughtn't to have profited by the
+compromise, you oughtn't to have allowed us to restore Sylvia to you.
+Common schoolboy honour tells you that. Incidentally, why haven't you
+had the flat searched already? As a Minister of the Crown, you
+know...."
+
+If my heart had not been beating so quickly, I should have liked to
+study their faces at leisure. The history of the last two days was
+written with tolerable clearness. Nigel had told Arthur--and possibly
+his own father--the story of his visit to Adelphi Terrace; he had
+hinted sufficient to incite one or both to take the matter up
+officially. Then Philip had intervened and depicted himself as bound
+in honour to take no step until the expiration of the armistice. Their
+faces told a pretty tale of "pull devil, pull baker," with Nigel at
+the head, Philip at the feet, and Arthur twisting and struggling
+between them.
+
+I had no need to ask why the flat had not yet been searched, but I
+repeated my question.
+
+"And when _are_ you going to search it?" I added.
+
+Arthur attempted a compromise.
+
+"If you will give me your word...." he began.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" I said. "Are you bound or are you not? Sylvia's in
+the room to settle any doubts on the subject."
+
+He yielded after a struggle.
+
+"I will take no steps to search the flat until after midday on Monday,
+provided Mavis is restored by then."
+
+I made another attempt to rise, but Arthur waved me back into my seat.
+
+"I have not finished yet. As you point out, Sylvia is in the room. I
+wish to know how she got here, and I wish still more to know how she
+was ever spirited away in the first instance."
+
+"I know nothing about the getting away. She may be able to throw light
+on that. Hasn't she told you how we found her?"
+
+"She has given me your version."
+
+"Then I don't suppose I can add anything to it."
+
+"You might substitute a story that would hold a little more water."
+
+"I am afraid I am not naturally inventive."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+His tone told me that I had definitely lost Arthur as a friend--which
+was regrettable, but if I could play the part of whetstone to his
+repartee I was content to see him draw profit from the _d�bris_ of our
+friendship.
+
+"It is only fair to say that you and Aintree are regarded with a good
+deal of suspicion," he went on. "Apart from the question of the
+flat...."
+
+"Not again!" I begged.
+
+"I have not mentioned the report of the officers who watched Miss
+Davenant's house in...."
+
+"Nigel has," I interrupted. "_Ad nauseam._ My interview was apparently
+very different from their report. Suppose we have them in?"
+
+"They are not in the house."
+
+"Then hadn't we better leave them out of the discussion? What else are
+we suspected of?"
+
+Arthur traced a pattern on the blotting-pad, and then looked up very
+sternly.
+
+"Complicity with the whole New Militant campaign."
+
+I turned to the Seraph.
+
+"This is devilish serious," I said. "Incitement to crime, three
+abductions, more in contemplation. I shouldn't have thought it to look
+at you. Naughty boy!"
+
+Arthur was really angry at that. I knew it by his old habit of growing
+red behind the ears.
+
+"You appear to think this is a fit subject for jesting," he burst out.
+
+"I laugh that I may not weep," I said. "A charge like this is rather
+upsetting. Have you bothered about any evidence?"
+
+"You will find there is perhaps more evidence than you relish. Apart
+from your intimacy with Miss Davenant...."
+
+"She's a very pretty woman," I interrupted.
+
+"...you have successfully kept one foot in either camp. You were
+present when Rawnsley told me of the abduction of Mavis, and added
+that the matter was being kept secret. Miss Davenant at once
+published an article entitled 'Where is Miss Rawnsley?'"
+
+"If she really abducted the girl, she'd naturally notice it was being
+kept quiet," I objected.
+
+"On the day after Private Members' time had been appropriated,
+Jefferson's boy disappeared; Miss Davenant must have been warned in
+time to have her plans laid. She referred to my midland campaign, and
+had an accomplice lying in wait for my daughter with a car, the same
+day that Rawnsley made his announcement that there would be no autumn
+session."
+
+"You will find all this on the famous Time Table," I reminded him.
+
+"She got her information from some one who knew the arrangements of
+the Government."
+
+"I'm surprised you continued to know me," I said, and turned to the
+Seraph. "It's devilish serious, as I said before, but it seems to be
+my funeral."
+
+Arthur soon undeceived me.
+
+"You are both equally incriminated. Aintree, is it not the case that
+on one occasion in Oxford and another in London, you warned my
+daughter that trouble was in store for her?"
+
+The Seraph had been sitting silent and with closed eyes since his
+single intervention. He now opened his eyes and bowed without
+speaking.
+
+"I suggest that you knew an attempt would be made to abduct her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are quite certain?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Then why the warning?"
+
+"I knew trouble was coming; I didn't know she would be abducted."
+
+"What form of trouble did you anticipate?"
+
+"No form in particular."
+
+"Why trouble at all?"
+
+"I knew it was coming."
+
+"But how?"
+
+He hesitated, and then closed his eyes wearily.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Arthur balanced a quill pen between the first fingers of both hands.
+
+"On Wednesday last your rooms were visited, and the question of a
+search-warrant raised. You obtained a promise that the warrant would
+not be applied for if my daughter and Miss Rawnsley were restored
+within five days. Did you know at that time where they were?"
+
+"No."
+
+"When did you find out?"
+
+"I don't know where Miss Rawnsley is. I didn't know where your
+daughter was till we came to the house."
+
+"We none of us know our hats are in the hall till we look to make
+certain," Nigel interrupted; "but you found her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No one told you where she was?" Arthur went on.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how did you find her?"
+
+"I believe she has told you."
+
+"She has given me Merivale's version. I want yours."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How did you start?"
+
+"She's told you. I walked out of the house, and went on till I found
+her."
+
+"How did you know where to look?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles,
+passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house--a
+house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This
+was pure coincidence?"
+
+"I knew she was there."
+
+"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you
+mean?"
+
+"I felt sure she _was_ there."
+
+"You felt that when you left London?"
+
+"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."
+
+"No one had told you where to look?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of
+the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one.
+You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the
+right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"
+
+"I ask you to believe nothing."
+
+"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given
+five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's
+whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"
+
+"No."
+
+Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of
+self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.
+
+"Do you know where my sister is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you--er--_feel_ where she is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you walk from this house and find her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How soon will you be able to do so?"
+
+With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.
+
+"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."
+
+"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how do you propose to find her?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You know the consequences?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy
+fidelity.
+
+"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden
+is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"
+
+"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."
+
+"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"
+
+"That is so."
+
+"You suggest no reason for the difference?"
+
+For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia.
+Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much.
+I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same
+expression that had come over her face when he suggested the
+possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous
+Wednesday morning.
+
+"I suggest no reason," he said at last.
+
+Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a
+window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes
+melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a
+discreet distance from her mother.
+
+"Not worth saving, Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed
+in him.
+
+"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How
+_could_ he, if he didn't know all along?"
+
+"Remember Brandon Court," I said.
+
+"Why didn't he mention it?"
+
+I pointed to the Bench.
+
+"My dear child, look at them! Why not talk higher mathematics to a
+boa-constrictor?"
+
+"If he can't make them believe it, why should I?"
+
+"Because you _know_."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything. You know he's in love with you, and you're in love with
+him."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+Her voice quivered with passion; there was nothing for it but a bold
+stroke. And one risk more or less hardly mattered.
+
+"Can you keep a secret, Sylvia?"
+
+"It depends."
+
+"No. Absolutely?"
+
+"All right."
+
+I lowered my voice to a whisper.
+
+"There _was_ a woman in his rooms last Wednesday, and she is the woman
+I am engaged to marry."
+
+Her look of scorn was caused less by concern for my morals than by
+pity for my simplicity in thinking she would believe such a story.
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You must. It's your last chance. If you let him go now, you'll lose
+him for ever, and I'm not going to let you blight your life and his,
+if I can stop it. You must make up your mind now. Do you believe me?"
+
+Her expression of scorn had vanished and given place to one of painful
+perplexity.
+
+"I'm not...."
+
+"Do you believe me, Sylvia?"
+
+She hesitated in an agony of indecision, until the moment was lost.
+The water had arrived, and Arthur was dismissing me from the Presence.
+
+"You're not going to arrest us, then?" I said.
+
+"I reserve perfect freedom of action," he answered, in the Front Bench
+manner.
+
+"Quite right," I said. "I only wish you'd reserved the inquisition
+till this boy was in a better state to receive it. Would it interfere
+with your liberty of action if I asked you to say a word of thanks
+either to Aintree, myself, or both? I believe it is usual when a man
+loses his daughter and has her restored to him."
+
+A few minutes more would have tried my temper. Arthur sat down again
+at his table, opened a drawer, and took out a cheque-book.
+
+"According to your story it was Aintree who was chiefly instrumental
+in making the discovery?"
+
+"That was the lie we agreed on," I said.
+
+Arthur wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds, and handed it to the
+Seraph with the words--
+
+"That, I think, clears all obligations between us."
+
+"Except that of manners," I exclaimed. "The House of Commons----"
+
+But he had rung the bell, and was tidying his papers into neat,
+superfluous bundles.
+
+Philip had the courage to shake me by the hand and say he hoped to see
+me again soon. I am not sufficiently cynical to say it was prompted by
+the reflection that Gladys was my niece, because he was every whit as
+cordial to the Seraph.
+
+I shook hands with Sylvia, and found her watching the Seraph fold and
+pocket the two thousand pound cheque.
+
+"He's taking it!" she said.
+
+"Your father should have been ashamed to make the offer. It serves him
+right if his offer's accepted. Don't blame the Seraph. If Nigel and
+your father proceed on the lines they've gone on this afternoon, one
+or both of us will have to cut the country. The Seraph's not made of
+money; he'll want all he can lay hands on. Now then, Sylvia, it's two
+lives you're playing with."
+
+She had not yet made up her mind, and indecision chilled the warmth of
+her eyes and the smile on her lips. I watched the effort, and wondered
+if it would suffice for the Seraph. Then question and answer told
+their tale.
+
+"When shall we see you again?" I heard her ask as I walked to the
+door.
+
+"I can hardly say," came the low reply. "I'm leaving England shortly.
+I shall go across India, and spend some time in Japan--and then visit
+the Islands of the South Seas. It's a thing I've always wanted to do.
+After that? I don't know...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
+
+      "The instant he entered the room it was plain that all
+      was lost....
+
+      "'I cannot find it,' said he, 'and I must have it. Where
+      is it?... Where is my bench?... Time presses; and I must
+      finish those shoes.'
+
+      "They looked at one another, and their hearts died within
+      them.
+
+      "'Come, come!' said he, in a whimpering miserable way:
+      'let me get to work. Give me my work.'
+
+      "...Carton was the first to speak:
+
+      "'The last chance is gone: it was not much....'"
+
+                  CHARLES DICKENS: "A Tale of Two Cities."
+
+
+As I helped the Seraph out of the house and into a taxi, I was trying
+to string together a few words of sympathy and encouragement. Then I
+looked at his face, and decided to save my breath. Physically and
+mentally he was too hard hit to profit by any consolation I could
+offer. As a clumsy symbol of good intention I held out my hand, and
+had it gripped and retained till we reached Adelphi Terrace.
+
+"Never mind me," he said, in a slow, sing-song voice, hesitating like
+a man speaking an unfamiliar language. "It's you and Joyce we've got
+to consider."
+
+"Don't worry your head, Seraph," I said. "We'll find a way out. You've
+got to be quiet and get well."
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"I've no idea," I answered blankly.
+
+The Seraph sighed and lifted his feet wearily on to the seat opposite.
+
+"You played that last hand well, Toby. I'm afraid you'll have to go on
+playing without any support from me. I'm dummy, I'm only good for two
+possible tricks."
+
+I waited to see the hand exposed.
+
+"I can't find Mavis," he went on. "You see that?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You must ask Joyce to tell you. She spoke a few words this morning,
+and she's getting stronger. If she refuses ... but she won't if you
+ask her."
+
+"If she does?"
+
+"You must go on bluffing Nigel. He doesn't know who's in the flat, and
+old Roden doesn't know either. They'd have searched three days ago,
+they'd have arrested us to-day on suspicion if they hadn't been afraid
+of making fools of themselves. Keep bluffing, Toby. The keener you are
+to get the search over and done with, the more they'll be afraid of a
+mare's nest." The words trailed off in a sigh. "If there's anything I
+can do I'll do it, but I'm afraid you'll find me pretty useless."
+
+"You're going quietly to bed for forty-eight hours," I told him.
+
+He raised no protest, and I heard him murmur, "Saturday night. Sunday
+night. Monday night. It'll be all over then, one way or the other."
+
+On reaching the flat I carried him upstairs, ordered some soup, and
+smoked a cigarette in the hall. Maybury-Reynardson was completing his
+evening inspection, and when he came out I asked for the bulletin.
+
+"It's in the right direction," he told me, "but very, very slow. The
+mind's working back to normal whenever she wakes, and she's been
+talking a little. I'm afraid you must go on being patient."
+
+"Could she answer a question?"
+
+"You mustn't ask any."
+
+"I'm afraid it's absolutely necessary."
+
+"What d'you want to know?"
+
+"The police will search this flat on Monday if we don't find out
+before then where Miss Rawnsley was taken to when she disappeared."
+
+Maybury-Reynardson shook his head.
+
+"You mustn't think of bothering her with questions of that kind. If
+you did, I don't suppose she could help you."
+
+"But you said the mind was normal?"
+
+"Working back to normal. Everything's there, but she can't put it in
+order. The memory larder is full, but her hands are too weak to lift
+things down from the shelves."
+
+"It's a matter of life and death," I urged.
+
+"If it was a matter of eternal salvation I doubt if she could help
+you. Do you dream? Well, could you piece together the fragments of all
+you dreamt last night? You might have done so a moment after waking,
+little pieces may come back to you when some one suggests the right
+train of thought. That's Miss Davenant's condition. To change the
+parallel, her eyes can see, but they see 'through a glass darkly.'"
+
+I thought the matter over while he was examining and prescribing for
+the Seraph.
+
+"We're in a tight corner, Seraph," I said when he had gone. "I don't
+see any other way out, I'm going to take the responsibility of
+disobeying him."
+
+He offered no suggestion, and I walked to the door of Joyce's room and
+put my fingers to the handle. Then I came back and made him open his
+eyes and listen to me.
+
+"I'll take the blame," I said; "but will you see if you can make her
+understand? She's known you longer."
+
+It was not the true reason. When I reached the door I was smitten with
+the fear that she would not recognise me, and my nerve failed.
+
+We explained our intentions to a reluctant nurse; I fidgeted outside
+in the hall and heard the Seraph walk up to the bedside and ask Joyce
+how she was.
+
+"I'm better, thanks," she answered. "Let me see, do I know you?" There
+was a weak laugh. "I should like to be friends with you, you've got
+such nice eyes."
+
+The Seraph took her hand and asked if she knew any one named Mavis
+Rawnsley.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know her. Her father's the Prime Minister. Mavis, yes, I
+know her."
+
+"Do you know where she is?"
+
+"Mavis Rawnsley? She was at the theatre last night. What theatre was
+it? She was in the stalls, and I was in a box. Who else was there?
+Were you? She was with her mother. Where is she now? Yes, I know Miss
+Rawnsley well."
+
+"Do you know where she is now?"
+
+"I expect she's at the theatre."
+
+She closed her eyes, and the Seraph came back to the door, shaking his
+head. I tiptoed into the room, looked round the screen and watched
+Joyce smiling in her sleep. As I looked, her eyes opened and met mine.
+
+"Why, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're my husband. You took me to
+the theatre last night, when we saw Mavis Rawnsley. We were in a box,
+and she was in the stalls. Some one wanted to know where Mavis was.
+Tell them we saw her at the theatre, will you?"
+
+She held out her hand to me; I bent down, kissed her forehead, and
+crept out of the room. The Seraph was lying on the bed we had made up
+for him in my room. I helped him to undress, and retired to the
+library with a cigar--to forget Joyce and plan the bluffing of Nigel.
+
+My first act was to get into communication with Paddy Culling on the
+telephone.
+
+"Will you do me another favour?" I began. "Well, it's this. I want you
+to get hold of Nigel and take him to lunch or dine to-morrow--Sunday--at
+the Club. Let me know which, and the time. When you've finished eating,
+lead him away to a quiet corner--the North Smoking Room or the
+Strangers' Card Room. Hold him in conversation till I come. I shall
+drop in accidentally, and start pulling his leg. You can help, but do
+it in moderation; we mustn't make him savage--only uncomfortable. You
+understand? Right."
+
+Then I went to bed.
+
+On Sunday morning I started out in the direction of Chester Square,
+and made two discoveries on the way. The first was that our house was
+being unceasingly watched by a tall Yorkshireman in plain clothes and
+regulation boots; the second, that the Yorkshireman was in his turn
+being intermittently watched by Nigel Rawnsley. His opinion of the
+Criminal Investigation Department must have been as low--if not as
+kindly--as my own. On two more occasions that day I found him engaged
+on a flying visit of inspection--to keep Scotland Yard up to the
+Rawnsley mark and answer the eternal question that Juvenal propounded
+and Michael Roden amended for his own benefit and mine at Henley.
+
+Elsie received me with anxious enquiries after her sister. I gave a
+full report, propounded my plan of campaign, and was rewarded by being
+shown the extensive and beautiful contents of her wardrobe. I should
+never have believed one woman could accumulate so many clothes; there
+seemed a dress for every day and evening of the year, and she could
+have worn a fresh hat each hour without repeating herself. My own rule
+is to have one suit I can wear in a bad light, and four that I cannot.
+With hats the practice is even simpler; I flaunt a new one until it is
+stolen, and then wear the changeling until a substitute of even
+greater seediness has been supplied. My instincts are conservative,
+and my hats more symbolical than decorative; for me they typify the
+great, sad law that every change is a change for the worse.
+
+My only complaint against Elsie was that her wardrobe contained too
+much of what university authorities would call the "subfuse" element.
+The most conspicuous garments I could find were a white coat and
+skirt, white stockings and shoes, black hat and veil, and heliotrope
+dust coat. I am no judge whether they looked well in combination, but
+I challenge the purblind to say they were inconspicuous. To my eyes
+the _tout ensemble_ was so striking that I laid them on a chair and
+gazed in wondering admiration until it was time to call up Gartside
+and warn him that I stood in need of luncheon.
+
+Carlton House Terrace had a depressing, derelict appearance that
+foreboded the departure of its lord. All the favourite pictures and
+ornaments seemed to have been stowed away in preparation for India,
+neat piles of books were distributed about the library floor, and
+every scrap of paper seemed to have been tidied into a drawer. We sat
+down a pleasant party of three, and I made the acquaintance of
+Gartside's cousin and aide-de-camp, Lord Raymond Sturling. An
+agreeable fellow he seemed, who put himself and his services entirely
+at my disposal in the event of my deciding to come for a part or all
+of the way. I could only avail myself of his offer to the extent of
+sending him to see if Mountjoy's villa at Rimini was still in the
+market, and if so what his figure was for giving me immediate
+possession.
+
+Gartside himself was as hospitable as ever in offering me every
+available inch on the yacht for the accommodation of myself and any
+friends I might care to bring with me. I ran through the list and
+found myself wondering if Maybury-Reynardson could be persuaded to
+come. I had hardly known him long enough to call him a friend, but he
+had gone out of his way to oblige me in coming to attend Joyce, and on
+general principles I think most big London practitioners are the
+better for a few days at sea at the close of the London season.
+
+I called round in Cavendish Square for a cup of tea, and told him he
+was pulled down and in need of a change.
+
+"Look at the good it did my brother," I said. "Just to Marseilles and
+back. Or if you'll come to Genoa and overland to Rimini, I shall be
+very glad to put you up for as long as you can stay. It's Gartside's
+own yacht, and I'm authorised by him to invite whom I please. He's a
+capital host, and you'll be done to a turn. The only fault I have to
+find with his arrangements is that he carries no doctor, and I'm
+sufficiently middle-aged to be fussy on a point like that. Anybody
+taken ill, you know, anybody coming on board ill, and it would be
+devilish awkward. I shall insist on a doctor. He'll be Gartside's
+guest, but I shall pay his fees, of course, and he can name his own
+figure. What do you think of the idea? We shall be to all intents and
+purposes a bachelor party."
+
+When Maybury-Reynardson's name was first mentioned to me on the
+evening of Joyce's flight, the Seraph had justly described him as a
+"sportsman." Under the grave official mask I could see a twinkling eye
+and a flickering smile.
+
+"It depends on one case of nervous breakdown that I've got on hand at
+present," he said. "If my patient's well enough...."
+
+"She's got to be," I said.
+
+"When do you sail?"
+
+"Friday."
+
+"You can't make it later?"
+
+"Absolutely impossible."
+
+"This is Sunday. I'll tell you when we're a little nearer the day."
+
+"She must be moved on Thursday afternoon."
+
+"Must? Must?" he repeated with a smile. "Whose patient is she?"
+
+"Whose wife's she going to be?" I asked in my turn.
+
+"I suppose it'll be pretty hot," he said. "First week in August. I
+must get some thin clothes."
+
+"Include them in the fee," I suggested.
+
+"Damn the fee!" he answered, as we walked to the door.
+
+Paddy Culling had arranged to give Nigel his dinner at eight. I had
+comfortable time to dress and dine at Adelphi Terrace, and nine-thirty
+found me wandering round the Club in search of company.
+
+"Praise heaven for the sight of a friendly face!" I exclaimed as I
+stumbled across Paddy and Nigel in the North Smoking Room.
+
+"Where was ut ye dined?" asked Paddy, as I pulled up a chair and rang
+for cigars. To a practised ear his brogue was an eloquent war signal.
+
+"In the sick-house," I told him, "Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Is ut catching?" he inquired. "It's not for my own self I'm asking,
+but Nigel here. I owe ut to empire and postherity to see he runs no
+risks."
+
+I reassured him on the score of posterity.
+
+"He's just knocked up and over-tired," I said, "and I'm keeping him in
+bed till Wednesday or Thursday."
+
+"Then he'll not be walking ye into the Lake District to find Miss
+Mavis for the present," Paddy observed with an eye on Nigel.
+
+"He'll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest," I said with
+great determination.
+
+Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.
+
+"I'd have ye remember the days of grace," he grumbled.
+
+I shrugged my shoulders without answering.
+
+"Where's me pound of flesh?" he demanded. "Manin' no disrispec' to
+Miss Mavis," he added apologetically to Nigel.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't help you to find her," I said.
+
+"Can the Seraph?"
+
+"I don't suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present."
+
+Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked
+up the threads where they had been dropped.
+
+"You say Aintree's ill," he began cautiously. "If I were disposed to
+regard the time of illness as so many _dies non_, would he be in a
+position to find my sister by the end of the week?"
+
+"Frankly, I see no likelihood."
+
+"It's an extra five days."
+
+"What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?"
+
+"You should know best."
+
+"I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better
+means of finding out."
+
+"And Aintree?"
+
+"In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means
+of finding out he'd tell me."
+
+Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.
+
+"When the days of grace have expired, ye'll have yer contract
+unfulfilled?"
+
+"And we shall be prepared to face the consequences."
+
+"Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?"
+
+"He can't help himself." I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no
+profit in staying longer. "I shall see you both to-morrow at noon?"
+
+"Not me," said Paddy. "I've searched the place once."
+
+"You, Nigel?"
+
+"If I think fit," he answered loftily.
+
+"I only ask, because you mustn't worry the Seraph. You can search his
+rooms, but you mustn't try to cross-question him. He's not equal to
+it."
+
+"I think you'd be wise to accept the extension of time."
+
+"My dear man, what's the good? If we can't find your sister, we can't.
+Saturday's no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time,
+you'd better stick to it and get your search over."
+
+"If Aintree's ill...."
+
+"Humbug! Nigel," I said. "If you believe we're harbouring a criminal,
+it's your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach
+Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your
+superior wisdom. Bring 'em to-morrow; bring 'em to-night if you like,
+and as many as you can get. The more there are," I said, turning at
+the door to fire a last shot, "the more voices will be raised in
+thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley."
+
+The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need
+expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain
+other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning
+to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy's villa at
+Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all
+formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton
+House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up
+odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious
+invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On
+Thursday I called at Chester Square.
+
+Elsie's car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid
+me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on
+the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat
+and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce.
+The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she
+dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might
+have belonged to either sister.
+
+I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to
+Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of
+attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after
+Joyce, they would not be there for ever. As we crossed Trafalgar
+Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.
+
+"Just as I thought," I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My
+plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite
+side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman
+from the corner of the Terrace.
+
+"Bow to him," I said to Elsie. "He may not deign to recognise you, but
+he can't help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained
+ankle!"
+
+With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half
+carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The
+ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to
+run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out
+of my Yorkshire friend's field of vision.
+
+I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce's room. I never
+waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time,
+weak, suffering and heart-broken--two large blue eyes gazing at me out
+of a white immobile face--I half regretted we had ever met, and
+heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could
+have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all,
+he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting
+out solitary and unfriended--to forget....
+
+Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed
+before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and
+heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little
+smile, bent over the Seraph's bed and kissed him, and then suffered me
+to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the
+footman and I took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My
+Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in
+my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough
+padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his
+present scrutiny told him was that a woman's veil was up when she
+entered a house, and down when she left it.
+
+We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond
+Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us,
+and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch
+already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in
+the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.
+
+"A _mariage de convenance_," Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw
+me inspecting the labels.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. _Ariel_, Southampton," was the name and
+destination I found written.
+
+"It may save trouble," he added apologetically. "I thought you
+wouldn't mind."
+
+His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and
+arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson,
+Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and
+railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce's age and figure,
+and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.
+
+"My wife," Sturling explained brusquely. "Yes, be as quick as you can,
+please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible.
+Sturling--aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht.
+There she is, the _Ariel_, sailing to-morrow. These gentlemen? Mr.
+Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That
+all?"
+
+"All in order, my lord."
+
+"Right away."
+
+As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the
+_Ariel_. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought
+of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have
+kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of
+the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember
+the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed
+direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag
+flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to
+correct a popular delusion.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling's" nurses arrived by an early train on Friday
+morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at
+three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and
+five: "Sursum corda" was the first; "Keep your tails up" the second;
+and "Haste to the Wedding" completed the series.
+
+I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters.
+Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air
+and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has
+returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were
+already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was
+wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of
+the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears
+that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there
+would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning,
+and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been
+ruffled.
+
+While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce his nightly visit, I paced
+the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar.
+As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as
+reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several
+years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had
+tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.
+
+"How did you find Sylvia?" he asked in a tone that showed how his
+thoughts had been occupied.
+
+I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of
+the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.
+
+"Perhaps I'm not leaving so much behind after all," was his comment.
+"Good luck to the Seraph! He's a nice boy."
+
+"He'll need all the luck he can get," I answered. "You'll get oil and
+water to mingle quicker than you'll bring those two together. Tell me
+how it's to be done, Gartside, and you'll put the coping-stone on all
+your labours."
+
+In the darkness I heard him sigh.
+
+"I can't help you. I'm not a diplomatist, I'm just a lumpy,
+good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!" he added
+softly. "He's as fond of her as we any of us were."
+
+I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.
+
+"That's like Paddy," he said with a laugh. "Well, he's right. You're
+the only one that's come out on top, and good wishes to you for the
+future!"
+
+We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.
+
+"You don't want thanks," I said, "but if you do you know where to come
+for them."
+
+"Oh well!" I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes
+when the light of the chart-room lamp fell on his face. "If I can't
+get what I want, there's some satisfaction in helping a friend to get
+what _he_ wants."
+
+"I'll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass," I said. "I
+shall want that text during the next few months."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together," I answered in the
+same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"And how are you going to do that?"
+
+"God knows!" I replied with a woeful shake of the head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE RAID
+
+      "I can see you flying before the laughter like ...
+      tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter will
+      pursue you to Paris, where they'll make little songs
+      about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera, where
+      they'll sell your photographs on picture postcards. I can
+      see you fleeing across the Atlantic to ... the immensity
+      of America, and there the Yellow Press, pea-green with
+      frenzy, will pile column of ridicule upon column of
+      invective. Oh, ... do you think it isn't worth while to
+      endure six months' hard labour to amuse the world so
+      profoundly?"
+
+                               W.S. MAUGHAM: "Jack Straw."
+
+
+The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited
+by the Individualist.
+
+Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and
+better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and
+habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the
+Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her
+efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce
+in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that
+reputation back.... Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her
+loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained
+her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness,
+imprisonment and--well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was
+calling down on her foolish young head.
+
+It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism--the kind that sets
+your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your
+throat--but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night
+Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to
+the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce's bedroom, watched them meet and
+kiss.... "Gods of my fathers," I murmured, "what have you won, the
+pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?"
+
+The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you
+tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our
+escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all;
+You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the
+nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was
+no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of
+command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more
+troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been
+less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my
+grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit
+between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.
+
+I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will
+for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or
+chagrined--only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen
+her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her
+campaign to win a reputation.
+
+When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and
+earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not
+mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday
+at three, and at three-thirty Culling was to post a letter I had
+written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of
+persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her
+again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to
+avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but
+she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to
+overcome the Seraph's curious bent of self-depreciation.
+
+Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph's
+condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down
+during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of
+finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and
+the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing
+when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great
+a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.
+
+I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was
+getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him.
+Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening,
+catch the nine o'clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa
+at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the
+fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea
+of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her
+husband to look after him.
+
+Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks
+no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our
+departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous,
+undisciplined outlet. Nine o'clock came and went without bringing her
+a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting
+by his bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he began to
+grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she
+steal away to her sister's deserted room and lie down for a few hours'
+sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been
+administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like
+slumber.
+
+He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my
+letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to
+swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what
+she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and
+courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to
+Adelphi Terrace and going alone.
+
+Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade
+her going, reminding her--I have no doubt--of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph's entire
+unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently
+tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely
+resolute. The homily ended--as is the way of most sermons--when her
+mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled
+and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her
+hat, called at a florist's on the way, and presented herself at
+Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph's man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that
+the patient was still sleeping.
+
+"I've brought him some flowers," she said. "I suppose it's no good
+waiting? You can't say how soon he's likely to wake up?"
+
+Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the
+man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and
+withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.
+
+Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures
+and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted
+by the sound of men's voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared
+to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.
+
+"Here's the warrant," said a voice, "properly signed, all in order. If
+you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you
+do so at your own risk."
+
+Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The
+voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.
+
+"One of you stay here," he went on, "and see that nobody leaves the
+flat. The other come with me. Take the library first."
+
+The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the
+library's sole occupant.
+
+"Sylvia!" he exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here?"
+
+His tone so resembled her mother's that all Sylvia's latent opposition
+and obstinacy were called into play.
+
+"Have you any objection to my being here?" she asked.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It was rather a surprise."
+
+"As I don't always warn you beforehand, I'm afraid a good many things
+I do must come as a surprise to you."
+
+"And to yourself?"
+
+"You must explain that."
+
+"Surely no explanation is needed?"
+
+"No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn't bother to
+explain my presence here."
+
+Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.
+
+"I imagine Aintree could supply that," he said.
+
+She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to
+use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his
+expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.
+
+"I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister,
+and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect
+of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead."
+
+"Do you imagine he had any hand in that?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"He knew where to look for you," was the significant answer, "and he
+found that out from the woman he's been hiding in these rooms. As it's
+too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I've called
+to gain that information from the lady herself."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Search the flat."
+
+"And if she isn't here?"
+
+"She _was_."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, I admit I didn't see her. It may have been any one. But there's a
+very strong probability, and I'm going on that."
+
+"And if there's no one here now?"
+
+"She must have got away."
+
+"Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"What are you going to do if you find no one?"
+
+"If there's no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If
+Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant...." He paused delicately.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm afraid he'll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to
+sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment."
+
+"You'll have him arrested?"
+
+"That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. _I_
+shan't do anything."
+
+"Except rub your hands?" she taunted.
+
+"Not even that," he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing
+no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his
+voice to summon the detectives into the library. "We'll take this room
+first," he told her, "and then leave you undisturbed."
+
+The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to
+fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with
+surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their
+conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she
+entered the library and in the Seraph's interests requested Nigel to
+carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.
+
+"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night,
+so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll
+stay here and talk to Miss Roden."
+
+Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement,
+humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually
+fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."
+
+"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern
+authority.
+
+"It's some time now...."
+
+"And how long have you been here?"
+
+There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie's thoughts had
+been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in
+readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in
+the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open;
+outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.
+
+"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.
+
+The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to
+boiling point in Sylvia's mind.
+
+"How long?" she repeated.
+
+Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak,
+the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared
+in the doorway.
+
+"She's not here," he announced.
+
+"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at
+his untimely return.
+
+"Your sister."
+
+"Oh, I could have told you that."
+
+"She _was_ here."
+
+"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale
+invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm
+afraid you and the--er--gentleman outside have had your journey in
+vain."
+
+Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect
+of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had
+undertaken to educate.
+
+"Not altogether," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"We've found Aintree."
+
+"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to
+move yet."
+
+"He may have to."
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well--and away."
+
+Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening
+tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly
+becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier
+losings.
+
+"So you're arresting him?" she said.
+
+"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he
+answered with a lift of the eyebrows.
+
+"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my
+sister?"
+
+Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.
+
+"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."
+
+"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.
+
+"Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested."
+
+A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on
+Elsie's face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.
+
+"Possibly he won't be arrested," she remarked.
+
+"You will prevent it?"
+
+"I leave that to you."
+
+"It's a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it."
+
+Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.
+
+"You'll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation
+like the present," she told him with a wise shake of the head. "It's
+ridiculous enough to search a man's rooms for a woman who isn't there,
+but you can't--you really can't arrest a man for harbouring a woman
+when there's no shred of evidence to show she was ever under the same
+roof."
+
+Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel's thin skin to an angry spot
+of red on either cheek.
+
+"You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss
+Roden disappeared," he answered.
+
+Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I have every reason to remember it."
+
+"Your sister was here then."
+
+"You saw her?"
+
+"I heard her."
+
+"You heard _a_ woman."
+
+"It was your sister or yourself."
+
+"Or one of a million others."
+
+Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.
+
+"I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday.
+Barring two nurses, and they're accounted for. You or your sister must
+have left here yesterday."
+
+"And not come back?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, that makes it much easier, doesn't it? If one went out and
+never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it
+looks ... I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think,
+that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind."
+
+"Exactly. And it's on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be
+arrested."
+
+Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves.
+It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed
+and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.
+
+"All the same, what a pity you didn't come before the bird was
+flown!" Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.
+
+"It's something to have found Aintree at home," Nigel returned.
+
+"And you're going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?" Elsie
+walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the
+door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be
+betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the
+Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the
+immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb
+her: she was filled with pity and doubt--pity for Sylvia, and doubt
+whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. "I suppose--you're quite
+certain--he wasn't harbouring--_me_?"
+
+Nigel's unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.
+
+"There's no warrant against you."
+
+"Fortunately not."
+
+"Then why should he harbour you?"
+
+Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she
+turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of
+desperation.
+
+"It's a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+There was a moment's silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with
+cheeks aflame.
+
+"D'you mean you were here the whole time?"
+
+"Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+"Were you?"
+
+"D'you think it likely?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome r�le to its bitter end.
+
+"You know my character, you've not had time to forget my divorce or
+the way I thrust myself under the noses of respectable people. Have I
+got much more bloom to lose?"
+
+"It's not true! The Seraph ... he _wouldn't_!"
+
+"You used to see us about together."
+
+"There's nothing in that!"
+
+"Enough to make you cut him at Henley." Each fresh word fell like a
+lash across Sylvia's cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely
+at the door it was impossible to end the torture.
+
+"_Will_ you say whether you were here the whole time?" she demanded of
+Elsie.
+
+"'Course she wasn't," Nigel struck in. "There are convenances even in
+this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time."
+
+"_Was_ he?" Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper
+down.
+
+"I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes."
+
+"You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from
+time to time? It's important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I
+was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn't happen to
+be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn't have been
+harbouring my sister, but it's good-bye to the remains of my good
+name. And if Mr. Merivale _was_ here, I couldn't have been living here
+too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which
+was it? I don't like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me
+confidentially what you believe yourself."
+
+Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.
+
+"As the conduct of the case is not in my hands," he answered loftily,
+"my opinion is of no moment."
+
+Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling
+mischievously to herself.
+
+"So there's nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, _che sera
+sera_: I suppose it'll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall
+be let out in time to see the fun. It'll be worth it. I wish women
+were admitted to your Club, it 'ud be so amusing to hear your friends
+chaffing you about your great mare's nest. 'Well, Rawnsley, what's
+this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?'
+Men are such cats, aren't they? Every one would start teasing you at
+the House, the thing 'ud get into the papers, they'd hear of it in
+your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting
+and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the
+great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One
+or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and
+grow louder as every one joined in. They'd laugh at you in private
+houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They'd laugh at you in the
+streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on
+at the music halls and imitate you. They'd laugh and laugh till their
+sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you'd try to
+live it down and find you couldn't, and in the end you'd have to leave
+England and live abroad, until they'd found something else to laugh
+at. You're going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven't got
+the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come
+back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!"
+
+The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a
+little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that
+would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her
+voice and the laughter out of her eyes.
+
+"Shall I go and see if the Seraph's awake yet?" she temporised, "or
+would you prefer to leave a message?"
+
+Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come--only a dry, choking
+sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed
+to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.
+
+"Miss Roden! Sylvia!"
+
+"_Don't_ call me that!"
+
+"I'm sorry. Miss Roden, I've got something to say to you!"
+
+"I don't want to hear it, I only want to get away!"
+
+"You must listen, your whole life's at stake--and the Seraph's, too."
+
+The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded.
+
+"You must shut that door."
+
+"I won't."
+
+Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three
+paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to
+light a cigarette.
+
+"It's about--the woman who was here," she whispered as he began to
+descend the stairs.
+
+"Was it you?"
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"No, say it! say it! Yes or no."
+
+The sound of Nigel's descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the
+angle of the stairs.
+
+"For God's sake come back inside here a minute!" Elsie implored her.
+
+"I won't, it's no good; I shouldn't believe you whatever you said. If
+you weren't here, why did you say you were? And if you were---- Oh,
+let me go, let me go!"
+
+With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie's restraining hand and
+rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with
+her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed
+the door and walked with a heavy heart into the library. On a table by
+the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had
+brought--lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph
+loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and
+across the hall to the Seraph's door. He was still sleeping, but awoke
+in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.
+
+"The search-party," Elsie told him, forcing a smile.
+
+"Who was there?"
+
+"Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.
+
+"Wasn't it enough?" she asked indifferently.
+
+The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.
+
+"I don't know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other
+people--some people--were near me. I fancied--when I was asleep--I
+suppose it must have been a dream--I don't know--I fancied there was
+some one else quite close."
+
+He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie's fingers in a
+bloodless, wasted hand.
+
+"How did you keep the search-party out?" he inquired.
+
+"I didn't. They came in, and looked into every room. For some
+unaccountable reason," she added ironically, "Joyce was nowhere to be
+found."
+
+"Were they surprised to see you here?"
+
+"A little. I told them you were seedy and I'd called to inquire."
+
+The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go
+on talking.
+
+"I suppose they really thought you'd been here the whole time?"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"But how else...."
+
+"I don't know," Elsie interrupted quickly. "You must ask _them_ who
+the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They
+couldn't say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both
+compromised."
+
+She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.
+
+"Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you
+well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in
+August isn't good for little boys."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini."
+
+The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.
+
+"I can't go there yet. They'll be--frightfully happy--wrapped up in
+each other--all that sort of thing. I don't want to see them yet."
+
+Elsie dropped no hint of the time that must elapse before Joyce was
+strong again or "frightfully happy."
+
+"Where shall it be then?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph pressed her fingers to his lips.
+
+"You go there, Elsie. I must travel alone. I shall go to the East. I
+shan't come back for some time. If ever."
+
+The effort of talking and the trend of the conversation had made him
+restless. Elsie smoothed his pillow, and rose to leave the room.
+
+As he watched her walk to the door, his eyes fell for the first time
+on the bouquet of roses and lilies.
+
+"Who brought those?" he inquired.
+
+"I found them in the library," she answered.
+
+"Is there no name?"
+
+For a moment she pretended to look for a card, then shook her head
+without speaking. As she saw him lying in bed, she wondered if he
+would ever know the price at which his freedom from arrest had been
+purchased. Of her own sacrifice she thought little; it was but
+generous payment of a long outstanding debt. All her imagination was
+concentrated on Sylvia--her sanguine, happy arrival, the morning's
+long agony, her hopeless, agonised departure.
+
+"And no message?" the Seraph persisted with a mixture of eagerness and
+disappointment.
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder who they can be from."
+
+"One of your numerous admirers, I suppose," Elsie answered carelessly.
+Then she opened the door, walked wearily to her own room, and
+tried--unsuccessfully--to cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+RIMINI
+
+    "We left our country for our country's good."
+
+              GEORGE BARRINGTON: _Prologue_.
+
+
+We arrived in Rimini at the end of the first week in August--Joyce,
+her two nurses, Maybury-Reynardson and I. Elsie joined us as soon as
+we were comfortably settled in the villa, and has stayed on week after
+week, month after month, tending her poor sister with a devotion that
+touched my selfish, hardened old heart. Dick came for a few days
+before the beginning of the law term; otherwise we have been a party
+of three, as the doctor and nurses returned to England as soon as
+Joyce appeared to be out of danger.
+
+Rimini turns cold at the beginning of November, and we have had to
+make arrangements for going into winter quarters. Cairo and the
+Riviera are a little public for two escaped criminals, but I hear
+there is a tolerable hotel at Taormina; and as Joyce has never been in
+Sicily before, we might spend at least the beginning of our honeymoon
+there. For myself, I do not mind where we go so long as we can escape
+from Rimini. I want no unnecessary reminders of the last three months,
+the weary waiting, the frequent false dawns of convalescence, the
+regular relapses. They have been bad months for Joyce, but I venture
+to think they were worse for Elsie and myself. In my own case there
+definitely came an early day when my nervous system showed signs of
+striking work; it was then that I embarked on my first and last
+venture in prose composition.
+
+When she is well enough to be bothered with such vain trivialities, I
+shall present my manuscript to Joyce. I hope she will read it, for I
+have intended it for her eyes alone; and if she rejects the task, I
+shall feel guilty of having wasted an incredible amount of good sermon
+paper. And when she has read it, she must light a little fire and burn
+every sheet of it; not even Elsie must see it, though she has been
+instrumental in giving me information over the last chapters that I
+should not otherwise have obtained.
+
+I think my decision is wise and necessary. In part the book is too
+intimate an account of Sylvia's character and the Seraph's feelings
+for me to be justified in making it public: in part, the pair of us
+have already done sufficient injury to Rodens and Rawnsleys without
+giving the world our candid opinion of either family: in part, we have
+to remember that during the last eight months, wherever we found the
+law of England obtruding itself on our gaze, we broke it with a light
+heart and untroubled conscience. There is not the least good in taking
+the world into our confidence in the matter of these little
+transgressions.
+
+In a week's time there will be a quiet wedding at the British
+Consulate; it will take place in the presence of a Consul who has
+treated me with such uniform kindness that I have sometimes wondered
+if he has ever heard of such things as extradition orders. Our
+marriage will be the last chapter of one phase in my life. It opened
+on a day when I walked up the steps of the Club, and paused for a
+moment to gaze at the altered face of Pall Mall and read on a
+contents-bill that the old militants had broken every window on the
+east side of Bond Street, interrupted a meeting, and burnt down an
+Elizabethan house in Hertfordshire. "Shocking," I remember thinking,
+"and quite unimpressive." Before I was twelve hours older, Fate had
+introduced me to a young woman whose machinations may or may not have
+been infinitely more shocking; they were certainly not unimpressive.
+
+The closing scenes of the Militant campaign are soon given. Elsie left
+London and joined us here as soon as the Seraph was fit to travel.
+That was three days after Nigel's second raid. They must have been
+anxious days, as our rising young statesman seems to have been torn
+between a quite bloodthirsty lust for revenge and a morbid horror of
+another fiasco as humiliating as his search-party. Elsie went round by
+Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for
+Bombay and came overland to Rimini. When I met her and heard the
+details of her flight, I could tell her that all danger was over,
+and--if Justice had not been done--the stolen goods had at least been
+restored.
+
+The news reached us as we came out of the Bay. Gartside and I were on
+deck, watching the sun strike golden splinters out of the hock-bottle
+towers of the royal palace at Cintra. The wireless operator came down
+with a tapped message that Mrs. Millington had revealed the
+whereabouts of Mavis Rawnsley and young Paul Jefferson. He added that
+the police had so far discovered no trace of that hardened
+criminal--Miss Joyce Davenant.
+
+When Elsie joined us and told me the story of the Rawnsley raid, I
+could not help thinking once again, "_Plus �a change, plus c'est la
+m�me chose_." The gallant fight she had made for freedom and
+reputation ended in disaster, and she left England branded with the
+stigma that the Divorce Court had striven to impose and we had fought
+tooth and nail to remove. Joyce's struggle for the suffrage ended, as
+she now knows, in putting the suffrage further from the forefront of
+practical politics than it has been for a generation. When the
+recording angel allots to each one of us our share of responsibility
+in moulding the face of history, what effective change will be
+credited to the united or separate efforts of Rawnsleys and Rodens,
+Seraphs, Davenants and Merivales?
+
+Two results stand out. The first is a marriage that will be celebrated
+at the Consulate in a week's time, the second is a listless letter
+penned in exile, signed by the Seraph and dated from Yokohama. Joyce
+knows I am tolerably fond of her, and will acquit me of speaking
+rhetorically if I say that I would wipe the last eight months--and all
+they mean to us both--from the pages of Time, if I could spare the
+Seraph what he has been through since I dined with him that first
+evening at the Ritz. Here is the letter, and no one will be surprised
+to learn that I spent a melancholy day after reading it.
+
+"I send you the last chapters of Volume III. As you've waded through
+the earlier stuff, you may care to see the record brought up to date.
+I call it 'The End' because there's nothing more to write, and if
+there were, I shouldn't write it. Some day I suppose I may have to
+write again, when my present money (Roden's money) is exhausted. Not
+till then.
+
+"India was one disappointment, and Japan another, though the fault, I
+imagine, lay in my lack of appreciation. The South Seas will be a
+third. '_Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_.' I don't
+want to move on, but I can't stand Yokohama any longer.
+
+"When I get to San Francisco I shall probably cross the States,
+arriving in New York at the end of December. Then I suppose one has to
+see this Panama Canal. After that, God knows.
+
+"Before I left England I was looking for the MS. of the earlier
+chapters of Vol. III. I couldn't find them. Did you by any chance get
+them mixed up in your luggage? If so, please destroy them at once,
+with the new chapters, as soon as you have read them. Don't let
+anybody see them, even Joyce. In this I depend on your friendship and
+honour.
+
+"I hope Joyce is all right again now. Give my love to her and Elsie,
+and take my best wishes for yourself. You--I suppose--are a fixture at
+Rimini, or at any rate out of England. I can't answer for myself, but
+I don't expect we shall meet again. You must have found me a
+depressing host in London. I'm sorry. Good-bye."
+
+He said that even Joyce was not to see the third volume--put me on my
+honour, in fact--and see it she shall not. There is another reason. I
+read those last chapters and then went through the whole volume from
+beginning to end. Without exaggeration the effect was overwhelming--his
+style is so artless, his pathos so unpremeditated. I felt as if I had
+been re-reading Hardy's most poignant novels--"Tess" and "Jude" and "A
+Pair of Blue Eyes." It was horrible. I went up to my room, lit the fire
+and prepared for the holocaust.
+
+Then I was tempted. Yes, he puts me on my honour, depends on my
+friendship, all that sort of thing.... But I did not burn a sheet. It
+was a chilly evening, I lit a cigar, and waited for the pyre to burst
+into destructive flame. As I watched and meditated, Sylvia's little
+face seemed to look at me out of the fire, the black coals crowning
+her forehead as I used to see it crowned with her own lustrous hair. I
+thought of our last meeting when she struggled with her devils of
+pride and unbelief; and of her meeting with Elsie when she came in
+hope and left in humiliation. I confess I love Sylvia very
+dearly--love her as all men love her--for her beauty, her queenliness
+and clean, passionate pride; love her because I know something of her
+loneliness, her passion for service, and the repeated rejections of
+her sacrifices. And I love her a little more on my own account,
+because she talked to me as if I had been her own sister, and I
+perhaps know--better than any one--what she must have been through
+during those sad, mad months in England.
+
+Well, I broke faith with the Seraph and wrote her a line of overture.
+I was perhaps a fool to do it, as I had already had evidence in plenty
+of my incompetence to play the _r�le_ of Providence. "I am sending you
+the MS. of a book," I told her. "It is the third volume of Gordon
+Tremayne's 'Child of Misery'. I know you have read the first two
+volumes, for we have discussed and admired them together a dozen
+times. Did you ever suspect who the author was?
+
+"In telling you it was the Seraph, I am breaking my word to him and
+running the risk of being branded and disowned. I must tell you,
+though, to explain the existence of the third volume. I watched it
+being written, day by day. That evening on the Cher, when he
+anticipated some words you were going to say, the words had already
+been written down as part of the current chapter. I saw him brought up
+short when you were spirited away and the connection was broken. Most
+wonderful of all, I was present when the connection was re-established
+and he jumped up like one possessed, exclaiming, 'Sylvia wants me!'
+
+"When you have read these pages, you will not be in a position to
+doubt any longer. He loves you as no woman was ever loved before, and
+in him you have found the half that completes and interprets your
+'_�me incomprise_.' Get him back, Sylvia. I don't know how it's to be
+done, but you must use your woman's wit to find a way. I'm asking for
+his sake and yours, not for mine--though I would give much to see 'The
+Child of Misery' growing to happier manhood.
+
+"I am afraid you will say I am hardly the man to ask anything of you
+or yours. The Rodens and Merivales have hardly made a success of their
+recent relationship. But I should like to be forgiven. What is my
+crime? That I helped to keep justice from touching a woman who had
+done you and your family a great wrong. Well, Sylvia, you'd have done
+the same thing and told the same lies, had you been in my place and
+had you wanted Joyce as badly as I wanted her. So will you forgive me
+and be friends? And if you forgive me, will you forgive the woman
+who's going to be my wife in a few days' time? I must reconcile myself
+to the idea of being estranged from the rest of your family, but
+(between ourselves) I'll let 'em all go if you'll write and say Joyce
+and I are not quite such monsters of iniquity as you may have thought
+us.
+
+"One thing more. When you've read the third volume, you will no longer
+doubt that Mrs. Wylton's presence in Adelphi Terrace was due to
+charitable impulse towards Joyce and the Seraph. And you ought to
+think well of any one who played the Good Samaritan to the Seraph.
+Don't try to rehabilitate her character in public; it can only be done
+at a risk to the Seraph's personal safety. And in any case you won't
+convince a man like Nigel or the men he's already told the story to.
+
+"Return me the MS. when you've read it, will you? I was entrusted with
+its destruction, and put on honour not to let another soul read it.
+You see how I keep my trust. The worst thing you can say of me is what
+I've already said of myself--that most damning of all judgments--that
+I meant well."
+
+I sent that letter to Sylvia nine days ago, and received her reply
+this morning. She returned me the MS., and I burnt it--with the
+knowledge that I was destroying one of the greatest literary treasures
+of this generation.... Well, they had to do the same with some of
+Ruskin's letters.
+
+"I wish you had not told me to send you back the book," she began. "I
+should have liked to keep it. Or rather--I don't know--I half wish you
+hadn't sent it at all. The time that has passed since the beginning of
+August has been rather hard to bear, and the book has only turned
+misgiving into certainty.
+
+"Of course I forgive you! As if there were anything to forgive! And
+Miss Davenant too. I hope she is better now. Will you ask her to
+accept my love and best wishes for the future? And of course I include
+you. We were good friends, weren't we? As I said we should be the
+first time we met. Only I said then that you would find me worth
+having as a friend, and I'm afraid I did everything I could to
+disprove it. You stood me awfully well. I think you knew most of the
+dark corners in my mean little soul--and if you did, perhaps you see
+that I didn't do much beyond showing my true nature.
+
+"This isn't a pose--I'm really--well, I was going to say 'broken'--but
+I hope I'm a little more tolerant. You'd hardly recognise me if you
+saw me, there's little enough of the 'Queen Elizabeth' about me now.
+It's a horrid, flat world, and I wish I could find something in it to
+interest me. May I ask for just one good mark? You wrote to me when
+you left England, telling me to swallow my pride and go to see the
+Seraph. Well, it was a struggle, but I did go--as you know. When I got
+there, I seemed to find more than I could bear, and so of course
+everything went wrong. But I did try, and you will give me my one
+little good mark, won't you? I want it.
+
+"Mother says I'm run down and in need of a change, so Phil's taking me
+over to the United States at the beginning of December. There's a sort
+of Parliamentary Polytechnic Tour to Panama, every one who can get
+away is going to see the Canal. I don't in the least want to go, but I
+suppose the States can hardly be duller than England, and as long as
+mother thinks I must have a change, change I must have. If it isn't
+Panama it will be somewhere worse.
+
+"We shall spend Christmas in New York. Will you send me a letter of
+good wishes to the Fifth Avenue Hotel? And tell me where you are going
+to settle permanently and whether you will let me come and see you. If
+your wife will not mind, I should like to see you both again--well and
+happy, I hope. Somebody must be happy in this world, or it wouldn't go
+on. I don't want to lose you as a friend; I'm feeling lonely enough as
+it is.
+
+"I am hardly likely to see the Seraph again, but if you meet him, I
+should like you to give him a message. Say it is from a woman who did
+him a great wrong: say she now knows the wrong she did him and has
+been punished for it. Tell him you know how much she hates ever
+apologising or admitting she was wrong, but that she wants him to know
+of her apology before she finally passes out of his memory. Will you
+tell him that? It won't do any good, but it will make me more
+comfortable in my mind."
+
+At the bottom of the page six words had been scratched out. I did not
+mean to read them, but the obliteration was incomplete, and the
+firelight shining up through the paper enabled me to decipher: "Oh, my
+God, I am miserable." Then followed the signature: "Affectionately
+yours (may I sign myself 'affectionately'?) Sylvia."
+
+After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question
+how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and
+bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of
+attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and
+wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember
+the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons
+and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on
+the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect
+assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.
+
+On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had
+agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a
+suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought
+it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a
+villa at our leisure. Ambling out of the bank, I wandered in the
+direction of the telegraph office.
+
+Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging
+berths on the Wagon-Lits--I knew it would. As soon as our places were
+booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph
+at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired.
+"All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day,
+one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.--TOBY."
+
+Then I came back to the Villa Monreale.
+
+Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time.
+Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every
+moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the
+Seraph, and as husbands and wives _in posse_ should have no secrets
+from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a
+study.
+
+"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to
+see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."
+
+"Quite so," I assented.
+
+"Did you order rooms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then we can't go to New York."
+
+"I never proposed to."
+
+"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Toby!"
+
+She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by
+word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable
+sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim
+originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined
+it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I
+only borrowed it for the nonce.
+
+"Will--you--lunch--Christmas Day----" I pointed out. "It doesn't say
+we shall be there to receive him."
+
+"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since
+honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are
+married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little
+stratagem.
+
+"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.
+
+"Who?" she asked.
+
+"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.
+
+And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+            TRISTRAM.
+
+    "Raise the light, my page! that I may see her--
+      Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen?
+    Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever;
+      Late thou comest, cruel hast thou been."
+
+            ISEULT.
+
+    "Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried;
+      Bound I was, I could not break the band.
+    Chide not with the past, but feel the present!
+      I am here--we meet--I hold thy hand."
+
+            MATTHEW ARNOLD: "Tristram and Iseult."
+
+
+I had intended to write no more, but as we left the Consulate to-day
+after our wedding, a cable was handed me by my smiling Italian valet.
+
+"Paddy Culling for a bob!" I said, as I opened it and prepared for
+some whimsical message of congratulation.
+
+I was wrong. The cable was my reply from Yokohama.
+
+"No offence intended," it ran. "Delighted lunch as
+suggested.--SERAPH."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page   4: repellant replaced with repellent               |
+    | Page  52: "ths same advice" replaced with                 |
+    |           "the same advice"                               |
+    | Page  90: been been replaced with been                    |
+    | Page  95: torso replaced with trio                        |
+    | Page 119: "because its unique" replaced with              |
+    |           "because it's unique"                           |
+    | Page 125: femineity replaced with femininity              |
+    | Page 127: dispise replaced with despise                   |
+    | Page 233: Fra�lein replaced with Fr�ulein                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  66: A sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance    |
+    |           and Baroque eras.                               |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIXTH SENSE***
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+<body>
+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sixth Sense, by Stephen McKenna</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Sixth Sense</p>
+<p>       A Novel</p>
+<p>Author: Stephen McKenna</p>
+<p>Release Date: August 22, 2011  [eBook #37164]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIXTH SENSE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation and dialect spelling in the original document has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</span></p>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/cover.jpg" width="50%" alt="Book Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>THE SIXTH SENSE</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<h1>THE SIXTH SENSE</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A NOVEL</i></h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h2>STEPHEN McKENNA</h2>
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE RELUCTANT LOVERS" "SHEILA INTERVENES"</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"The World is a Comedy to those that think, a tragedy
+ to those who feel."</p>
+<p class="right"><i>Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>LONDON<br />
+CHAPMAN &amp; HALL, <span class="sc">Ltd.</span><br />
+1915</h4>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>&Agrave; L'INTROUVABLE</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="65%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr" width="10%" style="font-size: 80%;">CHAPTER</td>
+  <td class="tdl" width="70%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%" style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE. <span class="sc">London After Twenty Years</span></a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">1</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">War &agrave; Outrance</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">25</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">Supper With a Mystic</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">46</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">Brandon Court</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">62</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">The First Round</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">84</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Commemoration</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">103</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">The Second Round</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">123</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">A Cause C&eacute;l&egrave;bre</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">140</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Henley&mdash;and After</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">160</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">The Third Round</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">178</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">X.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">The Zeal That outruns Discretion</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr"> 197</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">The Amateur Detective</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">214</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">The Sixth Sense</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">232</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">Or the Obvious Alternative</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">247</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XIV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">Through a Glass Darkly</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">263</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">The Raid</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">279</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">XVI.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">Rimini</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">296</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl"><a href="#EPILOGUE">EPILOGUE</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">308</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>THE SIXTH SENSE</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>PROLOGUE</h3>
+
+<h4>LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"As when a traveller, bound from North to South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A superfluity at Timbuctoo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, through his journey was the fool at ease?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I take and like its way of life; I think<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My brothers who administer the means,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Live better for my comfort&mdash;that's good too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And God, if he pronounce upon such life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Approves my service, which is better still."<br /></span>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Robert Browning</span>: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>I paused, with my foot on the lowest step of the Club, to mark the
+changes that had overtaken Pall Mall during my twenty years' absence
+from England.</p>
+
+<p>The old War Office, of course, was gone; some of the shops on the
+north side were being demolished; and the Automobile Club was new and
+unassimilated. In my day, too, the Athen&aelig;um had not been painted
+Wedgwood-green. Compared, however, with the Strand or Mall, Piccadilly
+or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>Whitehall, marvellously little change had taken place. I made an
+exception in favour of the character and velocity of the traffic: the
+bicycle boom was in its infancy when I left England: I returned to
+find the horse practically extinct, and the streets of London as
+dangerous as the railway stations of America.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the London of
+1913.... Then I wondered if I should find anything to keep me long
+enough to grow acclimatised. Chance had brought me back to England,
+chance and the "wandering foot" might as easily bear me away again. It
+has always been a matter of indifference to me where I live, what I
+do, whom I meet. If I never seem to get bored, it is perhaps because I
+am never long enough in one place or at one occupation. There was no
+reason why England should not keep me amused....</p>
+
+<p>A man crossed the road and sold me a <i>Westminster Gazette</i>. I opened
+it to see what was engaging the England of 1913, remembering as I did
+so that the <i>Westminster</i> was the last paper of importance to be
+published before I went abroad. As I glanced at the headlines, twenty
+years seemed to drop out of my life. Another Home Rule Bill was being
+acclaimed as the herald of the Millennium; Ulster was being told to
+fight and be right: the Welsh Church was once more being
+disestablished, while in foreign politics a confederation of Balkan
+States was spending its blood and treasure in clearing Europe of the
+Turk, to a faint echoing accompaniment of Gladstone's "bag and
+baggage" trumpet call. At home and abroad, English politics repeated
+themselves with curiously dull monotony.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>Then I turned to the middle page, and saw I had spoken too hastily.
+"Suffragette Outrages" seemed to fill three columns of the paper. My
+return to England had synchronised with a political campaign more
+ruthless, intransigeant and unyielding than anything since the Fenian
+outrages of my childhood. I read of unique fifteenth-century houses
+burnt to the ground, interrupted meetings, assaults on Ministers,
+sabotage in public buildings, and the demolition of plate-glass
+windows at the hands of an uncompromising, fearless and diabolically
+ingenious army of destroyers. On the other side of the account were
+entered long sentences, hunger-strikes, forcible feeding and something
+that was called "A Cat and Mouse Act." I was to hear more of that
+later: it was indeed the political parent of the "New Militant
+Campaign" whose life coincided with my own residence in England. I
+fancy the supporters of the bill like Roden, Rawnsley or Jefferson
+genuinely believed they had killed hunger-striking&mdash;and with it the
+spirit of militancy&mdash;when the Government assumed the power of
+imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning at will. The event proved
+that they had only driven militancy into a fresh channel....</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to reflect that as I at last mounted the steps and
+entered the Club, I was wondering where it would be possible to meet
+the resolute, indomitable women who formed the Council of War to the
+militant army. It would be a new, alluring experience. I was so
+occupied with my thoughts that I hardly noticed the hall porter
+confronting me with the offer of the New Members' Address Book.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely a new porter?" I suggested. At ten guineas a year for twenty
+years, it was costing me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>two hundred and ten pounds to enter the
+Club, and I did not care to have my expensive right challenged.</p>
+
+<p>"Seventeen years, sir," he answered with the gruff, repellent
+stiffness of the English official.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have been before your time, then," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he disbelieved me, on the score of age if for no other
+reason; and the page boy who dogged my steps into the Cloak Room, was
+sent&mdash;I have no doubt&mdash;to act as custodian of the umbrellas. My age is
+forty-two, but I have never succeeded in looking more than about eight
+and twenty: perhaps I have never tried, as I find that a world of
+personal exertion and trouble is saved by allowing other people to do
+my trying, thinking, arranging for me ... whatever I am, others have
+made me.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a single familiar face in the hall, and I passed into
+the Morning Room, like a ghost ascending from Hades to call on &AElig;neas.
+Around me in arm-chair groups by the fire, or quarrelsome knots
+suspended over the day's bill of fare, were sleek, full-bodied
+creatures of dignified girth and portentous gravity&mdash;fathers of
+families, successes in life. These&mdash;I told myself&mdash;were my
+contemporaries; their faces were for the most part unknown, but this
+was hardly surprising as many of my friends are dead and most of the
+survivors are to be found at the Bar. A barrister with anything of a
+practice cannot afford time to lunch in the spacious atmosphere of
+Pall Mall, and the smaller the practice, the greater his anxiety to
+conceal his leisure. For a moment I felt painfully insignificant,
+lonely and unfriended.</p>
+
+<p>I was walking towards the Coffee Room when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>a heavy hand descended on
+my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Toby, by Gad!"</p>
+
+<p>No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to
+find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face
+extending a diffident palm.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of
+surprise. "I thought for a moment...."</p>
+
+<p>"You were right," I interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you
+were dead."</p>
+
+<p>The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not original," I objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who I am?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was
+before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's
+Attorney-General."</p>
+
+<p>"By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a
+second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing
+with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?"</p>
+
+<p>"As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began.</p>
+
+<p>"'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he
+interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for
+the third of a lifetime...."</p>
+
+<p>"You've not ordered yourself any lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hang lunch!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't ordered any for me, either."</p>
+
+<p>My poor story&mdash;for what it was worth&mdash;started with the plovers' eggs,
+and finished neck-to-neck <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>with the cheese. I told him how I had gone
+down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to
+India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying
+him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines
+of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the
+Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months
+when we all lay <i>perdus</i> wondering what course the Government was
+going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the
+war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in
+despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in
+between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene
+of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation,
+during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or
+sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another.</p>
+
+<p>"What brings you home now?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and
+when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a
+touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come
+himself, so suggested I should take charge. <i>J'y suis</i>...."</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to
+make...."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire."</p>
+
+<p>"Done."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not married?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>believes Dr. Johnson ought
+to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be
+indecent.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And never will be, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I've no plans. You, of course...."</p>
+
+<p>I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me
+all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me
+remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my
+absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of
+children before I left England; I had no idea how far the
+ramifications went.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that his wife&mdash;who was still living&mdash;had presented him
+with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and
+member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and
+unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and
+Michael, an <i>enfant terrible</i> of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy
+there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in
+Cadogan Square or Brandon Court.</p>
+
+<p>In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful
+man. I remember him during the barren first few years of practice, but
+soon after my departure from England reports used to reach me showing
+the increasing volume of his work, until he became one of the busiest
+juniors on the Common Law side, reading briefs at four in the morning,
+and sending a clerk out to buy his new clothes. After taking silk at
+an early age, he had entered the House and been made Attorney-General
+in 1912.</p>
+
+<p>"I was appointed the same day your brother was raised to the Bench,"
+he told me.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>"I should think he makes a pretty bad Judge," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Resolute," said Arthur. "We want firmness."</p>
+
+<p>I knew what that meant. According to unsympathetic papers, Mr. Justice
+Merivale had conducted a Bloody Assize among the Militants of the
+Suffrage Army. When Roden prosecuted in person, there was short shrift
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"We've killed militancy between us," he boasted.</p>
+
+<p>"And I understand you're burnt together in effigy."</p>
+
+<p>His face grew suddenly stern.</p>
+
+<p>"They haven't stopped at that. There've been two attempts to fire
+Brandon Court, and one wing of your brother's house was burnt down a
+few weeks ago. I expect you found him rather shaken."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen him yet."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur looked surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you ought to," he said. "I'm afraid he won't be able to last out
+the rest of the term without a change. It's got on his nerves. Got on
+his wife's nerves, too. Your niece is the only one who doesn't seem to
+care; but then I think girls have very little imagination. It's the
+same with Sylvia. By the way, I suppose you know you've got a niece?"</p>
+
+<p>We paid our bills, and walked upstairs to the Smoking Room.</p>
+
+<p>"What'll be their next move?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think there will be a next move," he answered slowly. "What
+can they do?"</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged my shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only an onlooker, but d'you believe this Cat and Mouse Act is
+going to stop them? My knowledge is mere newspaper knowledge, but to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>be beaten by a device like that&mdash;it isn't in keeping with the
+character of the women who've organised the Militant Campaign so far."</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>can</i> they do?" he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't either. One or two of the most determined law breakers are
+in reality spies; they've kept us posted in the successive steps of
+the campaign up to the present. Now they report that there's no plan
+for the future. They know it would be futile to start assassination;
+if they go on burning and breaking, a proportion of them get caught
+and punished. Hunger striking's been killed by the Cat and Mouse Act.
+Well, militancy's dead, Toby. If you come down to the House to-night,
+you'll be present at the funeral."</p>
+
+<p>"What's happening?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the division on the Suffrage amendment to the Electoral Reform
+Bill. Hullo! here's Philip. Let me introduce my eldest son."</p>
+
+<p>I made friends with Philip as we crossed the Park and entered the
+House. He was curiously like the Arthur I had known twenty years
+before&mdash;tall, dark-haired, clean-featured, with an exuberant zest for
+life tempered to an almost imperceptible degree by the reserve of the
+responsible public man. The physical and mental vigour of father and
+son left me silently admiring; as they hurried along at a swinging
+five miles an hour, I took stock of their powerful, untiring frames,
+quick movements, and crisp, machine-made speech. They were hard,
+business-like, unimaginative, with the qualities of those defects and
+the defects of those qualities; trained, taught, and equipped to play
+the midwife to any of the bureaucratic social reforms that have been
+brought into the English political world the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>last few years, but
+helpless and impotently perplexed in face of an idea outside their
+normal ken. They were highly efficient average English politicians.
+Either or both would reform you the Poor Law, nationalise a railway,
+or disestablish a Church; but send Philip to India, set Arthur to
+carry out Cromer's work in Egypt, and you would see English dominion
+driven from two continents as speedily as North drove it from America.
+It was one of the paradoxes of English politics that Arthur should
+have been entrusted with the problem of Suffrage militancy, a paradox
+of the same order as that whereby Strafford grappled with the problem
+of a parliamentary system.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll stay a few minutes," Philip urged as I abandoned him to Empire
+and wandered off to pay my belated respects to my brother.</p>
+
+<p>I glanced round me and shook my head. I would not grow old all at
+once, and yet&mdash;Gladstone was Prime Minister when I left England: his
+statue now dominated the public lobby. And Salisbury, Harcourt,
+Chamberlain, Parnell, Labby&mdash;their voices were sunk in the great
+silence. In my day Committee Room Number Fifteen used to be an object
+of historic interest....</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They say the lion and the lizard keep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Halls where Jamshyd gloried, and drank deep:<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stamps o'er his head, and he lies fast asleep."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I quoted the lines to Philip apologetically, reminding him that the
+Omar Khayyam vogue had not come in when I left England. "I shall see
+you at Brandon Court," I added.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do till then?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>"Heaven knows! I never make arrangements. Things just happen to me. I
+always contrive to be in the thick of whatever's going on. I don't
+know how long I shall stay in England, or where I shall go to
+afterwards. But whether it's a railway strike or a coronation, I shall
+be there. I don't like it, I'm a peaceful man by nature, but I can't
+help it. I always get dragged into these things."</p>
+
+<p>Philip scratched his chin thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that we've got any great sensations at the present
+time," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Something will turn up," I answered in the words of one greater than
+myself, as I waved my hand in farewell and started back in the
+direction of the Club.</p>
+
+<p>I knew my brother would not leave Court till at least four o'clock, so
+I had to dispose of an hour before it was time to call round in Pont
+Street. The Club had emptied since luncheon, and I drew blank in one
+place after another until fate directed my steps to the Card Room.
+There were two men playing b&eacute;zique, one of them poor Tom Wilding whom
+I had left lame and returned to find half paralysed and three parts
+blind. The other&mdash;who played with a wonderful patience, calling the
+names of the cards&mdash;I recognised as my young friend Lambert Aintree
+who had parted from me in Morocco five years before. I reminded them
+both of my identity, and we sat gossiping till an attendant arrived to
+wheel poor Wilding away for his afternoon drive.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the card-table, Aintree joined me on the window-seat and
+subjected my face, clothes and general appearance to a rapid scrutiny.
+It was the practised, comprehensive glance of an old physician in
+making diagnosis, and I waited for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>him to pronounce on my case. Five
+years ago in Morocco he had exhibited a disconcerting and almost
+uncanny skill in reading character and observing little forgotten
+points that every one else missed. The results of his observation were
+usually shrouded in the densest veils of uncommunicativeness: I
+sometimes wonder if I have ever met a more silent man. When you could
+get him to talk, he was usually worth hearing: for the most part,
+however, talking like every other form of activity seemed too much of
+an exertion. I understand him now better than I did, but I am not so
+foolish as to pretend that I understand him completely. I am a man of
+three dimensions: Aintree, I am convinced, was endowed with the
+privilege of a fourth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" I said invitingly, as he brought his examination to an end and
+looked out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>His answer was to throw me over a cigarette and light one himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Take an interest in me," I said plaintively. "Say you thought I was
+dead...."</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone's said that."</p>
+
+<p>"True," I admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"And they've all asked you when you landed, and how long you were
+staying, and what brought you to England."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be rather friendly if you did the same."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't tell me&mdash;any more than you could tell them."</p>
+
+<p>"But I could. It was Sunday morning."</p>
+
+<p>"About then. I knew that. You've been here long enough to get English
+clothes, and," he gave me another rapid look, "to have them made for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>you. How long you're here for&mdash;you don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to a day," I conceded. "Well, why did I come?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me." I told him of my visit to Malta and the charitable
+guardianship of my friend's convalescent wife.</p>
+
+<p>"But that wasn't the real reason."</p>
+
+<p>"It was the only reason."</p>
+
+<p>"The only one you thought of at the time."</p>
+
+<p>I was amazed at the certainty of his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," I said. "I am a more or less rational creature, a
+reason comes along and compels me to do a thing. If I were a woman, no
+doubt I should do a thing and find reasons for it afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you ever do a thing on impulse, instinctively? And analyse your
+motives afterwards to see what prompted you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, possibly. But not on this occasion."</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you driving at?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find out in time."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know now."</p>
+
+<p>Aintree inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and answered with eyes
+half-closed.</p>
+
+<p>"Most men of your age wake up one morning to find they've turned
+forty. They feel it would be good to renew their youth, they play with
+the idea of getting married."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this to my address?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you feel it applies to your case?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can solemnly assure you that such an idea never crossed my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Not consciously."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>"Nor unconsciously."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know of the unconscious ideas in your own mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hang it," I said, "what do <i>you</i> know of the unconscious ideas in
+my&mdash;or any one else's mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm interested in them," he answered quietly. "Tell me if you ever
+feel my prophecy coming true."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall be best man," I promised him. "Married! One doesn't marry
+at my age."</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious spring afternoon, and I suggested that he should
+accompany me part of my way to Pont Street.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself since you stayed with me
+five years ago," I said as we stepped into Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to shiver and retreat into his shell as soon as the
+conversation became focussed on himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I've done nothing," he answered briefly, and relapsed into one of his
+wonted spells of silence.</p>
+
+<p>In the blazing afternoon sunlight I returned him the compliment of a
+careful scrutiny. He had come to Morocco five years before as a boy of
+one-and-twenty just down from Oxford. A girl to whom he had been
+engaged had died of consumption a few months before, and he was
+straying into the Desert, broken, unnerved, and hopeless, to forget
+her. I must have seemed sympathetic, or he would not have unburdened
+himself of the whole pitiful little tragedy. At twenty-one you feel
+these things more keenly perhaps than in after life; there were
+moments when I feared he was going to follow her....</p>
+
+<p>Five years may have healed the wound, but they left him listless,
+dispirited, and sore. He was more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>richly endowed with nerves than any
+man or woman I know, and all the energy of his being seemed
+requisitioned to keep them under control. Less through love of mystery
+than for fear of self-betrayal his face wore the expressionless mask
+of a sphynx. He was fair, thin, and pale, with large frightened eyes,
+sapphire blue in colour, and troubled with the vague, tired
+restlessness that you see in overwrought, sensitive women. The nose
+and mouth were delicate and almost ineffeminate, with lips tightly
+closed as though he feared to reveal emotion in opening them. You see
+women and children with mouths set in that thin, hard line when they
+know a wickering lip or catch in the breath will give the lie to their
+brave front. And there were nerves, nerves, nerves everywhere, never
+so much present as when the voice was lazily drawling, the hands
+steady, and the eyes dreamily half-closed. I wonder if anything ever
+escaped those watchful, restless eyes; his entire soul seemed stored
+up and shining out of them; and I wonder what was the process of
+deduction in his curious, quick, feminine brain. Before I left England
+I tried to evolve a formula that would fit him; "a woman's senses and
+intuition in a man's body" was the best I could devise, and I am
+prepared at once to admit the inadequacy of the label. For one thing
+his intuition transcended that of any woman I have ever known.</p>
+
+<p>As he would not talk about himself, I started to wile away the time by
+telling him of my meeting with the Rodens, and their invitation to
+Hampshire.</p>
+
+<p>"I was asked too," he told me. "I shan't go."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unsociability, I suppose. I don't go out much."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a bachelor's party, I understand."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>"That's the best thing I've heard about it. Did they say who'd be
+there? If you're not careful you'll have politics to eat, politics to
+drink, and politics to smoke."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and create a diversion," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll think about it. Is Phil going to be there? Oh, then it won't be
+a bachelor party. I could name one young woman who will be there for
+certain, only I mustn't make mischief. Did you find Roden much
+changed?"</p>
+
+<p>I tried to sort out my impressions of Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>"Harder than he used to be. I shouldn't care to be a militant
+prosecuted by him."</p>
+
+<p>Aintree raised his eyebrows slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think they mind him; they can look after themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I've never met one."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Joyce Davenant, the queen bee of the swarm. Dine with me to-night at
+the Ritz; seven o'clock, I'm afraid, but we are going to a first
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she a daughter of old Jasper Davenant? I used to shoot with him."</p>
+
+<p>"The younger daughter. Do you know her sister, Mrs. Wylton? She's
+coming too. You'd better meet her," he went on with a touch of acidity
+in his tone, "you'll hear her name so much during the next few months
+that it will be something to say you've seen her in the flesh."</p>
+
+<p>I only remembered Elsie Wylton as a young girl with her hair down her
+back. Of her husband, Arnold Wylton, I suppose every one has heard; he
+enjoys the reputation of being a man who literally cannot be flogged
+past a petticoat. How such a girl came to marry such a man no rational
+person <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>has ever been able to explain; and it never sweetens the
+amenities of debate to talk vaguely of marriages being made in heaven.
+I met Wylton twice, and on both occasions he was living in retirement
+abroad. I have no wish to meet him a third time.</p>
+
+<p>"How did she ever come to marry a fellow like that?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Aintree shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Her father was dead, or he'd have stopped it. Nobody else felt it
+their business to interfere, and it wouldn't have made the slightest
+difference if they had. You know what the Davenants are like&mdash;or
+perhaps you don't. Nothing shakes them when they've made up their
+minds to do a thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But didn't she know the man's reputation?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose so. Wylton had never been mixed up in any overt
+scandal, so the women wouldn't know; and it's always a tall order for
+a man to lay information against another man when a girl's engaged to
+marry him. She just walked into it with her eyes shut."</p>
+
+<p>"And now she's divorcing him at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"The other way about."</p>
+
+<p>I felt sure I could not have heard him correctly.</p>
+
+<p>"The other way about," he repeated deliberately. "Oh, she'd have got
+rid of him years ago if he'd given her the chance! Wylton was too
+clever; he knew the divorce law inside out; he was alive to all its
+little technicalities. He's sailed close to the wind a number of
+times, but never close enough to be in danger."</p>
+
+<p>"And what's happening now?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She's forced his hand&mdash;gone to some trouble to compromise herself.
+She couldn't divorce him, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>it was the only way, she's making him
+divorce her. Rather a burlesque of justice, isn't it? Elsie Wylton,
+the respondent in an undefended action! The daughter of Jasper
+Davenant&mdash;one of the finest, cleanest, bravest women I know. And the
+successful petitioner will be Arnold Wylton, who ought to have been
+thrashed out of half the houses and clubs in London. Who ought to have
+been cited as a co-respondent half a dozen times over if he hadn't
+been so clever in covering up his tracks. I wonder if he's got
+sufficient humour to appreciate the delicate irony of <i>his</i> coming
+sanctimoniously into court to divorce <i>her</i>. It's a sickening
+business, we won't discuss it&mdash;but it will be the one topic of
+conversation in a few weeks' time."</p>
+
+<p>We walked in silence for a few yards.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the man any one of note?" I asked. "The co-respondent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fellow in the Indian Army," Aintree answered. "I don't suppose you
+know him. It was a bogus case; he just lent his name."</p>
+
+<p>I sniffed incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"The world won't believe <i>that</i>," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie's going to make it."</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't. Would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most certainly. So will you when you've met her. You knew the father
+well? She's her father's own daughter."</p>
+
+<p>The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a
+horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of
+married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his
+true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper,
+never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with
+little loss of essential characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>"I look forward to meeting them both," I said as we parted at
+Buckingham Gate. "Seven o'clock? I'll try not to be late."</p>
+
+<p>Walking on alone through Sloane Square, something set me thinking of
+my boast to Philip Roden. Within three hours I was apparently going to
+meet one woman whose name was mixed up with the most prominent <i>cause
+c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</i> of the year, and another who was a <i>cause c&eacute;l&egrave;bre</i> in
+herself&mdash;the redoubtable Miss Joyce Davenant of the Militant Suffrage
+Union. That my introduction should come from the peace-loving,
+nerve-ridden Aintree, was in accordance with the best ironical
+traditions of life. I was not surprised then: I should have still less
+reason to be surprised now. In the last six months he has placed me
+under obligations which I shall never be able to meet: in all
+probability he expects no repayment; the active side of his unhappy,
+fatalistic temperament is seen in his passionate desire to make life
+less barren and melancholy for others. Tom Wilding can testify to this
+at the b&eacute;zique table: Elsie and Joyce and I can endorse the testimony
+in a hundred ways and half a hundred places.</p>
+
+<p>As I turned into Pont Street a private car was drawn up by the kerb
+opposite my brother's house. I dawdled for a few steps while a pretty,
+brown-eyed, black-haired girl said good-bye to a friend at the door
+and drove away. It was no more than a glimpse that I caught, but the
+smiling, small-featured face attracted me. I wondered who she was, and
+who was the girl with auburn hair who persisted in standing on my
+brother's top step long after the car <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>was out of sight, instead of
+retiring indoors and leaving me an unembarrassed entry.</p>
+
+<p>I pretended not to see her as I mounted the steps, but the pretence
+was torn away when I heard her addressing me as "Uncle Simon."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be Gladys," I said, wondering if I looked as sheepish as I
+felt. "How did you recognise me?"</p>
+
+<p>"By your photograph," she said. "You haven't altered a bit."</p>
+
+<p>On the whole I carried it off fairly well, though I was glad Arthur
+Roden was not present after my implied familiarity with my niece's
+existence. Of course I knew I had a niece, and that her birthday
+fell&mdash;like the Bastille&mdash;on July 14th. Usually I remembered the date
+and sent her some little trifle, and she would write me a friendly
+letter of thanks. If I had kept count of the number of birthdays, I
+should have known she was now nineteen, but then one never does keep
+count of these things. Frankly, I had imagined her to be about seven
+or eight, and her handwriting&mdash;by becoming steadily more unformed and
+sporadic the older she grew&mdash;did nothing to dispel the illusion.
+Instead of curious little pieces of jewellery I might easily have sent
+her a doll....</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the Judge?" I asked as she kissed me and led the way upstairs
+to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not home yet," she answered to my relief.</p>
+
+<p>"And your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>But my sister-in-law also was out, and I reconciled myself without
+difficulty to the prospect of taking tea alone with my niece. Possibly
+as a romantic reaction from her father, possibly with her mother Eve's
+morbid craving for forbidden fruit, Gladys had elevated me into a
+Tradition. The whole of her pretty, sun-splashed room seemed hung with
+absurd <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>curios I had sent her from out-of-the-way parts of the world,
+while on a table by the window stood a framed photograph of myself in
+tweeds that only an undergraduate would have worn, and a tie loosely
+arranged in a vast sailor's knot after the unsightly fashion of the
+early 'nineties. My hair was unduly long, and at my feet lay a large
+dog; it must have been a property borrowed for the purpose, as I hate
+and have always hated dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"A wasted, unsatisfactory life, Gladys," I said as my tour of
+inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd
+known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to now?"</p>
+
+<p>In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so
+literally or promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your father and mother...."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you if I were left an orphan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in
+joke."</p>
+
+<p>Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a
+menacing angle.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I
+prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan
+in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."</p>
+
+<p>I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in
+domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden
+had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his
+person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted
+violence, had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he
+was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose
+at Whitsun.</p>
+
+<p>"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's
+going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want
+to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to
+take me through the Bay."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother
+has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable
+family of two.</p>
+
+<p>"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping.
+"The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on
+Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."</p>
+
+<p>"I can imagine worse fates."</p>
+
+<p>"For her? or for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Either or both."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll
+adopt me, I'll introduce you."</p>
+
+<p>"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon
+Court improving my acquaintance with her."</p>
+
+<p>Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just
+as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my
+guardian...."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents
+to decide. You can guess my feelings."</p>
+
+<p>I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was
+then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree
+and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the
+following night.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll
+only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got
+a book?"</p>
+
+<p>I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of
+late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was
+incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.</p>
+
+<p>Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me
+reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged
+to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble,
+nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions
+or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For
+a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in
+England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is
+one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in
+England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into
+effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor
+points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory,
+but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.</p>
+
+<p>It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I
+had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now
+shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this
+date&mdash;to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant,
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my
+first glimpse of Sylvia....</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>this date: and then
+natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander
+abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil
+and excitement of the following six months.</p>
+
+<p>I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>WAR &Agrave; OUTRANCE</h4>
+
+<div class="block2"><p>"<span class="sc">Ridgeon</span>: I have a curious aching; I dont
+know where; I cant localise it. Sometimes I think
+it's my heart; sometimes I suspect my spine. It
+doesn't exactly hurt me, but it unsettles me
+completely. I feel that something is going to
+happen....</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Patrick</span>: You are sure there are no
+voices?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Ridgeon</span>: Quite sure.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Patrick</span>: Then it's only foolishness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Ridgeon</span>: Have you ever met anything like it
+before in your practice?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Patrick</span>: Oh yes. Often. It's very common
+between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It
+sometimes comes on again at forty or thereabouts.
+You're a bachelor, you see. It's not serious&mdash;if
+you're careful.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Ridgeon</span>: About my food?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Patrick</span>: No; about your behaviour....
+Youre not going to die; but you may be going to make a
+fool of yourself."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Bernard Shaw</span>: "The Doctor's Dilemma."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had
+quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of
+the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin
+and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and
+South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I
+associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it
+must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet
+returning from India by P &amp; O are usually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>so bleached and dried by
+the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair
+and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real
+life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are
+cherishing an illusion.</p>
+
+<p>I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of
+the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by
+flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant
+brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I
+was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and
+Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still
+unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut
+hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted
+to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as
+they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large
+enough to hold a rein.</p>
+
+<p>When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young
+draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie
+was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a
+subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball
+at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the
+hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as
+they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked,
+golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father
+to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with
+pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth
+it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>Jasper
+to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to
+establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off
+this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me
+again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate
+shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd
+better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.
+I've had my fun."</p>
+
+<p>The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of
+the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half
+moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to
+compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with
+uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had
+run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the
+hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third;
+but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had
+a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a
+poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the
+day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen
+and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and
+Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve
+hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name
+before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in
+the suffrage agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as
+Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I
+shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years," I said. "You have&mdash;grown, rather."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright
+golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered
+in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure,
+and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.</p>
+
+<p>I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness
+between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band
+of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and
+wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only
+differences&mdash;until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw
+that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of
+her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went
+out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I
+hardly know what to call it&mdash;homage, allegiance, devotion. She
+impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this
+life&mdash;Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more&mdash;with the feeling that
+I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would
+always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among
+straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was
+twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim
+and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.</p>
+
+<p>Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared
+to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we <i>did</i>
+meet?"</p>
+
+<p>"The last time I heard of you...." I began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some
+pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait
+a bit&mdash;'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach
+to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a
+compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant
+hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at
+the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front&mdash;he's too good
+for this world&mdash;he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm
+afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed&mdash;that is, if we ever did
+meet."</p>
+
+<p>"As I was saying...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of
+interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time
+we met...."</p>
+
+<p>"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came
+to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary
+to your happiness. It was an <i>id&eacute;e fixe</i>, you were a fanatic, you
+broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When
+I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an
+insufficient allowance of bread and water."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce shook her head sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was an awful child."</p>
+
+<p>"Was?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I improved?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were a wonderfully pretty child."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind looks!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I do. They're the only things worth having."</p>
+
+<p>"They're not enough."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."</p>
+
+<p>"In any case they don't last."</p>
+
+<p>"And while they do, you slight them."</p>
+
+<p>"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room
+to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow,
+childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a
+dinner-service to get a pony."</p>
+
+<p>"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. <i>Plus &ccedil;a change, plus
+c'est la m&ecirc;me chose.</i> You are still not content with looking extremely
+nice, you <i>must</i> break a dinner-service now and again."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident
+proposition.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.</p>
+
+<p>"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince
+you of your error."</p>
+
+<p>"I get condemned to that now."</p>
+
+<p>"Dull eating, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I've never tried."</p>
+
+<p>"You did then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."</p>
+
+<p>We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful
+child of five that I remember so well."</p>
+
+<p>"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.</p>
+
+<p>How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an
+admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much
+to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs.
+Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was
+approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the
+Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table,
+living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in
+its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the
+present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out
+of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the
+future as the past....</p>
+
+<p>I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like
+dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written
+and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told
+her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she
+had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when
+sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one
+to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a
+determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into
+the Prime Minister's private room.</p>
+
+<p>The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the
+ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and
+hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the
+Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling
+campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been
+decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and
+then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a
+General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain
+Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into
+the scale of the Opposition candidate.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had
+promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced
+to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by
+an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh
+terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the
+institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible
+Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat
+and Mouse" Bill.</p>
+
+<p>I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been
+against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often
+that Joyce herself would stick at nothing&mdash;fire, flood or dynamite&mdash;to
+secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be
+thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right,
+responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt
+pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof
+from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her
+countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of
+art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and
+burning down unique, priceless houses.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I
+renewed my acquaintance with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me
+down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant
+movement."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He seemed quite certain of the result."</p>
+
+<p>"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he
+had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one
+at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."</p>
+
+<p>I reminded her that she had not answered my question.</p>
+
+<p>"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers,"
+I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the
+constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her
+head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through
+the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks
+breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be
+serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.</p>
+
+<p>"What would <i>you</i> do?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to <i>force majeure</i>. I've lived long
+enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."</p>
+
+<p>"But if we <i>won't</i> give it up?"</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged my shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>can</i> you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to
+be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the
+Amendment's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the
+first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the <i>New
+Militant</i>, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most
+of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign,
+rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No
+more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just
+where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she
+concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."</p>
+
+<p>Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to
+grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away,
+or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you
+adopted militant tactics."</p>
+
+<p>"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I
+requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the
+name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better
+description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened
+eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like
+it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full
+of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you
+like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I can."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce turned to her sister.</p>
+
+<p>"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.</p>
+
+<p>"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>laying her hand on
+my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very
+little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on
+either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to
+refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There
+are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all
+get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because
+the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial
+franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory
+workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who
+bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and
+leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you
+say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an
+impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further
+forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your
+head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."</p>
+
+<p>She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted
+almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.</p>
+
+<p>"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted
+one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still
+the stronger."</p>
+
+<p>"And woman the more resourceful."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished
+her coffee and drew on her gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"War <i>&agrave; outrance</i>," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what
+after the war?"</p>
+
+<p>"When we've got the vote...." she began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win,
+do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share
+of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality
+with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce
+Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her
+father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and
+fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was
+very angry and whipped her with a crop."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. Only&mdash;he said afterwards that she took it rather well,
+there was no crying."</p>
+
+<p>I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way
+appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.</p>
+
+<p>"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she
+interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.</p>
+
+<p>"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out
+of the dining-room with Aintree.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She's</i> worth some sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation.
+She's up against the existing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>divorce law, and that's buttressed by
+every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're
+starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."</p>
+
+<p>Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Joyce?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"You were Joyce when last we met."</p>
+
+<p>"That was twenty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."</p>
+
+<p>"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with
+laborious antithesis.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I haven't improved?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're perfect&mdash;off duty, in private life."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no private life."</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I
+say good-bye to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But not for good?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If
+you like to come in as an ally...?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you could convert me?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me closely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're
+dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."</p>
+
+<p>"How long will you be in England?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've no idea."</p>
+
+<p>"Six months? In six months I'll make you the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>Prince Rupert of the
+militant army. Then when we're sent to prison&mdash;Sir Arthur Roden's a
+friend of yours&mdash;you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and
+we'll tap on the dividing wall."</p>
+
+<p>I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on
+segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however,
+for captious criticism.</p>
+
+<p>"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from
+your militant army."</p>
+
+<p>"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never found anything worth doing before."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."</p>
+
+<p>"They haven't the monopoly of that."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the
+word "Cheek!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of
+the law."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect to hear <i>you</i> calling the law and the prophets in
+aid."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she
+answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I
+am going to make the best of it."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you in six months' time."</p>
+
+<p>Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her
+sister vanished from sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Which?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.</p>
+
+<p>"They are astonishingly alike," I said <i>&agrave; propos</i> of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"They're often mistaken for each other."</p>
+
+<p>"I can well believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.</p>
+
+<p>I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was
+thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his
+mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping
+imperceptibly away."</p>
+
+<p>I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.
+And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph
+interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and
+my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy
+directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her
+audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to
+do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the
+graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless
+front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the
+laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when
+one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready
+to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.
+It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of
+Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English
+imagination....</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What influence have <i>I</i> got over her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some&mdash;not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, <i>I</i>'ve no
+control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I
+say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I
+objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."</p>
+
+<p>The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was <i>The Heir-at-Law</i>,
+and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my
+residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may
+still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic
+success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of
+characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a
+masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going,
+and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know;
+possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats,
+possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as <i>virtuosi</i>, and
+say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had
+had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually
+had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were
+often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted
+substantial cutting.</p>
+
+<p>"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were <i>The
+Second Mrs. Tanqueray</i>, and <i>A Woman of No Importance</i>."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we
+thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely
+of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many
+revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little
+out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to
+understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed
+in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with
+fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the
+inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....</p>
+
+<p>"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote
+plays."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the
+coming men."</p>
+
+<p>I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across
+Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had
+read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from
+the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage:
+then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his
+"Child of Misery."</p>
+
+<p>I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece
+of self-revelation&mdash;"Jean Christophe"&mdash;which in many ways it so
+closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and
+"Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than
+"Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero&mdash;for want of a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>better
+name&mdash;was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers
+with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme
+would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you
+the childhood and upbringing of Rupert&mdash;and incidentally revealed to
+my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive
+boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage
+to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental
+prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how
+the third volume would shape....</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by
+jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.</p>
+
+<p>From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or
+two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived
+from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were
+in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one
+quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was
+pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a
+moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we
+had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous
+explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the
+box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing
+mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious
+that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of
+nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that
+occasion for the first, last and only time.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span><i>The Heir-at-Law</i> went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end
+of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain
+while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of
+"Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the
+curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager
+had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was
+not in the house.</p>
+
+<p>We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.
+Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as
+a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in
+turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be
+credited with the dominant mind of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop
+short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a
+wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening
+paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill
+were four gigantic words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="cenlgsc"><b>Defeat of Suffrage Amendment.</b></p>
+
+<p>Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I
+go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"When shall I see you again?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She held out a small gloved hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't. It's good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's war <i>&agrave; outrance</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"That's no concern of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."</p>
+
+<p>I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head provokingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason,
+justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when
+I think of my wasted chances...."</p>
+
+<p>"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put
+the two women inside it.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall convert you."</p>
+
+<p>"If there's any conversion...."</p>
+
+<p>"When are you coming?" she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun
+with the Rodens."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and
+then abruptly congratulated me.</p>
+
+<p>"What on?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked
+itself epileptically away from the kerb.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I
+see...? ... I see your soul."&mdash;<span class="sc">John
+Masefield</span>, "The Tragedy of Nan."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it
+disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an
+invitation to supper.</p>
+
+<p>"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me
+alone," I heard him murmuring.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down
+by myself, and think&mdash;think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion
+of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the
+direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose,
+I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a
+minute; I want to have this prescription made up."</p>
+
+<p>I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a
+powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many
+years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of
+what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>not like to see boys of
+six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little
+grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the
+need.</p>
+
+<p>"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for
+the powders had trembled more than was necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"You were all right at dinner," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"That was some time ago," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."</p>
+
+<p>"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.</p>
+
+<p>Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge
+dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as
+silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of
+other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the
+arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told
+him to talk to me.</p>
+
+<p>"What about?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything."</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past
+three hours in particular."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs
+crossed.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it strange and&mdash;unsettling? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>Three months ago life
+was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day
+was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt
+lonely&mdash;lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four
+hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten
+it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the
+vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on?
+You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent,
+that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then
+you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then
+exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not
+going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to
+find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to
+save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now
+you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think
+that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall
+tell you how I know."</p>
+
+<p>I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials
+with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true,
+wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose it was?"</p>
+
+<p>His shoulders gave a slight shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."</p>
+
+<p>I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that
+I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>"Not the world."</p>
+
+<p>"You?"</p>
+
+<p>"As a rule. Not more than other people."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can with a good many men."</p>
+
+<p>"Not women?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and
+starts&mdash;jerkily; it's hard to follow them."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the
+expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in
+succession&mdash;you just <i>see</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm hanged if I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening
+dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction
+of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't
+it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes
+between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken
+at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to
+go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be.
+You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're
+flabbergasted that <i>I</i> should be the person. You're impotently angry.
+Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're
+going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether
+I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little
+thought&mdash;will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head
+because it'll hurt more. Still another thought&mdash;how hard to hit? You
+don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide
+to be on the safe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>side and hit rather gently. Then&mdash;then at last
+you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"</p>
+
+<p>I thought it over very carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each
+other. There isn't time."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was
+introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly
+assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into
+such attitudes."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you account for it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather
+than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then
+I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh&mdash;er&mdash;porter, taxi,
+please."</p>
+
+<p>"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."</p>
+
+<p>I jumped up and ran into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get
+interested."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot
+more that I haven't told you about. I only&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking
+drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather&mdash;abnormal."</p>
+
+<p>"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Such as?"</p>
+
+<p>"Occupy your mind more."</p>
+
+<p>"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as
+we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.</p>
+
+<p>As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace,
+our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we
+had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in
+aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm
+that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two
+thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side
+like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh
+train of thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness
+one employs in advancing these general propositions.</p>
+
+<p>"What about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young
+friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going
+on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to
+paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that
+gets published, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my
+question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six
+psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James
+there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power
+that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and
+observation, comes to you&mdash;by some freak of nature&mdash;ready made. You
+could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might try."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what that means."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your
+advice."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.</p>
+
+<p>"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm still waiting to see the result."</p>
+
+<p>"You've seen it."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."</p>
+
+<p>"In my sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't write in my own name."</p>
+
+<p>"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>His lips opened, and then shut in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't go any further," I promised.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want even you to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us
+thought of turning in.</p>
+
+<p>"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the
+Wellington Street crossing and were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>waiting for a stream of traffic
+to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.</p>
+
+<p>"Try something a little less well&mdash;known: get hold of a book that's
+been published anonymously."</p>
+
+<p>"'Gretchen' was published over a <i>nom de plume</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you
+didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.</p>
+
+<p>"A mere quibble," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who <i>has</i> met
+him?"</p>
+
+<p>I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a
+smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was
+borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he
+answered in parenthesis.</p>
+
+<p>He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had
+reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the
+fantastic tangle was straightened out.</p>
+
+<p>Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in
+Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of
+"Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name
+through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with
+the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the
+same way: <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>even the <i>Heir-at-Law</i> I had just witnessed came to a
+similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without
+criticism or suggestion from the author.</p>
+
+<p>I could see no reason for a <i>nom de plume</i> in the case of "Gretchen"
+or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was
+different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the
+second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out
+of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert
+and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but
+the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering
+termination, had taken place a few months&mdash;a few weeks, I might
+say&mdash;before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I
+was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke
+through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to
+have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth
+century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all
+time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.</p>
+
+<p>"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.</p>
+
+<p>"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon
+Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."</p>
+
+<p>Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona
+Macleod.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence.
+"You think after what's passed...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he
+hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. 'Tisn't that&mdash;altogether. It's the future."</p>
+
+<p>"What's going to happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him
+writing plays."</p>
+
+<p>Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know
+the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was
+trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with
+friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for
+minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was
+always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously
+from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before
+mustering resolution to take a step forward....</p>
+
+<p>"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed
+Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out;
+as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I
+do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind
+on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days
+you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....</p>
+
+<p>I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a
+credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the
+belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope
+or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the
+close of the previous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>winter he had found himself in attendance at a
+costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian
+mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through
+the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse
+drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse
+seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been
+manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat
+armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard
+peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken
+by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his
+memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the
+peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.</p>
+
+<p>In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She
+was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black
+hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far
+apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore
+an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met,
+but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her
+walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the
+Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and
+once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror
+changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire
+and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and
+frightened.</p>
+
+<p>It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a
+fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and
+intimately with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always
+interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched
+away. Gradually&mdash;like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist&mdash;the
+outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open
+with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at
+almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple
+Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on
+the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters,
+with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean?
+Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know
+her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And
+it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've
+never felt so ... so <i>conscious</i> of anybody in my life. I saw her for
+those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall
+meet her again&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to?"</p>
+
+<p>He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once
+more in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up
+Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy
+curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's
+some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ...
+she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."</p>
+
+<p>When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink.
+He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was
+reluctant to be left to his own company.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your
+dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to
+change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The
+Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"</p>
+
+<p>He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.</p>
+
+<p>"I do hate meeting people," he protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I
+shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a
+diversion. Come to oblige me."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat
+and jerking it out straight.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be my salvation."</p>
+
+<p>"You deserve it, for what it's worth."</p>
+
+<p>"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered,
+turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's
+premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from
+Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and
+in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be
+concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of
+reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In
+the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the
+careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was
+held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the
+question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my
+brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by
+reflecting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in
+store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered
+occasional pangs of disappointment?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed.
+Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and
+arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South
+Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing
+the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More
+charitable than the Psalmist&mdash;from whom indeed he differs in all
+material respects&mdash;Brian could not bring himself to believe that any
+one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked.
+At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be
+attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in
+the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.</p>
+
+<p>For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial
+good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my
+curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I
+was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was
+inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common
+fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade
+manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should
+have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge;
+indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.</p>
+
+<p>When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my
+sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with
+her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would
+cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>exhortation that I was not
+to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other
+mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived
+for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the
+code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have
+had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle";
+"Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation
+successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist
+nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or
+even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps
+needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they
+sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian
+and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I
+had passed out of the life of all three&mdash;presumably for ever.</p>
+
+<p>In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that
+my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter
+would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the
+weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in
+contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and
+position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and
+independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to
+know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.</p>
+
+<p>I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present
+regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She
+was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited&mdash;tasting life for the first
+time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it
+could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before
+wedlock called her to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>the responsibilities of the drab, workaday
+world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless
+courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's
+passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side
+with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she
+was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those
+thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched
+Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England
+has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice
+over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my
+happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.</p>
+
+<p>I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board
+the <i>Bessarabia</i>. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of
+instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My
+niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her
+ingenious explanation.</p>
+
+<p>As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went
+abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to
+be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a
+bachelor party."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>BRANDON COURT</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in.
+Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> call it that too?" ...</p>
+
+<p>... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known
+you all my life!"&mdash;<span class="sc">Rudyard Kipling</span>, "The
+Brushwood Boy."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed
+myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she
+had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the
+rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be
+there."</p>
+
+<p>As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second
+reading of his admirably lucid instructions.</p>
+
+<p>"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the
+Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last
+minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own
+account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley
+or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize
+him...."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you <i>know</i> him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he
+had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the
+Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."</p>
+
+<p>Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to
+gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several
+years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the
+sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly
+respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public
+position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for
+his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do
+so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the
+waters returned to me after not many days.</p>
+
+<p>"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a topper!"</p>
+
+<p>I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, <i>per obscurans ad
+obscurantius</i>; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of
+the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent
+specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in
+weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the
+kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of
+speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might
+starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your
+plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was
+brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and
+followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination
+he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and
+unready <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose
+he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him,
+and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a
+Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity
+Eight.</p>
+
+<p>I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He
+is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not
+comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime
+Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime
+Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise
+him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you
+with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on
+five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and
+finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also
+his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious
+enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic
+instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously;
+he is making a mark in the House."</p>
+
+<p>"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the
+Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a
+very general feeling.</p>
+
+<p>I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of
+the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more
+than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable,
+I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I
+have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to
+size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>Nigel
+went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an
+abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of
+personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those
+who&mdash;like the Jews&mdash;trample that they be not trampled on. He became
+overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for
+fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his
+tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House
+christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was
+not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom
+to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when
+he was sure of his ground.</p>
+
+<p>I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have
+been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff,
+make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness.
+Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own
+case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him
+no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will
+carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and
+humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the
+youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and
+figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not
+now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery
+of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still
+able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I
+laughed&mdash;though he had all the trumps in his hand&mdash;he must needs think
+I had reason for my laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat
+Culling. He is an irrepressible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>Irishman of some thirty summers, with
+a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ
+it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless
+face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument
+from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to
+Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in
+Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I
+know.</p>
+
+<p>"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he
+will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing
+that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a
+special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be
+losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He
+is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your
+hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him
+gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable
+foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will
+deal himself five aces with the utmost <i>sang froid</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in
+my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her
+belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole
+time."</p>
+
+<p>I reminded myself that I stood <i>in loco parentis</i>, shook hands with
+Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.</p>
+
+<p>The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip
+conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my
+presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told
+me how life had treated him since our parting in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>Asia Minor; while
+Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated
+history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Av&eacute;nement de
+Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily
+summoned to be informed of the birth&mdash;I noticed that the ministers
+were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi&mdash;it concluded with
+the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For
+reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived
+of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the
+badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable
+as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry
+when we arrived at Brandon Junction.</p>
+
+<p>We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being
+collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and
+from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I
+recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long
+rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour
+of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony
+must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from
+Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect
+without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.</p>
+
+<p>When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at
+the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud
+youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the
+ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling
+black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft,
+unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge
+hovered round her small, straight mouth, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>as though she were conscious
+of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile
+there lurked&mdash;or so I fancied&mdash;a suggestion of weariness as with one
+whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling
+blend of frankness and reserve. The <i>camaraderie</i> of her greeting
+reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers;
+fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by
+her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the
+man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It
+was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends
+were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr.
+Culling."</p>
+
+<p>Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach
+Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were
+astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in
+trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be
+filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other
+people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick
+movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I
+remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical
+energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame
+could contain such fire without eruption.</p>
+
+<p>Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands.
+"And where's the wicked uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a
+hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>"I feel even younger," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"Face massage," Culling murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"A good conscience," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other
+than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would
+outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched
+Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an
+excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his
+arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in
+desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come
+to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in,
+everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage,"
+objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.</p>
+
+<p>"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good
+enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.</p>
+
+<p>Philip was seized with inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes,"
+his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."</p>
+
+<p>My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was
+shod with neat, serviceable brogues.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the
+way."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia
+and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across
+the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon
+Court.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.</p>
+
+<p>"What was?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand,
+but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."</p>
+
+<p>We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a
+temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking
+down on me.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I sincerely hope so."</p>
+
+<p>"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time
+to go back and get a cab at the station."</p>
+
+<p>"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake
+of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to
+make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them.
+Will you promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"The flesh is weak," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I worth a little promise like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar,
+as you call them. You know you're really&mdash;you won't mind my saying
+it?&mdash;you're old enough...."</p>
+
+<p>"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was
+perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the
+subject. So far as I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>can see, my declining years will be one long
+riot of senile infidelity.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I
+don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood
+facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine.
+"You're not in love with me, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot
+tapped the ground with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known
+me five minutes. Well,"&mdash;her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may
+have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm&mdash;"please
+don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till
+I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've
+knocked about the world, you're seasoned&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I held out my hand to seal the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence.
+"I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she
+added with a flash of pride.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I saw that the moment we met."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder."</p>
+
+<p>It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before
+I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty
+years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and
+troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared
+with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them
+had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and
+Sylvia had been in attendance at every important <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>match in which he
+was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a
+prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an
+end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of
+Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and
+Sylvia, whose one cry&mdash;like Kundry's&mdash;had ever been, "Let me serve,"
+found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household,
+when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without
+an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding.
+Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had
+slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his
+place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the
+world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her
+devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am
+convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an
+outlet for her activities in militancy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her
+eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be
+friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate
+them all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Did you know her?"</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by
+her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came
+afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was
+reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.</p>
+
+<p>"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>"You think so?" she asked without conviction.</p>
+
+<p>It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions;
+they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was
+being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had
+troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden
+standstill.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>say</i>, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't come," I reassured her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept
+invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably
+polite."</p>
+
+<p>"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged my shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Shyness, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate shy people."</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know him. What's he like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the
+Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I
+ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather
+haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very
+nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds like a degenerate poet."</p>
+
+<p>"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia.
+Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time
+to hate!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate
+myself more than anybody else."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't
+control myself."</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden
+was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the
+household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained
+Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as
+Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in
+prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget
+that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect
+for Morningtons&mdash;or any other pre-Conquest families&mdash;whether they come
+from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn
+reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have
+possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon
+Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for
+pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the
+Judge?" she said when we met. "Then&mdash;let me see&mdash;your sister-in-law
+was a Hylton."</p>
+
+<p>I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench
+politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion
+quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt.
+Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"&mdash;it
+now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square&mdash;rescued the conversation
+from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>to arrange
+for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was
+coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought
+over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia
+volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while
+the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon
+Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.</p>
+
+<p>"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me,
+when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a
+cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that
+high, and now&mdash;God knows&mdash;it's in a decline you'd say he was taken.
+You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has
+his heart broken."</p>
+
+<p>I did not know what answer to give.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a passing mood," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those
+feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world
+and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other
+business&mdash;a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost
+to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel
+moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy
+kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and
+the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came
+towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his
+thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>dragged the depths
+of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick
+and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual,
+and his manner restless.</p>
+
+<p>"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.</p>
+
+<p>"I was giving up hope."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>had</i> to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into
+one of his longest silences.</p>
+
+<p>We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens,
+reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming
+masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve
+rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth
+in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun,
+and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We
+drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymph&aelig;as
+closing their eyes for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom,
+Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old
+spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it,"
+said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of
+us did to improve or debase our minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two
+glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and
+Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind
+as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his
+head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At
+two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and
+passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as
+many minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>knows</i> it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance.
+If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If <i>you</i> were blind,
+you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."</p>
+
+<p>"Not enough," said Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ.
+You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive
+surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive
+organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing,
+hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."</p>
+
+<p>Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.</p>
+
+<p>"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."</p>
+
+<p>"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the
+sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the
+moment he got into the room."</p>
+
+<p>"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather,"
+Gartside went on.</p>
+
+<p>"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't
+coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere
+on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute
+touch sense."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the
+fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.</p>
+
+<p>"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling,
+infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.</p>
+
+<p>"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called
+'premonition.'"</p>
+
+<p>Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.</p>
+
+<p>"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."</p>
+
+<p>"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's
+dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What
+about all those other mornings...."</p>
+
+<p>"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.</p>
+
+<p>"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure
+coincidence."</p>
+
+<p>I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."</p>
+
+<p>"For instance?"</p>
+
+<p>I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my
+observation in the East&mdash;the power possessed by many natives of
+foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came
+across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had
+been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One
+morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature
+was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I
+congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die
+punctually at eight that evening.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the
+relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme
+unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect
+health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his
+assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be
+morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at
+hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on
+his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.</p>
+
+<p>"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating
+illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to
+fancies. An idea&mdash;from a dream, perhaps&mdash;that death will take place at
+a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body
+is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm
+going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I
+shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an
+unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick
+to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and
+dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."</p>
+
+<p>"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from
+the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in
+his voice.</p>
+
+<p>We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had
+a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.</p>
+
+<p>"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my
+bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know&mdash;it's your livelihood."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"</p>
+
+<p>Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or
+verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.
+To write an entirely imaginative work would be&mdash;as the poet said of
+love&mdash;"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like
+keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal
+length.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when
+I put this view before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd lose the psychology of expectation&mdash;uncertainty."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."</p>
+
+<p>"What form does it take?"</p>
+
+<p>His lips parted, and closed again quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and
+after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the <i>entr&eacute;e</i>, it
+was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in
+my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were
+unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away
+from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between
+Philip and the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words
+the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.
+I saw the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and
+whisper something to Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she
+had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.</p>
+
+<p>"The man only said...."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia
+framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress,
+and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed
+with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle
+of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study in
+black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into relief
+by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared
+unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my
+forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through
+bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted
+lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair
+by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be
+sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.
+Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she
+ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She
+hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and
+as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.
+Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>tone that tries to be
+sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph
+as she did so.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him
+with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood
+likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I
+came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"</p>
+
+<p>I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the
+one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was
+ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at
+last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had
+already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant
+tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood
+about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table
+with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation
+for a stroll on the terrace.</p>
+
+<p>He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time
+and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and
+a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the
+face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that
+at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and
+unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's
+many feminine characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he
+and I were the two last men <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>in the world, and Brandon Court the only
+house in England&mdash;till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found
+two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.
+Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had
+been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty
+years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or
+other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.</p>
+
+<p>It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open
+library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he
+would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it
+would have enlightened neither of us.</p>
+
+<p>On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the
+frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed
+herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair
+braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no
+portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the
+fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to
+judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable
+temperament....</p>
+
+<p>I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or
+twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately&mdash;almost before I
+had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the
+adjoining room.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE FIRST ROUND</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"<span class="sc">Brassbound</span>: You are not my guest: you are
+my prisoner.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Howard</span>: Prisoner?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Brassbound</span>: I warned you. You should have
+taken my warning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Howard</span>: ... Am I to understand, then,
+that you are a brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Brassbound</span>: ... All the wealth of England
+shall not ransom you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Sir Howard</span>: Then what do you expect to gain
+by this?</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">Brassbound</span>: Justice...."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Bernard Shaw</span>: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the
+following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily
+placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the
+Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay
+scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding
+of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent
+pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.</p>
+
+<p>"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.
+"Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun
+it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly
+arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason
+for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and
+for some years I have found that other people tend to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>be somewhat
+irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in
+the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that
+the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it
+difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the
+first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical
+student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own
+person.</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph up yet?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first
+time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept
+in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had,
+further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and
+escorted Sylvia to the early service.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in
+disgrace over something."</p>
+
+<p>The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter
+Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time
+and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any
+known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to
+their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth
+doing. Sylvia&mdash;like most <i>d&eacute;v&ocirc;tes</i>&mdash;could not believe in the existence
+of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people
+should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my
+comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion
+only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for
+the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other&mdash;and to
+tell me all about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and
+admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a
+strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and
+brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but
+Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He
+was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and
+brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his
+handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most
+enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use
+of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The
+first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy
+of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of
+our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I
+tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I
+forget who won; he certainly had the note.</p>
+
+<p>A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence.
+Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few
+days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of
+perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last
+Commemoration.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced.
+"House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's paying?" asked Michael.</p>
+
+<p>"Guv'nor, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Je</i> ne <i>pense pas</i>," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the
+library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.</p>
+
+<p>"You come," Robin went on regardless of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>interruption. "I've got
+six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."</p>
+
+<p>"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance
+together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead
+necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University
+dancing costume, I believe it's called."</p>
+
+<p>"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already
+depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for
+the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and
+Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates
+from Carfax.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was
+unpinning a motor-veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>yes</i>, darling Sylvia!" Robin&mdash;I know&mdash;was both fond and proud of
+his sister, but the tone of <i>ad hoc</i> blandishment suggested that
+experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll
+come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully
+averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."</p>
+
+<p>"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd
+you like?" he asked me.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any
+one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I
+shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me
+drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to
+mischief."</p>
+
+<p>Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just
+entered the room, and turned to his sister.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and
+misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to
+hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me
+know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the
+driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."</p>
+
+<p>Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's
+chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing
+up the drive, cutting all corners.</p>
+
+<p>"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."</p>
+
+<p>Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with
+the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime
+Minister's sudden appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise
+God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."</p>
+
+<p>"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.</p>
+
+<p>"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the
+selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a
+viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and
+fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make
+him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How
+perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."</p>
+
+<p>We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the
+inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's
+suggestion we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>began to retreat through the open French windows into
+the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file
+and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could
+escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had
+to be introduced afresh.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement
+towards the window. "You may be able to help us."</p>
+
+<p>I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a
+spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met
+him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade,
+coming to Oxford to address some political club.</p>
+
+<p>"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato
+voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into
+three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance
+without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now.
+My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you
+know her by sight?"</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter
+to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to
+Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the
+day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the
+four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The
+eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything
+of her before you left?"</p>
+
+<p>I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting
+old friends and being introduced <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>to new ones that I had had neither
+time nor eyes....</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you
+know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten
+yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles
+beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by
+the slip?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the
+A.B.C. with an impatient slap.</p>
+
+<p>"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left
+London."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.</p>
+
+<p>"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been
+called away suddenly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter
+makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place&mdash;with a
+view to tracing her."</p>
+
+<p>He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by
+first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western
+District Office at Victoria."</p>
+
+<p>The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>
+"<span class="sc">Dear Sir,</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"This is to inform you that your daughter is well and in safe
+keeping, but that she is being held as a hostage pending the
+satisfactory settlement of the Suffrage Question. As you are
+aware, Sir George Marklake has secured second place in the
+ballot for Private Member's Bills. Your daughter will be
+permitted to communicate with you by post, subject to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>reasonable censorship; on the day when you promise special
+facilities and Government support for the Marklake Bill, and
+again at the end of the Report Stage and Third Reading. The same
+privilege will be accorded at the end of each stage in the House
+of Lords, and she will be restored to you on the day following
+that on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent.</p>
+
+<p>"You will hardly need to be reminded that the Marklake Bill is
+to be taken on the first Private Member's night after the
+Recess. Should you fail to give the assurances we require, it
+will be necessary for us to take such further steps as may seem
+best calculated to secure the settlement we desire."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>It took me some minutes to digest the letter before I was in a
+condition to offer even the most perfunctory condolence. Now that the
+blow had been struck, I found myself wondering why it had never been
+attempted before.</p>
+
+<p>"You've no clue?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>Rawnsley inspected the letter carefully and held it up to the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Written with a Remington, I should say. And a new one, without a
+single defect in type or alignment. And the paper is made by
+Hitchcock. That's all I have to go on."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Advise Scotland Yard, I suppose. Then await developments. I don't
+wish what I've told you this morning to go any further; no good
+purpose will be served by giving the militants a free advertisement.
+When I am in town, it is to be understood that Mavis is with her
+mother at Hanningford; and when I am at Hanningford, Mavis must be at
+Downing Street."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>One has no business in private life to badger ministers with political
+questions, but I could not help asking what line Rawnsley proposed to
+take with the Marklake Bill. His grey eyes flashed with momentary
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be taken this session," he declared. "I'm moving to
+appropriate all Private Members' time for the Poor Law Bill. And
+that's all, I think; I must be getting back to my wife, she's&mdash;a good
+deal upset. Can you spare Nigel, Roden? I should like to take him if I
+may. Good-bye, Mr. Merivale. Good-bye, Mr. &mdash;&mdash; Oh, by the way, Roden,
+remember you're tarred with the same brush. As soon as the Recess is
+over, you'll have to keep a close watch on your family. Harding's
+another; I shall have to warn him."</p>
+
+<p>Rawnsley's departure left me with a feeling of anti-climax and vague
+discomfort. Short of assassination, which would have defeated its own
+object, a policy of abduction was the boldest and most effective that
+the militants could devise at a time when&mdash;in Joyce's words&mdash;all
+arguments had been exhausted on both sides and war <i>&agrave; outrance</i> was
+declared by women who insisted on a vote against men who refused to
+concede it. I had every reason to think I knew whose brain had evolved
+that abduction policy; its reckless simplicity and directness were
+characteristic. Then and now I wondered, and still wonder, whether the
+author of that policy had sufficient imagination and perspective to
+appreciate the enormity of her offence, or the seriousness of the
+penalty attendant on non-success.</p>
+
+<p>"Ber-luddy day!" exclaimed Michael, rejoining us in the library and
+delicately brushing occasional drops of moisture from his immaculate
+person. A heavy downpour of rain was starting, and though I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>looked
+like being spared initiation into the mysteries of golf&mdash;which I am
+not yet infirm enough to learn&mdash;it was not very clear how we were to
+kill time between meal and meal. Gladys was spending the morning
+quietly in her room, Philip wandered to and fro like a troubled
+spirit, and Sylvia had mysteriously departed.</p>
+
+<p>In time Michael condescended to give us the reason. It appeared that
+while we were closeted with Rawnsley in the library, Robin had decided
+that rest and relaxation before his Schools could best be secured by
+the organisation of an impromptu Calico Ball, to be given that night
+to all who would come. While he sat at the telephone summoning the
+County of Hampshire to do his bidding, Sylvia had departed in her
+little white runabout to purchase masks and a bale of calico from
+Brandon Junction, and scour the neighbourhood in search of piano,
+violin, and 'cello. The wet afternoon was to be spent by the women of
+the party in improvising costumes, by the men in French-chalking the
+floor of the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>I took the precaution of calling on Gladys to acquaint her with the
+day's arrangements, and beg her to see that I was not compelled to
+wear any costume belittling to the dignity of a middle-aged uncle.
+Then after writing a bulletin to catch my brother at Gibraltar, I felt
+I had earned rest and a cheroot before luncheon. Brandon Court was one
+of those admirably appointed houses where you could be certain of
+finding wooden matches in every room; it was not, however, till I got
+back to the library that I found companionship and the Seraph. He was
+lying on a sofa writing slowly and painfully with his left hand.</p>
+
+<p>"If that's volume three," I said, "I won't interrupt. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>If it's
+anything else, we'd better smoke and talk. I will do the smoking."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only scribbling," he answered. "There's no hurry about volume
+three."</p>
+
+<p>"Your public&mdash;<i>quorum pars non magna sum</i>&mdash;is growing impatient."</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be any volume three," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"But why not? I mean, a mere temporary hitch...."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that. If it wasn't for this hand I could write like, well,
+like you <i>do</i> write once in a lifetime."</p>
+
+<p>"What's to stop you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. I only said there wouldn't be a volume three. I shan't
+publish it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>His big blue eyes looked up at me thoughtfully for a moment from under
+their long lashes. Then he crumpled up the half-covered sheet of
+paper, remarking&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There are some things you can't make public."</p>
+
+<p>"But with a <i>nom de plume</i>...."</p>
+
+<p>"I might let <i>you</i> see it," he conceded.</p>
+
+<p>There we had to leave the subject, as the library was soon afterwards
+invaded by zealous seekers after luncheon, first Lady Roden and
+Gartside, then the rest of the party with the single exception of
+Sylvia. Lady Roden walked over to the window and gazed in dismay at
+the unceasing downpour.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Sylvia back yet, does anybody know?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"She came in about a quarter of an hour ago," volunteered the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Was she very wet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't see her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>Lady Roden bustled out of the room to make first-hand investigation.</p>
+
+<p>"She took a Burberry with her," Robin called out; then springing up he
+seized an ebony paper knife and advanced on Michael who was reclining
+decoratively on a Chesterfield sofa. "Talking of Burberries," he went
+on, with menace in his tone, "what the deuce d'you mean by stealing
+mine, Michael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't be seen dead in your bloody Burberry," Michael responded
+with delicate languor.</p>
+
+<p>The Roden boys were all much of a size, and on the subject of raided
+and disputed garments a fierce border warfare raged unintermittently
+round their bedroom doors. It was so invariable a rule with Michael to
+meet all direct charges with an equally direct denial that his
+brothers placed but slight reliance on his word.</p>
+
+<p>"What was it doing in your room, then?" persisted Robin, as he applied
+the paper-knife to the soles of Michael's feet.</p>
+
+<p>"That was Phil's," said Michael ingenuously.</p>
+
+<p>Robin turned to his elder brother with the suggestion of a little
+disciplinary boiling-oil.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be enough if we just ruffle him," answered the humane Philip.
+"Keep the door, Pat. Now, Robin!"</p>
+
+<p>The perfect harmony of their attack argued long practice. Almost
+before I had time to move out of the way, Culling was standing with
+his back to the door while a scuffling trio on the hearthrug indicated
+that castigation was already being meted out. Within two minutes the
+immaculate Michael had been reduced to slim, white nudity, and even as
+the decorous Gartside proffered a consolatory "<i>Times'</i> Educational
+Supplement," the two brothers and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>Culling had divided the raiment and
+taken their centrifugal course through the house, secreting boots,
+socks, tie and collar in a succession of ingeniously inaccessible
+places as they went. Then the gong sounded, and Gartside took me in to
+luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>Such little breezes, as I afterwards discovered, were characteristic
+of Brandon Court when the three brothers were at home and Philip had
+forgotten his public dignity. I could have spared the present
+outbreak, as the inflammatory word "Burberry" had kept me from putting
+a certain question to the Seraph. At one-thirty he had told Lady Roden
+that Sylvia had come in about a quarter of an hour before: to be
+strictly accurate, she had entered the yard as the stable clock struck
+one-fifteen, and had come into the house three minutes later by a side
+door and gone straight to her room by a side staircase. The Seraph and
+I had been sitting in the library since twelve-forty-five. The library
+looked out over a terrace on to the lawn: stable yard, side door and
+side staircase were at the diametrically opposite angle of the house.
+It was impossible for any one, even with the Seraph's uncannily acute
+senses, to hear a sound from the stable yard; even had it been
+possible, he could not have identified it as the sound of Sylvia's
+return.</p>
+
+<p>I put my question in the smoking-room after luncheon, but got no
+satisfactory answer. Meeting Sylvia in the hall a few minutes later, I
+took my revenge by setting her to find out.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was spent in polishing the ball-room floor. Others
+worked, I offered advice. At one point, Michael, too, showed a
+tendency to offer advice, but the threat that his young body would be
+dragged up and down till the bones cut through the skin and scratched
+the floor, was effectual in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>persuading him to swathe his feet in
+towels and wade through uncharted seas of French chalk to the infinite
+detriment of the blue colour-scheme he had been forced into adopting
+for luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Roden, Sylvia and Gladys retired with their three maids and a
+bale of calico. From time to time one of us would be summoned to have
+our measurements taken, but no indication was manifested of the guise
+in which we were to appear. At eight we retired to our rooms with
+sinking hearts; at eight-thirty a group of sheepish men loitered at
+the stair-head, waiting for one less self-conscious than the rest to
+give a lead to the others.</p>
+
+<p>The ball&mdash;when it came and found us filled and reckless with
+dinner&mdash;proved an unqualified success. My indistinct memory of it
+recalls a number of pretty girls who danced well, talked very quickly,
+and called me&mdash;without exception&mdash;"my dear." I sat out two with
+Sylvia, and was cut three times by Gladys, who disappeared with Philip
+at an early stage. Further, I supped twice with two creditably hungry
+girls, discussed the lineage of the county with Lady Roden, and smoked
+a sympathetic cigarette with a nice-looking shy boy of fifteen, who
+was always being cut by Gladys when he was not being cut by some one
+else. His name was Willoughby, and I hope some girl has smiled on him
+less absent-mindedly than my niece.</p>
+
+<p>In my few spare moments I watched Sylvia dealing with her male guests.
+Culling approached and was rewarded with a smile and one dance.
+Gartside followed and received an even sweeter, Tristan-und-Isolde
+smile, and the same proportion of her programme. The Seraph,
+arm-in-sling, hung unostentatiously on the outskirts of the crowd, and
+with much hesitation summoned courage to ask if she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>could spare him
+one to sit out. She gave him two, and extended it later to three.</p>
+
+<p>I heard afterwards that at the end of the third he prepared to return
+to the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you taking this one with?" she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"No one," he told her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not stay here, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you promised it to young Willoughby?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'll survive the disappointment," said Sylvia lightly.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shook his head. "May I have one later?" he asked. "You
+oughtn't to cut Willoughby, he's been looking forward to it."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was not accustomed or inclined to dictation from others.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you asked him?" she said, uncertain whether to be amused or
+angry.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't necessary. Haven't you felt his eyes on you while you were
+dancing? He thinks you're the most wonderful girl in the world. There
+he's right. He'll treasure up every word you speak, every smile you
+give him; he'll send himself to sleep picturing ways of saving your
+life at the cost of his own. And he'll dream of you all night."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's tranquil, unemotional voice had grown so earnest that
+Sylvia found herself growing serious in spite of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't discuss me with boys like that," she said, more
+to gain time than administer reproof.</p>
+
+<p>"Should I have discussed you?" exclaimed the Seraph. "And would he
+have told me? Why can't you, why can't any girl understand the mind of
+a boy of fifteen? You'd make such men of them if <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>you'd only take the
+trouble. Look at him now, he's thinking out wonderful speeches to make
+to you...."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>hope</i> not," said Sylvia ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll forget them all when he meets you. I was fifteen once."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if you'll ever be more."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't meant for a snub," said Sylvia reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked at him curiously. "Is there anything you <i>don't</i> know?"
+she asked as they descended the stairs to the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't even know if you're going to let me take you in to supper."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad there's something."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not an answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to?"</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to know that without asking."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid there's a great deal about you I <i>don't</i> know."</p>
+
+<p>Supper was ended and their table deserted before Sylvia put the
+question with which I had primed her that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything I <i>don't</i> know? to use your own words," said the
+Seraph evasively.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not an answer, to use yours."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only answer I can give," he replied, with that curious
+expression in his dark eyes that did duty for a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't you tell me? I'm interested. It's about myself, so I've a
+right to know."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't explain; I don't know. It never happened before."</p>
+
+<p>"Never?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>The Seraph thought over his first meeting with her the previous day.</p>
+
+<p>"Never with any one else," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," she said. "Either it was just coincidence and
+you were talking without thinking, or else ... I don't know. It's
+rather funny. D'you want to smoke? Let's go out on to the terrace."</p>
+
+<p>"The detectives are there."</p>
+
+<p>"No, father said they weren't to appear to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"They're out there."</p>
+
+<p>"How d'you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can hear them."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked round at the closed plate-glass windows.</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>can't</i>," she said incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you bet? No, I don't want to rob you. Shall I tell you something
+else? You opened a fresh bottle of scent to-night when you dressed for
+dinner. It's Chaminade, the same kind that you were using before, but
+this is fresher. Had you noticed it?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph was considerably less impressed by his powers than Sylvia
+appeared to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else?" she asked after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph wrinkled his brows in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Gladys Merivale was coughing last night," he said. "Some one passed
+my door at two o'clock and went into her room. I don't know who it
+was, but it wasn't you. The coughing stopped for a time, but started
+again just before three. Then you passed by and went in."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have heard some one; you didn't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>know it was me. I went once
+and mother went once. You couldn't tell which was which."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph lit a cigarette and walked with her to the door of the
+supper-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was your mother?" he said. "Then she went the first time."</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you know?" Sylvia repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't explain, any more than about the car coming back this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shook her head a little uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"You're abnormal," she pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I...?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Because I know a fraction more about you than other people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a fraction. It would take time to understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"How much? I hate to be thought a sphinx."</p>
+
+<p>"However little I wanted, we should be parted before I got it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? How? How parted?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me to read the future," he said with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the ball I found the Roden boys congratulating
+themselves on the success of the evening. I added my quota of praise,
+and was pressed to state if I now felt equal to three successive
+nights at Commemoration.</p>
+
+<p>"Which reminds me!" Robin exclaimed, flying off at his usual tangent.
+"Where's Sylvia? Sylvia, my angel, what about Commem.?"</p>
+
+<p>His sister looked tired but happy, and in some way excited.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come if you want me," she answered, putting <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>her arm round
+Robin's neck and kissing him good-night. "Yes, all right&mdash;I will. Oh,
+Mr. Rawnsley told me this morning that Mavis wouldn't be able to come,
+so you must get another girl."</p>
+
+<p>Robin dropped his voice confidentially.</p>
+
+<p>"See if you can persuade Cynthia to come. And we're still a man
+short."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia looked slowly round the room with thoughtful, unsmiling
+eyes&mdash;past Culling, past Gartside....</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come, Seraph?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Less than a day and a half had passed since I had noticed her practice
+of avoiding Christian names. For some reason I had supposed nicknames
+to fall into the same category.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>COMMEMORATION</h4>
+
+<div class="block2"><p>"Oxford ... the seat of one of the most ancient and
+celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid
+picturesque environs at the confluence of the
+Cherwell and the Thames.... Oxford is on the whole
+more attractive than Cambridge to the ordinary
+visitor.... The best time for a visit is the end of
+the Summer term.... This period of mingled work and
+play (the latter predominating) is named
+<i>Commemoration</i>.... It is almost needless to add that
+an introduction to a 'Don' will greatly add to the
+visitor's pleasure and profit."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Karl Baedecker</span>: "Handbook for Travellers:
+Great Britain."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Of the weeks that passed between my return to London from Brandon
+Court and our departure from London to Oxford, I have only the most
+indistinct recollection. My engagement book earned many honourable
+scars before I carried it away into my present exile, but for May and
+the first half of June there appears a black, undecipherable smudge
+that my memory tells me should represent a long succession of late
+nights and crowded days. Individual items are blurred out of
+recognition; my general sense of the period is that I pretended to be
+preternaturally young, and was punished by being made to feel
+prematurely old.</p>
+
+<p>It was the busiest part of the London season, and Gladys appeared to
+receive cards for an average of three balls a night on five nights of
+the week. I accompanied her everywhere, growing gradually broken to
+the work and relieved of my more serious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>responsibilities by the fact
+that Philip Roden was too busy at the House to waste his nights in a
+ball-room. We seemed to move in the midst of a stage army, the same
+few hundred men, women, and dowagers reappearing in an endless
+march-past. With the advent of the big hotels, hospitality had changed
+in character since the days when I counted myself a Londoner: there
+was more of it and it was less hospitable. The rising generation, and
+more particularly the female portion of it, seemed to have taken
+matters into its own hands.</p>
+
+<p>Regularly each morning, after a late breakfast, Gladys would set me to
+write a series of common-form letters: "Dear Mr. Blank," I would say,
+"My niece and I shall be so pleased if you will dine with us here
+to-night at 8.30 and go on to Lady Anonym's ball." Then Gladys would
+bring unknowing guest and unknown hostess into communication. "Can I
+speak to Lady Anonym?" I would hear her call down the telephone. "Oh,
+good morning! I say, do you think you could <i>possibly</i> do with another
+man for your ball to-night? Honest? It <i>is</i> sweet of you. Oh, quite a
+nice thing&mdash;Mr. Incognito Blank, 101, Utopia Chambers, St. James.
+Thanks, most awfully. Oh no, not <i>him</i>, he's the most awful stiff;
+this is a dear thing. Well, I would have, only he's only just got back
+to England, he's been shooting big game...."</p>
+
+<p>This was the retail method. In the case of intimate friends, Gladys
+would be encouraged to send in her own list of desirable invitees.
+Because I am old-fashioned and unacquainted with English ways, I trust
+I am not inaccessible to new ideas. I would carry the policy of
+promiscuity to its logical conclusion. An announcement in the <i>Times</i>
+with draft <i>m&eacute;nu</i>, name of band and programme of music&mdash;even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>a
+placard outside Claridge's&mdash;would save endless postage and stationery,
+and could not pack the ball-room tighter than on a dozen occasions I
+remember. Hostesses who believe that numbers are the soul of
+hospitality, could be certain beforehand of the success of their
+efforts; superior young men would continue to remark, "Society gettin'
+very mixed, what?" exactly as they have done ever since I entered my
+first ball-room at the age of seventeen. Everybody, in short, would be
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>We saw a good deal of Sylvia during those weeks, as for reasons of her
+own she would frequently drop in at Pont Street and conduct her share
+of the arrangements over our telephone. Occasionally Gladys would be
+called in as an accomplice, I would hear "Mr. Aintree's" name added to
+Lady Anonym's list, and Gladys would remark with fine carelessness,
+"Oh, just send him the card, if you will; don't bother to say who it
+comes from." The Seraph may have suspected, but he never had
+documentary proof of the originating cause of some of his invitations.</p>
+
+<p>In making our arrangements for Commemoration, I decided to take the
+greater part of my charges to Oxford by road. Robin, of course, was
+still in residence, and Philip promised to come down by the first
+possible train. Gladys, Sylvia, the Seraph, and a <i>pis-aller</i> of
+Robin's named Cynthia Bargrave constituted my flock; we motored
+quietly down to Henley, where we lunched and chartered a houseboat for
+the Regatta, and arrived in Oxford with ample time for the three girls
+to have a comfortable rest before dinner. I made rather a point of
+this, as they were going to have three very tiring days and would
+naturally wish to look their best; moreover, I wanted to roam round
+the town with the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>Even Oxford, that I thought could never alter, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>had changed during my
+years of absence. The little, nameless back-street colleges I would
+gladly sacrifice to the Destroyer, for they serve no purpose beyond
+that of breeding proctors, and I know we counted it an indignity to be
+fined by the scion of a college we had to reach by cab. But the High
+should have been inviolate; there wanted no new colleges breaking
+through its immemorial sides.... Univ. men, standing at their lodge
+gate and looking northward, have told me the High already contains one
+college in excess.</p>
+
+<p>While the Seraph sought out Robin's rooms in Canterbury, I wandered
+through the college&mdash;guiltily, I admit&mdash;looking for traces of a
+popular outbreak that occurred when a ball took place at Blenheim and
+House men asked in vain for leave to attend it. In time I came to my
+own old rooms in Tom, and gazed rather in sorrow than anger at the
+strange new name painted over the door. Twice my fingers went to the
+handle, twice I told myself that "Mr. R.F. Davenant" had as much right
+to privacy as I should have claimed in his place.... I wandered out
+through Tom Gate, across St. Aldates, and down Brewer Street to those
+pleasant digs in Micklem Hall, where I once spent an all-too-short
+twelve months. Then I returned to college, crept furtively back to the
+old familiar door, knocked, listened, entered....</p>
+
+<p>"R.F. Davenant" was far more civil than I should have been at a like
+intrusion. He showed me round the rooms, offered me whisky and
+cigarettes, wanted to know when I had been up, whether I was going to
+the Gaudy.... We were friends in a minute. I liked his fair,
+neatly-parted hair and clean, fresh colouring; I liked his Meissonier
+artist proofs; I liked the way the left back leg of the sofa
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>collapsed unless you underpinned it with a Liddle and Scott. Not a
+thing was changed but the photographs on the mantelpiece. I walked
+over and surveyed them critically. Then one of those things happened
+that convince me an idle Quixotic Providence is watching over my least
+movements: I was staring at the picture of a girl on horseback when he
+volunteered the information that it was his sister.</p>
+
+<p>"Your married sister?" I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know her?"</p>
+
+<p>He fed me on Common-room tea and quarter-pound wedges of walnut cake.
+Joyce was coming up for two of the three balls I was attending, coming
+unprovided with partners to chaperone some girl who had captured her
+brother's wandering fancy. These elder sisters earn more crowns than
+they are ever accorded; it seemed that Joyce who trampled on the world
+would stretch herself out to be trampled on by her heedless only
+brother. I wonder wherein the secret lies.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and dine," suggested Dick Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>I told him of my own party, and lost no time in working the Cumberland
+days with his father for all they were worth. What happened to the
+Seraph I never discovered. As I hurried back to the Randolph for
+dinner, Robin met me with an apology in advance for the dull evening
+before me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fraid you'll have rather a rotten time," he opined. "I wish you had
+let me find you some old snag or other."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be all right, Robin," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"There's sure to be bridge <i>somewhere</i>. Or look here, what about a
+roulette-board? Combine business with pleasure&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be able to amuse myself," I assured him.</p>
+
+<p>Our dinner that night was one of the gayest meals <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>I have eaten; we
+were all expectant, excited, above our usual form&mdash;with the single
+exception of Philip. If I were a woman, I suppose I should notice
+these things; as it was I put his silent preoccupation down to
+overwork. When he approached Robin with other-world gentleness and
+suggested a stroll up St. Giles after dinner "just to keep me company,
+old boy," I ought to have suspected something; but it was not till the
+Seraph, smoking a lonely cigar, murmured something about "<i>Consul
+videat ne respublica detrimentum capiat</i>," that I saw my authority
+over Gladys was being threatened.</p>
+
+<p>The girls had been despatched for their last mysterious finishing
+touches, and we had the hall of the Randolph to ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>"What the deuce ought I to do, Seraph?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>can</i> you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do anything?"</p>
+
+<p>That is the question I always ask myself when I have no definite idea
+what is expected of me.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he'd had the consideration to wait till my brother came back,"
+I grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"These little emotional crises never <i>do</i> wait till we're ready for
+them, do they?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the fulness of the heart...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pardon me, I was not speaking of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shook his head at me.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or
+any one but your own self."</p>
+
+<p>I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.</p>
+
+<p>"No emotional crises have come <i>my</i> way," I protested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>"Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this
+afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my
+chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will
+you...? No! sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"Will I what?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's no business of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Why d'you start talking about it, then? Will I what?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph knocked the ash off his cigar, finished his coffee, and sat
+silent. I repeated my question.</p>
+
+<p>"Well...." he hesitated nervously. "Are you going to propose to her
+to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Seraph!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to&mdash;some time or other...."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"...I was wondering if it would be to-night."</p>
+
+<p>I felt myself growing rather annoyed and uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very good form to talk like this," I said stiffly. "After all,
+she's a friend of yours and mine. A joke's all very well...."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm quite serious!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Seraph, d'you appreciate that I've met the girl once&mdash;a few
+weeks ago&mdash;and once only since she was a child of five?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. And do you remember my telling you what was bringing you back
+to England? Do you remember the impression she made on you that night?
+If you're going to marry her...."</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph, drop it!"</p>
+
+<p>He withdrew into his shell, and we smoked without speaking until I
+began to be sorry for snubbing him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>"I didn't mean to be rude," I said apologetically. "But she's a nice
+girl; I may see her to-night for all I know to the contrary, and this
+coupling of names.... You see my point?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph suddenly developed a nervous, excited earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me give you a word of advice. If you're going to propose to
+her&mdash;oh, all right; if X. is going to propose to her, he'd better do
+it now&mdash;before the crash comes. There's going to be a very big crash;
+she's going down under it. If you&mdash;if X. proposed now, she might be
+got out of the way before it's too late. You&mdash;X. won't like to see the
+woman he's going to marry...."</p>
+
+<p>"X. marries her then?" I asked in polite incredulity. "Oh, he should
+certainly lose no time."</p>
+
+<p>"She may not accept you at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and get your coat, Seraph."</p>
+
+<p>"But she will later."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and get your coat," I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;you don't believe me&mdash;well...."</p>
+
+<p>I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of
+Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I
+have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday
+fortnight?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shook his head without answering.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then," I said decisively.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't know either."</p>
+
+<p>Of course he was right.</p>
+
+<p>"I may not know <i>now</i>," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due
+course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do&mdash;whether it's
+choosing a tie or...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more
+than what's in your own mind."</p>
+
+<p>"You talked about the woman X. was going to <i>marry</i>, not merely
+propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."</p>
+
+<p>"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does she know herself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so
+disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve,
+seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you
+at once."</p>
+
+<p>"You know her mind better than she does?"</p>
+
+<p>As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that
+a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as
+part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you
+wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you
+come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."</p>
+
+<p>I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across
+Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was
+half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated
+and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening
+extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and
+white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>callow
+zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the
+Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H.
+contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.</p>
+
+<p>My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at
+the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various
+inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found
+her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air,
+flushed&mdash;or so I fancied&mdash;and occasionally passing a hand across eyes
+that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her
+to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the
+luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven
+undergraduate generations.</p>
+
+<p>"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said,
+after telling her of my meeting with Dick.</p>
+
+<p>"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,"
+she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So&mdash;for that matter&mdash;have others."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean.
+If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the
+staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"</p>
+
+<p>I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"If you <i>will</i> espouse unpopular political causes," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not complaining! <i>This</i> was nothing to what I've been through in
+the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"</p>
+
+<p>I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I
+used to keep mine. On <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand
+along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I
+used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable
+precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while
+like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I
+said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time
+was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their
+hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as
+I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who
+know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps they don't know you."</p>
+
+<p>"That," I said, "is not very helpful."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know
+me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you expect?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."</p>
+
+<p>It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I
+told her&mdash;what was no more than the truth&mdash;that I owed no allegiance
+to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in
+politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing
+if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise
+question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was
+granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace
+and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of
+hostility.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I
+refuse to mix myself up in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>the miserable business. Friends and
+enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could
+persuade you to accept the <i>fait accompli</i>. You're up against <i>force
+majeure</i>, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why give up at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're striking at an immovable body."</p>
+
+<p>"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it an irresistible force?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight
+of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."</p>
+
+<p>"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern
+hemisphere? Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen
+her since."</p>
+
+<p>"Has her father?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask him."</p>
+
+<p>"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour
+reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this
+week's <i>New Militant</i>, I had such fun writing it."</p>
+
+<p>"What was the rumour?"</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;ell!" Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her
+memory. "Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in
+that, of course; <i>you</i>'ve disappeared before now. Then some one else
+said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the
+suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about
+it; you'd have thought Mr. Rawnsley was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>making a mystery of it.
+However, I wanted to know, so I'm asking the question in the leading
+article. Perhaps he'll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to
+give me a match?"</p>
+
+<p>I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul's good.</p>
+
+<p>"As I say, my law's pretty rusty," I told her in conclusion, "but you
+may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather
+severe."</p>
+
+<p>"Brutally," Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. "But you've got
+to catch your criminal before you can imprison him."</p>
+
+<p>"Or her."</p>
+
+<p>"And you can't catch without evidence."</p>
+
+<p>I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one,
+but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the most banal remark I've ever heard from you," I told her.
+"There never was a criminal yet that didn't think he'd left no traces,
+never one that didn't think he was equal to the strain of sitting
+waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened
+or become reckless&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Which am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither as yet. You'll become reckless, because I don't think you
+know what fear means."</p>
+
+<p>"Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial
+room of the <i>New Militant</i>, will you climb up and see my moderating
+influence at work? If it hadn't been for me, we should have been
+prosecuted over the first number."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that's Mrs. Millington?" I hazarded. An echo of her fiery
+pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson
+and sabotage campaign.</p>
+
+<p>"What's in a name?" Joyce asked sweetly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>"Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there's <i>some one</i> who has to be
+restrained. I tell you you'll be arrested the day after your
+restraining influence is withdrawn...."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce bowed her assent.</p>
+
+<p>"And that will happen when you're invalided home from the front."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce bowed again. "Me that never had a day's illness in my life," I
+heard her murmur.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a new experience, and you'll have it very shortly if I know
+anything of what a woman looks like when she's overworked,
+over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways,
+you're man's inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues
+of life...."</p>
+
+<p>"But this wasn't!" The interruption came quickly in a tone that had
+lost its early banter. "Elsie's case comes on at the end of this week.
+I've been with her, I didn't want to come to-night, but she made
+me&mdash;so as not to disappoint Dick. It's not very pleasant to sit
+watching any one going through.... However, don't let's talk about it.
+You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It's cheap...."</p>
+
+<p>"And so very filling? I'll give no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stop, it's a wonderful index. As long as people give me good
+advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more."</p>
+
+<p>I weighed the remark rather deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"You were nearer being spiteful then than I've ever heard you," I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"But wasn't it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give
+me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph."</p>
+
+<p>"The only three who'll give you anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Among the non-politicals. I've got politicals <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>who'd go through fire
+and water for me," she declared proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those three." She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a
+mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. "My friend,
+you're not suggesting <i>yourself</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm waiting to be asked."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be waste of time. You've not been living your own sinful
+selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came&mdash;it's
+kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six
+months before I could be certain of you."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't get six months."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win
+without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to
+the ball-room?"</p>
+
+<p>I exhibited my unfinished cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"When you're tired of oakum and a plank bed," I began....</p>
+
+<p>"Caught, tried <i>and</i> condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn't
+leave it as late as that."</p>
+
+<p>"The sooner the better."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come as soon as there's a warrant out."</p>
+
+<p>"Promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Faithfully. But there won't be any warrant if the cause succeeds."</p>
+
+<p>"I pray you'll fail," was my fervent answer.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"You've spoilt <i>every</i>thing by that!"</p>
+
+<p>"My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't be separated."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you bet?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything you like!"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The
+flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope
+of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited
+breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that
+moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the
+background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible.
+Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was
+hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun
+gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and
+shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything you like!" she repeated in confident gay challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"I hold you to that."</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it
+once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings
+so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight
+and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt,
+my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of
+those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian
+jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the
+ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold out your hand, Joyce," I said. "No, the other one. There!"</p>
+
+<p>I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table,
+and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>"No good," I said. "You may cut the ring, which would be a pity
+because it's unique; and it's not yours till you've won the wager. Or
+you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too
+... well, anyway, it won't be yours to amputate if I win the bet."</p>
+
+<p>Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take it off, please?"</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>"You said I might fix the wager."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it off, please!" she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me.
+Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well
+when she disapproves.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go back now?" I suggested. "I've finished my cigar."</p>
+
+<p>"A joke may be carried too far," she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I
+remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven witness I'm not joking!" I protested. "Nothing I could say
+would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my
+chance. It's a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you
+separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long
+as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I'm
+backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some
+difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.</p>
+
+<p>"How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I had not considered that.</p>
+
+<p>"Till my death?" I suggested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>"Sooner than that, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as
+she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elated and quite
+deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I'm bound up with the cause more intimately than you
+think," she began with unexpected gentleness. "For&mdash;let me see&mdash;three
+years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and
+I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a
+Suffragan Bishop...."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a proper distinction," I interrupted. "Neither fish, flesh,
+fowl, nor good red herring."</p>
+
+<p>"...and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire."</p>
+
+<p>"But this is where I come in."</p>
+
+<p>"Too late, I'm afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my
+own. I've sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the
+<i>New Militant</i>. I'm living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That
+looks like business, doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and
+mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Living out in the East," I said, "I have learnt the virtue of
+infinite patience."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important
+question unasked.</p>
+
+<p>"When I win my wager," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't."</p>
+
+<p>"Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object
+to the consequences?"</p>
+
+<p>Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>"I've never given the matter a thought," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Subconsciously?" I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, give it a thought now," I begged.</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't make much difference whether I objected or not."</p>
+
+<p>"If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing's a joke in
+questionable taste, I'll take the ring off here and now."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I
+suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes
+were soft and kind.</p>
+
+<p>"I think any girl 'ud be very lucky...." she began. I bowed, and as I
+did so an imp of mischief took possession of her tongue. "...very
+lucky indeed&mdash;to engage your roving affection."</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't what you started to say."</p>
+
+<p>"I never know what I <i>am</i> going to say. That's why I'm so good on a
+platform."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I take the ring off?"</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer to win it in fair fight."</p>
+
+<p>"If you can," I rejoined, as we pressed our way into the bright warmth
+of the ball-room.</p>
+
+<p>My charges appeared to be profiting by my absence. Couple after couple
+floated by with touching heads and dreamy eyes; half-way down the room
+Philip was whispering in Gladys' ear and making her smile; I caught a
+glimpse of Robin and Cynthia; then Sylvia and the Seraph glided past.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they look sweet together?" said Joyce, half to herself, as our
+faces were subjected to a quick, searching glance.</p>
+
+<p>"What about a turn before supper?" I suggested.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>"Am I having it with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to."</p>
+
+<p>We started round the room, half-way through the waltz. Joyce was a
+beautiful dancer, easy, light, and rhythmical. It was too good to
+spoil with talking; I contented myself with one final remark.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," I said, "you may as well start getting used to me."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE SECOND ROUND</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"One sleeps, indeed, and wakes at intervals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We know, but waking's the main part with us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my provision's for life's waking part.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All day, I build, scheme, study and make friends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when night overtakes me, down I lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sooner the better, to begin afresh.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You, the philosopher that disbelieve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That recognise the night, give dreams their weight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be consistent&mdash;you should keep your bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live through the day and bustle as you please.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so you live to sleep as I to wake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To unbelieve as I to still believe?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bedridden,&mdash;and its good things come to me."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Robert Browning</span>: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The Bullingdon Ball took place on the Tuesday night, and Joyce
+returned to town the following morning. Her brother may have mentioned
+the time, or it may have been pure coincidence that I should be buying
+papers and watching the trains when she arrived at the station with
+the girl she was chaperoning. We met as friends and exchanged papers:
+I gave her the <i>Morning Post</i> and received <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>the <i>New Militant</i> in
+return. As the train slipped away from the platform, she waved
+farewell with a carefully gloved left hand. Then Dick and I strolled
+back to the House.</p>
+
+<p>In drowsy, darkened chamber Robin was sleeping the sleep of the just.
+As I voyaged round his rooms, I reflected that undergraduate humour
+changes little through the ages, and in Oxford as elsewhere the
+unsuspecting just falls easy prey to wakeful, prowling injustice. An
+enemy had visited that peaceful home of slumber. Half-hidden by
+disordered bed-clothes, a cold bath prematurely awaited Robin's foot,
+and on his table was spread a repast such as no right-thinking man
+orders for himself after two nights' heavy dancing. Moist, indecorous
+slabs of cold boiled beef, beer for six, two jars of piccalilli and a
+round of over-ripe Gorgonzola cheese, offered piteous appeal to a
+jaded, untasting palate. Suspended from the overmantel&mdash;that soul
+might start on equal terms with body&mdash;hung the pious aspiration&mdash;"God
+Bless our Home."</p>
+
+<p>"Garton, for a bob!" Robin exclaimed when I described the condition of
+his rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Flinging the bed-clothes aside, he fell heavily into the bath,
+extricated himself to the accompaniment of low, vehement muttering
+that may have been a prayer, and bounded across the landing to render
+unto Garton the things that were Garton's. I followed at a
+non-committal distance, and watched the disposal of two pounds of
+boiled beef in unsuspected corners of Garton's rooms. Three slices
+were hidden in the tobacco jar, the rest impartially distributed
+behind Garton's books&mdash;to mature and strengthen during sixteen weeks
+of Long Vacation. Balancing the jug of beer on the door-top&mdash;whence it
+fell and caved in the fraudulent white head of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>a venerable
+scout&mdash;Robin hastened back to his own quarters and sported the oak.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of a touch of lunch on the Cher," he observed,
+exchanging his dripping pyjamas for a dressing-gown and making for a
+window-seat commanding Canterbury Gate, a cigarette in one hand and a
+Gorgonzola cheese in the other. "If you wouldn't mind toddling round
+to Phil and the Seraph and routing the girls out, we might all meet at
+the House barge at one. I'll cut along and dress as soon as I've given
+Garton a little nourishment. I suppose the pickles 'ud kill him," he
+added with a regretful glance at the two-pound glass jars.</p>
+
+<p>I communicated the rendezvous to Philip, threw an eye over the "Where
+is Miss Rawnsley?" article as I crossed the Quad, and dropped anchor
+in the Seraph's rooms. His quaint streak of femininity showed itself
+in the bowls of "White Enchantress" carnations with which the tables
+and mantelpiece were adorned. A neat pile of foolscap covered with
+shorthand characters indicated early rising and studious method. I
+found him working his way through the <i>Times</i> and <i>Westminster
+Gazette</i> for the last three days.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose there is no news?" I said when I had told him Robin's
+arrangements for the day and described the Battle of the Beef.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to-day," he answered. "Have you seen yesterday's <i>Times</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>I had been far too busy with Joyce and my three wards to spare a
+moment for the papers. I now read for the first time that the Prime
+Minister had moved for the appropriation of all Private Members' days.
+The Poor Law Reform Bill would engage the attention of the House for
+the remainder of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>Session, to the exclusion of Female Suffrage and
+every other subject.</p>
+
+<p>"That's Rawnsley's answer to <i>this</i>," I said, giving the Seraph my
+copy of the <i>New Militant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what the answer of the <i>New Militant</i> will be to Rawnsley,"
+he murmured when he had read the article.</p>
+
+<p>"That is for you to say," I told him. "You read the Heavens and
+interpret dreams and forecast the future...."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately I can't."</p>
+
+<p>This was an unexpected point of view.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you if you could?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Would any one go on living if he didn't cheat himself into believing
+the future was not going to be quite as black as the present?"</p>
+
+<p>This was not the right frame of mind for a man who had spent two
+nights dancing with Sylvia&mdash;to the exclusion of every one else, and I
+told him so.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along to the Randolph," he exclaimed impatiently. "To-day,
+to-night; and to-morrow all will be over. I was a fool to come. I
+don't know why I did."</p>
+
+<p>We picked up our hats and strolled into King Edward Street.</p>
+
+<p>"You came because Sylvia invited you," I reminded him. "I heard the
+invitation. Young Rawnsley was not there, but Culling and Gartside
+were, and a dozen more I don't know by name. Any of them might have
+been chosen instead, but&mdash;they weren't. You should be more grateful
+for your advantages, my young friend."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>I linked my arm in his, and tried to find out what was upsetting him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>"You've been having some senseless, needless quarrel with her...." I
+hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>"How can two people quarrel when they've not a single point in common?
+Our lives are on parallel lines, continue them indefinitely and
+they'll never meet. Therefore&mdash;it's a mistake to bring the parallels
+so close together that one can see the other."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I wondered whether he had put his fortune to the test and
+received a rebuff.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Sylvia think your lives are on parallel lines?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What experience or imagination do you think a girl like that's got?
+It never occurs to them that everybody's not turned out of the same
+machine as themselves, with the same ideas, beliefs, upbringing,
+position, means. D'you suppose Sylvia appreciates that she spends more
+money on dress in six months than I earn in a year? Can she imagine
+that I hate and despise all the little conventions that she wouldn't
+transgress for all the wealth of the Indies? The doctrines she's
+learnt from her mother, the doctrines she'll want to teach her
+children&mdash;can she imagine that I regard them as so much witchcraft
+that I wouldn't imperil my soul by asking any sane child to believe?
+I'm an infidel, a penniless, unconventional Bohemian, and she&mdash;well,
+you know the atmosphere of Brandon Court. What's the good of our going
+on meeting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nigel is neither infidel, unconventional, nor Bohemian," I said.
+"Moreover, he stands on the threshold of a big career...."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay," said the Seraph as I paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Nigel was not invited. Gartside may be an infidel if he ever troubles
+to think of such things; he is certainly not penniless or Bohemian. He
+is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>a large-framed, large-hearted hero, with every worldly advantage a
+girl could desire. Gartside was not invited. No more were the others.
+You were."</p>
+
+<p>"She hadn't known me two days; perhaps two days aren't long enough to
+find me out."</p>
+
+<p>"Feminine intuition...." I began.</p>
+
+<p>"Feminine intuition's a woman's power of jumping to wrong conclusions
+quicker than men. Unless you want to get yourself into trouble, you'd
+better not march into Sylvia's presence with a <i>New Militant</i> in your
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him for the reminder, and bequeathed the offending sheet to
+the Martyrs' Memorial. The heavy type of the headline, "Where is Miss
+Rawnsley?" reminded me of our earlier conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't be sorry to get rid of my charges," I remarked. "They're a
+responsibility in these troublous times."</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia's in no danger," he answered with great confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure."</p>
+
+<p>"She's absolutely safe."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me doubtfully, and the confidence died out of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. It's&mdash;just an opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Even if you're right, there's still Gladys," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd forgotten her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a fair mark."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"Though not as good as Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you Sylvia's in no danger."</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you know?" I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you; it's only an opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't express any opinion about Gladys."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>"How could I?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you about Sylvia?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, flushed, opened his lips and shut them again in his old
+tantalising way.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he answered as we entered the Randolph, and walked to
+the end of the hall where the three girls were awaiting us.</p>
+
+<p>Robin had provided an imposing flotilla for our accommodation. His own
+punt was reserved for Cynthia, himself, and the luncheon-baskets; a
+mysterious reconciliation had placed Garton's at the disposal of
+Philip, Gladys, and myself, while Sylvia and the Seraph were stowed
+away in a Canadian canoe, detached by act of sheer piracy from the
+adjoining Univ. barge. We took the old course through Mesopotamia and
+over the Rollers, mooring for luncheon half a mile above the Cherwell
+Hotel. Hunger and a sense of duty secured my presence for that meal
+and tea; in the interval I retired for a siesta. Distance, I find,
+lends enchantment to a chaperon.</p>
+
+<p>It was in my absence that Philip asked Gladys to marry him. On my
+reappearance at tea-time, Robin shouted the news across a not
+inconsiderable section of Oxfordshire. I affected the usual surprise,
+warned Philip that he must await my brother's approval, and shook
+hands with him avuncularly. Then I watched the orgy of kissing that
+seems inseparable from announcements of this kind. A mathematician
+would work out the possible combinations in two minutes, but his
+calculation would, as ever, be upset by the intrusion of the personal
+equation, for Robin kissed Gladys not once, but many times, less with
+a view to welcoming her as a sister than from a reasonable belief that
+such ill-timed assiduity would exasperate her elder brother.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>In time it occurred to some one to make tea, and at six o'clock the
+flotilla started home. Robin ostentatiously transferred me from
+Philip's punt to his own, and with equal ostentation announced his
+intention of starting last so as to round up the laggards. The
+Canadian canoe shot gracefully ahead, and was soon lost to view; a
+fast stream was running, and the boat needed little assistance from
+the paddle. I have no doubt that in the late afternoon sun, and with
+an accompaniment of rippling water gently lapping the sides of the
+boat, time passed all too quickly. Fragments of conversation were
+disinterred for my benefit in the course of the following weeks, to
+set me wondering anew what sympathetic nimbus I must wear that girls
+and boys like Sylvia and the Seraph should unlock their hearts for my
+inspection.</p>
+
+<p>I gather that Sylvia called for the verdict on the success of their
+expedition to Oxford, and that the Seraph found for her, but with
+reluctant, qualified judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not sorry you came?" she asked. "Well, what's lacking? I'm
+responsible for bringing you here; I want everything to be quite
+perfect."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything <i>is</i> perfect, Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Some</i>thing's wrong. You're moody and silent and troubled, just like
+you were the first time we met. D'you remember that night? You looked
+as if you thought I was going to bite you. I don't bite, Seraph. Tell
+me what's the matter, there's still one night more; I want to make you
+glad you came."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't make me gladder than I am. But you can't find roses without
+thorns. I wish we weren't all going back to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>"It's only to London."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but it'll all be different."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, but it <i>will</i> be. These three days wouldn't have been
+so glorious if I hadn't remembered every moment of the time that they
+were&mdash;just three days."</p>
+
+<p>Shipping his paddle, he lay back in the boat and plunged his arms up
+to the elbow in the cool, reedy water. Sylvia roused him with a
+challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"Four days would have bored you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever met the man who <i>was</i> bored by four days of your
+company?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you sometimes fancy you know me better than most?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've known you since Whitsun."</p>
+
+<p>"You've known me since...."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped abruptly. The Seraph lifted a wet hand, and watched the
+water trickling in zigzag rivulets up his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I finish it for you?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what I was going to say."</p>
+
+<p>"You've known me since the day I was born."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you think I was going to say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I stopped in the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd thought out the end."</p>
+
+<p>"Had I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unconsciously?"</p>
+
+<p>A hand waved in impatient protest.</p>
+
+<p>"If it was unconscious, how should I know?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph glanced quickly up at her face, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"True," he answered absently.</p>
+
+<p>"No one could know," she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> knew."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>"Guessed."</p>
+
+<p>For answer he picked up his coat from the bottom of the boat, and
+extracted a closely written sheet of college note-paper. Folding it so
+that only the last line was visible, he handed it her with the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find it there."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia read the line, and gazed in perplexity at her companion.</p>
+
+<p>"But I never <i>said</i> it," she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"You were going to."</p>
+
+<p>She turned the paper over without answering.</p>
+
+<p>"What's on the other side?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph extended an anxious hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't read that!" he implored her. "It's not meant for you to
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why shouldn't I see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may, but not now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's manner had grown suddenly agitated. To gain time, he
+produced a cigarette, but his agitation was betrayed in the trembling
+hand that held the match.</p>
+
+<p>"When we meet again," he answered after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"We meet again to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"When we meet&mdash;after parting."</p>
+
+<p>"We part to dress for dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean a long, serious parting," he replied in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia laughed at his suddenly grave expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Are we going to quarrel?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Seraph?" she asked more gently.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>"We can't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"It takes two to make a quarrel. <i>I</i> don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"We shouldn't&mdash;if we were the only two souls in creation."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia sat silent, fidgeting with a signet ring, and from time to time
+looking questioningly into the troubled blue eyes before her.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you <i>know</i> these things?" she asked at length. "You can't
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Call it guessing, but I was right over the unfinished sentence,
+wasn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, but how do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. It's fancy. Some people spend their lives awake, others
+dreaming." He shrugged his shoulders. "I dream. And sometimes the
+dream's so real that I know it must be true."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't dream we were going to quarrel," she said. "I
+don't want to lose you as a friend."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help
+badly."</p>
+
+<p>Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes
+recovered their disdainful, independent fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I want help?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," was all he could answer. "You will."</p>
+
+<p>Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped
+Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up
+and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly
+through Mesopotamia neither was able&mdash;perhaps neither was willing&mdash;to
+pick up the threads <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>of the conversation where they had been dropped.
+In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade
+of Addison's Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows.
+Sylvia's mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he
+had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"Do we meet and make it up?" she asked with assumed lightness of tone
+as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and
+shot clear into the Isis.</p>
+
+<p>"We meet."</p>
+
+<p>"And make it up?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia!"</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we don't?" The Seraph sat motionless for a moment, and then began
+paddling the boat alongside the barges. "I shall go abroad. I've never
+been to India. I want to go there. And then I shall go on to Japan,
+and from Japan to some of Stevenson's islands in the South Seas. I've
+seen everything else that I want to see."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>He raised his eyebrows and shook his head uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"Burial at sea, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's true."</p>
+
+<p>"There'd be nothing more in life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if we quarrelled and never made it up."</p>
+
+<p>"But if we <i>did</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that'ud make all the difference in the world."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment they looked into each other's eyes: then Sylvia's fell.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to quarrel," she said. "I don't <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>believe we shall, I
+don't see why we need. If we do, I'm prepared to make it up."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if you will be when the time comes," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>We were, with a single, noteworthy exception&mdash;a subdued party that
+night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and
+little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and
+reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed
+an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished
+conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the
+expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and
+the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of
+his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish
+called forth a new simile.</p>
+
+<p>"Pity oysters aren't in season, Toby," he remarked. "Marriage is like
+your first oyster, horrid to look at, clammy to touch, and only to be
+swallowed at a gulp." "Clear soup for me, please. When I'm offered
+thick, I always wonder what the cook's trying to hide. Thick soup is
+like marriage." "Why does dressed crab always remind me of marriage? I
+suppose because it's irresistible, indigestible, and if carelessly
+mixed, full of little pieces of shell." "Capercailzie is symbolical of
+married life: too much for one, not enough for two." "Matrimony is
+like a cigarette before port: it destroys the palate for the best
+things in life."</p>
+
+<p>No one paid any attention to Robin as he rambled on to his own
+infinite contentment: he would probably still be rambling but for the
+arrival of an express letter directed to me in Arthur Roden's writing.
+We were digesting dinner over a cigar in the hall, and after reading
+the letter I took Sylvia <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>and the Seraph aside, and communicated its
+contents. By some chance it was included in a miscellaneous bundle of
+papers I packed up before leaving England, and I have it before me on
+my table as I write.</p>
+
+<p>"Private and Confidential," it began&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p class="sc">"My Dear Toby,"</p>
+
+<p>"If this arrives in time, I shall be glad if you will send me a
+wire to say all is well with Sylvia and the others. We are a
+good deal alarmed by the latest move of the Militants. You will
+have seen that Rawnsley got up in the House the other day and
+moved to appropriate all Private Members' time till the end of
+the Session, in this way frustrating all idea of the Suffrage
+coming up in the form of a Private Member's Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"The Militants have made their counterstroke without loss of
+time. Yesterday morning Jefferson's only child&mdash;a boy of
+seven&mdash;disappeared. We left J. out when we were running over
+likely victims at Brandon: he was away in the <i>Enchantress</i>
+inspecting Rosyth at the time, and I suppose that was how we
+forgot him. We certainly ought not to have done so, as he has
+been one of the most outspoken of the anti-militants.</p>
+
+<p>"The child went yesterday with his nurse to Hyde Park. The
+woman&mdash;like all her damnable kind&mdash;paid no attention to her
+duty, and allowed some young guardsman to sit and talk to her.
+In five minutes' time&mdash;she says it was only five minutes&mdash;the
+child had disappeared. No trace of him has been found.
+Jefferson, of course, is in a great state of worry, but agrees
+with Rawnsley that no word of the story must be allowed to reach
+the Press, and no effort spared to convince the electorate of
+the utter impossibility of considering the claims at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>present
+put forward by the Militants. I am arranging a series of
+meetings in the Midlands and Home Counties as soon as the House
+rises.</p>
+
+<p>"And that reminds me. Rawnsley received a second letter
+immediately after the abduction of J.'s boy, telling him his
+action in respect of Private Members' time had been noted, and
+that he would be given till the end of the month [June] to
+foreshadow an autumn session. There may be an autumn
+session&mdash;that depends on the Committee Stage of the Poor Law
+Bill&mdash;but the Suffrage will not come up during its course, and
+Rawnsley is purposely withholding his announcement till the
+month has turned.</p>
+
+<p>"For the next ten days, therefore, we may hope to be spared any
+fresh attack. After that they will begin again, and as my
+Midland campaign is being announced in the course of this week,
+it is more than probable that the blow may be aimed at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Please shew this letter to Sylvia and the boys, and explain as
+much of the Rawnsley affair as may be necessary to make it clear
+to her. At present she has been told that Mavis is ill in London
+and may have to undergo an operation. Tell her to use the utmost
+care not to stir in public without some competent person to
+escort her. Scotland Yard is increasing its bodyguards, and
+everything must be done to assist them.</p>
+
+<p>"You will, of course, see the necessity of keeping this letter
+private.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="padding-right: 10%;">"Ever yours,</span><br />
+"<span class="sc">Arthur Roden</span>."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>As I gave the letter to Sylvia and the Seraph to read, I will admit
+that my first feeling was one of unsubstantial relief that Joyce had
+been in Oxford <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>when the abduction took place in London. I did not in
+any way condone the offence, I should not have condoned it even had I
+known that she was mainly responsible for the abduction. Independently
+of all moral considerations, I found myself being glad that she was
+out of town at the time of the outrage. The consolation was flimsy. I
+concede that. But it is interesting to me to look back now and review
+my mental standpoint at that moment. I had already got beyond the
+point of administering moral praise and blame: my descent to active
+participation in crime followed with incredible abruptness.</p>
+
+<p>I felt the "Private and Confidential" was not binding against the
+Seraph, as he had been present when Rawnsley described the
+disappearance of Mavis. While he expounded her father's letter to
+Sylvia, I gave its main points to Philip and Robin. The comments of
+the family were characteristic of its various members. Philip shook a
+statesmanlike head and opined that this was getting very serious, you
+know. Robin inquired plaintively who'd want to abduct a little thing
+like him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want any 'competent escort,'" Sylvia exclaimed with her
+determined small chin in the air.</p>
+
+<p>"For less than twenty-four hours," I begged. "I'm responsible for your
+safety till then. After that you can fight the matter out with your
+father."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can look after myself even for the next twenty-four hours."</p>
+
+<p>I assumed my severest manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever seen me angry?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you could frighten me?" she asked with a demure smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm quite sure I couldn't," I answered helplessly. "Seraph, can you
+do anything with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody can do anything with her...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>"Seraph!"</p>
+
+<p>"...against her will."</p>
+
+<p>"That's better."</p>
+
+<p>I struck at a propitious moment.</p>
+
+<p>"When we leave here," I said to the Seraph, "you're to take her hand
+and not let go till you're back in the hotel again. I give her into
+your charge. Treat her...."</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated, and Sylvia interrogated me with a King's Ransom smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Treat her as she deserves," I said. "If she were my wife, ward or
+daughter, I should slap her and send her to bed. So would you, so
+would any man worthy of the name."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you, Seraph?"</p>
+
+<p>He was helping her into her cloak and did not answer the question.
+Suddenly she turned round and looked into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you, Seraph?" I heard her repeat.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall treat you&mdash;as you deserve to be treated," he answered slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not an answer," she objected.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the good of asking him?" I said as the rest of our party
+joined us.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of Joyce I spent large portions of a dull and
+interminably long night smoking excessive cigarettes and leaning
+against a wall to watch the dancers. Towards three o'clock I
+discovered an early edition of an evening paper and read it from cover
+to cover. Canadian Pacifics were rising or falling, and some
+convulsion was taking place in Rio Tintos.</p>
+
+<p>The only other news of interest I found in the Cause List. I remember
+the case of Wylton <i>v.</i> Wylton and Sleabury was down for trial one day
+towards the end of that week.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>A CAUSE C&Eacute;L&Egrave;BRE</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Conventional women&mdash;but was not the phrase tautological?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">George Gissing</span>: "Born in Exile."</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>I always look back with regret to our return to London after
+Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens' house in Cadogan
+Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful,
+light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first
+careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of
+suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old
+alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping
+unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our
+former frank, trustful footing.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time&mdash;not even the Seraph,
+for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back
+over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had
+already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much
+that followed.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that
+characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have
+warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were
+their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of
+demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the
+progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals;
+but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed,
+vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched,
+and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered
+the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the
+suspicions of both belligerents.</p>
+
+<p>Again, the Wylton divorce proved&mdash;if proof were ever needed&mdash;that when
+English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing
+for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure
+themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of
+moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two
+added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much
+unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that
+Quixotism does not pay in England, while I&mdash;well, there is no fool
+like a middle-aged fool.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia's tropical
+intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably
+<i>intrigu&eacute;e</i>, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as
+she might, there was something arresting in his other-world,
+somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were
+too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy
+was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl
+who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt
+that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any
+woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt
+that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated
+the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of
+unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph&mdash;it is clear&mdash;had not responded. I know now&mdash;indeed, I knew
+at the time&mdash;that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his
+receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence
+had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a
+man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism.
+Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy
+she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate
+his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred
+to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and
+their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he
+could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had
+shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford
+absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his
+curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his
+mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped
+short&mdash;for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to
+go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock.
+I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or
+gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.</p>
+
+<p>With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken
+for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were
+always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>running over to the Rodens' or receiving visits from Sylvia
+and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as
+completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the
+information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further
+inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady
+Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an
+intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination
+into his antecedents. "Who <i>is</i> this Mr. Aintree?" I remember her
+asking in her lifeless, faded voice. "Has he any relations? There used
+to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell."</p>
+
+<p>After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out
+to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to
+Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I
+felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am
+glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to
+proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day
+or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but
+away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I
+called in at the club before trying his flat. The Seraph was not
+there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside's
+benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current "Vie
+Parisienne."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?" I heard him inquire
+with feigned admiration. "In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?"
+Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity.
+"'Corruptio optimi pessima!' I wonder ye've the courage to show
+yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph's whereabouts, but the
+question appeared to add fuel to Culling's indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the Seraph?" he exclaimed. "Well ye may ask! His wings are
+clipped, there's a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings
+broken. The Heavenly Choir&mdash;&mdash;" He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of
+foolscap and resumed his normal tone. "This'll be rather good&mdash;the
+Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as
+Gartside here.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To bottomless perdition, there to dwell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why can't the club afford a decent pen?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You're our committeeman, Bob, you're to blame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I always use blank verse for my complaints.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bottomless perdition, there to dwell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In adamantine chains and penal fire.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">John Milton</span>: "Paradise Lost, Liber One."</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the
+Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of
+the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the
+shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had
+been knocked over one eye, and his halo&mdash;in Culling's words&mdash;was "all
+anyhow." As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the
+Seraph's reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for
+enlightenment.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been going on long enough to be getting serious," I was told. "A
+solid week now."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What's</i> been going on?" I exclaimed in despair. "Where are we? Above
+all, where's the Seraph?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the
+day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through
+London <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a
+Gentleman&mdash;well known in Society&mdash;seeking whom he may devour,'" he
+murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And
+it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak
+to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."</p>
+
+<p>I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in
+extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references
+to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed
+tobacco."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married
+a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm
+hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all
+accounts, and Wylton&mdash;well, I expect you've heard some queer stories
+about him, they're all true. After they'd been married&mdash;how long was
+it, Paddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a few years&mdash;by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up
+the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to
+work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being
+horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad
+while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new
+partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his
+actions out of court...."</p>
+
+<p>"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>Culling warmed oratorically to his work.</p>
+
+<p>"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient
+Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided
+business.' Toby, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life
+is a <i>mauvais quart d'heure</i> made up of exquisite week-ends. While
+Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be
+the Hungarian correspondent of the <i>Baptist Family Herald</i>, Mrs.
+Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."</p>
+
+<p>He paused delicately.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls will be girls," sighed Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>"A gay cavalry major, with that way they have in the army, made a
+flying descent on Deauville. He'd been seen about with her in London
+quite enough to cause comment. Good-natured friends asked Wylton why
+he was vegetating in Pesth when he might be in Deauville; he came, he
+saw, he stayed in the self same hotel as his wife...."</p>
+
+<p>"Which curiously enough had been already chosen by the gay cavalry
+major."</p>
+
+<p>Culling shook his head over the innate depravity of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>"You see the finish?" he inquired rhetorically. "They say the senior
+partner in Morgan and Travers had a seizure when Wylton had finished
+the last batch of cases in his own department, and strolled into the
+private office to instruct proceedings for a petition."</p>
+
+<p>"Six days ago, decree nisi was granted," said Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>"Scene in Court: President expressing sympathy with Petitioner,"
+murmured Culling, with quick pencil already at work on the
+blotting-pad.</p>
+
+<p>I lit a cigar to clear my head.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does the Seraph come in?" I persisted like a man with an <i>id&eacute;e
+fixe</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"In the sequel," said Gartside. "There is a right way of doing
+everything, also a wrong. When one is divorced, one hides one's
+diminished head...."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>"I always do," said Culling.</p>
+
+<p>"One grows a beard and goes to live in Kensington. Mrs. Wylton is
+making the mistake of trying to brazen things out. 'You may cut me,'
+she says, 'but ye canna brek me manly sperrit.' Consequently in every
+place where she can be certain of attracting a crowd, Mrs. Wylton is
+to be found in the front row of the stalls, very pretty, very quiet
+and so unobtrusively dressed that you're almost tempted to damn her as
+respectable."</p>
+
+<p>He lit a cigarette and I took occasion to remind him that we had not
+yet come in sight of the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>Culling took up the parable.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she alone?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Sir, she is not! Who
+took her to dinner last night at Dieudonn&eacute;'s, the night before at the
+Savoy, the night before that at the Carlton? Who has been seen with
+her at the Duke of York's, the Haymarket, the St. James'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who rides with her every summer morning in the Park?" cut in
+Gartside. "It is our Seraph. Our foolish Seraph, and we lay at your
+door the blame for his demoralisation. Seriously, Toby, somebody ought
+to speak the word in season. He's getting talked about, and that sort
+of flying in the face of public opinion doesn't do one damn's worth of
+good. The woman's got to have her gruel and take her time over it.
+She'll only put people's backs up by going on as she's doing at
+present. Mind you, I'm sorry for her," he went on more gently. "In her
+place I'd have done precisely the same thing, and I'd have done it
+years ago. But I should have had the sense to recognise I'd got to
+face the consequences."</p>
+
+<p>I wondered for a short two seconds if it would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>be of the slightest
+avail to proclaim my belief in Elsie Wylton's innocence. A glance at
+Culling and Gartside convinced me of the futility.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the Seraph now?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"With her. Any money you like. She lives with her sister in Chester
+Square; you'll find him there."</p>
+
+<p>I sent a boy off to telephone to Adelphi Terrace. Until his return
+with the announcement that the Seraph was still away from home,
+Gartside suggested the lines on which I was to admonish the young
+offender.</p>
+
+<p>"The gay cavalry major's prudently shipped himself back to India," he
+said, "and he was a pretty shadowy figure to most people as it was.
+What the Seraph has to understand is that he'll get all the discredit
+of being an 'and other' if he ties himself to her strings in this way.
+I only give you what everybody's saying."</p>
+
+<p>I promised to ponder his advice, and after being reminded that Gladys
+and I were due at his musical party the following week, and reminding
+him that he was expected to lunch on my house-boat at Henley, we went
+our several ways.</p>
+
+<p>Wandering circuitously round the smoking-rooms and library on my way
+to the hall, I had ample corroboration of what&mdash;in Gartside's
+words&mdash;everybody was saying. The Wylton divorce was the one topic of
+conversation. For the most part, I found Gartside's own tolerance to
+the woman representative of the general feeling in the club: his
+strictures on the folly of the Seraph's conduct had a good many
+echoes, though two men had the detachment to praise his disinterested
+behaviour. Of the rest, those who did not condemn opined that he was
+too young to know any better.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>The one discordant note was struck when I met Nigel Rawnsley in the
+hall. Elsie Wylton was shot hellwards in one sentence and the Seraph
+in another, but the burden of his discourse was reserved for the
+sacramental nature of wedlock and the damnable heresy of divorce. I
+was subjected to a lucid exposition of the Anglican doctrine of
+marriage, initiated into the mysteries of the first three (or three
+hundred) General Councils of the Church, presented with thumbnail
+biographies of Arius and S. Athanasius, and impressed with the
+necessity of unfrocking all priests who celebrated the marriage of
+divorced persons. It was all very stimulating, and I found that half
+my most prosaic friends were living in something that Rawnsley
+damningly described as "a state of sin."</p>
+
+<p>It was tea-time before I arrived at Chester Square. I suppose I had
+never taken Gartside very seriously: the moment I saw Elsie and the
+Seraph, my lot was unconditionally thrown in with the publicans and
+sinners. She greeted me with the smile of a woman who has no care in
+the world: then as she turned to ring the bell for tea, I caught the
+expression of one who is passing through Purgatory on her way to Hell.
+The Seraph's eyes were telegraphing a whole code-book. I walked to the
+window so that she could not see my face, nor I hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in," I said as carelessly as
+I could. "It was tea-time for one thing, and for another I wanted to
+tell you that you've done about the pluckiest thing a woman can do.
+Good luck to you! If there's anything I can do...."</p>
+
+<p>Then we shook hands again, and I found her death-like placidity a good
+deal harder to bear than if she had broken down or gone into
+hysterics. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>do not believe the Davenant women know how to cry:
+Nature left the lachrymal sac out of their composition. Yet on
+reflection I can see now that she was suffering less than in the days
+six weeks before when the anticipation of the divorce lowered
+menacingly over her head and haunted every waking moment. It is
+curious to see how suspense cards down a woman's spirit while the
+shock of a catastrophe seems actually to brace her and call forth
+every reserve of strength. From this time till the day of my departure
+from England, Elsie was indomitable.</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard work at present," she said with a gentle, tired smile, "but
+I'm going through with it."</p>
+
+<p>That was what her father used to say when I climbed with him in
+Trans-Caucasia. He would say it as we crawled and fought and bit our
+way up a slippery face of rock, sheer as the side of a house. And he
+was five and twenty years my senior.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing to-night?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We were trying to make up our minds when you came in," said the
+Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner somewhere, I suppose, and a theatre? What's on, Seraph? I'm
+all alone to-night, and I want you and Elsie to dine with me."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie was sitting with closed eyes, bathing her forehead with scent.</p>
+
+<p>"Make it something that starts late," she said wearily. "I don't feel
+I can stand many hours."</p>
+
+<p>After a brief study of the theatrical advertisements in the <i>Morning
+Post</i> the Seraph went off to make arrangements over the telephone. I
+took hold of Elsie's disengaged hand and tried in a clumsy, masculine
+fashion to pump courage into her tired spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"You must stick it out to the end of the Season," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>I told her. "It's
+only a few more weeks, and then you can rest as long as you like.
+Don't let people think they can drive you into hiding. If you do that,
+you'll lose pride in yourself, and when you lose pride in yourself,
+why should any one believe in you?"</p>
+
+<p>"How many people believe in me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not many. That's why I admire your pluck. But there's Joyce for one."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Joyce," she assented slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"And the Seraph for another."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the Seraph."</p>
+
+<p>"And me for a third."</p>
+
+<p>I felt her trying to draw her hand away.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit&mdash;hard
+hit."</p>
+
+<p>I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing
+erect&mdash;blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired&mdash;she was wonderfully
+like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender
+white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep
+themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or
+untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but
+the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a
+grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to
+conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean.
+I've known three in one generation and one in another."</p>
+
+<p>I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if
+Elsie had had no sister Joyce.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to
+join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I
+found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I
+found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried
+meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or
+fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked
+at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a
+weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short
+to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an an&aelig;mic girl
+of twenty&mdash;a Miss Draper&mdash;with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's
+every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of
+agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after
+coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.</p>
+
+<p>That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I
+believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is
+immaterial; wherever we went we found&mdash;or so it seemed to our
+over-sensitive, suspicious nerves&mdash;a slight hush, a movement of
+turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through
+it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with
+the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled,
+indifferent&mdash;best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought
+actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some
+superiority over man....</p>
+
+<p>We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the
+door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of
+course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two
+months. We bowed to every familiar form, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>the familiar forms bowed
+back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into
+talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....</p>
+
+<p>When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that
+none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without
+running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in
+air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister;
+and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that
+night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of
+any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that
+text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct
+underlying such a belief.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our
+preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill&mdash;and swore a
+private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts,
+and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out&mdash;an unexpected
+party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to
+collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from
+Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had
+eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned
+in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed,
+and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.
+Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened
+itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been
+expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight
+curve. Every one bowed to every one&mdash;Robin with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>his irrepressible,
+instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public
+man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of
+the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her
+cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and
+parted.</p>
+
+<p>The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than
+enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.</p>
+
+<p>"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.
+"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere
+presence of one was distasteful to the other."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me,
+they've got to know my friends."</p>
+
+<p>"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right,
+aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up
+visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather
+uncomfortable."</p>
+
+<p>The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to
+Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much
+publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of
+embarrassment to a private gathering.</p>
+
+<p>I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soir&eacute;e Musicale three nights
+later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from
+under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House
+Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the
+female side of human nature at work.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom
+had led her to dress&mdash;as ever&mdash;in white, and to wear no jewellery but
+pearls. Her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever;
+her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.
+Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the
+compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for
+thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies
+called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I
+liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet
+more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there
+was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was
+wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel
+approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant
+promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to
+spare&mdash;Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one
+who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental
+antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....</p>
+
+<p>They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention,
+preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time
+Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in
+deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him
+to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's
+clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time
+what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men
+otherwise so dissimilar.</p>
+
+<p>With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of
+territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I
+wondered how <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>much it amused her. Not many women can resist the
+age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I
+should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want
+admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the
+first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her
+object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of
+jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this
+were even her motive.</p>
+
+<p>We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a
+word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to
+be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see,
+grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he
+came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening
+that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at
+eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had
+just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the
+room to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing
+three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the
+Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It depends on yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"What must I do?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."</p>
+
+<p>"I usually am."</p>
+
+<p>"With some startling lapses."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not aware of any."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.</p>
+
+<p>"How have you spent the last week?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a variety of ways."</p>
+
+<p>"In a variety of company?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same nearly all the time."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"This is my objection."</p>
+
+<p>"If <i>she</i> doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned
+him to leave the sentence unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've
+no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate
+carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've
+spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in
+company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every
+one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort
+of notoriety...."</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be avoided?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can drop the woman."</p>
+
+<p>"She's none too many friends."</p>
+
+<p>"She's one too many."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot agree."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you put yourself on her level."</p>
+
+<p>"I should be proud to rank with her."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a temper," she remarked with exaggerated indifference, "it's
+never wise for anybody to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>rouse it, and many people would be annoyed
+if you talked to them as you're talking to me. I&mdash;simply don't think
+it's worth it, but can you wonder if I ask you to choose between her
+and me?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's face and voice were grave.</p>
+
+<p>"The choice seems unnecessary," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You must take it from me that I have no wish to be seen about with a
+man who allows his name to be coupled with a woman of that kind."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind, Sylvia?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know my meaning."</p>
+
+<p>"But your meaning is wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean an ugly word for an ugly sin. A woman of the kind that breaks
+the Seventh Commandment."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph began tearing his card in narrow strips.</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie Wylton didn't," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"She told you so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't need telling."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia's expression implored pity on the credulity of man. The Seraph
+was still nervously fingering his card, but no signs of emotion
+ruffled her calm. The face was slightly flushed, but she bent her head
+to hide it.</p>
+
+<p>"Part friends, Seraph," she said at last, "if you're not coming to the
+Carstens'. Think it over, and you'll find every one will give you the
+same advice."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say." He pocketed the torn card and prepared to accompany her.
+"What would you do in my place if you believed the woman innocent?"</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia shirked the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Innocent women don't get into those positions."</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible."</p>
+
+<p>"How can she prove her innocence?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you prove her guilt?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>"I don't attempt to go behind what the Court finds."</p>
+
+<p>At the door the Seraph hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night's only an armistice, Sylvia," he stipulated. "I must have
+time to think. I'm not committed either way."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her old friendly smile.</p>
+
+<p>"If you like." Then the smile melted away. "My ultimatum comes in
+force to-morrow morning, though. You must make up your mind then."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>HENLEY&mdash;AND AFTER</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of
+a disappointed woman."&mdash;<span class="sc">Colley Cibber</span>:
+"Love's Last Shift."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Henley Regatta was something of a disappointment to me. I had
+furbished up the memories of twenty years before&mdash;which was one
+mistake&mdash;and was looking forward to it&mdash;which was another. In great
+measure the glory had departed from the house-boats, every one poured
+into the town by train or car, and the growth of <i>ad hoc</i> riverside
+clubs had reduced the number of punts and canoes on the river itself.
+Being every inch as much a snob as my neighbour, I regretted to find
+Henley so deeply democratised....</p>
+
+<p>I think, in all modesty, my own party was a success. Our houseboat was
+the "Desdemona," a fair imitation of what the papers call "a floating
+hotel": we brought my brother's cook from Pont Street and carried our
+cellar with us from town. And there was a pleasant, assiduous
+orchestra that neither ate nor slept in its zeal to play us all the
+waltzes we had grown tired of hearing in London. A Mad Hatter's
+luncheon started at noon and went on till midnight. Any passing boat
+that liked the "Desdemona's" looks, moored alongside and boarded her:
+no one criticised the food or cigars, many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>dropped in again for a
+second or third meal in the course of the afternoon, and if they did
+not know Gladys or myself, they no doubt had a friend among my guests
+or waiters.</p>
+
+<p>Both those that slept on board and those that visited us at their
+stomachs' prompting were cheery, light-hearted, out to enjoy
+themselves. I admit my own transports were moderated by the necessity
+of having to dance attendance on Lady Roden. The air became charged
+with Rutlandshire Morningtons, and our conversation showed signs of
+degenerating into a fantastic Burke's Auction Bridge. Two earls
+counted higher than three viscounts; I called her out with one
+marquis, she took the declaration away with a duke, I got it back
+again with a Russian prince: she doubled me.... Apart from this, I
+enjoyed myself. All the right people turned up, except Gartside who
+was kept in town discussing Governorships with the India Office.</p>
+
+<p>There were Rodens to right of us, Rodens to left of us: in a field
+behind us, unostentatiously smoking Virginia cigarettes, loitered a
+watchful Roden bodyguard. The Regatta started on July 3rd and on the
+previous day Rawnsley had given the House its time-table. There would
+be no Autumn Session, but the House would sit till the end of the
+third week in August to conclude the Third Reading of the Poor Law
+Bill; no fresh legislation would be introduced. The New Militants had
+their answer without possibility of misconstruction, and the families
+of Cabinet Ministers moved nowhere without a lynx-eyed, heavy-booted,
+plain-clothes escort.</p>
+
+<p>I summoned Scotland Yard out of its damp, cheerless meadow, gave it
+bottled beer and a pack of cards, and told it to treat the "Desdemona"
+as its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>own and to ring for anything likely to contribute to its
+comfort. Though we had never met before and were only to meet once
+again, I felt for those men as I should feel for any one deputed to
+bear up the young Rodens lest at any time they dashed their feet
+against stones....</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was laconic and decisive. She had engaged and defeated her
+father, met and routed her brothers. Any one who guarded her reckless
+person did so at their peril; she declined to argue the point. I fancy
+Lady Roden accepted a detective more or less as part of her
+too-often-withheld due; Philip was constitutional, guided by
+precedent, anxious to help peace and order in the execution of their
+arduous duties. The only active molestation came from Robin: left to
+himself he would have ignored the detectives' very existence, but at
+the fell suggestion of Culling I discovered him whiling away the
+morning by bursting into the guard-room at five-minute intervals with
+hysterical cries of "Save me! Oh, my God! save me!"</p>
+
+<p>The saturnine, enigmatic Michael pursued his own methods. How he had
+escaped from Winchester in the midst of the terminal examinations, I
+never discovered. His telegram said, "What about me for Henley, old
+thing? Michael." I wired back, "Come in your thousands," and he came
+in a dove-grey suit, grey socks and buckskin shoes, grey tie, silk
+handkerchief and Homburg hat. I appreciated Michael more and more at
+each meeting. Of a detached family he was the most detached member.
+Observing me staring a trifle unceremoniously at his neck-tie, he
+produced a note-book and pencil and invited my written opinion. "On
+Seeing my New Tie" was inscribed on the front page, and the
+comments&mdash;so far as I remember the figures&mdash;were:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>(1) "Oh, my God!" (forty per cent.).</p>
+
+<p>(2) "<i>Have</i> you seen Michael's tie?" (forty per cent.).</p>
+
+<p>(3) "Michael <i>darling</i>!" (Sylvia's <i>cri de c&oelig;ur</i>, ten per cent.).</p>
+
+<p>(4) "It's a devilish good tie" (my own verdict, perhaps not altogether
+sincere). (Ten per cent.).</p>
+
+<p>"Come and shew yer ticket o' leave," urged Culling with derisory
+finger outstretched to indicate the forces of law and order.</p>
+
+<p>"No bloody peelers for this child," Michael answered in a voice
+discreetly lowered to keep the offending epithet from his sister's
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed an exchange of glances between Culling and himself, but was
+too busy to think much of it at the time. Eleven minutes later,
+however, the majesty of Scotland Yard had been incarcerated in its own
+stronghold. Culling sat outside their door improvising an oratorio on
+an accordion. "The Philistines are upon thee," I heard him thunder as
+I passed that way. Michael was lying prone on the deck of the
+house-boat, dangling at safe distance the key of the cabin at the end
+of a Japanese umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?</i>" he asked, as an official hand shot
+impotently out of the cabin window. The question may have been
+imperfectly understood.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sanguineos quis custodes custodiet ipsos?</i>" he ventured.</p>
+
+<p>As there was still no answer, common humanity ordained that I should
+possess myself of the key and hold a gaol delivery. The detectives
+were near weeping with humiliation, but I comforted them in some
+measure, won a friendship that was to serve me in good stead, and was
+at length free to resume my duties as host.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>From time to time perfunctory racing took place, without arousing
+either interest or resentment. We all had our own ways of passing the
+time between meal and meal; one would study the teeth and smile of a
+musical-comedy star, another would watch Culling at the Three Card
+Trick, a third would count the Jews on a neighbouring house-boat....
+There was no sign of Elsie or the Seraph, but that was only to be
+expected. He was to provide her with luncheon and publicity at Phyllis
+Court, and give the "Desdemona" a wide berth. Those, at least, were
+his sailing orders if he came; but Elsie had been over-tired and
+over-excited for some weeks past, and I should not have been surprised
+to hear she had stayed in town at the last moment.</p>
+
+<p>It is one thing to set a course, and another to steer it&mdash;of Henley
+this is probably truer than of any other stretch of water in the
+world. When half the punts are returning from island to post after
+luncheon, and the other half paddle down stream to look at the
+house-boats, the narrow water midway between start and finish becomes
+hopelessly, chaotically congested. One or two skiffs and
+dinghies&mdash;which should never be allowed at any regatta&mdash;make confusion
+worse confounded till a timely collision breaks their sculls, or the
+nose of a racing punt turns them turtle; and with the closing of the
+booms, three boats begin to sprout where only one was before.</p>
+
+<p>Through a forest of dripping paddles, I watched punt, dinghy and canoe
+fighting, pressing, yielding; up-stream, down-stream, broad side on,
+they slid and trembled like a tesselated pavement in an earthquake.
+The fatalists shipped their poles and paddles, and abandoned
+themselves to the line of least resistance. Faces grew flushed, but
+tempers remained creditably even....</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>"Mary, mother of God! it's our sad, bad, mad Seraph!"</p>
+
+<p>Having exhausted the possibilities of the Three Card Trick, and being
+unable to secure either a pea or two thimbles, Paddy Culling had
+wandered to my side and was watching the crowd like a normal man.</p>
+
+<p>I followed the direction of his eyes. The Seraph had turned fatalist
+and was being squeezed nearer and nearer the "Desdemona." A last
+vicious thrust by a boatload of pierrots jammed the box of his punt
+under our landing-stage. He waved a hand to me and began distributing
+bows among my guests.</p>
+
+<p>"Droppit sthraight from Hiven," cried Culling with unnecessary
+elaboration of his already strong brogue. "The tay's wet, Mrs. Wylton,
+and we waiting for some one would ask a blessing. Seraph, yer
+ambrosia's on order."</p>
+
+<p>They would not leave the punt, but we brought them tea; and a fair
+sprinkling of my guests testified to the success of our last few
+weeks' campaign by coming down to the raft and being civil to Elsie.
+There was, of course, no commotion or excitement of any kind; of those
+who lingered on deck or in the saloon, fully half, I dare say, were
+unconscious of what was going on below. Such was certainly the case
+with Sylvia. While Paddy and I served out strawberries to the crew of
+the punt, she had been washing her hands for tea, and as we crowned a
+work of charity with a few cigars and a box of matches, she came out
+onto the raft for assistance with the clasp of a watch-bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>Paddy volunteered his services, I looked on. Her eyes travelled idly
+over the crowded segment of river opposite my boat, and completed
+their circuit by resting on the punt and its occupants. Elsie bowed
+and received a slight inclination of the head <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>in return. The Seraph
+bowed, and was accorded the most perfect cut I have ever witnessed.
+Sylvia looked straight through him to a dinghy four yards the other
+side. It was superbly, insolently done. I have always been too lazy to
+cultivate the art of cutting my friends, but should occasion ever
+arise, I shall go to Sylvia for the necessary tuition.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the congestion was in some measure relieved, the Seraph
+waved good-bye to me and started paddling up stream towards Henley
+Bridge. Elsie had seen all that was to be seen in the cut,
+and&mdash;womanlike&mdash;had read into it a variety of meanings.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you're not tired," the Seraph said, as they landed and walked
+down to the station.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a lovely time," she answered. "Thanks most awfully for
+bringing me, and for all you've done these last few weeks. And before
+that." She hesitated, and then added with a regretful smile, "We must
+say good-bye after to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet; but you've got into enough trouble on my account without
+losing all your friends," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But I haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"You're risking one."</p>
+
+<p>"On your account?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>He had not the brazenness to attempt a direct denial.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you think so?" he hedged.</p>
+
+<p>"Seraph, dear child, I couldn't help seeing the way she took your bow.
+I got you that cut."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't cut Toby," he objected. "And he and I are equally
+incriminated."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>"She's quite indifferent how much <i>he</i> soils his wings."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph was left to digest the unspoken antithesis. His face
+gradually lost the flush it had taken on after their encounter at the
+raft, his eyes grew calmer and his hands steadier; on the subject of
+their contention, however, he remained impenitent.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't say good-bye till you honestly tell me you don't want to see
+me again."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I can't say that, Seraph."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then."</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't! The good you do me is simply not worth the harm you do
+yourself. It didn't matter so much till Sylvia came to be reckoned
+with."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shifted impatiently in his corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither Sylvia Roden nor any other woman or man in the world is going
+to dictate who I may associate with, or who I mayn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You must make an exception to the rule in her case."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every man has to make an exception to every rule in the case of one
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>His chin achieved an uncompromising angle.</p>
+
+<p>"To quote the Pharisee of blessed memory," he said, "I thank God I am
+not as other men."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie was well enough acquainted with his moods to know nothing was to
+be gained by further direct opposition.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like you to come to Chester Square," she compromised; "but
+you mustn't be seen with me in public any more."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall ride in the Park to-morrow as usual," he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't be there, Seraph."</p>
+
+<p>A surprise was awaiting me when Gladys and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>I returned to Pont Street
+in the early hours of Sunday morning, after waiting to see the
+fireworks&mdash;by immemorial tradition&mdash;extinguished by a tropical
+downpour. Brian notified me by wireless that he was on his way home
+and halfway through the Bay. He was, in fact, already overdue at
+Tilbury, but had been held up while the piston of a high-compression
+cylinder divested itself of essential portions of its packing.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's going to tell him about Phil?" Gladys asked in consternation
+when I read her the message. We were getting on so comfortably without
+my brother that I think the natural affection of us both was tinged
+with resentment that he was returning by an earlier boat than he had
+threatened.</p>
+
+<p>"As you are the offender," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"You were responsible for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not leave it to Phil?" I suggested, with my genius for
+compromise.</p>
+
+<p>"That's mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, will you tell him yourself? No! I decline to be mixed up in it.
+I shan't be here. The day your parents land, I shall shift myself bag
+and baggage to an hotel. Isn't the simplest solution to break off the
+engagement? Well, you're very hard to please, you know."</p>
+
+<p>I really forget how we settled the question, but the news was
+certainly not broken by me. The Seraph dropped in to dinner on the
+last night of my guardianship, and I asked him whether he thought I
+could improve on the Savoy as my next house of entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're coming to stay with <i>me</i>," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, you've no experience of me as a guest. I don't know
+how long I'm staying in London."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>"The longer the better, if you don't mind roughing it."</p>
+
+<p>I knew there would be no "roughing it" in his immaculate mode of
+living, but the question was left undecided for the moment as I really
+felt it would be better for us both to run independently. Ten weeks of
+domesticity shared even with Gladys gave me a sensation of clipped
+wings after my inconsiderate, caravanserai existence, and&mdash;without
+wishing to be patronising&mdash;I had to remember that he was a man of very
+moderate means and would feel the cost of housing me more than I
+should feel it myself. The following afternoon I called round at
+Adelphi Terrace to acquaint him with my decision, but something seemed
+to have upset him; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window and I
+had not the heart to bother him with my own ephemeral arrangements. At
+the door of the flat his man apologetically asked my advice on the
+case; his master was eating, drinking, and smoking practically
+nothing, wandering about his room instead of going to bed, and gazing
+out into space instead of his usual daily writing.</p>
+
+<p>I thought over the symptoms on my way to the Club, and decided to
+employ a portion of the afternoon in playing providence with Sylvia.
+It is a part for which I am unfitted by inclination, instinct,
+experience, and aptitude.</p>
+
+<p>Some meeting of political stalwarts was in progress when I arrived at
+Cadogan Square, but I was mercifully shewn into Sylvia's own room and
+allowed to spend an interesting five minutes inspecting her books and
+pictures. They formed an illuminating commentary on her character. One
+shelf was devoted to works of religion, the rest to lives and
+histories of the world's great women. Catherine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>of Siena marched in
+front of the army, Florence Nightingale brought up the rear; in the
+ranks were queens like Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia, and Joan of
+Arc, the great uncrowned; writers from Madame de S&eacute;vign&eacute; to George
+Eliot, actresses from Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry, artists like Vig&eacute;e le
+Brun, reformers like Mary Woolstonecraft. It was a catholic library,
+and found space for Lady Hamilton among the rest. My inspection was
+barely begun when the door opened and Sylvia came in alone.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis sweet of you to come," she said. "Have you had tea? Well, d'you
+mind having it here alone with me? I'm sure you won't want to meet all
+father's constituents' wives. I hope I wasn't very long."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt it seemed longer than it was," I answered. "Still, I've had
+time to look at some of your books and make a discovery about you. If
+you weren't your father's daughter, you'd be a raging militant."</p>
+
+<p>From the sudden fire in her eyes I thought I had angered her, but the
+threatening flame died as quickly as it had arisen.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something in heredity after all, then," she said with a
+smile. "Do I&mdash;look the sort of person that breaks windows and burns
+down houses?"</p>
+
+<p>So far as looks went the same question might have been asked of Joyce
+Davenant. That I did not ask it was due to a prudent resolve to keep
+my friendship with Rodens and Davenants in separate watertight
+compartments.</p>
+
+<p>"You look the sort of person that has a great deal of ability and
+ambition, and wants a great deal of power."</p>
+
+<p>"Without forgetting that I'm still a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of the militants are curiously feminine."</p>
+
+<p>"'Curiously,' is just the right adverb."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>"Joan of Arc rode astride," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"Florence Nightingale didn't break windows to impress the War Office."</p>
+
+<p>"As an academic question," I said, "how's your woman of personality
+going to make her influence effective in twentieth-century England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you met many women of personality?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fair sprinkling."</p>
+
+<p>"So I have; you could feel it as if they were mesmerising you, you had
+to do anything they told you. But they'd none of them votes."</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of tea turned our thoughts from politics, and at the end
+of my second cup I advanced delicately towards the purpose of my call.</p>
+
+<p>"You like plain speaking, don't you, Sylvia?" I began.</p>
+
+<p>"As plain as you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're not treating the Seraph fairly."</p>
+
+<p>I leant back and watched her raising her little dark eyebrows in
+amused surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Has he sent you here?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I came on my own blundering initiative," I said. "I don't know what
+the trouble's about."</p>
+
+<p>"But whatever it is, I'm to blame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia was delighted. "If a man doesn't think highly of women I do
+like to hear him say so!"</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact I'm not concerned to apportion blame to either of
+you. You're both of you abnormal and irrational; as likely as not
+you're both of you wrong. I wanted to tell you something about the
+Seraph you may not have heard before."</p>
+
+<p>In a dozen sentences I told her of my first meeting with him in
+Morocco.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks to you," I said, "he's pretty well got over it. Remember that
+I saw him then, and you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>didn't; so believe me when I tell you he was
+suffering from what the novelists call a 'broken heart.' He won't get
+over it a second time."</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure it was broken?" she asked dispassionately. "Um. It sounds
+to me like a dent; press the other side, the dent comes out."</p>
+
+<p>I produced a cigarette case, and flew a distress signal for
+permission.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like you to be serious about this," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I? Where do I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>I searched vainly for matches, and eventually had to use one of my
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"He's in love with you," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia dealt with the proposition in a series of short sentences
+punctuated by grave nods.</p>
+
+<p>"Gratifying. If true. Seems improbable. Irrelevant, anyway. Unless I
+happen to be in love with him."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not born yesterday," I reminded her. "Or the day before."</p>
+
+<p>"You might have been."</p>
+
+<p>I bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, you're so deliciously young. Do you usually go about talking
+to girls as you've been talking to me?"</p>
+
+<p>I buttoned up my coat, preparatory to leaving. "Being a friend of you
+both," I said, "if a word of advice&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you haven't given it."</p>
+
+<p>Literally, I suppose that was true.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if your generosity's greater than your pride, you can apologise
+to him: if your pride's greater than your generosity, waive the
+apology and sink the past. I've a fair idea what the quarrel's about,"
+I added.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>"I see." Sylvia brought flippancy into her tone when speaking of
+something too serious to be treated seriously: the flippancy was now
+ebbing away, and leaving her implacable and unyielding. "Is there any
+reason why I should do anything at all?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I stretched out my hand to bid her good-bye. "I've not done it well,"
+I admitted, "but the advice was not bad, and the spirit was really
+good."</p>
+
+<p>"Admirable," she answered ironically. "I should be glad of such a
+champion. Have you given <i>him</i> any advice?"</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you suggest?"</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia knelt on the edge of a sofa, clasping her hands lazily behind
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I ride in the Park every morning," she began. "I ride alone because I
+prefer to be alone. My father objects, and Phil doesn't like it,
+because they don't think it's safe. I think I'm quite capable of
+taking care of myself, so I disregard their objection. Your friend
+also rides in the Park every morning, sometimes with a rather
+conspicuous woman and the last few mornings alone. I don't know
+whether it's design, I don't know whether it's chance&mdash;but he rides
+nearer me than I like."</p>
+
+<p>I waited for her to point the moral, mentioning incidentally that
+England was a free country and the Park was open to the public.</p>
+
+<p>"He may have the whole of it," she answered, "except just that little
+piece where I happen to be riding at any given moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you can't keep him out of even that."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes broke into sudden blaze. "I can flog him out of it as I'd
+flog any man who followed me when I forbade him."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing more to be said, but I said it as soon as I dared.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>"We're friends, Sylvia?" She nodded. "And I can say anything I please
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one can do that."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything in reason? Well, it's this&mdash;you're coming a most awful
+cropper one of these fine days, my imperious little queen."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do. You're half woman, and half man, and half angel, and
+three-quarters devil."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia had been counting the attributes on her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"When I was at school," she interrupted, "they taught me it took only
+two halves to make a whole."</p>
+
+<p>"I've learnt a lot since I left school. One thing is that you're the
+equivalent of any three ordinary women. Now I really am going. Queen
+Elizabeth, your most humble servant."</p>
+
+<p>Her hand went again to the bell, but I was ready with a better
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a graceful act if you offered to show me downstairs," I
+said. "It'll be horribly lonely going down two great long flights all
+by myself."</p>
+
+<p>She took my arm, led me down to the hall, and presented me with my hat
+and stick.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you walking?" she asked as we reached the door. "If not, you may
+have my private taxi. Look at him." She pointed to an olive-green car
+at the corner of the Square. "I believe I must have made a conquest,
+he's always there, and whenever I'm in a hurry I can depend on him. I
+think he must refuse to carry any one else. It's an honour."</p>
+
+<p>I ran through my loose change, and lit upon a half-sovereign, which I
+held conspicuously between thumb and first finger.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll carry me," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>"Will you bet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, if you offer to buy the car!"</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't the courage of your convictions," I said severely.
+"Good-bye, Queen Elizabeth."</p>
+
+<p>It was well for me she declined the wager. I walked to the corner and
+hailed the taxi; but the driver shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Engaged, sir," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your flag's up," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"My mistake, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Nonchalantly pulling down the flag, he retired behind a copy of the
+<i>Evening News</i>. I was sorry, because his voice was that of an educated
+man, and I am always interested in people who have seen better days;
+they remind me of my brother before he was made a judge. I had only
+caught a glimpse of dark eyes, a sallow complexion and bushy black
+beard and moustache. England is so preponderatingly clean-shaven that
+a beard always arouses my suspicions. If the wearer be not a priest of
+the Orthodox Church, I like to think of him as a Russian nihilist.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner the following night I mentioned to the Seraph that I had
+run across Sylvia, and hinted that his propinquity to her in the Park
+each day was not altogether welcome.</p>
+
+<p>"So she told me this morning," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wouldn't mind my handing on an impression for what it
+was worth," I added with vague floundering.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all. I shall go there just the same, though."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll annoy her."</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "That's as may be. This is not
+the time for her to be running any unnecessary risks."</p>
+
+<p>"You can hardly kidnap a grown woman&mdash;on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>horseback&mdash;in broad
+daylight&mdash;in a public park," I protested.</p>
+
+<p>"The place is practically deserted at the hour she rides."</p>
+
+<p>The following day the Seraph rode as usual. Sylvia entered the Park at
+her accustomed time; saw him, cut him, passed him. For a while they
+cantered in the same direction, separated by a hundred and fifty
+yards; then the Seraph gradually reduced the distance between their
+horses. His quick eyes had marked a group of men moving furtively
+through a clump of trees to the side of the road. Their character and
+intentions will never be known, for Sylvia abruptly drew
+rein&mdash;throwing her horse on his haunches as she did so&mdash;then she
+turned in her own length, and awaited her gratuitous escort. The
+Seraph had to swerve to avoid a cannon. As he passed, her hand flashed
+up and cut him across the face with a switch; an instinctive pull at
+the reins gave his horse a momentary check and enabled her to deal a
+second cut back-handed across his shoulders. Then both turned and
+faced each other.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia sat with white face and blazing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a switch to-day, and it will be a crop to-morrow," she told
+him. "It seems you have to be taught that when I say a thing I mean
+it."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph bowed and rode away without answering. Physically as well
+as metaphorically he was thin-skinned, and the switch had drawn blood.
+Three weeks passed before his face lost the last trace of Sylvia's
+castigation. A purple wale first blackened and then turned yellowish
+green. When I saw him later in the day, his face was swollen, and the
+mark stretched diagonally from cheekbone to chin, crossing and cutting
+the lips on its way. He gave me the story quietly and without
+rancour.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>"I can't go again after this," he concluded, "but somebody ought to.
+If you've got any influence with her, use it, and use it quickly. She
+doesn't know&mdash;you none of you know&mdash;the danger she's in at present!"</p>
+
+<p>He jumped up to pace the room in uncontrollable nervous excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"What's going to happen, Seraph?" I asked, in a voice that was
+intended to be sympathetic, sceptical, and pacifying at one and the
+same moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;but she's in danger&mdash;I know that&mdash;I know that&mdash;I'm
+certain of that&mdash;I know that."</p>
+
+<p>His overstrung nerves betrayed themselves in a dozen different ways.
+It occurred to me that the less time he spent alone in his own society
+the better.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see if I can do anything," I said in off-hand fashion.
+"Meantime, I dropped in to know if your invitation held good for a bed
+under your hospitable roof-tree."</p>
+
+<p>"Delighted to have you," he answered; and then less conventionally,
+"it's very kindly intended."</p>
+
+<p>"Kindness all on <i>your</i> side," I murmured, pretending not to see that
+he had plumbed the reason for my coming.</p>
+
+<p>The old, absent thought-reading look returned for an instant to his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"All my razors are on my dressing-table," he said. "Don't hide them. I
+shan't commit suicide, but I shall want to shave. I never keep
+firearms."</p>
+
+<p>I had intended to supervise my removal from Pont Street in person; on
+reflection I thought it would be wiser to send instructions over the
+telephone, and give the Seraph the benefit of my company for what it
+was worth.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE THIRD ROUND</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">"When we two parted<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">In silence and tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i9">Half broken-hearted<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">To sever for years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i9">Pale grew thy cheek and cold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Colder thy kiss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i9">Truly that hour foretold<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Sorrow to this."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Lord Byron</span>: <i>When We Two Parted</i>.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Though the flat in Adelphi Terrace became my home from this time until
+the end of my residence in England, I saw little of the Seraph for the
+week following my change of quarters. I think he liked my company at
+meals, and whenever we were together I certainly worked hard to
+distract his mind from the unhappy quarrel with Sylvia. But I will not
+pretend that I sat by him day and night devising consolatory speeches;
+I am no good at that kind of thing, he would have seen through me, and
+we should speedily have got on one another's nerves. For the first day
+or two, then, I purposely measured out my companionship in small
+doses; later on, when he had got used to my presence, I became more
+assiduous. Those were the days when I could see reflected in his eyes
+the fast approaching nightmare of his dreams.</p>
+
+<p>My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the
+curious journal he had started at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>Brandon Court and continued in
+Oxford. I called&mdash;and still call&mdash;it the third volume of Rupert
+Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for
+though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same,
+and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the
+great tragedies of the book-world that&mdash;at least in his life-time&mdash;the
+third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion&mdash;for
+what that is worth&mdash;it is the finest work Aintree has ever
+accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to
+withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was
+allowed to read the manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the
+flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander
+into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when
+I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as
+each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it
+were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind
+at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was
+describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my
+imagination to browse on the significance of each successive
+"soul-brush." Yet&mdash;I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing!
+His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I
+had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and
+gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like
+Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a
+later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse
+and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth
+dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>of
+two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls
+stripped bare&mdash;I am not sure that I wish to repeat it&mdash;there comes a
+point where a painful "study of mankind is man."</p>
+
+<p>While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant.
+Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a
+certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since
+Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication
+between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable&mdash;though
+I say it in no carping spirit&mdash;that Philip sought my company a shade
+less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys.
+Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie
+adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in
+company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was
+impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's
+resentment.</p>
+
+<p>The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it
+came to be relieved&mdash;to his honour be it said!&mdash;by Gartside. I gave
+him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at
+dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I
+knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave
+offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with
+the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled
+himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most
+sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want
+of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure
+that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to
+confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated
+him seriously; but with Gartside it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>different. At a time when
+Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of
+the India Office&mdash;and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood
+high on the list of possible successors&mdash;it required some courage to
+incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did
+incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting
+the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect
+Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a
+little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time
+when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am
+not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her
+house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning
+to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that
+nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as
+recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration
+of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the
+head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she
+was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our
+meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard
+me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my
+vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My
+foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher
+would only have involved me in a headlong fall.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the
+attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but
+would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>and
+theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do,
+would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I
+had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I
+managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was
+shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was
+standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.</p>
+
+<p>"I've run you to earth at last," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was
+looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and
+under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been
+there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny
+flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as
+children smile in their sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the
+head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."</p>
+
+<p>I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned
+with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you been doing to get yourself into this state?" I asked
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Working."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are!" I said. "Something always happens when people take to
+work. I shall now read you a short lecture on female stamina."</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure you wouldn't prefer to smoke?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can do both."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's not fair."</p>
+
+<p>Joyce Davenant and Sylvia Roden have only two characteristics in
+common; one is that I am very fond of both, the other, that I can do
+nothing with either. I capitulated, and selected a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>"A live dog's worth a good many dead lions," I reminded her as a final
+shot.</p>
+
+<p>"Are <i>you</i> trying to convince me of the error of my ways?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not your Suffragan Bishop," I answered in the tone Robert
+Spencer adopted in telling a surprised House of Commons that he was
+not an agricultural labourer.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad. I couldn't bear an argument to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The effort she had made on my arrival had spent itself, and I was not
+at all certain whether I ought to stay.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," I said, "if you're too tired to see me, I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, don't!" she laid a restraining hand on my sleeve. "I'm all
+right if you don't argue or use long words; but I've had such a
+headache the last few days that I haven't been able to sleep, and now
+I don't seem able to fix my attention properly, or remember things."</p>
+
+<p>I had met these symptoms before; the first time in India with men who
+were being kept too long at work in the hot weather.</p>
+
+<p>"In other words, you want a long rest."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I simply can't. I've put my hand to the plough, and you know what we
+are. Obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes, the whole family of us. I've got
+other people to consider, I mustn't fail them."</p>
+
+<p>"And the benighted, insignificant people who don't happen to be your
+followers? Some of them may cherish a flickering interest in your
+existence."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! they don't count."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Joyce."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>She held out a pacifying hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be
+ungracious. But those women&mdash;&mdash; You know, you get rather attached to
+people when you've spoken and fought and been imprisoned side by side
+with them. I always feel rather mean; any one of them 'ud die for me,
+and I'm not at all sure I'd do the same for them. Everything's been
+different since Elsie got her freedom; it's easier to fight for a
+person than a principle."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you weakening?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! No! I'm just showing you I should be honour-bound to stand
+by my fellows even if I lost all faith in the cause. I say, don't go
+on smoking cigarettes; ring the bell and make Dick give you a cigar.
+He's in the house somewhere. I heard him come in a few minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I came to see you," I pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm dreadfully poor company to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I take you as I find you, in sickness and health, weal and woe&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Merivale!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was very stern.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember our wager?" I said, with a shrug of the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a joke," she retorted. "And not in very good taste. Oh, I was
+as much to blame as you were."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was quite serious."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you seriously think I should give up the Cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"I offered very long odds. A twopenny ring&mdash;but you remember what they
+were."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you any nearer winning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Because we haven't answered Mr. Rawnsley's time-arrangements in the
+House?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>"Oh, I've no doubt the reply has been posted."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded significantly. "And they haven't found their hostages yet."</p>
+
+<p>"But they've paid no ransom."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an indurance test."</p>
+
+<p>I got up to find myself a match. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of
+her left hand, wearing the scarab-ring; it disappeared for a moment,
+and to my surprise reappeared without the ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we call the bet off?" she suggested. "It was all rather
+silly."</p>
+
+<p>"Odds offered and taken and horses running. It's too late now. How did
+you find out the secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't. My finger shrank and the ring came off three days ago when
+I was washing my hands."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't pull?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Show me."</p>
+
+<p>"It was like this," she began, slipping the ring back on to the third
+finger. "Rather loose&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I tightened the couplings before she saw what I was about.</p>
+
+<p>"That's soon remedied. Come to me when the finger's nice and plump
+again, and I'll let it out."</p>
+
+<p>A shadow of annoyance crossed her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I shall have it cut," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You could have had that done three weeks ago. You could have thrown
+the thing away three days ago. You didn't do either."</p>
+
+<p>A smile dimpled its way into her cheeks. "How old are you? Over
+forty?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a way of looking at things!" I exclaimed. "Marlborough was fifty
+before he started his campaigns, Wren nearer fifty than forty before
+ever he put pencil to paper. You don't know the possibilities of
+virgin soil."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>"I was wondering how long it was since you left school."</p>
+
+<p>I got up and dusted the flecks of cigarette ash from my shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going now," I said. "It's time you were in bed. Just one word
+before I go. You want to win this wager, don't you? So do I. Well, if
+you don't give yourself a holiday, you're going to break down and lose
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Smiling mischievously, she got up and took my proffered hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be an ill-wind, then&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the wager!" I burst out. "I don't want to win it at that price.
+Joyce, if I say I'm beaten, will you be a good girl and go to bed and
+stay there? Win or lose, I can't bear to see you looking as ill as you
+are now."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head a little sadly. "I can't take a holiday now."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll lose the wager."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up swiftly into my face, and lowered her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I mind that much."</p>
+
+<p>"Joyce!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't take a holiday," she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the door, and on the threshold waved my hand in farewell.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you wait till Elsie comes back?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait for no one."</p>
+
+<p>"But where are you off to?"</p>
+
+<p>I scratched my chin, as one does when one wishes to appear reflective.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to break the Militant Suffrage Movement."</p>
+
+<p>"A good many people have failed," she warned me.</p>
+
+<p>"They never tried."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>"How will you begin?"</p>
+
+<p>I walked downstairs thoughtfully, weighed Dick's tall hat in the
+balance, and decided in favour of my own.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no idea," I called back to the figure at the stair-head.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph had marked his confidence in me by the bestowal of a
+latch-key. I let myself in at Adelphi Terrace and wandered round the
+flat in search of him. He was not in the library or dining-room, but
+at length I discovered him in pyjamas sitting in the balcony outside
+his bedroom, and gazing disconsolately out over the river. He knew
+where I had been before I had time to tell him, and was able to make a
+fairly accurate guess at the nature of my conversation with Joyce.
+Perhaps there was nothing very wonderful in that, but it fitted in
+with the rest of his theory: I remember he summarised her mental
+condition by saying that a certain sub-conscious idea was coming to be
+consciously apprehended. It was a cumbrous way of saying that both
+Joyce and I had made rather an important discovery; what puzzled me
+then, and puzzles me still, is that at my first meeting with her
+either of us should have given him grounds for forming any theory at
+all. Even admitting that I may have been visibly impressed, I could
+see no response in her; but I have almost given up trying to
+understand the Seraph's mind or mode of thought.</p>
+
+<p>"You've not got her yet," he warned me.</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows that better than I do."</p>
+
+<p>"Her mind's still very full of her cause."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, damn it."</p>
+
+<p>"Almost as full of it as of you. She's torn between you, and you'll
+have to fight if you want to keep your foothold."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>I told him, as I had told Joyce, that I proposed to break the Suffrage
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might be able to help. What <i>is</i> going to be the end of
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head moodily, and picked up a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a prophet."</p>
+
+<p>"You've prophesied to some purpose before now," I reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>He paused to look at me with the cigarette in one hand and a lighted
+match in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Guesswork," I heard him murmur.</p>
+
+<p>"But it worked out right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coincidence."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> don't think that."</p>
+
+<p>"I may think the world's flat if it amuses me," he answered, blowing
+out the match.</p>
+
+<p>The abruptness of his tone was unusual.</p>
+
+<p>"What's been worrying you, Seraph?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>I lay back in my chair and looked him up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"You've forgotten to light your cigarette," I pointed out. "You're
+shaking as if you'd got malaria, and wherever your mind may be, it's
+not in this room and it's not attending to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he apologised, sitting down. "I'm rather tired."</p>
+
+<p>To belie his words he jumped up again and began pacing feverishly up
+and down before the open balcony window.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's hear about it," I urged.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't do any good."</p>
+
+<p>"Let <i>me</i> judge of that."</p>
+
+<p>He paused irresolutely and stood leaning his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>head against the frame
+of the window and looking out at the flaming sky-signs on the far side
+of the river.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't do any good," he repeated over his shoulder. "Nobody 'ud
+believe you, but&mdash;I don't know, you might try. She must be warned.
+Sylvia, I mean. She's absolutely on the brink, and if some one doesn't
+save her, she'll be over. I can't interfere, I should only precipitate
+it. Will you go, Toby? She might listen to you. It's worth getting
+your face laid open to keep her out of danger. Will you go?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned and faced me, wild-eyed and excited. His lips were white,
+and his fingers locked and unlocked themselves in uncontrollable
+nervous restlessness.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the danger?" I asked, with studied deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. How should I? But it's there; will you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind trying," I answered, taking out my watch.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go now!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a quarter to one, and I told him so. Nobody can be less
+sensitive than I to the charge of eccentricity, but I refuse to
+disturb a Cabinet Minister's household at one in the morning to
+proclaim that an overstrung nervous visionary has a premonition that
+peril of a vague undefined order is menacing the daughter of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"We must wait till Christian hours," I insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you don't believe it; no one does!"</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock next morning&mdash;as soon, in fact, as I had drunk my
+coffee and was comfortably shaved and dressed&mdash;I drove round to
+Cadogan Square in search of Sylvia. I had no very clear idea what
+warning I was to give her when we met; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>indeed I felt wholly
+ridiculous and slightly resentful. However, my word had gone forth,
+and I was indisposed to upset the Seraph by breaking it. I left him in
+the library, silent and pale, writing hard and accumulating an
+industrious pile of manuscript against my return. By morning light no
+trace remained of his overnight excitement.</p>
+
+<p>To my secret relief Sylvia was not in when I arrived. The man believed
+she was shopping and would be out to luncheon, but if I called again
+about three I should probably find her at home. It hardly seemed worth
+my while to return to Adelphi Terrace, so I ordered some cigars, took
+a turn in the Park, lunched at the Club, and talked mild scandal with
+Paddy Culling. At three I presented myself once more in Cadogan
+Square.</p>
+
+<p>The door stood open, and Sylvia appeared in sight as I mounted the
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed as she gave me a hurried shake of the
+hand. "I was so sorry to be out when you called this morning. Look
+here, will you go inside and tell mother you're coming to dinner
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm dining out already."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, when will you come? Ring up and fix a night. I must simply
+fly now."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't take a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly I can't wait! I've got to go down to Chiswick of all
+unearthly places! My poor old darling of a fr&auml;ulein's been taken ill
+and she's got no one to look after her. I <i>must</i> just see she's got
+everything she wants. It's horribly rude, but you will forgive me,
+won't you? She rang up at half-past twelve, and I've only just got
+back."</p>
+
+<p>Touching my hand with the tips of her fingers, she flashed down the
+steps before I could stop her. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>The bearded Orthodox Church retainer
+was waiting at the kerb, and I heard her call out "Twenty-seven,
+Teignmouth Road, Chiswick," as he slammed the door and clambered into
+his seat. I caught my last glimpse of her rounding the corner into
+Sloane Street, the same black and white study that I had admired when
+I first visited Gladys&mdash;white dress, black hat; white skin, dark hair,
+and soft unfathomable brown eyes; a splash of red at the throat, a
+flush of colour in her cheeks. Then I hailed a taxi on my own account
+and drove back to Adelphi Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph was still in the library, sitting as I had left him more
+than four hours before. An empty coffee cup at his elbow marked the
+only visible difference. He was writing quicker than I think I have
+ever seen a man write, and allowed me to enter the room and drop into
+an armchair by the window without raising his eyes or appearing to
+notice my presence. I had been there a full five minutes before he
+condescended&mdash;still without looking up from his writing&mdash;to address
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't stop her, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But you saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just for a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"'Just for a moment.' Those were the words I had used."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped writing, drew a line under the last words, blotted the page
+and threw it face-downwards on the pile of manuscript. Then for the
+first time our eyes met, and I saw it was only by biting his lips and
+gripping the arms of the chair that he could keep control over
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd like some tea," he said, in the manner of a man recalling his
+mind from a distance. "Can you reach the bell?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>"Is this the end of the chapter?" I asked as he tidied the pile of
+manuscript and bored it with a paper fastener.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the end of everything."</p>
+
+<p>"How far does it carry you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To your parting from Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>"Present time, in fact?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forty minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>I checked him by my watch. "And what now?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at me, looked through me, I might say, and sat staring at
+the window without answering.</p>
+
+<p>The next two hours were the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. If
+in old age my guardian angel offers me the chance of living my whole
+life over again, I shall refuse the offer if I am compelled to endure
+once again that silent July afternoon. The Seraph sat from four till
+six without speech or movement. As the sun's rays lengthened, they
+fell on his face and lit it with cold, merciless limelight. He had
+started pale and grew gradually grey; the eyes seemed to darken and
+increase in size as the face became momentarily more pinched and
+drawn. I could see the lips whitening and drying, the forehead dewing
+with tiny beads of perspiration.</p>
+
+<p>I made a brave show of noticing nothing. Tea was brought in; I poured
+him out a cup, drank three myself, and ostentatiously sampled two
+varieties of sandwich and one of cake. I cut my cigar noisily, damned
+with audible good humour when the matches refused to strike, picked up
+a review and threw it down again, and wandered round the room in
+search of a book, humming to myself the while.</p>
+
+<p>At six I could stand it no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to play the piano, Seraph," I said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>"For pity's sake don't!" he begged me, with a shudder; but I had my
+way.</p>
+
+<p>When the <i>City of Pekin</i> went down in '95 as she tried to round the
+Horn, one of my fellow-passengers was a gigantic, iron-nerved man from
+one of the Western States. I suppose we all of us found it trying work
+to sit calm while the boats were lowered away: no one knew how long we
+could keep our heads above water and we all had a shrewd suspicion that
+the boat accommodation was insufficient. We should have been more
+miserable than we were if it had not occurred to the Westerner to
+distract our minds. In spite of a thirty-degree list he sat down to the
+piano and I helped hold him in position while we thundered out the old
+songs that every one knows without consciously learning&mdash;"Clementine,"
+"The Tarpaulin Jacket," "In Cellar Cool." We were taking a call for
+"The Tavern in the Town" when word reached us that there was room in
+the last boat.</p>
+
+<p>I set myself to distract the Seraph's mind, and gave him a tireless
+succession of waltzes and ragtimes till eight o'clock. Then the bell
+of the telephone rang, and I was told Philip Roden wished to speak to
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about Sylvia," he began. "She hasn't come back yet, and we don't
+know where she is. The man says you had a word with her as she started
+out: did she say where she was going?"</p>
+
+<p>I told him of the message from Chiswick, and repeated the address I
+had heard her give the chauffeur.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what the matter was," I added. "Sylvia may have found
+the woman worse than she expected. Hadn't you better inquire who took
+the message and see if he or she can throw any light on the mystery?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>I was half dressed for dinner when Philip rang me up again, this time
+with well-marked anxiety in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, there's something very fishy about this," he began. "I've just
+rung up the Chiswick address and the Fr&auml;ulein answered in person. She
+wasn't ill, she hadn't been ill, and she certainly hadn't sent any
+message to Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but who&mdash;&mdash;?" I started.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord knows!" he answered. "It might be any one. The address is a
+boarding house with a common telephone: any one in the house could
+have used it. You said twelve-thirty, didn't you? The Fr&auml;ulein was out
+in Richmond Park at twelve-thirty."</p>
+
+<p>"What about Sylvia?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the devil of it: Sylvia hadn't been near the place. When was
+it exactly that you saw her? Three-five, three-ten? And she turned
+into Sloane Street? North or South? Well, North's the Knightsbridge
+end. And that's all you can say?"</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned the invitation she had given me, and asked if I could be
+of any assistance in helping to trace her. Philip told me he was going
+at once to Chiswick to investigate the mystery of the telephone, and
+promised to advise me if there was anything fresh to report. Then he
+rang off, and I gave a <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of our conversation to the Seraph. He
+had just come out of the bath and was sitting wrapped in a towel on
+the edge of the bed. I remember noticing at the time how thin he had
+gone the last few weeks: he had always been slightly built, but the
+outline of his collarbones and ribs was sharply discernible under the
+skin.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it would be rather friendly if I went round after dinner to
+see if there's any news of her," I concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be," he answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>"Well, that of course we can't say."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> can. They won't have found her, they don't know where she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Philip may hear something in Chiswick; it looks like a silly
+practical joke."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to think," I answered, as I returned to my room and
+the final stages of my toilet. I soon came back, however, to tie my
+tie in front of his glass and propound a random question. "I suppose
+<i>you</i> don't know where she is?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You sometimes do."</p>
+
+<p>"So do other people."</p>
+
+<p>"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't&mdash;and when
+you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."</p>
+
+<p>He was still sitting on the bed in <i>d&eacute;shabille</i>, his hands clasped
+round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.
+For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again
+without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess-work," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's
+concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>is</i> no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy
+at Brandon."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to my satisfaction&mdash;or yours."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>"Meaning that you did once?"</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>say</i> I did."</p>
+
+<p>"You know you did."</p>
+
+<p>"There's not much sign of it now."</p>
+
+<p>"May be in abeyance. It may come back."</p>
+
+<p>I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting
+dress-socks.</p>
+
+<p>"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I
+heard him murmur.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Selina! The time has arrived to impart<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The covert design of my passionate heart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No common ambition deprives me of rest....<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublime<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As ever was carved on the tablets of time.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ring<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The echo and crash of a notable thing.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Hither to the rescue, ladies!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Let not fear your spirits vex.<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">On the plan by me that made is<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Hangs the future of your sex...<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Shall she then be left to mourn her<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Isolation and her shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Every true Belgravian dame."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Sir George Otto Trevelyan</span>: "The Modern Ecclesiazus&aelig;."</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next
+morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone;
+and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same
+time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as
+part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my
+overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news
+to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my
+journey.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip
+had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel
+Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland
+Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and
+Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper,
+loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching
+inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were
+described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I
+afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking
+down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties
+of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.</p>
+
+<p>I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics
+scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him&mdash;and
+of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public
+pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and
+defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no
+menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a
+national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical,
+cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it
+would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only
+child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I
+know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members
+of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so
+generously.</p>
+
+<p>Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have
+no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through
+the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>I admit I
+expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for
+quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated,
+I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of
+abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter,
+uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations.
+Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been
+lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel
+confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own
+children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged
+every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender,
+Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their
+wives' bodies.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his
+plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is
+what I have received."</p>
+
+<p>He threw me a typed sheet of paper.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be glad to know <i>within the next ten days</i> (expiring
+Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a
+bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is
+enjoyed by men."</p>
+
+<p>"How are you answering this?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and
+will go forward in due course."</p>
+
+<p>"And Sylvia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand
+pounds reward...."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you making the whole thing public?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as
+you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've
+advertised <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>themselves by broad hints in the <i>New Militant</i>; the
+gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other
+half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the <i>Times</i>, and you'll have the
+whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham
+next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library
+table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the
+length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story
+comes out."</p>
+
+<p>The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved
+his sagacity as a prophet.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these
+women, very clever."</p>
+
+<p>"No clue?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look
+for the perpetrators."</p>
+
+<p>"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice
+of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."</p>
+
+<p>"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the
+Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've
+publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old
+Militants, too&mdash;the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too
+stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows
+in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the
+nerve...."</p>
+
+<p>"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed,
+probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over
+the widest possible area.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the
+Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she
+visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage
+you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from
+the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was
+another."</p>
+
+<p>"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutional <i>New
+Militant</i>," I said as I prepared to leave.</p>
+
+<p>"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save
+them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"</p>
+
+<p>"You could advise them as a friend."</p>
+
+<p>"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I
+fear they wouldn't listen."</p>
+
+<p>"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered
+as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most
+significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a
+house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had
+reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or
+you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."</p>
+
+<p>"What cynics you public men are!" I exclaimed as I ran down the steps
+and turned in the direction of Chester Square.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that "Providence" is not one of my star <i>r&ocirc;les</i>, and I had
+every reason to know that my eloquence was unavailing when set to the
+task of converting Joyce from her militant campaign. However, I have
+seen stones worn away by constant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>dripping.... And in any case I had
+not been near the house for nearly two days.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you can't see Joyce," Elsie told me as we shook hands.
+"She wouldn't go to bed when the doctor told her, and now she's really
+rather bad."</p>
+
+<p>I was more upset by the news than I care to say, but Elsie hastened to
+assure me.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing much so far," she said. "But she's got a temperature and
+can't sleep, and worries a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't we get her away?" I exclaimed impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I've tried, but she simply won't leave town."</p>
+
+<p>"But what's to keep her?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's the paper every week."</p>
+
+<p>It always annoys me to find any one thinking the world will come to an
+end unless run on his or her own favourite lines.</p>
+
+<p>"If she died, some one else would have to edit it," I pointed out.
+"Who's doing it now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Millington. I'm afraid it's no use telling people that till they
+<i>are</i> dead."</p>
+
+<p>"And then it's a little late in the day," I answered irritably.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie proceeded to give me the real reason for Joyce's obstinacy.</p>
+
+<p>"When you're dead you don't have to take responsibility for your
+deputy's mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, is it? Mrs. Millington setting the Thames on fire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her zeal sometimes outruns her discretion," said Elsie with a smile.
+"That's what's chiefly worrying Joyce."</p>
+
+<p>I picked up my hat and stick and moved towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"And Joyce is losing her nerve?" I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>"She's not up to her usual form," was all Elsie would answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Give her my love," I said at the door, "and best wishes for a quick
+recovery. If she isn't well in two days' time, I shall carry her off
+by main force and put her into a nursing home."</p>
+
+<p>Then I went off to lunch at the Club, and found fault with the food,
+the wine, the cigars and all creation. Paddy Culling opened a
+subscription list to buy me a box of liver pills. The Seraph&mdash;after I
+had been two minutes at Adelphi Terrace&mdash;said he was sorry Joyce was
+no better.... I thanked him for his sympathy, and sat down to read the
+current copy of the <i>New Militant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In my careless, hot-blooded youth I made a collection of inanimate
+journalistic curiosities. It was my sole offence against the wise rule
+that to collect anything&mdash;from wives up to postage stamps&mdash;is a mark
+of incipient mental decay. There was the <i>Punch</i>, with the cartoon
+showing the relief of Khartoum; and I remember I had a copy of the
+suppressed issue of the <i>Times</i>, when the compositors usurped control
+of Empire and edited one of Harcourt's Budget speeches on lines of
+their own. There was also a pink <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, bought wet from
+the machine at a shilling the copy, when paper ran out and they
+borrowed the pink reserve rolls of the <i>Globe</i>. I had a copy of
+another journal that described in moving language the massacre of the
+Peking Legations. The Legations were, in fact, never massacred, but
+they should have been on any theory of probability, and, for aught I
+know, the enterprising journalist may have believed with Wilde that
+Nature tends to copy Art.</p>
+
+<p>I also had several illustrated weeklies <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>depicting&mdash;by the pen of Our
+Special Artist&mdash;that first Coronation Ceremony of Edward the Seventh,
+and the verbal account of it given by "A Peeress" who had been
+present. More lately I acquired the original American paper which sent
+the <i>Titanic</i> to her grave with the band playing "Nearer, my God, to
+Thee."...</p>
+
+<p>I am half sorry the collection is dispersed. I should have liked to
+add the one historic number of the <i>New Militant</i> that appeared under
+Mrs. Millington's fire-and-brimstone editorship. To the collector it
+is curious, as being the last issue of the paper; by the mental
+pathologist it is regarded as an interesting example of what is by
+common consent called "Militant Hysteria." The general public will
+remember it as the documentary evidence which at last enabled the
+police to secure a warrant of arrest against the "proprietors,
+printers and publishers of the newspaper called and known as the <i>New
+Militant</i>," to raid the printing office in Clerkenwell, and lay bare
+the private memoranda of the New Militant organisation.</p>
+
+<p>My own copy did not survive my departure from England, and I could not
+do Mrs. Millington the injustice of trying to reproduce her deathless
+periods. I remember there was a great deal of "Where is Miss Rawnsley?
+Where is Master Jefferson? Where is Miss Roden?" Such questions
+implicated no one, and only annoyed inconsequential persons like
+myself, who detest being set conundrums of which I do not know the
+answer by some one who obviously does. The practice is futile and
+vexatious.</p>
+
+<p>The incriminating words came heavy-typed in the last paragraph of the
+leading article, and contained an unmistakable threat that the policy
+of abduction would continue until female suffrage had been secured.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>After dinner that night I strolled round to the Club to hear what
+people were saying.</p>
+
+<p>"They've done for themselves this time," Gartside told me with much
+assurance when I ran across him in the hall. "Don't ask me where I got
+it from, and don't let it go any further, but there's a warrant out
+against some one."</p>
+
+<p>I was conscious of a very uncomfortable sensation of hollowness.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it indiscreet to ask who?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't tell you, because I don't know. I fancy you proceed against
+the whole lot, printers included."</p>
+
+<p>"They've not wasted much time," I said.</p>
+
+<p>It was Tuesday night. The <i>New Militant</i> went to press at midday and
+was on sale next morning throughout the country. In London, of course,
+it could be obtained overnight, and I had secured an early copy by
+calling at the office itself.</p>
+
+<p>I stood in the middle of the hall wondering exactly what I could do to
+prevent the arm of the law stretching out and folding Chester Square
+in its embrace. I was still wondering when Paddy Culling bounded up
+the steps and seized Gartside and myself by either hand.</p>
+
+<p>"It's yourself should have been there," he panted, momentarily
+releasing my arm in order to mop a red, dripping forehead. His broken
+collar and caved-in hat suggested a fight: his brogue reminded me that
+the offer of a golden throne in heaven will not avail to keep an
+Irishman out of a brawl. "Down Clerkenwell way ut was, the War of the
+Woild Women. The polis...."</p>
+
+<p>He was settling down to a narrative of epic proportions. The Irish are
+this world's finest raconteurs as they are its finest fighters, riders
+and gentlemen. It was an insult, but I could not wait.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>"Have they raided the place, Paddy?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"They have." His eyes reproached me for my interruption. "The
+polis...."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they get any one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am I telling ye or am I not? Answer me that."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Paddy," I said with all the contrition at my command. "But
+I've got to go, and I just wanted the main outline...."</p>
+
+<p>"They got Mrs. Millington," he began again, "and she fighting the way
+ye'd say she'd passed her born days being evicted. There was one had
+the finger bitten off him and another scratched in the face till the
+gutters ran blood. Five strong men held her down and stamped out the
+life of her, and five more dragged her down the road by the hair of
+her head and droppit her like a swung cat over the railings of the
+common mortuary. The vultures...."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they get any one else?" I interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the fine tale ye're spoiling," he complained.</p>
+
+<p>"But just tell me that," I pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"They did not," he answered with ill-concealed disgust. "Unless ye'd
+be calling a printer's devil one of God's fine men and women. But the
+polis...."</p>
+
+<p>I hurried down the steps and jumped into a taxi. I thought first of
+calling to warn them at Chester Square. Then I decided to communicate
+by telephone. If Joyce had not already been arrested, and if I was to
+be of any assistance later on, I could not afford to be discovered in
+the incriminating neighbourhood of her house.</p>
+
+<p>I gave the Seraph the heads of my story as I looked up the number and
+waited for my call.</p>
+
+<p>"You're through," the Exchange told me after an interminable delay.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, hallo!" I kept calling, for what seemed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>like half an hour.
+"Will you give another ring, please, Exchange?"</p>
+
+<p>A further age dragged its course, and I was told that there did not
+seem to be any one at the other end.</p>
+
+<p>"Now will you tell me what we're to do, Seraph?" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>We sat and stared at each other for the best part of five minutes.
+Then the decision was taken out of our hands. I saw him prick up his
+ears to catch a sound too faint for my grosser senses.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one coming upstairs," he whispered. "It's a woman, and she's
+coming slowly. Now she's stopped. Now she's coming on again."</p>
+
+<p>I rose from my chair and tiptoed across the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be Joyce?" I asked, sinking my own voice to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"She's going on to the next floor," he answered with a shake of the
+head; and then with sudden excitement, "Now she's coming back."</p>
+
+<p>"She mustn't ring the bell," I cried, running out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, there's nobody here but ourselves," he called out as
+I opened the door and ran out onto the landing.</p>
+
+<p>Ten feet in front of me, leaning back against the banisters, stood
+Joyce Davenant. One hand covered her eyes and the other was pressed to
+her heart. She was trembling with fever and panting with the exertion
+of climbing four flights of stairs. A long fur coat stretched down to
+bare feet thrust into slippers, her head was covered by a shawl,
+though the hair fell loosely inside her coat. At the neck I could see
+the frilled collar of a nightdress.</p>
+
+<p>"Joyce!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>She uncovered her face and showed eyes preternaturally bright, and
+white cheeks lit by a single spot of brilliant colour.</p>
+
+<p>"I said I'd come when there was a warrant out," she panted with game,
+gallant attempt at a smile. Then I caught her in my arms as she fell
+forward, and carried her as gently as I could inside the flat.</p>
+
+<p>I left it to the Seraph to take off her coat and lay her in his own
+bed. He did it as tenderly as any woman. Then we went to the far side
+of the room and held a whispered consultation. I am afraid I could
+suggest nothing of value, and the credit of our arrangement lies
+wholly at his door.</p>
+
+<p>"We must get a nurse," he began. "Elsie mustn't be seen coming near
+the place or the game's up. What about that woman who helped you bring
+Connie Matheson home from Malta this spring? Can you trust her? Have
+you got her address? Well, you must see if you can get her to-night.
+No, not yet. We want a doctor. Her own man? No! It would give us away
+at once. Look out Maybury-Reynardson's address in the telephone book,
+somewhere in Cavendish Square. He's a sportsman; he'll do it if you
+say it's for me. You must go and see him in person; we don't want the
+Exchange-girls listening. Anything more? I'll square my man and his
+wife when they come in. Oh, tell your nurse the condition this poor
+child's come in; say it's a bachelor establishment and we haven't got
+a stitch of anything, and can't send to Chester Square for it. Tell
+her to bring...."</p>
+
+<p>He paused to listen as heavy feet ascended the stairs. The noise was
+loud enough even for me this time. There was a ring at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Wine cellar. Locked. Haven't got key," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>whispered turning out the
+light and locking himself inside the room with Joyce.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the front door and found myself faced with the two Roden
+detectives I had corrupted with bottled beer at Henley.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, this is like old times!" I said. "Have you been able to find any
+trace of Miss Roden?"</p>
+
+<p>They had not, and I see now that my question was singularly tactless.
+They bore no resentment, however, and told me they had called on other
+business. There was a warrant out against Miss Davenant. She was not
+to be found at the Clerkenwell printing office, and while Chester
+Square was being searched, a woman had slipped out of the house by a
+side door, entered a car and driven away.</p>
+
+<p>"Could you follow her?" I asked, with all the Englishman's love of the
+chase.</p>
+
+<p>That, it appeared, had been difficult, as the number of the car seemed
+to have been wilfully obscured.</p>
+
+<p>"That's an offence, isn't it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>It was, and the driver&mdash;if traced&mdash;would find himself in trouble. They
+had followed a likely-looking car and seen it turn southward out of
+the Strand. When they reached Adelphi Terrace, however, there was only
+one car in sight, drawn up outside our door and presenting a
+creditably clear number-plate. Its driver had vaguely seen another
+car, but had not particularly noticed it. They called on chance, as
+this was the only suite with lights in it. Had I seen or heard
+anything of the car or a woman getting out of it?</p>
+
+<p>"I've only just come in myself," I told them. "Half an hour, to be
+exact. That was possibly my taxi you saw outside. I didn't notice the
+number. How long ago did you see your suspected car turn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>into Adelphi
+Terrace? Ten minutes? Oh, then I should have seen any one who came up
+here, shouldn't I? Would you like to look round to make sure?"</p>
+
+<p>The senior man stepped back and glanced up at the name painted over
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mr. Aintree's flat," I explained. "I'm staying with him."</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't any authority," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hang the authority!" I said. "Mr. Aintree wouldn't mind.
+Dining-room, wine-cellar, library.... Won't you come in? Not even for
+a drink? Sure? Well, good-night. Oh, it's no trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Detectives&mdash;or such few of them as I have met&mdash;remind me of
+Customs-house officials: if you offer your keys and go out of your way
+to lay bare your secrets before their eyes, they will in all
+probability let you through without opening a single trunk. They are
+perverse as women&mdash;and simple as children.</p>
+
+<p>I tapped at the Seraph's door and told him I had disposed of the
+police without uttering a single falsehood. It was almost the last
+time I was able to make that boast. We gave our friends ten minutes'
+start, and I then set out in search of nurse and doctor. Joyce looked
+shockingly ill when I left, but her breathing was peaceful.
+Occasionally she moved or moaned in her sleep; as I turned at the door
+for a last look, the Seraph was rearranging her pillow and smoothing
+the hair back from her face.</p>
+
+<p>I had to walk into the Strand to find a taxi. Outside the Vaudeville I
+met my brother and his wife, and was bidden to sup with them at the
+Savoy. I refused for many reasons, the first being that a man who
+starts a career of crime at the age of forty-two must not for very
+decency be seen eating in company <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>with a judge of the High Court. My
+meeting did good in giving me the idea of establishing a succession of
+<i>alibis</i>. When I had made the necessary arrangements with
+Maybury-Reynardson and the nurse, I looked in once more at the Club.</p>
+
+<p>Culling, Gartside and Nigel Rawnsley had the north smoking-room to
+themselves. They seemed to be discussing some plan of campaign, and
+the rescue of Sylvia was its object. Perhaps I should not say
+"discussing": Nigel was holding forth in a way that made me think he
+must have been a Grand Inquisitor in some previous incarnation. The
+ruthlessness of a Torquemada was directed by Napoleonic statecraft and
+brought down to date by the terrorism of a brow-beating counsel. The
+combination was highly impressive; his own contribution consisted in
+an exquisite choice of epithets.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to the Chief," I heard him say in summary of his plan of
+campaign. "Get him to arrange for Merivale, J., to try the case, and
+you'll find the woman Millington will exhibit surprising celerity in
+imparting whatever information she may have gathered in respect of the
+whereabouts of Mavis and Sylvia and the Jefferson boy."</p>
+
+<p>"King's Evidence, d'you mean?" asked Gartside. "Not she!"</p>
+
+<p>"Inconceivably less ornate than that. I agree with you that she might
+withhold her consent. It is therefore more expedient to coax her into
+the confessional without implicating her fellow conspirators. If you
+were being tried by Merivale and saw seven years' penal servitude
+stretching in pleasing prospect before you, you'd want to start the
+day on terms of reasonable amity with your judge. If you knew
+Merivale's daughter was engaged to marry a man whose sister had been
+spirited away, would you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>not strive to acquire merit in the eyes of
+your judge's family by saying where the sister could be found? It is
+approximately equivalent to a year's reduction of sentence."</p>
+
+<p>Paddy Culling scratched his head thoughtfully with a paper knife.</p>
+
+<p>"If Miss Davenant's afther hiding herself in one of the coops where
+the other little chicken's stored away...." he began.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not," Nigel interrupted decisively. "The risk's too
+considerable; she wouldn't want to betray herself and her hostages at
+the same moment. She's in London...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she?" asked Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>"She was to-day at lunch-time, because her doctor called at the house.
+Of course, the police in their infinite sagacity must needs start
+searching at the wrong end and afford her opportunities of escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Out of London if she wanted to," persisted Gartside.</p>
+
+<p>"Not by train," said Nigel. "Every station's watched...."</p>
+
+<p>"By car."</p>
+
+<p>"By airship, equally. The woman's seriously ill; you'd kill her."</p>
+
+<p>Paddy Culling looked at his friend a little enviously.</p>
+
+<p>"You know a lot about the inside of that house," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"By the simple expedient of the sovereign in season to the
+kitchen-maid, who, like the rest of her class, was unquestionably
+loyal, but more unquestionably impecunious. The woman Davenant's in
+London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell
+you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow
+morning. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman
+Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant
+will have to."</p>
+
+<p>"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater
+knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. "For
+example, when it's seriously ill. I fancy I could make the woman
+Davenant tell me all I wanted in three minutes."</p>
+
+<p>The tone was extraordinarily sinister. I seemed to realise in a flash
+why Sylvia, with a woman's quicker, deeper insight, kept the speaker
+at a distance.... However, I had come to the Club to establish an
+<i>alibi</i>, not to reflect on the character of Sylvia's admirers. And I
+wanted to get back to Adelphi Terrace as soon as my purpose was
+effected.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sorry to run away in the middle of your story, Paddy," I said.
+"I'd promised to meet a man, and I was rather late as it was. You'd
+got as far as the disposal of Mrs. Millington's body in the common
+mortuary and the arrest of a poor, mean printer's devil. What happened
+then? Was any one else caught?"</p>
+
+<p>Paddy looked at me almost with affection, his eyes alight with
+oratorical fire.</p>
+
+<p>"It's yourself should have been there to see it," he began, grasping
+my arm with one hand and making his points with the other. "The polis
+and red coats was there, and the newspaper men in their thousands, and
+the gravediggers in their tens of thousands...."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE</h4>
+
+<div class="block2"><p>"My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems,
+give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram,
+or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own
+proper atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation.
+That is why I have chosen my own particular
+profession, or rather created it, for I am the only
+one in the world ... the only unofficial consulting
+detective.... I am the last and highest court of
+appeal in detection.... I examine the data, as an
+expert, and pronounce a specialist's opinion. I claim
+no credit in such cases. My name figures in no
+newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding a
+field for my peculiar powers, is my highest
+reward."&mdash;<span class="sc">Sir A. Conan Doyle</span>: "The Sign of
+Four."</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Premonitions&mdash;so far as my gross person is concerned&mdash;are a matter of
+digestion, nerves and liver. If I woke up on the morning after Joyce's
+flight to Adelphi Terrace with a dull sense of impending disaster, I
+ascribe it to the fact that I had passed a more than ordinarily
+hideous night. Unlike the Seraph, who never went to bed, I had
+sufficient philosophy to turn in when the doctor had left and the
+nurse was comfortably established. It had been made clear to me that I
+could do no manner of good by staying up and getting in people's
+way....</p>
+
+<p>I started in my own room, but quickly took refuge in the library. If
+there are two sounds I cannot endure, one is that of a crying child,
+and the other of a woman&mdash;or man for that matter&mdash;moaning in pain.
+Even in the library I could hear <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>Joyce suffering. Maybury-Reynardson
+had told us she was all right, and there is no point in calling in
+experts if you are going to disbelieve them. But I do not want to
+experience another night of the same kind.</p>
+
+<p>And in the morning the papers were calculated to heighten the horror
+of the worst premonitions I could experience. I opened the <i>Times</i>,
+noted in passing that Gartside had fulfilled popular expectation by
+being appointed to the Governorship of Bombay, and turned to the
+account of the Clerkenwell raid. Culling was right in saying Mrs.
+Millington's had been the only arrest of importance; but he had left
+the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and had not waited to see
+the conquerors march into the citadel.</p>
+
+<p>I felt myself growing chilled and old as I read of the discoveries in
+the printing office. Mrs. Millington would stand charged with
+incitement to crime and public threat of abduction; serious enough, if
+you will, but her debt was discharged as soon as she had paid the
+penalty for a single article in a single paper. Her threats were
+embryonic, not yet materialised. Joyce stood to bear the burden of the
+three abductions carried out to date....</p>
+
+<p>I am no criminologist, and can offer neither explanation nor theory of
+the mental amblyopia that leads criminals to leave one weak link, one
+soft brick, one bent girder, to ruin a triumph of design and
+construction. They always do&mdash;men and women, veterans and tiros&mdash;and
+Joyce was no exception. When the police broke open the safe in her
+editorial office, the first document they found was the half sheet of
+Chester Square notepaper that the journalists agreed to christen "The
+Time Table."</p>
+
+<p>It was written in Joyce's hand, and her writing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>could be identified
+by a short-sighted illiterate at ten yards' distance. I have forgotten
+the dates by this time, and can only guess at them approximately;
+words and names have been added in full where Joyce put only initials.
+This was the famous Time Table:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="block2" style="padding-top: .5em; padding-bottom: .5em;">
+<p class="right">500, Chester Square, S.W.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).</p>
+
+<p class="hang"><del>June 17. P.&mdash;(private) M. (members') Day.</del> [This was ruled
+through.]</p>
+
+<p class="hang">June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley
+and Jefferson).</p>
+
+<p class="hang">June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).</p>
+
+<p class="hang">July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).</p>
+
+<p class="hang">July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) &amp; R.
+(Roden).</p>
+
+<p class="hang">July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.</p>
+
+<p class="hang">July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter
+Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board
+of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne,
+daughter of the Marquis of Berwick&mdash;of the India Office. Both
+Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a
+mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does
+not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the
+usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].</p></div>
+
+<p>"So far the police have been unable to discover the whereabouts of
+Miss Davenant," the article concluded. That was the sole, poor
+consolation I could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>offer to a white, tired Seraph as I threw him the
+paper and went back to my gloomy premonitions.</p>
+
+<p>As he read, I thought over my last <i>alibi</i> in the north smoking-room
+at the Club. I wondered what story my friends, the Henley detectives,
+were concocting in their report, and what action Nigel Rawnsley would
+take when he had digested it.</p>
+
+<p>It is not entirely my "wisdom after the event" that made me select
+Nigel as our most formidable opponent, nor altogether my memory of the
+lead he had taken in the discussion overnight; I was beginning to
+appreciate his character. When he is Prime Minister of England, like
+his father before him, it will be in virtue of the same qualities. A
+brain of steel and a ruthless, iron resolution will force the
+<span class="Greek" title="hoi physei archomenoi">&#959;&#7985;
+&#966;&#8059;&#963;&#949;&#953; &#7936;&#961;&#967;&#8057;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#953;</span>
+to follow and obey him. He will be feared,
+possibly even hated, but the hatred will leave him indifferent so long
+as power is conceded him. I have met no young man so resolute or
+successful in getting his own way; few who give me the impression of
+being so ruthless and, perhaps, unscrupulous in their methods. He is
+still preserved from active mischief by his astonishing
+self-consciousness and lack of humour; when he has outgrown these
+juvenilities, he will be really formidable. His wife&mdash;when she
+comes&mdash;will have my sympathy, for what that is worth; but there will
+be many women less discerning than Sylvia to strive for the privilege.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon before the Amateur Detective invaded us. The Seraph's
+man&mdash;who had already been admitted to our secret, and would at any
+time have been crucified head-downwards for his master&mdash;flung open the
+library door with the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, Lord Gartside, Mr. Culling, Mr. Philip Roden."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph rose and offered chairs. You could <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>to some extent weigh
+and discriminate characters by the various modes of entry. Nigel
+refused to be seated, placed his hat on the table and produced a
+typewritten transcript of the two detectives' reports in the
+traditional manner of a stage American policeman&mdash;which in passing, I
+may say, is nothing like any American policeman I have ever met
+anywhere in America or the civilised world. Philip and Gartside were
+self-conscious and uncomfortable; Culling strove to hide his
+embarrassment by more than usual affability.</p>
+
+<p>"It's ill ye're looking, Seraph," he remarked, as he accepted a
+cigarette. "And has this great ugly brute Toby been slashing the face
+off you?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the inquiry began, with Philip as first spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to invade you like this, Seraph," he began, "but it's about my
+sister. You know she's disappeared? Well, we were wondering if you
+could help us to find her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do anything I can...." the Seraph started.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where she is?" Nigel cut in.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know any one who does?" Philip asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I do."</p>
+
+<p>Philip hesitated, started a sentence, and closed his lips again
+without completing it. Nigel took up the examination.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Miss Davenant, I believe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she know where Sylvia and Mavis are?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no idea. You must ask her."</p>
+
+<p>"I propose to."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph turned to Philip, glancing at the clock as he did so.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>"I'm afraid the limits of my utility are soon reached. If there's
+anything I can do...."</p>
+
+<p>"You can tell us where Miss Davenant is hiding," said Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can and will."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph treated him to a long, unhurried scrutiny, starting from
+the boots and working up to the freckled face and sandy hair. Then he
+turned away, as though the subject had no further interest for him.</p>
+
+<p>Nigel tried to return the stare, but broke into a blush and took
+refuge in his typewritten transcripts.</p>
+
+<p>"I have here," he said, "a copy of the reports of the two detectives
+who watched Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square last night. They
+saw a woman, with her hair loose, and a long coat over whatever
+clothes she was wearing, jump into a car and drive to Adelphi
+Terrace."</p>
+
+<p>"They were certain of the identity of the car?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly."</p>
+
+<p>"They weren't when I talked to them last night," I said. "No
+number&mdash;no nothing. They thought it was the same car and called in on
+chance, as there was a light here, to see if we knew anything. I
+offered to show them round, but they wouldn't come in, so we prayed
+for mutually sweet dreams and parted."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel tapped his papers.</p>
+
+<p>"I have here their sworn statement that the car which left Chester
+Square was the car that turned into Adelphi Terrace."</p>
+
+<p>"Perjury&mdash;like joy&mdash;cometh in the morning," I observed.</p>
+
+<p>"That is as may be. I happen to know that Miss Davenant is seriously
+ill; I imagine, wherever she has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>gone, she has not gone far. The
+number of houses within easy reach of Chester Square&mdash;houses that
+would take her in when there's a warrant out for her arrest&mdash;is
+limited. These considerations lead me to believe that the statement of
+these men is not perjured."</p>
+
+<p>"I will apologise when next we meet," I said. When a young man like
+Nigel becomes stilted and dignified, I cannot repress a natural
+inclination to flippancy.</p>
+
+<p>Philip intervened before Nigel could mature a crushing repartee.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Seraph," he began. "Just as a favour, and not because we
+have any right to ask, will you say whether Miss Davenant's anywhere
+in this flat? If you say she is, I'm afraid we shall have to tell the
+police; if you say she isn't, we'll go away and not bother you any
+more."</p>
+
+<p>"You must speak for yourself," Nigel interposed, before the Seraph
+could answer.</p>
+
+<p>We sat for a moment in silence. Then Nigel continued his statement
+with unmistakable menace in his tone.</p>
+
+<p>"If once the police intervene, the question becomes more serious and
+involves any one found harbouring a person for whom a warrant of
+arrest has been issued. I naturally do not wish to go to extremes." He
+turned to me: "You offered to show the detectives round these rooms
+last night; will you make me the same offer?"</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"They aren't my rooms. I'm only a guest. I took it upon myself to make
+the offer in the Seraph's absence."</p>
+
+<p>He repeated his request in the proper quarter, but was met with an
+uncompromising refusal.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>"May I ask your reason?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a question of manners," answered the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you wish me to apply for a search-warrant?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am entirely indifferent. If you think it worth while, apply for one.
+As soon as it is presented, the police&mdash;are&mdash;welcome&mdash;to&mdash;any&mdash;
+discoveries&mdash;they&mdash;may&mdash;make."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph spoke with the quiet scorn of injured innocence. I saw a
+shadow of uncertainty settle on Nigel's face. The Seraph must have
+seen it, too; we preserved a strategic silence until uncertainty had
+matured into horrid doubt. I felt sorry for Nigel, as I feel sorry for
+any successful egoist in the toils of anticipated ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be quicker to clear the matter up now," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"My whole day is at your disposal."</p>
+
+<p>"But mine is not. What is that room?"</p>
+
+<p>"A spare bedroom, now occupied by Toby, if you ask for information."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel started to cross the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I like to check all verbal information," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph had shorter distance to cover, and was standing with his
+back to the door when Nigel got there.</p>
+
+<p>"I allow no unauthorised person to search my rooms without my leave,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot always prevent it."</p>
+
+<p>"I can in this case."</p>
+
+<p>"We are four to one."</p>
+
+<p>"You are one to two."</p>
+
+<p>"My mistake, no doubt." He waved a hand round the room to indicate his
+allies.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>"Assuredly your mistake, if you think Toby will stand by and let you
+search my rooms without my leave, or that any one of the others would
+raise a finger to help you."</p>
+
+<p>Not one of his three allies had moved a step to support him. Nigel was
+impressed. Without retreating from his position he tried the effect of
+bluff.</p>
+
+<p>"You forget the circumstances are exceptional. My sister has been
+spirited away, and so has Phil's. If we think you know the whereabouts
+of the woman who kidnapped them, we shall neither of us hesitate to
+employ timely physical force on you, perhaps inflict salutary physical
+pain."</p>
+
+<p>"You may try, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"If I try, I shall succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't really think that, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Gartside felt it was time to restore the peace. Walking up to Nigel,
+he led him firmly back to his place at the table and motioned the
+Seraph to his old position in the armchair by the fireplace. There was
+a long, awkward silence. Then Culling crossed the room, and sat on the
+arm of the Seraph's chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're white and ill, Seraph," he said, "and ye know I'm not the man
+would badger you. We're in a hole, and maybe ye can give us a hoist
+out of it. Do ye, or do ye not, know where Miss Davenant's hiding
+herself?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph looked him steadily in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is she, or is she not, in these rooms?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would <i>you</i> like to search them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Damn it, no, man! Give us yer word, and that's enough."</p>
+
+<p>For a fraction of time the Seraph gazed at the faces of Culling,
+Philip and Gartside, weighing the characters and measuring the men.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>"It's not enough for Rawnsley," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It'ull have to be."</p>
+
+<p>"He likes to check all verbal information."</p>
+
+<p>Culling shook his clenched fists in the air and involved us all in a
+comprehensive curse. The Seraph lit himself a cigarette, blew out the
+match with a deliberation Nigel could not have surpassed, and
+addressed the company.</p>
+
+<p>"We seem to have reached a deadlock," he began. "Shall I offer a
+solution? The four of you come here and charge me with harbouring the
+woman who is supposed to have made away with Miss Rawnsley and Miss
+Roden. Very good. Every man is free to entertain any suspicions he
+likes, and to ventilate them&mdash;provided he doesn't forget his manners.
+Three of you behaved like gentlemen, the fourth followed his own
+methods. I should like to oblige those three. Rawnsley, you have
+menaced me with personal violence, and threatened me with a search
+warrant. You have done this in my own library. If you will apologise,
+and undertake not to enter these rooms again or to molest me here or
+anywhere else, and if you will further undertake not yourself to
+apply&mdash;or incite any one else to apply&mdash;for a warrant to search the
+flat, I shall have pleasure in accompanying Gartside wherever he
+chooses to go, unlocking any doors that may be locked, and offering
+him every facility in inspecting every nook and cranny in these rooms.
+As you may not accept verbal information even from him, I shall have
+pleasure in extending my offer to Culling. The one will be able to
+check the other."</p>
+
+<p>He blew three smoke-rings and waited for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>There was another moment of general discomfort. Nigel jibbed at the
+idea of apologising, Gartside and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>Culling would have done anything to
+avoid accepting the offer; from Philip's miserable fidgeting I could
+see that he had been persuaded into coming against his better
+judgment. For myself, I waited as a condemned man waits for the drop
+to fall. It was bound to come in a few seconds' time, but&mdash;illogically
+enough&mdash;I had ceased to dread it. My one fear was that Joyce should
+betray herself by one of those pitiful moans that had mingled with my
+dreams and vexed my sleep throughout the night. To this hour I can
+remember thinking how horror-stricken I should be if that sound broke
+out again. It had begun to get on my nerves.... The discovery itself
+was inevitable; I could imagine no trick or illusion that would enable
+the Seraph to steer his inquisitors past one of the principal rooms in
+the flat.</p>
+
+<p>"I apologise for any offence I may have given, and I undertake all
+that you ask."</p>
+
+<p>It was not gracefully done, but the Seraph accepted the words for the
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, and let's get it over!" Culling exclaimed, jumping up and
+cramming his hat on the back of his head. With sinking heart I saw the
+three of them framed in the doorway, Gartside's huge form towering
+over the other two.</p>
+
+<p>"Devilish sorry about the whole business," I heard him begin as the
+door closed. It was opened again for a moment as the Seraph reminded
+me where the drinks were kept, and suggested I should compound a
+cocktail. Then it closed finally.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the hall Culling added his contribution to the general
+apology.</p>
+
+<p>"Come quietly," was all the Seraph would answer. "I hope she's
+sleeping."</p>
+
+<p>Both men paused abruptly and gazed first at the Seraph and then at
+each other. He returned their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>gaze unwaveringly, surprised apparently
+that they should be surprised. Then he led them wide-eyed with
+expectation across the hall; wide-eyed they watched him bend and
+listen, tap and gently open a bedroom door. The nurse rose from her
+chair at the bedside and placed a finger on her lips&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Praise God, she's sleeping!" murmured Paddy Culling, with instinctive
+reverence removing his hat. Gartside looked for a moment at the
+flushed cheeks and parched lips, then turned away as the Seraph closed
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Mustn't go back yet," he said. "We'd better look at one or two more
+rooms just to fill in time."</p>
+
+<p>One of the shortest recorded councils of war was held in the bathroom.
+Culling, with his quick, superficial sympathy had already made up his
+mind, but Gartside stood staring out of the window with head bent and
+hands locked behind his back, struggling and torn between an
+unwillingness to hurt Joyce and a deep hungry desire to bring Sylvia
+safely out of her unknown hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll kill her if you move her," the Seraph remarked,
+dispassionately but with careful choice of time. Gartside's foot
+tapped the floor irresolutely. "Toby's engaged to marry her," he added
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders Gartside turned to Culling,
+nodded without speaking, and linked arms with the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a good little devil," he said with a forced smile. "When this
+poor girl's better, get her to say where Sylvia is. She'll tell you.
+And let me know when the whole damned thing's straightened out. I'm
+off to Bombay in ten days' time. And it isn't very cheerful going off
+without knowing where Sylvia is. Now we've been out long enough," he
+added in firm, normal tones.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>All three of us looked up quickly as the door opened. Culling's hat
+was once more on his head, and he was trying to pull on a pair of
+gloves and light a cigarette at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>"All over but the cheering," he began abruptly. "High and low we've
+searched, and not found enough of a woman would make a man leave Eden,
+and she the only woman in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"You've searched every room?" asked Nigel with a suspicious glance at
+the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Cellar to garret," answered Culling serenely, "and no living creature
+but a pair of goldfinches, and one of them dead; unless you'd be
+counting the buxom matron that the Seraph dashes my hopes by sayin'
+has a taste for drink like the many best of us, and she married
+already, and the mother of fourteen brace of twins and a good plain
+cook into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel picked up his papers and turned to Gartside for corroboration.</p>
+
+<p>"We searched every room," he was told, "and Miss Davenant's not here.
+Seraph, we owe you...."</p>
+
+<p>The apology was cut short, as speaker and listeners paused to catch a
+sound that floated through the silent hall and in at the open library
+door. A long, troubled moaning it was, the sound I had heard all night
+and dreaded all the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to check the verbal information after all," said Nigel
+as he put back his hat and papers on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you off to?" asked Gartside as he approached the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems I must search the house myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You undertook to accept our finding."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I could trust you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>"I have said Miss Davenant is not in these rooms," said Gartside in a
+warning voice.</p>
+
+<p>"If you said it a hundred times I should still disbelieve you. Let me
+pass, please."</p>
+
+<p>He raised a hand to clear himself a passage, but in physical strength
+he had met more than his match. Seizing both wrists in one hand and
+both ankles in the other, Gartside carried him like a child's doll
+across the room to the open library window, thrust him through it, and
+held him for ninety seconds stretched at arm's length three storeys
+above the level of the street. The veins stood out on his forehead,
+and I heard his voice rumbling like the distant mutter of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>"When I say a thing, Nigel, you have to believe me. The moon's of
+green cheese if I tell you to believe it, and when I say Miss
+Davenant's not in this flat, she's not and never has been, and never
+will be. You see?"</p>
+
+<p>Stepping back from the window, he dropped his burden on a neighbouring
+sofa. Nigel straightened his tie, brushed his clothes, and once more
+gathered up his hat, his papers, and the remains of his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Culling says there is no woman but a cook in the house," he began,
+with the studied tranquillity of an angry man. "He clearly lies.
+Gartside says Miss Davenant is not in the flat. He probably lies, but
+it is always possible that the sound we heard may have come from some
+woman Aintree thinks fit to keep in his rooms. In either event, I do
+not feel bound by the undertaking I have given." He pulled out a
+note-book and pretended to consult it. "To-day's Wednesday. If my
+sister and Sylvia have not been restored to their families by midday
+on Monday, I shall apply for a warrant to have these rooms searched.
+They will, of course, be watched in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>the interval. If Lord Gartside or
+any other person presumes to lay a finger on me, I shall summon him
+for assault."</p>
+
+<p>Pocketing the note-book he passed out of the flat with the air I
+suspect Rhadamanthus of assuming, when he is leaving the court for the
+luncheon interval, and has had a disagreeable morning with the
+prisoners. Culling accompanied him to prevent a sudden bolt at a
+suspicious-looking door, Philip followed with the Seraph, I brought up
+the rear with Gartside. All of us were smarting with the Englishman's
+traditional dislike of a "scene."</p>
+
+<p>"I never congratulated you on the Bombay appointment," I said, with
+praiseworthy design of scrambling onto neutral territory. "How soon
+are you off?"</p>
+
+<p>"Friday week," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"It's little enough time&mdash;nine days."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I've known for some little while beyond that. It was only made
+public to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pleasant post," I said reflectively. "In a tolerably pleasant
+country. I shall probably come to stay with you; I'm forgetting what
+India's like."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would," he said warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going? P. and O. I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I shall go in my own yacht."</p>
+
+<p>Culling turned round to reprove me for my forgetfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"We Gartsides always take our own yachts when we cross the ocean to
+take up our new responsibilities of Empire," he explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you sail from?" I ask. "Marseilles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Southampton. Are you coming to see me off?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might. It depends whether I can get away. Half London will be
+there, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>Candidly I cannot say whether my questions were prompted by what the
+Seraph would call a sub-conscious plan of campaign. Gartside
+undeniably thought they were, and met me gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm eating a farewell dinner every night till I sail," he said. Then,
+sinking his voice, he added, "You know the yacht&mdash;she's roomy, and
+there will be only my two aide-de-camps and myself. No one will be
+seeing me off, because I haven't told them when I'm sailing. It's the
+usual route&mdash;anywhere in the Mediterranean. But I can't sail before
+Friday week."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. Well," I held out my hand, "if I <i>don't</i> see you again, I'll
+say good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye. Best of luck!" he answered, and waved a hand as I walked
+back and rejoined the Seraph in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>He was so white that I expected every moment to see him faint, and his
+clothes were wet with perspiration. I, who am not so fine-drawn, had
+found the last hour a little trying.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to bed in decent time to-night," I told him. "I'm going
+to see Nurse, and find out if she knows of any one she can trust to
+come and help her. And I'm going to keep you out of the sick-room at
+the point of a bayonet if you've got one."</p>
+
+<p>I had expected a protest, but none came. He sat with closed eyes,
+resting his head on his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that will be best," he assented at last.</p>
+
+<p>"And now you're coming to get something to eat," I said, leading him
+into the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not hungry," he complained.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're going to eat a great deal," I said, pushing him into his
+chair and selecting a serviceable, sharp-pronged pickle-fork.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>After luncheon I had my usual siesta, prolonged rather beyond my usual
+hour. It was five o'clock when I awoke, and I found the Seraph playing
+with a sheet of paper. He had written "Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+Sunday, Monday" on it, and after "Monday," "12.0 P.M."</p>
+
+<p>"What's all this?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Our days of grace."</p>
+
+<p>I added "Friday week" to the calendar.</p>
+
+<p>"If we can get Joyce well enough to move away from Nigel's damned
+cordon of police," I said, "and if we can hide her somewhere till
+Friday week, friend Gartside's yacht is going to solve a good many
+problems."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not going to find Sylvia," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>That was unquestionably true.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how that's going to be managed," I said.</p>
+
+<p>We sat without speaking until dinner-time, and ate a silent dinner. At
+eleven o'clock he left the room, changed out of his dress clothes into
+a tweed suit, and put on a hat and brown walking boots.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you off to?" I asked when he came back.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to find Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>The expression in his eyes convinced me&mdash;if I wanted any
+convincing&mdash;that the strain of the last few days had proved too much
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave it till the morning," I said in the tone one adopts in talking
+to lunatics and drunken men.</p>
+
+<p>"She wants me now."</p>
+
+<p>"A few hours won't make any difference," I urged. "You'll start
+fresher if you have a night's rest to the good."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye. You think I'm mad. I'm not. No <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>more than I ever am. But
+Sylvia wants me, and I must go to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how are you going to find her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where will you start looking?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>He was already halfway across the hall. I balanced the rival claims of
+Joyce and himself. She at least had a doctor and nurse, and a second
+nurse was coming in the morning. He had no one.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you, Seraph!" I said under my breath, and then aloud: "Wait a
+bit and I'll come too."</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up then!" he answered chafing visibly at the delay.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke a hurried word to the nurse, took a last look at Joyce,
+changed my clothes and joined him on the landing.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way first?" I asked, and received the answer I might have
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE SIXTH SENSE</h4>
+
+<div class="block2"><p>"There was no sound at all within the room. But ...
+he saw a woman's face.</p>
+
+<p>"He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the
+face rising white from the white column of the throat,
+the dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved
+lips which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and
+troubled, which seemed to hint a prayer for help which
+they disdained to make&mdash;for five seconds, perhaps, the
+illusion remained, for five seconds the face looked
+out at him ... lit palely, as it seemed, by its own
+pallor, and so vanished."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">A.E.W. Mason</span>: "Miranda of the Balcony."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>Neither by inclination nor habit am I more blasphemous or foul-mouthed
+than my neighbour, but I should not relish being ordered a year in
+Purgatory for every occasion on which I repeated "Damn you, Seraph!"
+in the course of the following nineteen or twenty hours.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly midnight when we left Adelphi Terrace, and I had in my
+own mind fixed one hour as the maximum duration of my patience or
+willingness to humour a demented neurotic. Thirty minutes out, thirty
+minutes back, and then the Seraph would go to bed, if I had to keep
+him covered with my revolver. <i>En parenth&egrave;se</i>, I wish I could break
+myself of the habit of carrying loaded firearms by night. In the
+settled, orderly Old Countries it is unnecessary; in the West it is
+merely foolish. I should be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>the richer by the contents of six
+chambers before I had time to draw on the quick, resourceful child of
+a Western State.... Nevertheless, my revolver and I are inseparable.</p>
+
+<p>We started down the Strand, along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace,
+and through Eaton Square to the Cadogan Estate. This was what I ought
+to have expected, if I had had time to sort out my expectations. The
+Seraph stood for a few minutes looking up at the Rodens' slumbering
+house, and then walked slowly eastward into Sloane Street.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go back now?" I suggested, in the voice one uses to deceive
+a child.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not mad, Toby," he answered, like a boy repeating a lesson. "I
+must find Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>He wandered into Knightsbridge, hesitated, and then set out at an
+uncertain three miles an hour along the border of the park towards
+Kensington. I realized with a sinking heart that he was heading for
+Chiswick.</p>
+
+<p>"Better leave it till the morning, Seraph," I urged, with a hand on
+his shoulder. "She'll be in bed, and we mustn't disturb her."</p>
+
+<p>He shook me off, and wandered on&mdash;hands in pocket and eyes to the
+ground. Twice I thought he would have blundered into an early
+market-cart, but catastrophe was averted more by the drivers' resource
+than any prudence on his own part. As we left Kensington and trudged
+on through the hideous purlieus of Hammersmith, I began to visualize
+our arrival at the Fr&auml;ulein's house, and my stammering, incoherent
+apologies for my companion's behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>The deferential speech was not required. On entering Chiswick High
+Street we should have turned to the right up Goldhawk Road, and then
+taken the second or third turning to the left into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>Teignmouth
+Terrace. The Seraph plodded resolutely on, looking neither to the
+right nor left, through Hounslow, past the walls of Sion Park and the
+gas-works of Brentford, into Colnbrook and open country. There was no
+reason why he should not follow the great road as far as the Romans
+had built it&mdash;and beyond. Night was lifting, and the stars paled in
+the blue uncertain light of early dawn.</p>
+
+<p>I gripped him by the shoulders and made him look me in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going back now," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> can."</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I must find Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll come back now, I'll take you to her in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a child, Toby, and I'm not mad."</p>
+
+<p>"You're behaving as if you were both."</p>
+
+<p>"I must find Sylvia," he repeated, as though that were an answer to
+every conceivable question.</p>
+
+<p>"If you're sane," I said, "you can appreciate the insanity of walking
+from London to Bath in search of a girl who may be in Scotland or on
+the Gold Coast for all you know. She's as likely to be in the Mile End
+Road as on the Bath Road. Why not look there? It's nearer Adelphi
+Terrace, at all events."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me for a moment reproachfully, as though his last friend
+had failed him, then turned and plodded westward....</p>
+
+<p>"God's truth!" I cried. "Where are you off to?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must find Sylvia," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"But where? Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>"Why this God-stricken road rather than another?"</p>
+
+<p>"She came along here."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"She did," was all he would answer.</p>
+
+<p>It was near Langley that I threatened him with personal injury. He had
+quickened his pace and shot slightly ahead of me. I have never been of
+a fleshy build, and with the exception of excessive cigar-smoking, my
+tastes are moderate. On the other hand, I never take exercise save
+under compulsion, or walk a mile if I can possibly ride, drive, or
+fly. We had covered some twenty miles since leaving home, my feet
+seemed cased in divers' boots, my mouth was parched with thirst, and I
+was ravenously hungry.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sane?" I asked, as I caught him up.</p>
+
+<p>"As sane as I ever am."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will understand my terms. We are going to leave the main
+road and walk straight to Langley Station. We are going to take the
+first train back to town, and we are...."</p>
+
+<p>"You can," he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"You will come with me. Don't tell me you have to find Sylvia, because
+it will be waste of breath. I have here a six-chambered revolver,
+loaded. Unless you come to the station with me, here and now, I shall
+empty one chamber into each of your legs. And if any one thinks I'm
+murdering you, I shall say I'm in pursuit of a dangerous lunatic. And
+when they see you, they'll believe me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me for perhaps half a second, and then walked on. It was,
+I suppose, the answer I deserved.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>It came as a surprise to me when he accepted my breakfast proposition
+at Slough. I put his assent down to sheer perversity, for I should
+have breakfasted in any case. My mind was made up. I would ask him for
+the last time to accompany me back to London, and if he refused I
+would return to Adelphi Terrace and bed, leaving him to follow the
+sun's path till he pitched head-foremost into the Bristol Channel....</p>
+
+<p>I breakfasted unwashed, unshaven, dusty, at full length on a sofa in a
+private room, simmering with grievance and irritability.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> then," I said, as I lit a cigar, threw the Seraph another, and
+turned to a Great Western time-table.</p>
+
+<p>"I must be getting on," he answered, giving me back my cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment," I said. "Up-trains, Sundays. Up-trains, week-days.
+Ten-fifteen. Horses and carriages only. Ten-thirty; that'ull do me.
+I'll walk with you as far as the cross-roads."</p>
+
+<p>I was so angry with myself and him that we parted without a word or
+shake of the hand. I watched him striding westward in the direction of
+Salt Hill, and carried my temper with me towards the station. The
+first twenty yards were covered at a swinging, resolute pace, the
+second more slowly. I was still far from the station when an absurd,
+irritating sensation of shame brought me to a standstill. Mad,
+unreasonable as I knew him to be, the more I thought of the Seraph,
+the less I liked the idea of leaving him in his present state. The
+sight of a garage, with cars for hire, decided me. I ordered one for
+the day, with the option of renewing on the same terms as long as I
+wanted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the money while you can get it," I warned <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>the proprietor, with
+the petulance of a tired man. "With luck you'll next hear of me from
+the inside of a padded cell. Now!" I said to the driver, "listen very
+carefully. I'm about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns
+for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may
+hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a
+young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the
+ground. You're to keep him in sight wherever he goes. <i>He's</i> mad, and
+<i>I'm</i> mad, and <i>everybody's</i> mad. Follow him, and address a remark to
+me at your peril. I've been up all night, I've walked from London to
+Slough, and I'm now going to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The
+difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds
+sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his
+heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case
+there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.... My driver
+left me to slumber undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph,
+pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to
+come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke,
+asking the driver what had come of our quarry.</p>
+
+<p>"He's following, sir," he told me.</p>
+
+<p>I was struck with an ingenious idea.</p>
+
+<p>"At the next cross-roads," I said, "turn off to the right or left,
+drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we'll lead him round
+in a circle and draw him back to London."</p>
+
+<p>We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight
+trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full
+view, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so
+much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!" I said, as I ordered the
+driver to start once more in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a
+three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood
+flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he
+once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he
+stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge,
+into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street.
+Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too
+absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.</p>
+
+<p>It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead
+Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an
+hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting
+as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun
+brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait here," I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the
+Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead
+of us lay Reading and Bath.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled
+on towards Reading.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward!" I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and
+bade him wait.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was
+casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him
+pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked
+back to the fork of the road, gazed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>north-west towards Henley, and
+stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and
+arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.</p>
+
+<p>I waited for him to fall. I say "waited" advisedly, for I could have
+done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the
+driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to
+London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the
+afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My
+own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and
+leaving him to his fate. His madness ... as I watched the strained
+pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.</p>
+
+<p>With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head
+fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the
+road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes,
+and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop where you are!" I called to the driver as I ran down the road
+and turned into the bridle-path.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He
+was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported
+him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.</p>
+
+<p>"This way!" he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I
+caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow&mdash;picturesque, peaceful,
+inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new
+corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of
+green tins of motor spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"She's there&mdash;Sylvia!" he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we
+walked down the bridle-path. "Go in and get her. Make them give her
+up!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At
+the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was
+another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an
+unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought
+not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of
+felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not
+there.... I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't," I said weakly. "It's a strange house; we don't know that
+she's there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander...."</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of
+my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover
+behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window
+opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching.
+Then the door opened.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come for Miss Roden," I heard him say.</p>
+
+<p>"Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here."</p>
+
+<p>The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face.
+I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.</p>
+
+<p>"I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden."</p>
+
+<p>The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away,
+or I'll call a man and have you given in charge."</p>
+
+<p>The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added
+something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my
+walnut-tree, pushed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door
+as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck
+of bright red froth.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"That is my name."</p>
+
+<p>"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize
+for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your
+name. We have called...."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous
+finger at the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"He is. We have called for Miss Roden."</p>
+
+<p>"She is not here."</p>
+
+<p>"One minute gone," said the Seraph, watch in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I
+think the name was "John."</p>
+
+<p>"I am armed," I warned her.</p>
+
+<p>She paid no attention.</p>
+
+<p>"One minute and a half," said the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you appreciate the strength of our position," I began.
+"You are no doubt aware that the office of the <i>New Militant</i> has been
+raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a
+warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant."</p>
+
+<p>"They haven't caught her," said Miss Draper, defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>I could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity
+that the mention of Joyce's name brought into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where she is?" asked the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>"I shan't say."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it probable that you do <i>not</i> know," I answered. "Miss
+Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my
+friend's flat."</p>
+
+<p>"You expect me to believe that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already
+suspected and watched."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't they search it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because England is a corrupt country," I said, boldly inventing. "I
+have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant's sister&mdash;Mrs.
+Wylton&mdash;is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of
+seeing Miss Davenant arrested&mdash;in a critical condition&mdash;if it can be
+avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of
+a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their
+families before midnight to-night. I may say in passing that if Miss
+Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than
+she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me.
+Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say
+how we found Miss Roden was being kept here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She is not."</p>
+
+<p>I sighed resignedly.</p>
+
+<p>"You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know where Miss Davenant is, and I do."</p>
+
+<p>It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old
+lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination,
+pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could,
+waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now going to search the house," I told Miss Draper. "This is
+your last chance. Tell me <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a
+felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a
+single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested.
+Which is it to be?"</p>
+
+<p>She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step
+across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle
+was over.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my
+lot to fight with women.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in
+the lock.</p>
+
+<p>"No tricks?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better make yourself scarce."</p>
+
+<p>Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the
+house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see
+if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless
+and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat
+my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard
+somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the hall&mdash;where the Seraph was sleeping upright against
+the wall&mdash;opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew
+accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and
+drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood
+in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by
+the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but
+blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.</p>
+
+<p>I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly
+to her feet. Then I shut the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>door and stood awkwardly at the window,
+while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink
+three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared
+that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last
+twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with
+the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark
+room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal
+with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the
+pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the
+voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were
+frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't expect to see me, Sylvia," I said, as I buttered the stale
+crusts to make them less unappetizing.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head without answering.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think no one was ever coming?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been
+expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you find me?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Seraph brought me here."</p>
+
+<p>Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Outside."</p>
+
+<p>"I must go to him!" she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying
+dizzily.</p>
+
+<p>I pressed her back into her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till you've had some food," I said, "and then I'll bring him
+in."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>"But I don't want any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia," I said firmly, "if you're not a good girl we shan't rescue
+you another time."</p>
+
+<p>She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline
+of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The
+Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a
+heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and
+laid him on the bed in Sylvia's prison. His heart was beating, but he
+seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed
+the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running
+diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the
+chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of
+brandy.</p>
+
+<p>I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that
+there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the
+tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and
+waiting for the eyes to open.</p>
+
+<p>"Your prison doesn't run to brandy," I told her. "We must get him to
+Maidenhead, and I'll give him some there. I've got a car waiting about
+half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be long," she said, with an anxious look at the white, still
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"No longer than I can help. Here's a revolver in case any one wants to
+abduct either of you. It's loaded, so be careful."</p>
+
+<p>I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia!" I said at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you be trusted to look after him properly?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.</p>
+
+<p>"I think so," she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away.
+"He's rather precious."</p>
+
+<p>The car was brought to the door, and the driver&mdash;who, after all, had
+been paid not to be surprised&mdash;looked on unemotionally as we carried
+the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing
+the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped
+up in the other.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back I was compelled to repeat <i>in extenso</i> the whole story
+of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment
+when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced
+my way into the darkened prison cell.</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia's face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative
+proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"But how could he <i>know</i>?" she asked in a puzzled tone when I had
+ended. "You must explain that. I don't see how it's possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Madam, I have provided you with a story," I replied in the manner of
+Dr. Johnson; "I am not obliged to provide you with a moral."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the
+moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly
+cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with
+its present angry wale.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if you point morals before there's a story to hang them
+from, you must expect to see them disregarded.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE</h4>
+
+<div class="block2"><p>"If one puts forward an idea to a true
+Englishman&mdash;always a rash thing to do&mdash;he never
+dreams of considering whether the idea is right or
+wrong. The one thing he considers of any importance
+is whether one believes it oneself.... The inherited
+stupidity of the race&mdash;sound English common
+sense...."</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Oscar Wilde</span>: "The Picture of Dorian Gray."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>If the Seraph's quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences
+of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest
+memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists
+and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the
+menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She
+had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson
+to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the
+S.Y. <i>Ariel</i>.... I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking
+more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there
+was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would
+have forestalled me.</p>
+
+<p>I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on
+Sylvia's character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes;
+I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender
+and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an
+Oxford summer evening; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>I could recognise her from the Seraph's
+description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I
+ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met&mdash;before
+her last parting from the Seraph&mdash;she had gone back to the earlier
+hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her
+least when she was regal.</p>
+
+<p>And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my
+tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her
+relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the
+manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of
+what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening
+interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.... I had watched the
+Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity&mdash;uneasiness&mdash;
+belief and disbelief&mdash;ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it
+must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her
+presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before
+they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to
+appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul
+in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.</p>
+
+<p>I remember it all, but I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of
+committing it to paper. No girl has ever spoken her heart to me as
+Sylvia then spoke it; I am not sure that I want to be again admitted
+to such confidences. It is all strange, and sad, and unsatisfactory;
+but above all it is sacred. Her imprisonment had taken the fire out of
+Sylvia's blood; and her meeting with the Seraph had worked on her
+emotions. At another time she would have been more reticent. As after
+our return from Oxford, I sometimes think we were punished by an
+extreme of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>cold for having been injudiciously admitted to bask in an
+extreme of heat. That is the way with the English climate, and with a
+certain number of reserved, proud girls who grow up under its
+influence....</p>
+
+<p>I dropped Sylvia at Cadogan Square without going in, and carried the
+Seraph straight back to Adelphi Terrace. Maybury-Reynardson was paying
+Joyce an evening visit; the report was satisfactory so far as it went,
+but indicated that we must exercise great patience before a complete
+cure could be expected. I asked&mdash;on a matter of life and
+death&mdash;whether she could be moved in a week's time. He preferred to
+give no opinion, and reminded me that I must not attempt to see or
+speak to the patient. Then I turned him over to the Seraph, ordered
+myself some dinner, and went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning a telephone message informed me that Arthur Roden would
+like us both to go round to Cadogan Square. I answered that it was out
+of the question so far as the Seraph was concerned; and it was not
+till late on the Saturday afternoon that I felt justified in letting
+him get out of bed and accompany me. He still looked perilously white
+and ill, and though one strain had been removed by the discovery of
+Sylvia, and another by the departure of the search-warrant bogey, I
+could see no good purpose in his being called in to assist at an
+affecting reconciliation, and having to submit to a noisy chorus of
+congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>We were spared both. I suppose I shall never know the true reason for
+the reception that awaited us, but I distribute the responsibility in
+equal shares between Lady Roden and Nigel Rawnsley. And of course I
+have to keep reminding myself that I had been present at the search,
+while they were not; that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>they were plain, matter-of-fact
+materialists with a rational cause for every effect, while I&mdash;well, I
+put myself out of court at once by asking them to believe in an
+absurdity called a Sixth Sense.</p>
+
+<p>I find it hard, however, to forgive Nigel his part in the scene that
+followed; so far as I can see he was actuated first by jealousy on
+Sylvia's account, secondly by personal venom against the Seraph as a
+result of the unauthorised search-party, and lastly by the obstinate
+anger of a strong-willed, successful egoist, who has been driven to
+dwell even temporarily in the shade of unsuccess. Lady Roden, it must
+never be forgotten, had to sink the memory of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, and the quarterings and armorial devices of an entire
+Heralds' College, before she could be expected to do justice to a man
+like the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>We were shown into the library, and found Arthur, Nigel and Philip
+seated before us like the Beasts in Revelation. Lady Roden and Sylvia
+entered later and sat to one side. There was much bowing and no
+hand-shaking.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the search was already known&mdash;Sylvia had told it as soon
+as she got home, probably in my own words; and in the first, fine,
+careless rapture, I have no doubt she had spoken of the Seraph in the
+strain I had heard in the car. If this were the case, Lady Roden's
+eyes must have been abruptly and painfully opened. I felt sorry for
+her. Rutlandshire Morningtons frowned sour disfavour from the walls at
+the possibility of her daughter&mdash;with her daughter's faith and
+wealth&mdash;allying herself with an infidel, unknown, relationless vagrant
+like Lambert Aintree. Rationalism in the person of Nigel Rawnsley was
+called in to discredit the story of the search and save Sylvia from
+squandering herself on a common adventurer.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>"You remember the terms of our agreement last Wednesday?" he began. "I
+undertook to suspend application for a search warrant...."</p>
+
+<p>"If we discovered Sylvia," I said. "Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"And my sister Mavis."</p>
+
+<p>I hope Nigel did not see my jaw drop. Save for the moment when I
+looked casually through the other rooms in the Maidenhead bungalow I
+had completely forgotten the Mavis stipulation. Every plan and hope I
+had cherished in respect of Joyce had been cherished in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"The time was to expire on Monday, at noon," said the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. I thought I would remind you that only half the undertaking
+had been carried out. That is all."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel would make an admirable proctor; he is to the manner born. I had
+quite the old feeling of being five shillings the poorer for straying
+round the streets of Oxford at night without academical dress.</p>
+
+<p>I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."</p>
+
+<p>I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him
+to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having
+to submit to examination by an old K.C.</p>
+
+<p>"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are
+suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the
+police on a most serious charge...."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an
+impatient glance at Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>"No arrangement you may have made on Wednesday is binding on me."</p>
+
+<p>"It was binding on your son, who sits on one side <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>of you," I said,
+"and on Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, who sits on the other."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur drew himself up, no doubt unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>"As a Minister of the Crown I cannot be a party to any connivance at
+crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Philip and Nigel," I said. "As sons of Ministers of the Crown, I hope
+you will take that to heart."</p>
+
+<p>"What I have to say&mdash;&mdash;" Arthur began.</p>
+
+<p>"One moment!" I interrupted. "Are you speaking as a Minister of the
+Crown or a father of a family? Sylvia's been restored to you as the
+result of your son and Nigel conniving at what you hope and believe to
+be a crime. You wouldn't have got her back without that immoral
+compromise."</p>
+
+<p>"The flat would have been searched," said Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>"It was. Paddy and Gartside searched it and declared themselves
+satisfied...."</p>
+
+<p>"They lied."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you repeat that to Gartside?" I asked invitingly. "I fancy not.
+They searched and declared themselves satisfied. I offered to show the
+detectives round ten minutes after&mdash;by all accounts&mdash;this woman ought
+to have taken refuge there. Anybody could have searched it if they'd
+approached the owner properly."</p>
+
+<p>He ignored my implied reproof and stuck to his guns.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a woman there when Gartside said there was not."</p>
+
+<p>"Gartside only said Miss Davenant wasn't there."</p>
+
+<p>It was the Seraph speaking, slowly and almost for the first time. His
+face flushed crimson as he said it. I could not help looking at
+Sylvia; I looked away again quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"There was <i>some</i> woman there, then?" said Nigel.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>My cue was plain, and I took it.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Davenant is the only person whose name is before the house," I
+interposed. "Gartside said she was not there. Were you satisfied,
+Phil? I thought so. It's no good asking you, Nigel; you won't be
+satisfied till you've searched in person, and that you can't do till
+after Monday. Every one who agreed to Wednesday's compromise is bound
+by it till Monday midday. If after that Nigel <i>still</i> thinks it worth
+while to conduct Scotland Yard over the flat, of course we shan't
+attempt to stop him. As for any one who was not present or personally
+bound by Wednesday's compromise, that is to say, you, Arthur&mdash;do you
+declare to win by 'Father of a Family' or 'Minister of the Crown'? You
+must take one or the other."</p>
+
+<p>"The two are inseparable," he answered shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"You must contrive to separate them. If you declare 'Father of a
+Family,' you must hold yourself bound by Phil's arrangement. If you
+declare 'Minister of the Crown,' you oughtn't to have profited by the
+compromise, you oughtn't to have allowed us to restore Sylvia to you.
+Common schoolboy honour tells you that. Incidentally, why haven't you
+had the flat searched already? As a Minister of the Crown, you
+know...."</p>
+
+<p>If my heart had not been beating so quickly, I should have liked to
+study their faces at leisure. The history of the last two days was
+written with tolerable clearness. Nigel had told Arthur&mdash;and possibly
+his own father&mdash;the story of his visit to Adelphi Terrace; he had
+hinted sufficient to incite one or both to take the matter up
+officially. Then Philip had intervened and depicted himself as bound
+in honour to take no step until the expiration of the armistice. Their
+faces told a pretty tale of "pull <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>devil, pull baker," with Nigel at
+the head, Philip at the feet, and Arthur twisting and struggling
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>I had no need to ask why the flat had not yet been searched, but I
+repeated my question.</p>
+
+<p>"And when <i>are</i> you going to search it?" I added.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur attempted a compromise.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will give me your word...." he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it!" I said. "Are you bound or are you not? Sylvia's in
+the room to settle any doubts on the subject."</p>
+
+<p>He yielded after a struggle.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take no steps to search the flat until after midday on Monday,
+provided Mavis is restored by then."</p>
+
+<p>I made another attempt to rise, but Arthur waved me back into my seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not finished yet. As you point out, Sylvia is in the room. I
+wish to know how she got here, and I wish still more to know how she
+was ever spirited away in the first instance."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about the getting away. She may be able to throw light
+on that. Hasn't she told you how we found her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has given me your version."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I don't suppose I can add anything to it."</p>
+
+<p>"You might substitute a story that would hold a little more water."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid I am not naturally inventive."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when?"</p>
+
+<p>His tone told me that I had definitely lost Arthur as a friend&mdash;which
+was regrettable, but if I could play the part of whetstone to his
+repartee I was content to see him draw profit from the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of our
+friendship.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>"It is only fair to say that you and Aintree are regarded with a good
+deal of suspicion," he went on. "Apart from the question of the
+flat...."</p>
+
+<p>"Not again!" I begged.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not mentioned the report of the officers who watched Miss
+Davenant's house in...."</p>
+
+<p>"Nigel has," I interrupted. "<i>Ad nauseam.</i> My interview was apparently
+very different from their report. Suppose we have them in?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are not in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Then hadn't we better leave them out of the discussion? What else are
+we suspected of?"</p>
+
+<p>Arthur traced a pattern on the blotting-pad, and then looked up very
+sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Complicity with the whole New Militant campaign."</p>
+
+<p>I turned to the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"This is devilish serious," I said. "Incitement to crime, three
+abductions, more in contemplation. I shouldn't have thought it to look
+at you. Naughty boy!"</p>
+
+<p>Arthur was really angry at that. I knew it by his old habit of growing
+red behind the ears.</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to think this is a fit subject for jesting," he burst out.</p>
+
+<p>"I laugh that I may not weep," I said. "A charge like this is rather
+upsetting. Have you bothered about any evidence?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will find there is perhaps more evidence than you relish. Apart
+from your intimacy with Miss Davenant...."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a very pretty woman," I interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"...you have successfully kept one foot in either camp. You were
+present when Rawnsley told me of the abduction of Mavis, and added
+that the matter was being kept secret. Miss Davenant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>at once
+published an article entitled 'Where is Miss Rawnsley?'"</p>
+
+<p>"If she really abducted the girl, she'd naturally notice it was being
+kept quiet," I objected.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day after Private Members' time had been appropriated,
+Jefferson's boy disappeared; Miss Davenant must have been warned in
+time to have her plans laid. She referred to my midland campaign, and
+had an accomplice lying in wait for my daughter with a car, the same
+day that Rawnsley made his announcement that there would be no autumn
+session."</p>
+
+<p>"You will find all this on the famous Time Table," I reminded him.</p>
+
+<p>"She got her information from some one who knew the arrangements of
+the Government."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm surprised you continued to know me," I said, and turned to the
+Seraph. "It's devilish serious, as I said before, but it seems to be
+my funeral."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur soon undeceived me.</p>
+
+<p>"You are both equally incriminated. Aintree, is it not the case that
+on one occasion in Oxford and another in London, you warned my
+daughter that trouble was in store for her?"</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph had been sitting silent and with closed eyes since his
+single intervention. He now opened his eyes and bowed without
+speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"I suggest that you knew an attempt would be made to abduct her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite certain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why the warning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew trouble was coming; I didn't know she would be abducted."</p>
+
+<p>"What form of trouble did you anticipate?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>"No form in particular."</p>
+
+<p>"Why trouble at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was coming."</p>
+
+<p>"But how?"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, and then closed his eyes wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur balanced a quill pen between the first fingers of both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"On Wednesday last your rooms were visited, and the question of a
+search-warrant raised. You obtained a promise that the warrant would
+not be applied for if my daughter and Miss Rawnsley were restored
+within five days. Did you know at that time where they were?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"When did you find out?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know where Miss Rawnsley is. I didn't know where your
+daughter was till we came to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"We none of us know our hats are in the hall till we look to make
+certain," Nigel interrupted; "but you found her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"No one told you where she was?" Arthur went on.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how did you find her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe she has told you."</p>
+
+<p>"She has given me Merivale's version. I want yours."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you start?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's told you. I walked out of the house, and went on till I found
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know where to look?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles,
+passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house&mdash;a
+house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This
+was pure coincidence?"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew she was there."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I felt sure she <i>was</i> there."</p>
+
+<p>"You felt that when you left London?"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."</p>
+
+<p>"No one had told you where to look?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of
+the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one.
+You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the
+right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you to believe nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given
+five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's
+whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of
+self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where my sister is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you&mdash;er&mdash;<i>feel</i> where she is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you walk from this house and find her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"How soon will you be able to do so?"</p>
+
+<p>With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how do you propose to find her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"You know the consequences?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy
+fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden
+is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."</p>
+
+<p>"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is so."</p>
+
+<p>"You suggest no reason for the difference?"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia.
+Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much.
+I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same
+expression that had come over her face when he suggested the
+possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous
+Wednesday morning.</p>
+
+<p>"I suggest no reason," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a
+window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes
+melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a
+discreet distance from her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Not worth saving, Sylvia?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed
+in him.</p>
+
+<p>"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How
+<i>could</i> he, if he didn't know all along?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>"Remember Brandon Court," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't he mention it?"</p>
+
+<p>I pointed to the Bench.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child, look at them! Why not talk higher mathematics to a
+boa-constrictor?"</p>
+
+<p>"If he can't make them believe it, why should I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you <i>know</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything. You know he's in love with you, and you're in love with
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice quivered with passion; there was nothing for it but a bold
+stroke. And one risk more or less hardly mattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you keep a secret, Sylvia?"</p>
+
+<p>"It depends."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Absolutely?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>I lowered my voice to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>was</i> a woman in his rooms last Wednesday, and she is the woman
+I am engaged to marry."</p>
+
+<p>Her look of scorn was caused less by concern for my morals than by
+pity for my simplicity in thinking she would believe such a story.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"You must. It's your last chance. If you let him go now, you'll lose
+him for ever, and I'm not going to let you blight your life and his,
+if I can stop it. You must make up your mind now. Do you believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>Her expression of scorn had vanished and given place to one of painful
+perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not...."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe me, Sylvia?"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated in an agony of indecision, until the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>moment was lost.
+The water had arrived, and Arthur was dismissing me from the Presence.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not going to arrest us, then?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I reserve perfect freedom of action," he answered, in the Front Bench
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right," I said. "I only wish you'd reserved the inquisition
+till this boy was in a better state to receive it. Would it interfere
+with your liberty of action if I asked you to say a word of thanks
+either to Aintree, myself, or both? I believe it is usual when a man
+loses his daughter and has her restored to him."</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes more would have tried my temper. Arthur sat down again
+at his table, opened a drawer, and took out a cheque-book.</p>
+
+<p>"According to your story it was Aintree who was chiefly instrumental
+in making the discovery?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was the lie we agreed on," I said.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds, and handed it to the
+Seraph with the words&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That, I think, clears all obligations between us."</p>
+
+<p>"Except that of manners," I exclaimed. "The House of Commons&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But he had rung the bell, and was tidying his papers into neat,
+superfluous bundles.</p>
+
+<p>Philip had the courage to shake me by the hand and say he hoped to see
+me again soon. I am not sufficiently cynical to say it was prompted by
+the reflection that Gladys was my niece, because he was every whit as
+cordial to the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>I shook hands with Sylvia, and found her watching the Seraph fold and
+pocket the two thousand pound cheque.</p>
+
+<p>"He's taking it!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your father should have been ashamed to make the offer. It serves him
+right if his offer's accepted. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>Don't blame the Seraph. If Nigel and
+your father proceed on the lines they've gone on this afternoon, one
+or both of us will have to cut the country. The Seraph's not made of
+money; he'll want all he can lay hands on. Now then, Sylvia, it's two
+lives you're playing with."</p>
+
+<p>She had not yet made up her mind, and indecision chilled the warmth of
+her eyes and the smile on her lips. I watched the effort, and wondered
+if it would suffice for the Seraph. Then question and answer told
+their tale.</p>
+
+<p>"When shall we see you again?" I heard her ask as I walked to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly say," came the low reply. "I'm leaving England shortly.
+I shall go across India, and spend some time in Japan&mdash;and then visit
+the Islands of the South Seas. It's a thing I've always wanted to do.
+After that? I don't know...."</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"The instant he entered the room it was plain that
+all was lost....</p>
+
+<p>"'I cannot find it,' said he, 'and I must have it.
+Where is it?... Where is my bench?... Time presses;
+and I must finish those shoes.'</p>
+
+<p>"They looked at one another, and their hearts died
+within them.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come, come!' said he, in a whimpering miserable way:
+'let me get to work. Give me my work.'</p>
+
+<p>"...Carton was the first to speak:</p>
+
+<p>"'The last chance is gone: it was not much....'"</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Charles Dickens</span>: "A Tale of Two Cities."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>As I helped the Seraph out of the house and into a taxi, I was trying
+to string together a few words of sympathy and encouragement. Then I
+looked at his face, and decided to save my breath. Physically and
+mentally he was too hard hit to profit by any consolation I could
+offer. As a clumsy symbol of good intention I held out my hand, and
+had it gripped and retained till we reached Adelphi Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind me," he said, in a slow, sing-song voice, hesitating like
+a man speaking an unfamiliar language. "It's you and Joyce we've got
+to consider."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry your head, Seraph," I said. "We'll find a way out. You've
+got to be quiet and get well."</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>"I've no idea," I answered blankly.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph sighed and lifted his feet wearily on to the seat opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"You played that last hand well, Toby. I'm afraid you'll have to go on
+playing without any support from me. I'm dummy, I'm only good for two
+possible tricks."</p>
+
+<p>I waited to see the hand exposed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't find Mavis," he went on. "You see that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You must ask Joyce to tell you. She spoke a few words this morning,
+and she's getting stronger. If she refuses ... but she won't if you
+ask her."</p>
+
+<p>"If she does?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must go on bluffing Nigel. He doesn't know who's in the flat, and
+old Roden doesn't know either. They'd have searched three days ago,
+they'd have arrested us to-day on suspicion if they hadn't been afraid
+of making fools of themselves. Keep bluffing, Toby. The keener you are
+to get the search over and done with, the more they'll be afraid of a
+mare's nest." The words trailed off in a sigh. "If there's anything I
+can do I'll do it, but I'm afraid you'll find me pretty useless."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going quietly to bed for forty-eight hours," I told him.</p>
+
+<p>He raised no protest, and I heard him murmur, "Saturday night. Sunday
+night. Monday night. It'll be all over then, one way or the other."</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the flat I carried him upstairs, ordered some soup, and
+smoked a cigarette in the hall. Maybury-Reynardson was completing his
+evening inspection, and when he came out I asked for the bulletin.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in the right direction," he told me, "but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>very, very slow. The
+mind's working back to normal whenever she wakes, and she's been
+talking a little. I'm afraid you must go on being patient."</p>
+
+<p>"Could she answer a question?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't ask any."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's absolutely necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you want to know?"</p>
+
+<p>"The police will search this flat on Monday if we don't find out
+before then where Miss Rawnsley was taken to when she disappeared."</p>
+
+<p>Maybury-Reynardson shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't think of bothering her with questions of that kind. If
+you did, I don't suppose she could help you."</p>
+
+<p>"But you said the mind was normal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Working back to normal. Everything's there, but she can't put it in
+order. The memory larder is full, but her hands are too weak to lift
+things down from the shelves."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a matter of life and death," I urged.</p>
+
+<p>"If it was a matter of eternal salvation I doubt if she could help
+you. Do you dream? Well, could you piece together the fragments of all
+you dreamt last night? You might have done so a moment after waking,
+little pieces may come back to you when some one suggests the right
+train of thought. That's Miss Davenant's condition. To change the
+parallel, her eyes can see, but they see 'through a glass darkly.'"</p>
+
+<p>I thought the matter over while he was examining and prescribing for
+the Seraph.</p>
+
+<p>"We're in a tight corner, Seraph," I said when he had gone. "I don't
+see any other way out, I'm going to take the responsibility of
+disobeying him."</p>
+
+<p>He offered no suggestion, and I walked to the door of Joyce's room and
+put my fingers to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>handle. Then I came back and made him open his
+eyes and listen to me.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the blame," I said; "but will you see if you can make her
+understand? She's known you longer."</p>
+
+<p>It was not the true reason. When I reached the door I was smitten with
+the fear that she would not recognise me, and my nerve failed.</p>
+
+<p>We explained our intentions to a reluctant nurse; I fidgeted outside
+in the hall and heard the Seraph walk up to the bedside and ask Joyce
+how she was.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm better, thanks," she answered. "Let me see, do I know you?" There
+was a weak laugh. "I should like to be friends with you, you've got
+such nice eyes."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph took her hand and asked if she knew any one named Mavis
+Rawnsley.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I know her. Her father's the Prime Minister. Mavis, yes, I
+know her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where she is?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mavis Rawnsley? She was at the theatre last night. What theatre was
+it? She was in the stalls, and I was in a box. Who else was there?
+Were you? She was with her mother. Where is she now? Yes, I know Miss
+Rawnsley well."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where she is now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expect she's at the theatre."</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes, and the Seraph came back to the door, shaking his
+head. I tiptoed into the room, looked round the screen and watched
+Joyce smiling in her sleep. As I looked, her eyes opened and met mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're my husband. You took me to
+the theatre last night, when we saw Mavis Rawnsley. We were in a box,
+and she was in the stalls. Some one wanted to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>know where Mavis was.
+Tell them we saw her at the theatre, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to me; I bent down, kissed her forehead, and
+crept out of the room. The Seraph was lying on the bed we had made up
+for him in my room. I helped him to undress, and retired to the
+library with a cigar&mdash;to forget Joyce and plan the bluffing of Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>My first act was to get into communication with Paddy Culling on the
+telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you do me another favour?" I began. "Well, it's this. I want you
+to get hold of Nigel and take him to lunch or dine to-morrow&mdash;Sunday&mdash;at
+the Club. Let me know which, and the time. When you've finished eating,
+lead him away to a quiet corner&mdash;the North Smoking Room or the
+Strangers' Card Room. Hold him in conversation till I come. I shall drop
+in accidentally, and start pulling his leg. You can help, but do it in
+moderation; we mustn't make him savage&mdash;only uncomfortable. You
+understand? Right."</p>
+
+<p>Then I went to bed.</p>
+
+<p>On Sunday morning I started out in the direction of Chester Square,
+and made two discoveries on the way. The first was that our house was
+being unceasingly watched by a tall Yorkshireman in plain clothes and
+regulation boots; the second, that the Yorkshireman was in his turn
+being intermittently watched by Nigel Rawnsley. His opinion of the
+Criminal Investigation Department must have been as low&mdash;if not as
+kindly&mdash;as my own. On two more occasions that day I found him engaged
+on a flying visit of inspection&mdash;to keep Scotland Yard up to the
+Rawnsley mark and answer the eternal question that Juvenal propounded
+and Michael Roden amended for his own benefit and mine at Henley.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>Elsie received me with anxious enquiries after her sister. I gave a
+full report, propounded my plan of campaign, and was rewarded by being
+shown the extensive and beautiful contents of her wardrobe. I should
+never have believed one woman could accumulate so many clothes; there
+seemed a dress for every day and evening of the year, and she could
+have worn a fresh hat each hour without repeating herself. My own rule
+is to have one suit I can wear in a bad light, and four that I cannot.
+With hats the practice is even simpler; I flaunt a new one until it is
+stolen, and then wear the changeling until a substitute of even
+greater seediness has been supplied. My instincts are conservative,
+and my hats more symbolical than decorative; for me they typify the
+great, sad law that every change is a change for the worse.</p>
+
+<p>My only complaint against Elsie was that her wardrobe contained too
+much of what university authorities would call the "subfuse" element.
+The most conspicuous garments I could find were a white coat and
+skirt, white stockings and shoes, black hat and veil, and heliotrope
+dust coat. I am no judge whether they looked well in combination, but
+I challenge the purblind to say they were inconspicuous. To my eyes
+the <i>tout ensemble</i> was so striking that I laid them on a chair and
+gazed in wondering admiration until it was time to call up Gartside
+and warn him that I stood in need of luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>Carlton House Terrace had a depressing, derelict appearance that
+foreboded the departure of its lord. All the favourite pictures and
+ornaments seemed to have been stowed away in preparation for India,
+neat piles of books were distributed about the library floor, and
+every scrap of paper seemed to have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>tidied into a drawer. We sat
+down a pleasant party of three, and I made the acquaintance of
+Gartside's cousin and aide-de-camp, Lord Raymond Sturling. An
+agreeable fellow he seemed, who put himself and his services entirely
+at my disposal in the event of my deciding to come for a part or all
+of the way. I could only avail myself of his offer to the extent of
+sending him to see if Mountjoy's villa at Rimini was still in the
+market, and if so what his figure was for giving me immediate
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>Gartside himself was as hospitable as ever in offering me every
+available inch on the yacht for the accommodation of myself and any
+friends I might care to bring with me. I ran through the list and
+found myself wondering if Maybury-Reynardson could be persuaded to
+come. I had hardly known him long enough to call him a friend, but he
+had gone out of his way to oblige me in coming to attend Joyce, and on
+general principles I think most big London practitioners are the
+better for a few days at sea at the close of the London season.</p>
+
+<p>I called round in Cavendish Square for a cup of tea, and told him he
+was pulled down and in need of a change.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the good it did my brother," I said. "Just to Marseilles and
+back. Or if you'll come to Genoa and overland to Rimini, I shall be
+very glad to put you up for as long as you can stay. It's Gartside's
+own yacht, and I'm authorised by him to invite whom I please. He's a
+capital host, and you'll be done to a turn. The only fault I have to
+find with his arrangements is that he carries no doctor, and I'm
+sufficiently middle-aged to be fussy on a point like that. Anybody
+taken ill, you know, anybody coming on board ill, and it would be
+devilish awkward. I shall insist on a doctor. He'll be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>Gartside's
+guest, but I shall pay his fees, of course, and he can name his own
+figure. What do you think of the idea? We shall be to all intents and
+purposes a bachelor party."</p>
+
+<p>When Maybury-Reynardson's name was first mentioned to me on the
+evening of Joyce's flight, the Seraph had justly described him as a
+"sportsman." Under the grave official mask I could see a twinkling eye
+and a flickering smile.</p>
+
+<p>"It depends on one case of nervous breakdown that I've got on hand at
+present," he said. "If my patient's well enough...."</p>
+
+<p>"She's got to be," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you sail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Friday."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't make it later?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"This is Sunday. I'll tell you when we're a little nearer the day."</p>
+
+<p>"She must be moved on Thursday afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Must? Must?" he repeated with a smile. "Whose patient is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose wife's she going to be?" I asked in my turn.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it'll be pretty hot," he said. "First week in August. I
+must get some thin clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Include them in the fee," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the fee!" he answered, as we walked to the door.</p>
+
+<p>Paddy Culling had arranged to give Nigel his dinner at eight. I had
+comfortable time to dress and dine at Adelphi Terrace, and nine-thirty
+found me wandering round the Club in search of company.</p>
+
+<p>"Praise heaven for the sight of a friendly face!" I exclaimed as I
+stumbled across Paddy and Nigel in the North Smoking Room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>"Where was ut ye dined?" asked Paddy, as I pulled up a chair and rang
+for cigars. To a practised ear his brogue was an eloquent war signal.</p>
+
+<p>"In the sick-house," I told him, "Adelphi Terrace."</p>
+
+<p>"Is ut catching?" he inquired. "It's not for my own self I'm asking,
+but Nigel here. I owe ut to empire and postherity to see he runs no
+risks."</p>
+
+<p>I reassured him on the score of posterity.</p>
+
+<p>"He's just knocked up and over-tired," I said, "and I'm keeping him in
+bed till Wednesday or Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he'll not be walking ye into the Lake District to find Miss
+Mavis for the present," Paddy observed with an eye on Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest," I said with
+great determination.</p>
+
+<p>Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd have ye remember the days of grace," he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>I shrugged my shoulders without answering.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's me pound of flesh?" he demanded. "Manin' no disrispec' to
+Miss Mavis," he added apologetically to Nigel.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't help you to find her," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Can the Seraph?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present."</p>
+
+<p>Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked
+up the threads where they had been dropped.</p>
+
+<p>"You say Aintree's ill," he began cautiously. "If I were disposed to
+regard the time of illness as so many <i>dies non</i>, would he be in a
+position to find my sister by the end of the week?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>"Frankly, I see no likelihood."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an extra five days."</p>
+
+<p>"What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"You should know best."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better
+means of finding out."</p>
+
+<p>"And Aintree?"</p>
+
+<p>"In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means
+of finding out he'd tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.</p>
+
+<p>"When the days of grace have expired, ye'll have yer contract
+unfulfilled?"</p>
+
+<p>"And we shall be prepared to face the consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't help himself." I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no
+profit in staying longer. "I shall see you both to-morrow at noon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not me," said Paddy. "I've searched the place once."</p>
+
+<p>"You, Nigel?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I think fit," he answered loftily.</p>
+
+<p>"I only ask, because you mustn't worry the Seraph. You can search his
+rooms, but you mustn't try to cross-question him. He's not equal to
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'd be wise to accept the extension of time."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear man, what's the good? If we can't find your sister, we can't.
+Saturday's no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time,
+you'd better stick to it and get your search over."</p>
+
+<p>"If Aintree's ill...."</p>
+
+<p>"Humbug! Nigel," I said. "If you believe we're <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>harbouring a criminal,
+it's your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach
+Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your
+superior wisdom. Bring 'em to-morrow; bring 'em to-night if you like,
+and as many as you can get. The more there are," I said, turning at
+the door to fire a last shot, "the more voices will be raised in
+thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley."</p>
+
+<p>The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need
+expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain
+other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning
+to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy's villa at
+Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all
+formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton
+House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up
+odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious
+invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On
+Thursday I called at Chester Square.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie's car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid
+me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on
+the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat
+and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce.
+The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she
+dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might
+have belonged to either sister.</p>
+
+<p>I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to
+Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of
+attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after
+Joyce, they would not be there for ever. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>As we crossed Trafalgar
+Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as I thought," I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My
+plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite
+side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman
+from the corner of the Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>"Bow to him," I said to Elsie. "He may not deign to recognise you, but
+he can't help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained
+ankle!"</p>
+
+<p>With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half
+carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The
+ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to
+run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out
+of my Yorkshire friend's field of vision.</p>
+
+<p>I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce's room. I never
+waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time,
+weak, suffering and heart-broken&mdash;two large blue eyes gazing at me out
+of a white immobile face&mdash;I half regretted we had ever met, and
+heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could
+have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all,
+he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting
+out solitary and unfriended&mdash;to forget....</p>
+
+<p>Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed
+before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and
+heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little
+smile, bent over the Seraph's bed and kissed him, and then suffered me
+to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the
+footman and I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My
+Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in
+my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough
+padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his
+present scrutiny told him was that a woman's veil was up when she
+entered a house, and down when she left it.</p>
+
+<p>We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond
+Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us,
+and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch
+already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in
+the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>mariage de convenance</i>," Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw
+me inspecting the labels.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. <i>Ariel</i>, Southampton," was the name and
+destination I found written.</p>
+
+<p>"It may save trouble," he added apologetically. "I thought you
+wouldn't mind."</p>
+
+<p>His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and
+arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson,
+Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and
+railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce's age and figure,
+and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife," Sturling explained brusquely. "Yes, be as quick as you can,
+please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible.
+Sturling&mdash;aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht.
+There she is, the <i>Ariel</i>, sailing to-morrow. These gentlemen? Mr.
+Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That
+all?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>"All in order, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Right away."</p>
+
+<p>As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the
+<i>Ariel</i>. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought
+of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have
+kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of
+the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember
+the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed
+direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag
+flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to
+correct a popular delusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Raymond Sturling's" nurses arrived by an early train on Friday
+morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at
+three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and
+five: "Sursum corda" was the first; "Keep your tails up" the second;
+and "Haste to the Wedding" completed the series.</p>
+
+<p>I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters.
+Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air
+and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has
+returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were
+already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was
+wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of
+the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears
+that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there
+would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning,
+and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been
+ruffled.</p>
+
+<p>While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>his nightly visit, I paced
+the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar.
+As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as
+reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several
+years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had
+tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you find Sylvia?" he asked in a tone that showed how his
+thoughts had been occupied.</p>
+
+<p>I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of
+the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I'm not leaving so much behind after all," was his comment.
+"Good luck to the Seraph! He's a nice boy."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll need all the luck he can get," I answered. "You'll get oil and
+water to mingle quicker than you'll bring those two together. Tell me
+how it's to be done, Gartside, and you'll put the coping-stone on all
+your labours."</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness I heard him sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't help you. I'm not a diplomatist, I'm just a lumpy,
+good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!" he added
+softly. "He's as fond of her as we any of us were."</p>
+
+<p>I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.</p>
+
+<p>"That's like Paddy," he said with a laugh. "Well, he's right. You're
+the only one that's come out on top, and good wishes to you for the
+future!"</p>
+
+<p>We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want thanks," I said, "but if you do you know where to come
+for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well!" I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes
+when the light of the chart-room <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>lamp fell on his face. "If I can't
+get what I want, there's some satisfaction in helping a friend to get
+what <i>he</i> wants."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass," I said. "I
+shall want that text during the next few months."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together," I answered in the
+same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>"And how are you going to do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows!" I replied with a woeful shake of the head.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XV<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>THE RAID</h4>
+
+<div class="block3"><p>"I can see you flying before the laughter like ...
+tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter
+will pursue you to Paris, where they'll make little
+songs about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera,
+where they'll sell your photographs on picture
+postcards. I can see you fleeing across the Atlantic
+to ... the immensity of America, and there the Yellow
+Press, pea-green with frenzy, will pile column of
+ridicule upon column of invective. Oh, ... do you
+think it isn't worth while to endure six months' hard
+labour to amuse the world so profoundly?"</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">W.S. Maugham</span>: "Jack Straw."</p>
+</div>
+<br />
+
+<p>The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited
+by the Individualist.</p>
+
+<p>Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and
+better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and
+habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the
+Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her
+efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce
+in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that
+reputation back.... Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her
+loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained
+her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness,
+imprisonment and&mdash;well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was
+calling down on her foolish young head.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism&mdash;the kind that sets
+your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your
+throat&mdash;but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night
+Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to
+the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce's bedroom, watched them meet and
+kiss.... "Gods of my fathers," I murmured, "what have you won, the
+pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?"</p>
+
+<p>The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you
+tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our
+escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all;
+You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the
+nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was
+no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of
+command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more
+troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been
+less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my
+grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit
+between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will
+for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or
+chagrined&mdash;only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen
+her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her
+campaign to win a reputation.</p>
+
+<p>When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and
+earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not
+mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday
+at three, and at three-thirty Culling was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>to post a letter I had
+written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of
+persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her
+again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to
+avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but
+she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to
+overcome the Seraph's curious bent of self-depreciation.</p>
+
+<p>Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph's
+condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down
+during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of
+finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and
+the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing
+when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great
+a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.</p>
+
+<p>I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was
+getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him.
+Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening,
+catch the nine o'clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa
+at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the
+fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea
+of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her
+husband to look after him.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks
+no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our
+departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous,
+undisciplined outlet. Nine o'clock came and went without bringing her
+a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting
+by his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he began to
+grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she
+steal away to her sister's deserted room and lie down for a few hours'
+sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been
+administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like
+slumber.</p>
+
+<p>He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my
+letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to
+swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what
+she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and
+courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to
+Adelphi Terrace and going alone.</p>
+
+<p>Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade
+her going, reminding her&mdash;I have no doubt&mdash;of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph's entire
+unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently
+tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely
+resolute. The homily ended&mdash;as is the way of most sermons&mdash;when her
+mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled
+and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her
+hat, called at a florist's on the way, and presented herself at
+Adelphi Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph's man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that
+the patient was still sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>"I've brought him some flowers," she said. "I suppose it's no good
+waiting? You can't say how soon he's likely to wake up?"</p>
+
+<p>Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the
+man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and
+withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures
+and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted
+by the sound of men's voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared
+to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the warrant," said a voice, "properly signed, all in order. If
+you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you
+do so at your own risk."</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The
+voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.</p>
+
+<p>"One of you stay here," he went on, "and see that nobody leaves the
+flat. The other come with me. Take the library first."</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the
+library's sole occupant.</p>
+
+<p>"Sylvia!" he exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here?"</p>
+
+<p>His tone so resembled her mother's that all Sylvia's latent opposition
+and obstinacy were called into play.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any objection to my being here?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It was rather a surprise."</p>
+
+<p>"As I don't always warn you beforehand, I'm afraid a good many things
+I do must come as a surprise to you."</p>
+
+<p>"And to yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must explain that."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely no explanation is needed?"</p>
+
+<p>"No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn't bother to
+explain my presence here."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>"I imagine Aintree could supply that," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to
+use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his
+expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister,
+and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect
+of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you imagine he had any hand in that?" she asked contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"He knew where to look for you," was the significant answer, "and he
+found that out from the woman he's been hiding in these rooms. As it's
+too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I've called
+to gain that information from the lady herself."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Search the flat."</p>
+
+<p>"And if she isn't here?"</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>was</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I admit I didn't see her. It may have been any one. But there's a
+very strong probability, and I'm going on that."</p>
+
+<p>"And if there's no one here now?"</p>
+
+<p>"She must have got away."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What d'you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do if you find no one?"</p>
+
+<p>"If there's no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If
+Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant...." He paused delicately.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>"I'm afraid he'll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to
+sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have him arrested?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. <i>I</i>
+shan't do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Except rub your hands?" she taunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even that," he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing
+no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his
+voice to summon the detectives into the library. "We'll take this room
+first," he told her, "and then leave you undisturbed."</p>
+
+<p>The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to
+fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with
+surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their
+conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she
+entered the library and in the Seraph's interests requested Nigel to
+carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night,
+so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll
+stay here and talk to Miss Roden."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement,
+humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually
+fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."</p>
+
+<p>"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern
+authority.</p>
+
+<p>"It's some time now...."</p>
+
+<p>"And how long have you been here?"</p>
+
+<p>There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>Elsie's thoughts had
+been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in
+readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in
+the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open;
+outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.</p>
+
+<p>"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.</p>
+
+<p>The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to
+boiling point in Sylvia's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"How long?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak,
+the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared
+in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not here," he announced.</p>
+
+<p>"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at
+his untimely return.</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could have told you that."</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>was</i> here."</p>
+
+<p>"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale
+invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm
+afraid you and the&mdash;er&mdash;gentleman outside have had your journey in
+vain."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect
+of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had
+undertaken to educate.</p>
+
+<p>"Not altogether," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>"We've found Aintree."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to
+move yet."</p>
+
+<p>"He may have to."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well&mdash;and away."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening
+tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly
+becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier
+losings.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're arresting him?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he
+answered with a lift of the eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my
+sister?"</p>
+
+<p>Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."</p>
+
+<p>"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested."</p>
+
+<p>A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on
+Elsie's face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly he won't be arrested," she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"You will prevent it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I leave that to you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation
+like the present," she told him with a wise shake of the head. "It's
+ridiculous enough to search a man's rooms for a woman who isn't there,
+but you can't&mdash;you really can't arrest a man for harbouring a woman
+when there's no shred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>of evidence to show she was ever under the same
+roof."</p>
+
+<p>Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel's thin skin to an angry spot
+of red on either cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss
+Roden disappeared," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I have every reason to remember it."</p>
+
+<p>"Your sister was here then."</p>
+
+<p>"You saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard her."</p>
+
+<p>"You heard <i>a</i> woman."</p>
+
+<p>"It was your sister or yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Or one of a million others."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.</p>
+
+<p>"I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday.
+Barring two nurses, and they're accounted for. You or your sister must
+have left here yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"And not come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that makes it much easier, doesn't it? If one went out and
+never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it
+looks ... I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think,
+that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. And it's on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be
+arrested."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves.
+It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed
+and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, what a pity you didn't come before <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>the bird was
+flown!" Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.</p>
+
+<p>"It's something to have found Aintree at home," Nigel returned.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?" Elsie
+walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the
+door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be
+betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the
+Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the
+immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb
+her: she was filled with pity and doubt&mdash;pity for Sylvia, and doubt
+whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. "I suppose&mdash;you're quite
+certain&mdash;he wasn't harbouring&mdash;<i>me</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>Nigel's unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no warrant against you."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortunately not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why should he harbour you?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she
+turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of
+desperation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with
+cheeks aflame.</p>
+
+<p>"D'you mean you were here the whole time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you?"</p>
+
+<p>"D'you think it likely?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome r&ocirc;le to its bitter end.</p>
+
+<p>"You know my character, you've not had time to forget my divorce or
+the way I thrust myself under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>the noses of respectable people. Have I
+got much more bloom to lose?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's not true! The Seraph ... he <i>wouldn't</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"You used to see us about together."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing in that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough to make you cut him at Henley." Each fresh word fell like a
+lash across Sylvia's cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely
+at the door it was impossible to end the torture.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> you say whether you were here the whole time?" she demanded of
+Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"'Course she wasn't," Nigel struck in. "There are convenances even in
+this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Was</i> he?" Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from
+time to time? It's important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I
+was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn't happen to
+be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn't have been
+harbouring my sister, but it's good-bye to the remains of my good
+name. And if Mr. Merivale <i>was</i> here, I couldn't have been living here
+too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which
+was it? I don't like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me
+confidentially what you believe yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"As the conduct of the case is not in my hands," he answered loftily,
+"my opinion is of no moment."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling
+mischievously to herself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>"So there's nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, <i>che sera
+sera</i>: I suppose it'll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall
+be let out in time to see the fun. It'll be worth it. I wish women
+were admitted to your Club, it 'ud be so amusing to hear your friends
+chaffing you about your great mare's nest. 'Well, Rawnsley, what's
+this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?'
+Men are such cats, aren't they? Every one would start teasing you at
+the House, the thing 'ud get into the papers, they'd hear of it in
+your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting
+and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the
+great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One
+or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and
+grow louder as every one joined in. They'd laugh at you in private
+houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They'd laugh at you in the
+streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on
+at the music halls and imitate you. They'd laugh and laugh till their
+sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you'd try to
+live it down and find you couldn't, and in the end you'd have to leave
+England and live abroad, until they'd found something else to laugh
+at. You're going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven't got
+the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come
+back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!"</p>
+
+<p>The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a
+little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that
+would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her
+voice and the laughter out of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I go and see if the Seraph's awake yet?" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>she temporised, "or
+would you prefer to leave a message?"</p>
+
+<p>Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come&mdash;only a dry, choking
+sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed
+to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Roden! Sylvia!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't</i> call me that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. Miss Roden, I've got something to say to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hear it, I only want to get away!"</p>
+
+<p>"You must listen, your whole life's at stake&mdash;and the Seraph's, too."</p>
+
+<p>The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"You must shut that door."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three
+paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to
+light a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about&mdash;the woman who was here," she whispered as he began to
+descend the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it you?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, say it! say it! Yes or no."</p>
+
+<p>The sound of Nigel's descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the
+angle of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake come back inside here a minute!" Elsie implored her.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, it's no good; I shouldn't believe you whatever you said. If
+you weren't here, why did you say you were? And if you were&mdash;&mdash; Oh,
+let me go, let me go!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie's restraining hand and
+rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with
+her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed
+the door and walked with a heavy heart into the library. On a table by
+the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had
+brought&mdash;lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph
+loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and
+across the hall to the Seraph's door. He was still sleeping, but awoke
+in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.</p>
+
+<p>"The search-party," Elsie told him, forcing a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives."</p>
+
+<p>"Was that all?"</p>
+
+<p>The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't it enough?" she asked indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other
+people&mdash;some people&mdash;were near me. I fancied&mdash;when I was asleep&mdash;I
+suppose it must have been a dream&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I fancied there was
+some one else quite close."</p>
+
+<p>He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie's fingers in a
+bloodless, wasted hand.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you keep the search-party out?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't. They came in, and looked into every room. For some
+unaccountable reason," she added ironically, "Joyce was nowhere to be
+found."</p>
+
+<p>"Were they surprised to see you here?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>"A little. I told them you were seedy and I'd called to inquire."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go
+on talking.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they really thought you'd been here the whole time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no!"</p>
+
+<p>"But how else...."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Elsie interrupted quickly. "You must ask <i>them</i> who
+the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They
+couldn't say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both
+compromised."</p>
+
+<p>She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you
+well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in
+August isn't good for little boys."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini."</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go there yet. They'll be&mdash;frightfully happy&mdash;wrapped up in
+each other&mdash;all that sort of thing. I don't want to see them yet."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie dropped no hint of the time that must elapse before Joyce was
+strong again or "frightfully happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall it be then?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>The Seraph pressed her fingers to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You go there, Elsie. I must travel alone. I shall go to the East. I
+shan't come back for some time. If ever."</p>
+
+<p>The effort of talking and the trend of the conversation had made him
+restless. Elsie smoothed his pillow, and rose to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>As he watched her walk to the door, his eyes fell for the first time
+on the bouquet of roses and lilies.</p>
+
+<p>"Who brought those?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I found them in the library," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no name?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she pretended to look for a card, then shook her head
+without speaking. As she saw him lying in bed, she wondered if he
+would ever know the price at which his freedom from arrest had been
+purchased. Of her own sacrifice she thought little; it was but
+generous payment of a long outstanding debt. All her imagination was
+concentrated on Sylvia&mdash;her sanguine, happy arrival, the morning's
+long agony, her hopeless, agonised departure.</p>
+
+<p>"And no message?" the Seraph persisted with a mixture of eagerness and
+disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder who they can be from."</p>
+
+<p>"One of your numerous admirers, I suppose," Elsie answered carelessly.
+Then she opened the door, walked wearily to her own room, and
+tried&mdash;unsuccessfully&mdash;to cry.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h4>RIMINI</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"We left our country for our country's good."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">George Barrington</span>: <i>Prologue</i>.</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>We arrived in Rimini at the end of the first week in August&mdash;Joyce,
+her two nurses, Maybury-Reynardson and I. Elsie joined us as soon as
+we were comfortably settled in the villa, and has stayed on week after
+week, month after month, tending her poor sister with a devotion that
+touched my selfish, hardened old heart. Dick came for a few days
+before the beginning of the law term; otherwise we have been a party
+of three, as the doctor and nurses returned to England as soon as
+Joyce appeared to be out of danger.</p>
+
+<p>Rimini turns cold at the beginning of November, and we have had to
+make arrangements for going into winter quarters. Cairo and the
+Riviera are a little public for two escaped criminals, but I hear
+there is a tolerable hotel at Taormina; and as Joyce has never been in
+Sicily before, we might spend at least the beginning of our honeymoon
+there. For myself, I do not mind where we go so long as we can escape
+from Rimini. I want no unnecessary reminders of the last three months,
+the weary waiting, the frequent false dawns of convalescence, the
+regular relapses. They have been bad months for Joyce, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>but I venture
+to think they were worse for Elsie and myself. In my own case there
+definitely came an early day when my nervous system showed signs of
+striking work; it was then that I embarked on my first and last
+venture in prose composition.</p>
+
+<p>When she is well enough to be bothered with such vain trivialities, I
+shall present my manuscript to Joyce. I hope she will read it, for I
+have intended it for her eyes alone; and if she rejects the task, I
+shall feel guilty of having wasted an incredible amount of good sermon
+paper. And when she has read it, she must light a little fire and burn
+every sheet of it; not even Elsie must see it, though she has been
+instrumental in giving me information over the last chapters that I
+should not otherwise have obtained.</p>
+
+<p>I think my decision is wise and necessary. In part the book is too
+intimate an account of Sylvia's character and the Seraph's feelings
+for me to be justified in making it public: in part, the pair of us
+have already done sufficient injury to Rodens and Rawnsleys without
+giving the world our candid opinion of either family: in part, we have
+to remember that during the last eight months, wherever we found the
+law of England obtruding itself on our gaze, we broke it with a light
+heart and untroubled conscience. There is not the least good in taking
+the world into our confidence in the matter of these little
+transgressions.</p>
+
+<p>In a week's time there will be a quiet wedding at the British
+Consulate; it will take place in the presence of a Consul who has
+treated me with such uniform kindness that I have sometimes wondered
+if he has ever heard of such things as extradition orders. Our
+marriage will be the last chapter of one phase in my life. It opened
+on a day when I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>walked up the steps of the Club, and paused for a
+moment to gaze at the altered face of Pall Mall and read on a
+contents-bill that the old militants had broken every window on the
+east side of Bond Street, interrupted a meeting, and burnt down an
+Elizabethan house in Hertfordshire. "Shocking," I remember thinking,
+"and quite unimpressive." Before I was twelve hours older, Fate had
+introduced me to a young woman whose machinations may or may not have
+been infinitely more shocking; they were certainly not unimpressive.</p>
+
+<p>The closing scenes of the Militant campaign are soon given. Elsie left
+London and joined us here as soon as the Seraph was fit to travel.
+That was three days after Nigel's second raid. They must have been
+anxious days, as our rising young statesman seems to have been torn
+between a quite bloodthirsty lust for revenge and a morbid horror of
+another fiasco as humiliating as his search-party. Elsie went round by
+Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for
+Bombay and came overland to Rimini. When I met her and heard the
+details of her flight, I could tell her that all danger was over,
+and&mdash;if Justice had not been done&mdash;the stolen goods had at least been
+restored.</p>
+
+<p>The news reached us as we came out of the Bay. Gartside and I were on
+deck, watching the sun strike golden splinters out of the hock-bottle
+towers of the royal palace at Cintra. The wireless operator came down
+with a tapped message that Mrs. Millington had revealed the
+whereabouts of Mavis Rawnsley and young Paul Jefferson. He added that
+the police had so far discovered no trace of that hardened
+criminal&mdash;Miss Joyce Davenant.</p>
+
+<p>When Elsie joined us and told me the story of the Rawnsley raid, I
+could not help thinking once <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>again, "<i>Plus &ccedil;a change, plus c'est la
+m&ecirc;me chose</i>." The gallant fight she had made for freedom and
+reputation ended in disaster, and she left England branded with the
+stigma that the Divorce Court had striven to impose and we had fought
+tooth and nail to remove. Joyce's struggle for the suffrage ended, as
+she now knows, in putting the suffrage further from the forefront of
+practical politics than it has been for a generation. When the
+recording angel allots to each one of us our share of responsibility
+in moulding the face of history, what effective change will be
+credited to the united or separate efforts of Rawnsleys and Rodens,
+Seraphs, Davenants and Merivales?</p>
+
+<p>Two results stand out. The first is a marriage that will be celebrated
+at the Consulate in a week's time, the second is a listless letter
+penned in exile, signed by the Seraph and dated from Yokohama. Joyce
+knows I am tolerably fond of her, and will acquit me of speaking
+rhetorically if I say that I would wipe the last eight months&mdash;and all
+they mean to us both&mdash;from the pages of Time, if I could spare the
+Seraph what he has been through since I dined with him that first
+evening at the Ritz. Here is the letter, and no one will be surprised
+to learn that I spent a melancholy day after reading it.</p>
+
+<p>"I send you the last chapters of Volume III. As you've waded through
+the earlier stuff, you may care to see the record brought up to date.
+I call it 'The End' because there's nothing more to write, and if
+there were, I shouldn't write it. Some day I suppose I may have to
+write again, when my present money (Roden's money) is exhausted. Not
+till then.</p>
+
+<p>"India was one disappointment, and Japan another, though the fault, I
+imagine, lay in my lack of appreciation. The South Seas will be a
+third. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>'<i>Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt</i>.' I don't
+want to move on, but I can't stand Yokohama any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"When I get to San Francisco I shall probably cross the States,
+arriving in New York at the end of December. Then I suppose one has to
+see this Panama Canal. After that, God knows.</p>
+
+<p>"Before I left England I was looking for the MS. of the earlier
+chapters of Vol. III. I couldn't find them. Did you by any chance get
+them mixed up in your luggage? If so, please destroy them at once,
+with the new chapters, as soon as you have read them. Don't let
+anybody see them, even Joyce. In this I depend on your friendship and
+honour.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Joyce is all right again now. Give my love to her and Elsie,
+and take my best wishes for yourself. You&mdash;I suppose&mdash;are a fixture at
+Rimini, or at any rate out of England. I can't answer for myself, but
+I don't expect we shall meet again. You must have found me a
+depressing host in London. I'm sorry. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>He said that even Joyce was not to see the third volume&mdash;put me on my
+honour, in fact&mdash;and see it she shall not. There is another reason. I
+read those last chapters and then went through the whole volume from
+beginning to end. Without exaggeration the effect was overwhelming&mdash;his
+style is so artless, his pathos so unpremeditated. I felt as if I had
+been re-reading Hardy's most poignant novels&mdash;"Tess" and "Jude" and "A
+Pair of Blue Eyes." It was horrible. I went up to my room, lit the fire
+and prepared for the holocaust.</p>
+
+<p>Then I was tempted. Yes, he puts me on my honour, depends on my
+friendship, all that sort of thing.... But I did not burn a sheet. It
+was a chilly evening, I lit a cigar, and waited for the pyre <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>to burst
+into destructive flame. As I watched and meditated, Sylvia's little
+face seemed to look at me out of the fire, the black coals crowning
+her forehead as I used to see it crowned with her own lustrous hair. I
+thought of our last meeting when she struggled with her devils of
+pride and unbelief; and of her meeting with Elsie when she came in
+hope and left in humiliation. I confess I love Sylvia very
+dearly&mdash;love her as all men love her&mdash;for her beauty, her queenliness
+and clean, passionate pride; love her because I know something of her
+loneliness, her passion for service, and the repeated rejections of
+her sacrifices. And I love her a little more on my own account,
+because she talked to me as if I had been her own sister, and I
+perhaps know&mdash;better than any one&mdash;what she must have been through
+during those sad, mad months in England.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I broke faith with the Seraph and wrote her a line of overture.
+I was perhaps a fool to do it, as I had already had evidence in plenty
+of my incompetence to play the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of Providence. "I am sending you
+the MS. of a book," I told her. "It is the third volume of Gordon
+Tremayne's 'Child of Misery'. I know you have read the first two
+volumes, for we have discussed and admired them together a dozen
+times. Did you ever suspect who the author was?</p>
+
+<p>"In telling you it was the Seraph, I am breaking my word to him and
+running the risk of being branded and disowned. I must tell you,
+though, to explain the existence of the third volume. I watched it
+being written, day by day. That evening on the Cher, when he
+anticipated some words you were going to say, the words had already
+been written down as part of the current chapter. I saw him brought up
+short when you were spirited away and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>the connection was broken. Most
+wonderful of all, I was present when the connection was re-established
+and he jumped up like one possessed, exclaiming, 'Sylvia wants me!'</p>
+
+<p>"When you have read these pages, you will not be in a position to
+doubt any longer. He loves you as no woman was ever loved before, and
+in him you have found the half that completes and interprets your
+'<i>&acirc;me incomprise</i>.' Get him back, Sylvia. I don't know how it's to be
+done, but you must use your woman's wit to find a way. I'm asking for
+his sake and yours, not for mine&mdash;though I would give much to see 'The
+Child of Misery' growing to happier manhood.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you will say I am hardly the man to ask anything of you
+or yours. The Rodens and Merivales have hardly made a success of their
+recent relationship. But I should like to be forgiven. What is my
+crime? That I helped to keep justice from touching a woman who had
+done you and your family a great wrong. Well, Sylvia, you'd have done
+the same thing and told the same lies, had you been in my place and
+had you wanted Joyce as badly as I wanted her. So will you forgive me
+and be friends? And if you forgive me, will you forgive the woman
+who's going to be my wife in a few days' time? I must reconcile myself
+to the idea of being estranged from the rest of your family, but
+(between ourselves) I'll let 'em all go if you'll write and say Joyce
+and I are not quite such monsters of iniquity as you may have thought
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing more. When you've read the third volume, you will no longer
+doubt that Mrs. Wylton's presence in Adelphi Terrace was due to
+charitable impulse towards Joyce and the Seraph. And you ought to
+think well of any one who played the Good <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>Samaritan to the Seraph.
+Don't try to rehabilitate her character in public; it can only be done
+at a risk to the Seraph's personal safety. And in any case you won't
+convince a man like Nigel or the men he's already told the story to.</p>
+
+<p>"Return me the MS. when you've read it, will you? I was entrusted with
+its destruction, and put on honour not to let another soul read it.
+You see how I keep my trust. The worst thing you can say of me is what
+I've already said of myself&mdash;that most damning of all judgments&mdash;that
+I meant well."</p>
+
+<p>I sent that letter to Sylvia nine days ago, and received her reply
+this morning. She returned me the MS., and I burnt it&mdash;with the
+knowledge that I was destroying one of the greatest literary treasures
+of this generation.... Well, they had to do the same with some of
+Ruskin's letters.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had not told me to send you back the book," she began. "I
+should have liked to keep it. Or rather&mdash;I don't know&mdash;I half wish you
+hadn't sent it at all. The time that has passed since the beginning of
+August has been rather hard to bear, and the book has only turned
+misgiving into certainty.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I forgive you! As if there were anything to forgive! And
+Miss Davenant too. I hope she is better now. Will you ask her to
+accept my love and best wishes for the future? And of course I include
+you. We were good friends, weren't we? As I said we should be the
+first time we met. Only I said then that you would find me worth
+having as a friend, and I'm afraid I did everything I could to
+disprove it. You stood me awfully well. I think you knew most of the
+dark corners in my mean little soul&mdash;and if you did, perhaps you see
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>that I didn't do much beyond showing my true nature.</p>
+
+<p>"This isn't a pose&mdash;I'm really&mdash;well, I was going to say 'broken'&mdash;but
+I hope I'm a little more tolerant. You'd hardly recognise me if you
+saw me, there's little enough of the 'Queen Elizabeth' about me now.
+It's a horrid, flat world, and I wish I could find something in it to
+interest me. May I ask for just one good mark? You wrote to me when
+you left England, telling me to swallow my pride and go to see the
+Seraph. Well, it was a struggle, but I did go&mdash;as you know. When I got
+there, I seemed to find more than I could bear, and so of course
+everything went wrong. But I did try, and you will give me my one
+little good mark, won't you? I want it.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother says I'm run down and in need of a change, so Phil's taking me
+over to the United States at the beginning of December. There's a sort
+of Parliamentary Polytechnic Tour to Panama, every one who can get
+away is going to see the Canal. I don't in the least want to go, but I
+suppose the States can hardly be duller than England, and as long as
+mother thinks I must have a change, change I must have. If it isn't
+Panama it will be somewhere worse.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall spend Christmas in New York. Will you send me a letter of
+good wishes to the Fifth Avenue Hotel? And tell me where you are going
+to settle permanently and whether you will let me come and see you. If
+your wife will not mind, I should like to see you both again&mdash;well and
+happy, I hope. Somebody must be happy in this world, or it wouldn't go
+on. I don't want to lose you as a friend; I'm feeling lonely enough as
+it is.</p>
+
+<p>"I am hardly likely to see the Seraph again, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>if you meet him, I
+should like you to give him a message. Say it is from a woman who did
+him a great wrong: say she now knows the wrong she did him and has
+been punished for it. Tell him you know how much she hates ever
+apologising or admitting she was wrong, but that she wants him to know
+of her apology before she finally passes out of his memory. Will you
+tell him that? It won't do any good, but it will make me more
+comfortable in my mind."</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the page six words had been scratched out. I did not
+mean to read them, but the obliteration was incomplete, and the
+firelight shining up through the paper enabled me to decipher: "Oh, my
+God, I am miserable." Then followed the signature: "Affectionately
+yours (may I sign myself 'affectionately'?) Sylvia."</p>
+
+<p>After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question
+how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and
+bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of
+attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and
+wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember
+the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons
+and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on
+the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect
+assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had
+agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a
+suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought
+it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a
+villa at our leisure. Ambling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>out of the bank, I wandered in the
+direction of the telegraph office.</p>
+
+<p>Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging
+berths on the Wagon-Lits&mdash;I knew it would. As soon as our places were
+booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph
+at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired.
+"All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day,
+one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.&mdash;<span class="sc">Toby</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Then I came back to the Villa Monreale.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time.
+Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every
+moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the
+Seraph, and as husbands and wives <i>in posse</i> should have no secrets
+from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a
+study.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to
+see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so," I assented.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you order rooms?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we can't go to New York."</p>
+
+<p>"I never proposed to."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Toby!"</p>
+
+<p>She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by
+word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable
+sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim
+originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>Prime Minister coined
+it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I
+only borrowed it for the nonce.</p>
+
+<p>"Will&mdash;you&mdash;lunch&mdash;Christmas Day&mdash;&mdash;" I pointed out. "It doesn't say
+we shall be there to receive him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since
+honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are
+married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little
+stratagem.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>EPILOGUE</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6"><span class="sc">Tristram.</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Raise the light, my page! that I may see her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Late thou comest, cruel hast thou been."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6"><span class="sc">Iseult.</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Bound I was, I could not break the band.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Chide not with the past, but feel the present!<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I am here&mdash;we meet&mdash;I hold thy hand."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p class="rightp"><span class="sc">Matthew Arnold</span>: "Tristram and Iseult."</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>I had intended to write no more, but as we left the Consulate to-day
+after our wedding, a cable was handed me by my smiling Italian valet.</p>
+
+<p>"Paddy Culling for a bob!" I said, as I opened it and prepared for
+some whimsical message of congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>I was wrong. The cable was my reply from Yokohama.</p>
+
+<p>"No offence intended," it ran. "Delighted lunch as
+suggested.&mdash;<span class="sc">Seraph.</span>"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4: &nbsp;repellant replaced with repellent<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;52: &nbsp;"ths same advice" replaced with "the same advice"<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;90: &nbsp;been been replaced with been<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;95: &nbsp;torso replaced with trio<br />
+Page 119: &nbsp;"because its unique" replaced with "because it's unique"<br />
+Page 125: &nbsp;femineity replaced with femininity<br />
+Page 127: &nbsp;dispise replaced with despise<br />
+Page 217: Accent corrected from &#966;&#965;&#963;&#949;&#8150; to &#966;&#8059;&#963;&#949;&#953;<br />
+Page 233: &nbsp;Fra&uuml;lein replaced with Fr&auml;ulein<br />
+                                                          |
+<p class="noin">Page  66: A sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance and Baroque eras.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sixth Sense, by Stephen McKenna
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Sixth Sense
+       A Novel
+
+
+Author: Stephen McKenna
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 22, 2011  [eBook #37164]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SIXTH SENSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's note:                                        |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and dialect spelling in the       |
+    | original document has been preserved.                      |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Greek text is enclosed by plus signs (+Greek+)             |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For      |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.      |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+A Novel
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN McKENNA
+
+Author of "The Reluctant Lovers" "Sheila Intervenes"
+
+
+   "The World is a Comedy to those that think, a tragedy
+   to those who feel."
+        _Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chapman & Hall, Ltd.
+1915
+
+
+
+
+A L'INTROUVABLE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+        PROLOGUE. LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS                     1
+
+     I. WAR A OUTRANCE                                         25
+
+    II. SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC                                   46
+
+   III. BRANDON COURT                                          62
+
+    IV. THE FIRST ROUND                                        84
+
+     V. COMMEMORATION                                         103
+
+    VI. THE SECOND ROUND                                      123
+
+   VII. A CAUSE CELEBRE                                       140
+
+  VIII. HENLEY--AND AFTER                                     160
+
+    IX. THE THIRD ROUND                                       178
+
+     X. THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION                      197
+
+    XI. THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE                                 214
+
+   XII. THE SIXTH SENSE                                       232
+
+  XIII. OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE                            247
+
+   XIV. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY                                263
+
+    XV. THE RAID                                              279
+
+   XVI. RIMINI                                                296
+
+        EPILOGUE                                              308
+
+
+
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+LONDON AFTER TWENTY YEARS
+
+    "As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
+    Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France?
+    In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?
+    In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!
+    Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,
+    A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
+    When, through his journey was the fool at ease?
+    I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,
+    I take and like its way of life; I think
+    My brothers who administer the means,
+    Live better for my comfort--that's good too;
+    And God, if he pronounce upon such life,
+    Approves my service, which is better still."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+I paused, with my foot on the lowest step of the Club, to mark the
+changes that had overtaken Pall Mall during my twenty years' absence
+from England.
+
+The old War Office, of course, was gone; some of the shops on the
+north side were being demolished; and the Automobile Club was new and
+unassimilated. In my day, too, the Athenaeum had not been painted
+Wedgwood-green. Compared, however, with the Strand or Mall, Piccadilly
+or Whitehall, marvellously little change had taken place. I made an
+exception in favour of the character and velocity of the traffic: the
+bicycle boom was in its infancy when I left England: I returned to
+find the horse practically extinct, and the streets of London as
+dangerous as the railway stations of America.
+
+I wondered how long it would take me to get used to the London of
+1913.... Then I wondered if I should find anything to keep me long
+enough to grow acclimatised. Chance had brought me back to England,
+chance and the "wandering foot" might as easily bear me away again. It
+has always been a matter of indifference to me where I live, what I
+do, whom I meet. If I never seem to get bored, it is perhaps because I
+am never long enough in one place or at one occupation. There was no
+reason why England should not keep me amused....
+
+A man crossed the road and sold me a _Westminster Gazette_. I opened
+it to see what was engaging the England of 1913, remembering as I did
+so that the _Westminster_ was the last paper of importance to be
+published before I went abroad. As I glanced at the headlines, twenty
+years seemed to drop out of my life. Another Home Rule Bill was being
+acclaimed as the herald of the Millennium; Ulster was being told to
+fight and be right: the Welsh Church was once more being
+disestablished, while in foreign politics a confederation of Balkan
+States was spending its blood and treasure in clearing Europe of the
+Turk, to a faint echoing accompaniment of Gladstone's "bag and
+baggage" trumpet call. At home and abroad, English politics repeated
+themselves with curiously dull monotony.
+
+Then I turned to the middle page, and saw I had spoken too hastily.
+"Suffragette Outrages" seemed to fill three columns of the paper. My
+return to England had synchronised with a political campaign more
+ruthless, intransigeant and unyielding than anything since the Fenian
+outrages of my childhood. I read of unique fifteenth-century houses
+burnt to the ground, interrupted meetings, assaults on Ministers,
+sabotage in public buildings, and the demolition of plate-glass
+windows at the hands of an uncompromising, fearless and diabolically
+ingenious army of destroyers. On the other side of the account were
+entered long sentences, hunger-strikes, forcible feeding and something
+that was called "A Cat and Mouse Act." I was to hear more of that
+later: it was indeed the political parent of the "New Militant
+Campaign" whose life coincided with my own residence in England. I
+fancy the supporters of the bill like Roden, Rawnsley or Jefferson
+genuinely believed they had killed hunger-striking--and with it the
+spirit of militancy--when the Government assumed the power of
+imprisoning, releasing and re-imprisoning at will. The event proved
+that they had only driven militancy into a fresh channel....
+
+It is curious to reflect that as I at last mounted the steps and
+entered the Club, I was wondering where it would be possible to meet
+the resolute, indomitable women who formed the Council of War to the
+militant army. It would be a new, alluring experience. I was so
+occupied with my thoughts that I hardly noticed the hall porter
+confronting me with the offer of the New Members' Address Book.
+
+"Surely a new porter?" I suggested. At ten guineas a year for twenty
+years, it was costing me two hundred and ten pounds to enter the
+Club, and I did not care to have my expensive right challenged.
+
+"Seventeen years, sir," he answered with the gruff, repellent
+stiffness of the English official.
+
+"I must have been before your time, then," I said.
+
+Of course he disbelieved me, on the score of age if for no other
+reason; and the page boy who dogged my steps into the Cloak Room, was
+sent--I have no doubt--to act as custodian of the umbrellas. My age is
+forty-two, but I have never succeeded in looking more than about eight
+and twenty: perhaps I have never tried, as I find that a world of
+personal exertion and trouble is saved by allowing other people to do
+my trying, thinking, arranging for me ... whatever I am, others have
+made me.
+
+There was not a single familiar face in the hall, and I passed into
+the Morning Room, like a ghost ascending from Hades to call on Aeneas.
+Around me in arm-chair groups by the fire, or quarrelsome knots
+suspended over the day's bill of fare, were sleek, full-bodied
+creatures of dignified girth and portentous gravity--fathers of
+families, successes in life. These--I told myself--were my
+contemporaries; their faces were for the most part unknown, but this
+was hardly surprising as many of my friends are dead and most of the
+survivors are to be found at the Bar. A barrister with anything of a
+practice cannot afford time to lunch in the spacious atmosphere of
+Pall Mall, and the smaller the practice, the greater his anxiety to
+conceal his leisure. For a moment I felt painfully insignificant,
+lonely and unfriended.
+
+I was walking towards the Coffee Room when a heavy hand descended on
+my shoulder and an incredulous voice gasped out----
+
+"Toby, by Gad!"
+
+No one had called me by that name for fifteen years, and I turned to
+find a stout, middle-aged man with iron-grey hair and a red face
+extending a diffident palm.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he added hastily, as he saw my expression of
+surprise. "I thought for a moment...."
+
+"You were right," I interrupted.
+
+"Toby Merivale," he said with profound deliberation. "I thought you
+were dead."
+
+The same remark had already been made to me four times that morning.
+
+"That's not original," I objected.
+
+"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
+
+"You used to be Arthur Roden in the old days when I knew you. That was
+before they made you a Privy Councillor and His Majesty's
+Attorney-General."
+
+"By Gad, I can hardly believe it!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand a
+second time and carrying me off to luncheon. "What have you been doing
+with yourself? Where have you been? Why did you go away?"
+
+"As Dr. Johnson once remarked...." I began.
+
+"'Questioning is not a mode of conversation among gentlemen,'" he
+interrupted. "I know; but if you drop out of the civilised world for
+the third of a lifetime...."
+
+"You've not ordered yourself any lunch."
+
+"Oh, hang lunch!"
+
+"But you haven't ordered any for me, either."
+
+My poor story--for what it was worth--started with the plovers' eggs,
+and finished neck-to-neck with the cheese. I told him how I had gone
+down to the docks twenty years before to see young Handgrove off to
+India, and how at the last moment he had cajoled me into accompanying
+him.... Arthur came with me in spirit from India to the diamond mines
+of South Africa where I made my money, took part with me in the
+Jameson Raid, and kept me company during those silent, discreet months
+when we all lay _perdus_ wondering what course the Government was
+going to pursue towards the Raiders. Then I sketched my share in the
+war, and made him laugh by saying I had been three times mentioned in
+despatches. My experience of blackwater fever was sandwiched in
+between the settlement of South Africa, and my departure to the scene
+of the Russo-Japanese war: last of all came the years of vegetation,
+during which I had idled round the Moorish fringe of the Desert or
+sauntered from one Mediterranean port to another.
+
+"What brings you home now?" he asked.
+
+"Home? Oh, to England. I've a young friend stationed out at Malta, and
+when I was out there three weeks ago I found his wife down with a
+touch of fever. He wanted her brought to London, couldn't come
+himself, so suggested I should take charge. _J'y suis_...."
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I don't know, Arthur. I've no plans. If you have any suggestions to
+make...."
+
+"Come and spend Whitsun with me in Hampshire."
+
+"Done."
+
+"You're not married?"
+
+"'Sir,'" I said in words Sir James Murray believes Dr. Johnson ought
+to have used, "'in order to be facetious it is not necessary to be
+indecent.'"
+
+"And never will be, I suppose."
+
+"I've no plans. You, of course...."
+
+I paused delicately, in part because I was sure he wanted to tell me
+all about himself, in part because I could not for the life of me
+remember what had come of the domestic side of his career during my
+absence abroad. He was married, and the father of a certain number of
+children before I left England; I had no idea how far the
+ramifications went.
+
+It appeared that his wife--who was still living--had presented him
+with Philip, now aged twenty-six, his father's private secretary and
+member for some Scotch borough; Sylvia, aged twenty-four, and
+unmarried; Robin, aged twenty-one, and in his last year at Oxford; and
+Michael, an _enfant terrible_ of sixteen still at Winchester. I fancy
+there were no more; these were certainly all I ever met, either in
+Cadogan Square or Brandon Court.
+
+In his public life I suppose Arthur Roden would be called a successful
+man. I remember him during the barren first few years of practice, but
+soon after my departure from England reports used to reach me showing
+the increasing volume of his work, until he became one of the busiest
+juniors on the Common Law side, reading briefs at four in the morning,
+and sending a clerk out to buy his new clothes. After taking silk at
+an early age, he had entered the House and been made Attorney-General
+in 1912.
+
+"I was appointed the same day your brother was raised to the Bench,"
+he told me.
+
+"I should think he makes a pretty bad Judge," I suggested.
+
+"Resolute," said Arthur. "We want firmness."
+
+I knew what that meant. According to unsympathetic papers, Mr. Justice
+Merivale had conducted a Bloody Assize among the Militants of the
+Suffrage Army. When Roden prosecuted in person, there was short shrift
+indeed.
+
+"We've killed militancy between us," he boasted.
+
+"And I understand you're burnt together in effigy."
+
+His face grew suddenly stern.
+
+"They haven't stopped at that. There've been two attempts to fire
+Brandon Court, and one wing of your brother's house was burnt down a
+few weeks ago. I expect you found him rather shaken."
+
+"I haven't seen him yet."
+
+Arthur looked surprised.
+
+"Oh, you ought to," he said. "I'm afraid he won't be able to last out
+the rest of the term without a change. It's got on his nerves. Got on
+his wife's nerves, too. Your niece is the only one who doesn't seem to
+care; but then I think girls have very little imagination. It's the
+same with Sylvia. By the way, I suppose you know you've got a niece?"
+
+We paid our bills, and walked upstairs to the Smoking Room.
+
+"What'll be their next move?" I asked.
+
+"I don't think there will be a next move," he answered slowly. "What
+can they do?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"I'm only an onlooker, but d'you believe this Cat and Mouse Act is
+going to stop them? My knowledge is mere newspaper knowledge, but to
+be beaten by a device like that--it isn't in keeping with the
+character of the women who've organised the Militant Campaign so far."
+
+"What _can_ they do?" he repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"They don't either. One or two of the most determined law breakers are
+in reality spies; they've kept us posted in the successive steps of
+the campaign up to the present. Now they report that there's no plan
+for the future. They know it would be futile to start assassination;
+if they go on burning and breaking, a proportion of them get caught
+and punished. Hunger striking's been killed by the Cat and Mouse Act.
+Well, militancy's dead, Toby. If you come down to the House to-night,
+you'll be present at the funeral."
+
+"What's happening?"
+
+"It's the division on the Suffrage amendment to the Electoral Reform
+Bill. Hullo! here's Philip. Let me introduce my eldest son."
+
+I made friends with Philip as we crossed the Park and entered the
+House. He was curiously like the Arthur I had known twenty years
+before--tall, dark-haired, clean-featured, with an exuberant zest for
+life tempered to an almost imperceptible degree by the reserve of the
+responsible public man. The physical and mental vigour of father and
+son left me silently admiring; as they hurried along at a swinging
+five miles an hour, I took stock of their powerful, untiring frames,
+quick movements, and crisp, machine-made speech. They were hard,
+business-like, unimaginative, with the qualities of those defects and
+the defects of those qualities; trained, taught, and equipped to play
+the midwife to any of the bureaucratic social reforms that have been
+brought into the English political world the last few years, but
+helpless and impotently perplexed in face of an idea outside their
+normal ken. They were highly efficient average English politicians.
+Either or both would reform you the Poor Law, nationalise a railway,
+or disestablish a Church; but send Philip to India, set Arthur to
+carry out Cromer's work in Egypt, and you would see English dominion
+driven from two continents as speedily as North drove it from America.
+It was one of the paradoxes of English politics that Arthur should
+have been entrusted with the problem of Suffrage militancy, a paradox
+of the same order as that whereby Strafford grappled with the problem
+of a parliamentary system.
+
+"You'll stay a few minutes," Philip urged as I abandoned him to Empire
+and wandered off to pay my belated respects to my brother.
+
+I glanced round me and shook my head. I would not grow old all at
+once, and yet--Gladstone was Prime Minister when I left England: his
+statue now dominated the public lobby. And Salisbury, Harcourt,
+Chamberlain, Parnell, Labby--their voices were sunk in the great
+silence. In my day Committee Room Number Fifteen used to be an object
+of historic interest....
+
+    "They say the lion and the lizard keep
+    The Halls where Jamshyd gloried, and drank deep:
+      And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass
+    Stamps o'er his head, and he lies fast asleep."
+
+I quoted the lines to Philip apologetically, reminding him that the
+Omar Khayyam vogue had not come in when I left England. "I shall see
+you at Brandon Court," I added.
+
+"What are you going to do till then?" he asked.
+
+"Heaven knows! I never make arrangements. Things just happen to me. I
+always contrive to be in the thick of whatever's going on. I don't
+know how long I shall stay in England, or where I shall go to
+afterwards. But whether it's a railway strike or a coronation, I shall
+be there. I don't like it, I'm a peaceful man by nature, but I can't
+help it. I always get dragged into these things."
+
+Philip scratched his chin thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't know that we've got any great sensations at the present
+time," he said.
+
+"Something will turn up," I answered in the words of one greater than
+myself, as I waved my hand in farewell and started back in the
+direction of the Club.
+
+I knew my brother would not leave Court till at least four o'clock, so
+I had to dispose of an hour before it was time to call round in Pont
+Street. The Club had emptied since luncheon, and I drew blank in one
+place after another until fate directed my steps to the Card Room.
+There were two men playing bezique, one of them poor Tom Wilding whom
+I had left lame and returned to find half paralysed and three parts
+blind. The other--who played with a wonderful patience, calling the
+names of the cards--I recognised as my young friend Lambert Aintree
+who had parted from me in Morocco five years before. I reminded them
+both of my identity, and we sat gossiping till an attendant arrived to
+wheel poor Wilding away for his afternoon drive.
+
+Leaving the card-table, Aintree joined me on the window-seat and
+subjected my face, clothes and general appearance to a rapid scrutiny.
+It was the practised, comprehensive glance of an old physician in
+making diagnosis, and I waited for him to pronounce on my case. Five
+years ago in Morocco he had exhibited a disconcerting and almost
+uncanny skill in reading character and observing little forgotten
+points that every one else missed. The results of his observation were
+usually shrouded in the densest veils of uncommunicativeness: I
+sometimes wonder if I have ever met a more silent man. When you could
+get him to talk, he was usually worth hearing: for the most part,
+however, talking like every other form of activity seemed too much of
+an exertion. I understand him now better than I did, but I am not so
+foolish as to pretend that I understand him completely. I am a man of
+three dimensions: Aintree, I am convinced, was endowed with the
+privilege of a fourth.
+
+"Well?" I said invitingly, as he brought his examination to an end and
+looked out of the window.
+
+His answer was to throw me over a cigarette and light one himself.
+
+"Take an interest in me," I said plaintively. "Say you thought I was
+dead...."
+
+"Everyone's said that."
+
+"True," I admitted.
+
+"And they've all asked you when you landed, and how long you were
+staying, and what brought you to England."
+
+"It would be rather friendly if you did the same."
+
+"You couldn't tell me--any more than you could tell them."
+
+"But I could. It was Sunday morning."
+
+"About then. I knew that. You've been here long enough to get English
+clothes, and," he gave me another rapid look, "to have them made for
+you. How long you're here for--you don't know."
+
+"Not to a day," I conceded. "Well, why did I come?"
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"Pardon me." I told him of my visit to Malta and the charitable
+guardianship of my friend's convalescent wife.
+
+"But that wasn't the real reason."
+
+"It was the only reason."
+
+"The only one you thought of at the time."
+
+I was amazed at the certainty of his tone.
+
+"My dear fellow," I said. "I am a more or less rational creature, a
+reason comes along and compels me to do a thing. If I were a woman, no
+doubt I should do a thing and find reasons for it afterwards."
+
+"Don't you ever do a thing on impulse, instinctively? And analyse your
+motives afterwards to see what prompted you?"
+
+"Oh, possibly. But not on this occasion."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"What are you driving at?" I asked.
+
+"You'll find out in time."
+
+"I should like to know now."
+
+Aintree inhaled the smoke of his cigarette and answered with eyes
+half-closed.
+
+"Most men of your age wake up one morning to find they've turned
+forty. They feel it would be good to renew their youth, they play with
+the idea of getting married."
+
+"Is this to my address?" I asked.
+
+"D'you feel it applies to your case?"
+
+"I can solemnly assure you that such an idea never crossed my mind."
+
+"Not consciously."
+
+"Nor unconsciously."
+
+"What do you know of the unconscious ideas in your own mind?"
+
+"Hang it," I said, "what do _you_ know of the unconscious ideas in
+my--or any one else's mind?"
+
+"I'm interested in them," he answered quietly. "Tell me if you ever
+feel my prophecy coming true."
+
+"You shall be best man," I promised him. "Married! One doesn't marry
+at my age."
+
+It was a glorious spring afternoon, and I suggested that he should
+accompany me part of my way to Pont Street.
+
+"Tell me what you've been doing with yourself since you stayed with me
+five years ago," I said as we stepped into Pall Mall.
+
+He seemed to shiver and retreat into his shell as soon as the
+conversation became focussed on himself.
+
+"I've done nothing," he answered briefly, and relapsed into one of his
+wonted spells of silence.
+
+In the blazing afternoon sunlight I returned him the compliment of a
+careful scrutiny. He had come to Morocco five years before as a boy of
+one-and-twenty just down from Oxford. A girl to whom he had been
+engaged had died of consumption a few months before, and he was
+straying into the Desert, broken, unnerved, and hopeless, to forget
+her. I must have seemed sympathetic, or he would not have unburdened
+himself of the whole pitiful little tragedy. At twenty-one you feel
+these things more keenly perhaps than in after life; there were
+moments when I feared he was going to follow her....
+
+Five years may have healed the wound, but they left him listless,
+dispirited, and sore. He was more richly endowed with nerves than any
+man or woman I know, and all the energy of his being seemed
+requisitioned to keep them under control. Less through love of mystery
+than for fear of self-betrayal his face wore the expressionless mask
+of a sphynx. He was fair, thin, and pale, with large frightened eyes,
+sapphire blue in colour, and troubled with the vague, tired
+restlessness that you see in overwrought, sensitive women. The nose
+and mouth were delicate and almost ineffeminate, with lips tightly
+closed as though he feared to reveal emotion in opening them. You see
+women and children with mouths set in that thin, hard line when they
+know a wickering lip or catch in the breath will give the lie to their
+brave front. And there were nerves, nerves, nerves everywhere, never
+so much present as when the voice was lazily drawling, the hands
+steady, and the eyes dreamily half-closed. I wonder if anything ever
+escaped those watchful, restless eyes; his entire soul seemed stored
+up and shining out of them; and I wonder what was the process of
+deduction in his curious, quick, feminine brain. Before I left England
+I tried to evolve a formula that would fit him; "a woman's senses and
+intuition in a man's body" was the best I could devise, and I am
+prepared at once to admit the inadequacy of the label. For one thing
+his intuition transcended that of any woman I have ever known.
+
+As he would not talk about himself, I started to wile away the time by
+telling him of my meeting with the Rodens, and their invitation to
+Hampshire.
+
+"I was asked too," he told me. "I shan't go."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Unsociability, I suppose. I don't go out much."
+
+"It's a bachelor's party, I understand."
+
+"That's the best thing I've heard about it. Did they say who'd be
+there? If you're not careful you'll have politics to eat, politics to
+drink, and politics to smoke."
+
+"Come and create a diversion," I suggested.
+
+"I'll think about it. Is Phil going to be there? Oh, then it won't be
+a bachelor party. I could name one young woman who will be there for
+certain, only I mustn't make mischief. Did you find Roden much
+changed?"
+
+I tried to sort out my impressions of Arthur.
+
+"Harder than he used to be. I shouldn't care to be a militant
+prosecuted by him."
+
+Aintree raised his eyebrows slightly.
+
+"I don't think they mind him; they can look after themselves."
+
+"I've never met one."
+
+"Would you like to?"
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Joyce Davenant, the queen bee of the swarm. Dine with me to-night at
+the Ritz; seven o'clock, I'm afraid, but we are going to a first
+night."
+
+"Is she a daughter of old Jasper Davenant? I used to shoot with him."
+
+"The younger daughter. Do you know her sister, Mrs. Wylton? She's
+coming too. You'd better meet her," he went on with a touch of acidity
+in his tone, "you'll hear her name so much during the next few months
+that it will be something to say you've seen her in the flesh."
+
+I only remembered Elsie Wylton as a young girl with her hair down her
+back. Of her husband, Arnold Wylton, I suppose every one has heard; he
+enjoys the reputation of being a man who literally cannot be flogged
+past a petticoat. How such a girl came to marry such a man no rational
+person has ever been able to explain; and it never sweetens the
+amenities of debate to talk vaguely of marriages being made in heaven.
+I met Wylton twice, and on both occasions he was living in retirement
+abroad. I have no wish to meet him a third time.
+
+"How did she ever come to marry a fellow like that?" I asked.
+
+Aintree shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Her father was dead, or he'd have stopped it. Nobody else felt it
+their business to interfere, and it wouldn't have made the slightest
+difference if they had. You know what the Davenants are like--or
+perhaps you don't. Nothing shakes them when they've made up their
+minds to do a thing."
+
+"But didn't she know the man's reputation?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't suppose so. Wylton had never been mixed up in any overt
+scandal, so the women wouldn't know; and it's always a tall order for
+a man to lay information against another man when a girl's engaged to
+marry him. She just walked into it with her eyes shut."
+
+"And now she's divorcing him at last?"
+
+"The other way about."
+
+I felt sure I could not have heard him correctly.
+
+"The other way about," he repeated deliberately. "Oh, she'd have got
+rid of him years ago if he'd given her the chance! Wylton was too
+clever; he knew the divorce law inside out; he was alive to all its
+little technicalities. He's sailed close to the wind a number of
+times, but never close enough to be in danger."
+
+"And what's happening now?" I asked.
+
+"She's forced his hand--gone to some trouble to compromise herself.
+She couldn't divorce him, it was the only way, she's making him
+divorce her. Rather a burlesque of justice, isn't it? Elsie Wylton,
+the respondent in an undefended action! The daughter of Jasper
+Davenant--one of the finest, cleanest, bravest women I know. And the
+successful petitioner will be Arnold Wylton, who ought to have been
+thrashed out of half the houses and clubs in London. Who ought to have
+been cited as a co-respondent half a dozen times over if he hadn't
+been so clever in covering up his tracks. I wonder if he's got
+sufficient humour to appreciate the delicate irony of _his_ coming
+sanctimoniously into court to divorce _her_. It's a sickening
+business, we won't discuss it--but it will be the one topic of
+conversation in a few weeks' time."
+
+We walked in silence for a few yards.
+
+"Was the man any one of note?" I asked. "The co-respondent?"
+
+"Fellow in the Indian Army," Aintree answered. "I don't suppose you
+know him. It was a bogus case; he just lent his name."
+
+I sniffed incredulously.
+
+"The world won't believe _that_," I said.
+
+"Elsie's going to make it."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"She can't. Would you?"
+
+"Most certainly. So will you when you've met her. You knew the father
+well? She's her father's own daughter."
+
+The gospel of Jasper Davenant was simple and sound. Never pull a
+horse, never forge a cheque, never get involved in the meshes of
+married women. Apart from that, nothing mattered: though to be his
+true disciple, you must never lose your head, never lose your temper,
+never be afraid of man or woman, brute or devil. He was the North
+American Indian of chivalrous romance, transplanted to Cumberland with
+little loss of essential characteristics.
+
+"I look forward to meeting them both," I said as we parted at
+Buckingham Gate. "Seven o'clock? I'll try not to be late."
+
+Walking on alone through Sloane Square, something set me thinking of
+my boast to Philip Roden. Within three hours I was apparently going to
+meet one woman whose name was mixed up with the most prominent _cause
+celebre_ of the year, and another who was a _cause celebre_ in
+herself--the redoubtable Miss Joyce Davenant of the Militant Suffrage
+Union. That my introduction should come from the peace-loving,
+nerve-ridden Aintree, was in accordance with the best ironical
+traditions of life. I was not surprised then: I should have still less
+reason to be surprised now. In the last six months he has placed me
+under obligations which I shall never be able to meet: in all
+probability he expects no repayment; the active side of his unhappy,
+fatalistic temperament is seen in his passionate desire to make life
+less barren and melancholy for others. Tom Wilding can testify to this
+at the bezique table: Elsie and Joyce and I can endorse the testimony
+in a hundred ways and half a hundred places.
+
+As I turned into Pont Street a private car was drawn up by the kerb
+opposite my brother's house. I dawdled for a few steps while a pretty,
+brown-eyed, black-haired girl said good-bye to a friend at the door
+and drove away. It was no more than a glimpse that I caught, but the
+smiling, small-featured face attracted me. I wondered who she was, and
+who was the girl with auburn hair who persisted in standing on my
+brother's top step long after the car was out of sight, instead of
+retiring indoors and leaving me an unembarrassed entry.
+
+I pretended not to see her as I mounted the steps, but the pretence
+was torn away when I heard her addressing me as "Uncle Simon."
+
+"You must be Gladys," I said, wondering if I looked as sheepish as I
+felt. "How did you recognise me?"
+
+"By your photograph," she said. "You haven't altered a bit."
+
+On the whole I carried it off fairly well, though I was glad Arthur
+Roden was not present after my implied familiarity with my niece's
+existence. Of course I knew I had a niece, and that her birthday
+fell--like the Bastille--on July 14th. Usually I remembered the date
+and sent her some little trifle, and she would write me a friendly
+letter of thanks. If I had kept count of the number of birthdays, I
+should have known she was now nineteen, but then one never does keep
+count of these things. Frankly, I had imagined her to be about seven
+or eight, and her handwriting--by becoming steadily more unformed and
+sporadic the older she grew--did nothing to dispel the illusion.
+Instead of curious little pieces of jewellery I might easily have sent
+her a doll....
+
+"Where's the Judge?" I asked as she kissed me and led the way upstairs
+to her room.
+
+"He's not home yet," she answered to my relief.
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+But my sister-in-law also was out, and I reconciled myself without
+difficulty to the prospect of taking tea alone with my niece. Possibly
+as a romantic reaction from her father, possibly with her mother Eve's
+morbid craving for forbidden fruit, Gladys had elevated me into a
+Tradition. The whole of her pretty, sun-splashed room seemed hung with
+absurd curios I had sent her from out-of-the-way parts of the world,
+while on a table by the window stood a framed photograph of myself in
+tweeds that only an undergraduate would have worn, and a tie loosely
+arranged in a vast sailor's knot after the unsightly fashion of the
+early 'nineties. My hair was unduly long, and at my feet lay a large
+dog; it must have been a property borrowed for the purpose, as I hate
+and have always hated dogs.
+
+"A wasted, unsatisfactory life, Gladys," I said as my tour of
+inspection concluded itself in front of my own portrait. "I wish I'd
+known about you before. I'd have asked Brian to let me adopt you."
+
+"Would you like to now?"
+
+In the East a complimentary speech is not usually interpreted so
+literally or promptly.
+
+"I'm afraid it's too late," I answered regretfully.
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Your father and mother...."
+
+"Would you if I were left an orphan?"
+
+"Of course I would, but you mustn't say things like that even in
+joke."
+
+Gladys poured me out a cup of tea and extended a cream jug at a
+menacing angle.
+
+"Not for worlds if it's China," I exclaimed.
+
+"It is. Uncle Toby...." She seemed to hesitate over the name, but I
+prefer it to Simon and bowed encouragement, "I'm going to be an orphan
+in three days' time. At least, it's that or very sea-sick."
+
+I begged for an explanation. It appeared that Pont Street was in
+domestic convulsion over the health of Mr. Justice Merivale. As Roden
+had hinted, a succession of militant outrages directed against his
+person and property, not to mention threatening letters and attempted
+violence, had seriously shaken his nerve. Under doctor's orders he
+was leaving England for a short sea cruise as soon as the Courts rose
+at Whitsun.
+
+"He's only going to Marseilles and back," she explained. "Mother's
+going with him, and something's got to be done with me. I don't want
+to make a nuisance of myself, but I should simply die if they tried to
+take me through the Bay."
+
+"Do you think they'd trust me?" I asked. From an early age my brother
+has regarded me as the Black Sheep of an otherwise irreproachable
+family of two.
+
+"They'd jump at it!" Irreverently I tried to visualise Brian jumping.
+"The Rodens wanted me to go to them, but it wouldn't be fair on
+Sylvia. She'd be tied to me the whole time."
+
+"I can imagine worse fates."
+
+"For her? or for me?"
+
+"Either or both."
+
+"I'll tell her. Did you see her driving away as you arrived? If you'll
+adopt me, I'll introduce you."
+
+"I've arranged that already. Whitsuntide will be spent at Brandon
+Court improving my acquaintance with her."
+
+Gladys regarded me with frank admiration.
+
+"You haven't wasted much time. But if you're going there, you may just
+as well adopt me. I shall be down there too, and if you're my
+guardian...."
+
+"It'll save all trouble with the luggage. Well, it's for your parents
+to decide. You can guess my feelings."
+
+I waited till after six in the hopes of seeing my brother, and was
+then only allowed to depart on the plea of my engagement with Aintree
+and a promise to dine and arrange details of my stewardship the
+following night.
+
+"Write it down!" Gladys implored me as I hastened downstairs. "You'll
+only forget it if you don't. Eight-fifteen to-morrow. Haven't you got
+a book?"
+
+I explained that on the fringe of the desert where I had lived of
+late, social engagements were not too numerous to be carried in the
+head.
+
+"That won't do for London," she said with much firmness, and I was
+incontinently burdened with a leather pocket-diary.
+
+Dressing for dinner that night, the little leather diary made me
+reflective. As a very young man I used to keep a journal: it belonged
+to a time when I was not too old to give myself unnecessary trouble,
+nor too disillusioned to appreciate the unimportance of my impressions
+or the ephemeral character of the names that figured in its pages. For
+a single moment I played with the idea of recording my experiences in
+England. Now that the last chapter is closed and the little diary is
+one of the bare half-dozen memorials of my checkered sojourn in
+England, I half wish I had not been too lazy to carry my idea into
+effect. After a lapse of only seven months I find there are many minor
+points already forgotten. The outline is clear enough in my memory,
+but the details are blurred, and the dates are in riotous confusion.
+
+It is fruitless to waste regrets over a lost opportunity, but I wish I
+had started my journal on the day Gladys presented me with my now
+shabby little note-book. I should have written "Prologue" against this
+date--to commemorate my meetings with Roden and Joyce Davenant,
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton, Gladys and Philip. To commemorate, too, my
+first glimpse of Sylvia....
+
+Yes, I should have written "Prologue" against this date: and then
+natural indolence would have tempted me to pack my bag and wander
+abroad once more, if I could have foreseen for one moment the turmoil
+and excitement of the following six months.
+
+I can only add that I am extremely glad I did no such thing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAR A OUTRANCE
+
+      "RIDGEON: I have a curious aching; I dont know where; I
+      cant localise it. Sometimes I think it's my heart;
+      sometimes I suspect my spine. It doesn't exactly hurt me,
+      but it unsettles me completely. I feel that something is
+      going to happen....
+
+      SIR PATRICK: You are sure there are no voices?
+
+      RIDGEON: Quite sure.
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Then it's only foolishness.
+
+      RIDGEON: Have you ever met anything like it before in your
+      practice?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: Oh yes. Often. It's very common between the
+      ages of seventeen and twenty-two. It sometimes comes on
+      again at forty or thereabouts. You're a bachelor, you see.
+      It's not serious--if you're careful.
+
+      RIDGEON: About my food?
+
+      SIR PATRICK: No; about your behaviour.... Youre not going
+      to die; but you may be going to make a fool of yourself."
+
+                  BERNARD SHAW: "The Doctor's Dilemma."
+
+
+I was a few minutes late for dinner, as a guest should be. Aintree had
+quite properly arrived before me, and was standing in the lounge of
+the Ritz talking to two slim, fair-haired women, with very white skin
+and very blue eyes. I have spent so much of my time in the East and
+South that this light colouring has almost faded from my memory. I
+associated it exclusively with England, and in time began to fancy it
+must be an imagination of my boyhood. The English blondes you meet
+returning from India by P & O are usually so bleached and dried by
+the sun that you find yourself doubting whether the truly golden hair
+and forget-me-not eyes of your dreams are ever discoverable in real
+life. But the fascination endures even when you suspect you are
+cherishing an illusion.
+
+I had been wondering, as I drove down, whether any trace survived of
+the two dare-devil, fearless, riotous children I had seen by
+flashlight glimpses, when an invitation from old Jasper Davenant
+brought me to participate in one of his amazing Cumberland shoots. I
+was twenty or twenty-one at the time; Elsie must have been seven, and
+Joyce five. Mrs. Davenant was alive in those days, and Dick still
+unborn. My memory of the two children is a misty confusion of cut
+hands, broken knees, torn clothes, and daily whippings. Jasper wanted
+to make fine animals of his children, and set them to swim as soon as
+they could walk, and to hunt as soon as their fingers were large
+enough to hold a rein.
+
+When I was climbing with him in Trans-Caucasia, I asked how the young
+draft was shaping. That was ten years later, and I gathered that Elsie
+was beginning to be afraid of being described as a tomboy. On such a
+subject Joyce was quite indifferent. She attended her first hunt ball
+at twelve, against orders and under threat of castigation; half the
+hunt broke their backs in bending down to dance with her, as soon as
+they had got over the surprise of seeing a short-frocked,
+golden-haired fairy marching into the ball-room and defying her father
+to send her home. "You know the consequences?" he had said with
+pathetic endeavour to preserve parental authority. "I think it's worth
+it," was her answer. That night the Master interceded with old Jasper
+to save Joyce her whipping, and the next morning saw an attempt to
+establish order without recourse to the civil hand. "I'll let you off
+this time," Jasper had said, "if you'll promise not to disobey me
+again." "Not good enough," was Joyce's comment with grave deliberate
+shake of the head. "Then I shall have to flog you." "I think you'd
+better. You said you would, and you'd make me feel mean if you didn't.
+I've had my fun."
+
+The words might be taken for the Davenant motto, in substitution of
+the present "Vita brevis." Gay and gallant, half savage, half
+moss-rider, lawless and light-hearted, they would stick at nothing to
+compass the whim of the moment, and come up for judgment with
+uncomplaining faces on the day of inevitable retribution. Joyce had
+run away from two schools because the Christmas term clashed with the
+hunting. I never heard the reason why she was expelled from a third;
+but I have no doubt it was adequate. She would ride anything that had
+a back, drive anything that had a bit or steering-wheel, thrash a
+poacher with her own hand, and take or offer a bet at any hour of the
+day or night. That was the character her father gave her. I had seen
+and heard little of the family since his death, Elsie's marriage and
+Joyce's abrupt, marauding descent on Oxford, where she worked twelve
+hours a day for three years, secured two firsts, and brought her name
+before the public as a writer of political pamphlets, and a pioneer in
+the suffrage agitation.
+
+"We really oughtn't to need introduction," said Mrs. Wylton, as
+Aintree brought me up to be presented. "I remember you quite well. I
+shouldn't think you've altered a bit. How long is it?"
+
+"Twenty years," I said. "You have--grown, rather."
+
+She had grown staider and sadder, as well as older; but the bright
+golden hair, white skin, and blue eyes were the same as I remembered
+in Cumberland. A black dress clung closely to her slim, tall figure,
+and a rope of pearls was her only adornment.
+
+I turned and shook hands with Joyce, marvelling at the likeness
+between the two sisters. There was no rope of pearls, only a thin band
+of black velvet round the neck. Joyce was dressed in white silk, and
+wore malmaisons at her waist. Those, you would say, were the only
+differences--until time granted you a closer scrutiny, and you saw
+that Elsie was a Joyce who had passed through the fire. Something of
+her courage had been scorched and withered in the ordeal; my pity went
+out to her as we met. Joyce demanded another quality than pity. I
+hardly know what to call it--homage, allegiance, devotion. She
+impressed me, as not half a dozen people have impressed me in this
+life--Rhodes, Chamberlain, and one or two more--with the feeling that
+I was under the dominion of one who had always had her way, and would
+always have it; one who came armed with a plan and a purpose among
+straying sheep who awaited her lead.... And with it all she was
+twenty-eight, and looked less; smiling, soft and childlike; so slim
+and fragile that you might snap her across your knee like a lath rod.
+
+Aintree and Mrs. Wylton led the way into the dining-room.
+
+"I can't honestly say I remember you," Joyce remarked as we prepared
+to follow. "I was too young when you went away. I suppose we _did_
+meet?"
+
+"The last time I heard of you...." I began.
+
+"Oh, don't!" she interrupted with a laugh. "You must have heard some
+pretty bad things. You know, people won't meet me now. I'm a.... Wait
+a bit--'A disgrace to my family,' 'a traitor to my class,' 'a reproach
+to my upbringing!' I've 'drilled incendiary lawlessness into a
+compact, organised force,' I'm 'an example of acute militant
+hysteria.' Heaven knows what else! D'you still feel equal to dining at
+the same table? It's brave of you; that boy in front--he's too good
+for this world--he's the only non-political friend I've got. I'm
+afraid you'll find me dreadfully changed--that is, if we ever did
+meet."
+
+"As I was saying...."
+
+"Yes, and I interrupted! I'm so sorry. You drop into the habit of
+interrupting if you're a militant. As you were saying, the last time
+we met...."
+
+"The last time we met, strictly speaking we didn't meet at all. I came
+to say good-bye, but you'd just discovered that a pony was necessary
+to your happiness. It was an _idee fixe_, you were a fanatic, you
+broke half a Crown Derby dinner-service when you couldn't get it. When
+I came to say good-bye, you were locked in the nursery with an
+insufficient allowance of bread and water."
+
+Joyce shook her head sadly.
+
+"I was an awful child."
+
+"Was?"
+
+She looked up with reproach in her blue eyes.
+
+"Haven't I improved?"
+
+"You were a wonderfully pretty child."
+
+"Oh, never mind looks!"
+
+"But I do. They're the only things worth having."
+
+"They're not enough."
+
+"Leave that to be said by the women who haven't any."
+
+"In any case they don't last."
+
+"And while they do, you slight them."
+
+"I? They're far too useful!" She paused at the door of the dining-room
+to survey her reflection in the mirror; then turned to me with a slow,
+childlike smile. "I think I'm looking rather nice to-night."
+
+"You looked nice twenty years ago. Not content with that, you broke a
+dinner-service to get a pony."
+
+"Fancy your remembering that all these years!"
+
+"I was reminded of it the moment I saw you. _Plus ca change, plus
+c'est la meme chose._ You are still not content with looking extremely
+nice, you _must_ break a dinner-service now and again."
+
+Joyce raised her eyebrows, and patiently stated a self-evident
+proposition.
+
+"I must have a thing if I think I've a right to it," she pouted.
+
+"You were condemned to bread and water twenty years ago to convince
+you of your error."
+
+"I get condemned to that now."
+
+"Dull eating, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't know. I've never tried."
+
+"You did then?"
+
+"I threw it out of the window, plate and all."
+
+We threaded our way through to a table at the far side of the room.
+
+"Indeed you've not changed," I said. "You might still be that wilful
+child of five that I remember so well."
+
+"You've forgotten one thing about me," she answered.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I got the pony," she replied with a mischievous laugh.
+
+How far the others enjoyed that dinner, I cannot say. Aintree was an
+admirable host, and made a point of seeing that every one had too much
+to eat and drink; to the conversation he contributed as little as Mrs.
+Wylton. I did not know then how near the date of the divorce was
+approaching. Both sat silent and reflective, one overshadowed by the
+Past, the other by the Future: on the opposite side of the table,
+living and absorbed in the Present, typifying it and luxuriating in
+its every moment, was Joyce Davenant. I, too, contrive to live in the
+present, if by that you mean squeezing the last drop of enjoyment out
+of each sunny day's pleasure and troubling my head as little about the
+future as the past....
+
+I made Joyce tell me her version of the suffrage war; it was like
+dipping into the memoirs of a prescribed Girondist. She had written
+and spoken, debated and petitioned. When an obdurate Parliament told
+her there was no real demand for the vote among women themselves, she
+had organised great peaceful demonstrations and "marches past": when
+sceptics belittled her processions and said you could persuade any one
+to sign any petition in favour of anything, she had massed a
+determined army in Parliament Square, raided the House and broken into
+the Prime Minister's private room.
+
+The raid was followed by short terms of imprisonment for the
+ringleaders. Joyce came out of Holloway, blithe and unrepentant, and
+hurried from a congratulatory luncheon to an afternoon meeting at the
+Albert Hall, and from that to the first round of the heckling
+campaign. For six months no Minister could address a meeting without
+the certainty of persistent interruption, and no sooner had it been
+decided first to admit only such women as were armed with tickets, and
+then no women at all, than the country was flung into the throes of a
+General Election, and the Militants sought out every uncertain
+Ministerial constituency and threw the weight of their influence into
+the scale of the Opposition candidate.
+
+Joyce told me of the papers they had founded and the bills they had
+promoted. The heckling of Ministers at unsuspected moments was reduced
+to a fine art: the whole sphere of their activities seemed governed by
+an almost diabolical ingenuity and resourcefulness. I heard of fresh
+terms of imprisonment, growing longer as the public temper warmed; the
+institution of the Hunger Strike, the counter move of Forcible
+Feeding, a short deadlock, and at last the promulgation of the "Cat
+and Mouse" Bill.
+
+I was not surprised to hear some of the hardest fighting had been
+against over-zealous, misdirected allies. It cannot be said too often
+that Joyce herself would stick at nothing--fire, flood or dynamite--to
+secure what she conceived to be her rights. But if vitriol had to be
+thrown, she would see that it fell into the eyes of the right,
+responsible person: in her view it was worse than useless to attempt
+pressure on A by breaking B's windows. She had stood severely aloof
+from the latter developments of militancy, and refused to lend her
+countenance to the idly exasperating policy of injuring treasures of
+art, interrupting public races, breaking non-combatants' windows and
+burning down unique, priceless houses.
+
+"Where do you stand now?" I asked as dinner drew to a close. "I
+renewed my acquaintance with Arthur Roden to-day, and he invited me
+down to the House to assist at the final obsequies of the Militant
+movement."
+
+Joyce shook her head dispassionately over the ingrained stupidity of
+mankind.
+
+"I think it's silly to talk like that before the battle's over. Don't
+you?"
+
+"He seemed quite certain of the result."
+
+"Napoleon was so certain that he was going to invade England that he
+had medals struck to commemorate the capture of London. I've got one
+at home. I'd rather like to send it him, only it 'ud look flippant."
+
+I reminded her that she had not answered my question.
+
+"Roden says that the 'Cat and Mouse' Act has killed the law-breakers,"
+I told her, "and to-night's division is going to kill the
+constitutionalists. What are you going to do?"
+
+Joyce turned to me with profound solemnity, sat for a moment with her
+head on one side, and then allowed a smile to press its way through
+the serious mask. As I watched the eyes softening and the cheeks
+breaking into dimples, I appreciated the hopelessness of trying to be
+serious with a fanatic who only made fun of her enemies.
+
+"What would _you_ do?" she asked.
+
+"Give it up," I answered. "Yield to _force majeure_. I've lived long
+enough in the East to feel the beauty and usefulness of resignation."
+
+"But if we _won't_ give it up?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I'm inviting suggestions. You're a man, so I thought you'd be sure to
+be helpful. Of course we've got our own plan, and when the
+Amendment's rejected to-night, you'll be able to buy a copy of the
+first number of a new paper to-morrow morning. It's called the _New
+Militant_, only a penny, and really worth reading. I've written most
+of it myself. And then we're going to start a fresh militant campaign,
+rather ingenious, and directed against the real obstructionists. No
+more window-breaking or house-burning, but real serious fighting, just
+where it will hurt them most. Something must come of it," she
+concluded. "I hope it may not be blood."
+
+Aintree roused himself from his attitude of listless indifference.
+
+"You'll gain nothing by militancy," he pronounced. "I've no axe to
+grind, you may have the vote or go without it. You may take mine away,
+or give me two. But your cause has gone back steadily, ever since you
+adopted militant tactics."
+
+"The Weary Seraph cares for none of these things," Joyce remarked. I
+requested a moment's silence to ponder the exquisite fitness of the
+name. Had I thought for a year I could not have found a better
+description for the shy boy with the alert face and large frightened
+eyes. "Every one calls him that," Joyce went on. "And he doesn't like
+it. I should love to be called seraphic, but no one will; I'm too full
+of original sin. Well, Seraph, you may disapprove of militancy if you
+like, but you must suggest something to put in its place."
+
+"I don't know that I can."
+
+Joyce turned to her sister.
+
+"These men-things aren't helpful, are they, Elsie?"
+
+"I'm a good destructive critic," I said in self-justification.
+
+"There are so many without you," Joyce answered, laying her hand on
+my arm. "Listen, Mr. Merivale. You've probably noticed there's very
+little argument about the suffrage; everything that can be said on
+either side has already been said a thousand times. You're going to
+refuse us the vote. Good. I should do the same in your place. There
+are more of us than there are of you, and we shall swamp you if we all
+get the vote. You can't give it to some of us and not others, because
+the brain is not yet born that can think of a perfect partial
+franchise. Will you give it to property and leave out the factory
+workers? Will you give it to spinsters and leave out the women who
+bear children to the nation? Will you give it to married women and
+leave out the unprotected spinsters? It's all or none: I say all, you
+say none. You say I'm not fit for a vote, I say I am. We reach an
+impasse, and might argue till daybreak without getting an inch further
+forward. We're fighting to swamp you, you're fighting to keep your
+head above water. We're reduced to a trial of strength."
+
+She leant back in her chair, and I presented her with a dish of salted
+almonds, partly as a reward, partly because I never eat them myself.
+
+"I admire your summary of the situation," I said. "You've only omitted
+one point. In a trial of strength between man and woman, man is still
+the stronger."
+
+"And woman the more resourceful."
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"She's certainly the more ruthless," Joyce answered, as she finished
+her coffee and drew on her gloves.
+
+"War _a outrance_," I commented as we left the dining-room. "And what
+after the war?"
+
+"When we've got the vote...." she began.
+
+"Napoleon and the capture of London," I murmured.
+
+"Oh well, you don't think I go in for a thing unless I'm going to win,
+do you? When we get the vote, we shall work to secure as large a share
+of public life as men enjoy, and we shall put women on an equality
+with men in things like divorce," she added between closed teeth.
+
+"Suppose for the sake of argument you're beaten? I imagine even Joyce
+Davenant occasionally meets with little checks?"
+
+"Oh yes. When Joyce was seven, she wanted to go skating, and her
+father said the ice wouldn't bear and she mustn't go. Joyce went, and
+fell in and nearly got drowned. And when she got home, her father was
+very angry and whipped her with a crop."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That's all. Only--he said afterwards that she took it rather well,
+there was no crying."
+
+I wondered then, as I have always wondered, whether she in any way
+appreciated the seriousness of the warfare she was waging on society.
+
+"A month in the second division at Holloway is one thing...." I began.
+
+"It'll be seven years' penal servitude if I'm beaten," she
+interrupted. Her tone was innocent alike of flippancy and bravado.
+
+"Forty votes aren't worth that. I've got three, so I ought to know."
+
+Joyce's eyes turned in the direction of her sister who was coming out
+of the dining-room with Aintree.
+
+"_She's_ worth some sacrifice."
+
+"You couldn't make her lot easier if you had every vote in creation.
+She's up against the existing divorce law, and that's buttressed by
+every Church, and every dull married woman in the country. You're
+starting conversation at the wrong end, Joyce."
+
+Her little arched eyebrows raised themselves at the name.
+
+"Joyce?" she repeated.
+
+"You were Joyce when last we met."
+
+"That was twenty years ago."
+
+"It seems less. I should like to blot out those years."
+
+"And have me back in nursery frocks and long hair?"
+
+"Better than long convict frocks and short hair," I answered with
+laborious antithesis.
+
+"Then I haven't improved?"
+
+"You're perfect--off duty, in private life."
+
+"I have no private life."
+
+"I've seen a glimpse of it to-night."
+
+"An hour's holiday. I say good-bye to it for good this evening when I
+say good-bye to you."
+
+"But not for good?"
+
+"You'll not want the burden of my friendship when war's declared. If
+you like to come in as an ally...?"
+
+"Do you think you could convert me?"
+
+She looked at me closely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"What'd you bet?" she challenged me.
+
+"It would be like robbing a child's money-box," I answered. "You're
+dealing with the laziest man in the northern hemisphere."
+
+"How long will you be in England?"
+
+"I've no idea."
+
+"Six months? In six months I'll make you the Prince Rupert of the
+militant army. Then when we're sent to prison--Sir Arthur Roden's a
+friend of yours--you can arrange for our cells to be side by side, and
+we'll tap on the dividing wall."
+
+I had an idea that our unsociable prison discipline insisted on
+segregating male and female offenders. It was not the moment, however,
+for captious criticism.
+
+"If I stay six months," I said, "I'll undertake to divorce you from
+your militant army."
+
+"The laziest man in the northern hemisphere?"
+
+"I've never found anything worth doing before."
+
+"It's a poor ambition. And the militants want me."
+
+"They haven't the monopoly of that."
+
+Joyce smiled in spite of herself, and under her breath I caught the
+word "Cheek!"
+
+"I'm pledged to them," she said aloud. "Possession's nine points of
+the law."
+
+"I don't expect to hear _you_ calling the law and the prophets in
+aid."
+
+"It's a woman's privilege to make the best of both worlds," she
+answered, as Elsie carried her off to fetch their cloaks.
+
+"There is only one world," I called out as she left me. "This is it. I
+am going to make the best of it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By appropriating to myself whatever's worth having in it."
+
+"How?" she repeated.
+
+"I'll tell you in six months' time."
+
+Aintree sauntered up with his coat under his arm as Joyce and her
+sister vanished from sight.
+
+"Rather wonderful, isn't she?" he remarked.
+
+"Which?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, really!" he exclaimed in disgusted protest.
+
+"They are astonishingly alike," I said _a propos_ of nothing.
+
+"They're often mistaken for each other."
+
+"I can well believe it."
+
+"It's a mistake you're not likely to make," he answered significantly.
+
+I took hold of his shoulders, and made him look me in the eyes.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing," he answered. "What did I say? I really forget; I was
+thinking what a wife Joyce would make for a man who likes having his
+mind made up for him, and feels that his youth is slipping
+imperceptibly away."
+
+I made no answer, because I could not see what answer was possible.
+And, further, I was playing with a day-dream.... The Seraph
+interrupted with some remark about her effect on a public meeting, and
+my mind set itself to visualise the scene. I could imagine her easy
+directness and gay self-confidence capturing the heart of her
+audience; it mattered little how she spoke or what she ordered them to
+do; the fascination lay in her happy, untroubled voice, and the
+graceful movements of her slim, swaying body. Behind the careless
+front they knew of her resolute, unwhimpering courage; she tossed the
+laws of England in the air as a juggler tosses glass balls, and when
+one fell to the ground and shivered in a thousand pieces she was ready
+to pay the price with a smiling face, and a hand waving gay farewell.
+It was the lighthearted recklessness of Sydney Carton or Rupert of
+Hentzau, the one courage that touches the brutal, beef-fed English
+imagination....
+
+"Why the hell does she do it, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Why don't you stop her, if you don't like it?"
+
+"What influence have _I_ got over her?"
+
+"Some--not much. You can develop it. I? Good heavens, _I_'ve no
+control. You've got the seeds.... No, you must just believe me when I
+say it is so. You wouldn't understand if I told you the reason."
+
+"It seems to me the more I see of you the less I do understand you," I
+objected.
+
+"Quite likely," he answered. "It isn't even worth trying."
+
+The play which the Seraph was taking us to see was _The Heir-at-Law_,
+and though we went on the first night, it was running throughout my
+residence in England, and for anything I know to the contrary may
+still be playing to crowded houses. It was the biggest dramatic
+success of recent years, and for technical construction, subtlety of
+characterization, and brilliance of dialogue, ranks deservedly as a
+masterpiece. As a young man I used to do a good deal of theatre-going,
+and attended most of the important first nights. Why, I hardly know;
+possibly because there was a good deal of difficulty in getting seats,
+possibly because at that age it amused us to pose as _virtuosi_, and
+say we liked to form our own opinion of a play before the critics had
+had time to tell us what to think of it. I remember the acting usually
+had an appearance of being insufficiently rehearsed, the players were
+often nervous and inaudible, and most of the plays themselves wanted
+substantial cutting.
+
+"The last things I saw in England," I told Mrs. Wylton, "were _The
+Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, and _A Woman of No Importance_."
+
+Dramatic history has developed apace since those days. I recollect we
+thought Pinero the most daring dramatist since Ibsen; we talked sagely
+of a revolution in the English theatre. There must have been many
+revolutions since then! Even the wit of Wilde has grown a little
+out-moded since '93. As we drove down to the Cornmarket I was given to
+understand that the dramatic firmament had been many times disturbed
+in twenty years; Shaw had followed a meteoric path, Barker burned with
+fitful brilliance, while aloft in splendid isolation shone the
+inexorable cold light of Galsworthy....
+
+"Who's the new man you're taking us to see?" Joyce asked the Seraph.
+
+"Gordon Tremayne," he answered.
+
+"The man who wrote 'The Child of Misery'? I didn't know he wrote
+plays."
+
+"I believe this is his first. Do you know his books?"
+
+"Forward and backward and upside down," I answered. "He's one of the
+coming men."
+
+I am not a great novel reader, and have no idea how I came across
+Tremayne's first book, "The Marriage of Gretchen," but when once I had
+read it, I watched the publisher's announcements for other books from
+the same pen. The second one belonged still to the experimental stage:
+then the whole literary world was convulsed by the first volume of his
+"Child of Misery."
+
+I suppose by now it is as well-known as that other strange masterpiece
+of self-revelation--"Jean Christophe"--which in many ways it so
+closely resembles. In one respect it shared the same immortality, and
+"Jean Christophe's" future was not more eagerly watched in France than
+"Rupert Chevasse's" in England. The hero--for want of a better
+name--was torn from the pages of the book and invested by his readers
+with flesh and blood reality. We all wanted to know how the theme
+would develop, and none of us could guess. The first volume gave you
+the childhood and upbringing of Rupert--and incidentally revealed to
+my unimaginative mind what a hell life must be for an over-sensitive
+boy at an English public school. The second opened with his marriage
+to Kathleen, went on to her death and ended with the appalling mental
+prostration of Rupert. I suppose every one had a different theory how
+the third volume would shape....
+
+"What sort of a fellow is this Tremayne?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+"I've never met him," he answered, and closured my next question by
+jumping up and helping Mrs. Wylton out of the taxi.
+
+From our box we had an admirable view of both stage and house. One or
+two critics and a sprinkling of confirmed first-nighters had survived
+from the audiences I knew twenty years before, but the newcomers were
+in the ascendant. It was a good house, and I recognised more than one
+quondam acquaintance. Mrs. Rawnsley, the Prime Minister's wife, was
+pointed out to me by Joyce: she was there with her daughter, and for a
+moment I thought I ought to go and speak. When I recollected that we
+had not met since her marriage, and thought of the voluminous
+explanations that would be necessitated, I decided to sit on in the
+box and talk to Joyce. Indeed, I only mention the fact of my seeing
+mother and daughter there, because it sometimes strikes me as curious
+that so large a part should have been played in my life by a girl of
+nineteen with sandy hair and over-freckled face whom I saw on that
+occasion for the first, last and only time.
+
+_The Heir-at-Law_ went with a fine swing. There were calls at the end
+of each act, and the lights were kept low after the final curtain
+while the whole house rang from pit to gallery with a chorus of
+"Author! Author!" The Seraph began looking for his coat as soon as the
+curtain fell, but I wanted to see the great Gordon Tremayne.
+
+"He won't appear," I was told when I refused to move.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+Aintree hesitated, and then pointed to the stage, where the manager
+had advanced to the footlights and was explaining that the author was
+not in the house.
+
+We struggled out into the passage and made our way into the hall.
+
+"Where does one sup these times?" I asked the Seraph.
+
+He suggested the Carlton and I handed on the suggestion to Mrs.
+Wylton, not in any way as a reflection on his admirable dinner, but as
+a precautionary measure against hunger in the night. Mrs. Wylton in
+turn consulted her sister, who appeared by common consent to be
+credited with the dominant mind of the party.
+
+"I should love...." Joyce was beginning when something made her stop
+short. I followed the direction of her eyes, and caught sight of a
+wretched newspaper boy approaching with the last edition of an evening
+paper. Against his legs flapped a flimsy newsbill, and on the bill
+were four gigantic words:--
+
+        DEFEAT OF SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT.
+
+Joyce met my eyes with a determined little smile.
+
+"Not to-night, thanks," she said. "I've a lot of work to do before I
+go to bed."
+
+"When shall I see you again?" I asked.
+
+She held out a small gloved hand.
+
+"You won't. It's good-bye."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"It's war _a outrance_."
+
+"That's no concern of mine."
+
+"Exactly. Those that are not with me are against me."
+
+I offered a bribe in the form of matches and a cigarette.
+
+"Don't you have an armistice even for tea?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head provokingly.
+
+"Joyce," I said, "when you were five, I had every reason,
+justification and opportunity for slapping you. I refrained. Now when
+I think of my wasted chances...."
+
+"You can come to tea any time. Seraph'll give you the address."
+
+"That's a better frame of mind," I said, as I hailed a taxi and put
+the two women inside it.
+
+"It won't be an armistice," she called back over her shoulder.
+
+"It'll have to be. I bring peace wherever I go."
+
+"I shall convert you."
+
+"If there's any conversion...."
+
+"When are you coming?" she interrupted.
+
+"Not for a day or two," I answered regretfully. "I'm spending Whitsun
+with the Rodens."
+
+Joyce shook my hand in silence through the window of the taxi, and
+then abruptly congratulated me.
+
+"What on?" I asked.
+
+"Your week-end party. How perfectly glorious!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"You're going to be in at the death," she answered, as the taxi jerked
+itself epileptically away from the kerb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC
+
+      "I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ...
+      I see your soul."--JOHN MASEFIELD, "The Tragedy of Nan."
+
+
+I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it
+disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an
+invitation to supper.
+
+"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me
+alone," I heard him murmuring.
+
+At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down
+by myself, and think--think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion
+of thinking.
+
+"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the
+direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose,
+I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at
+dinner."
+
+"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a
+minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
+
+I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a
+powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many
+years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of
+what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of
+six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little
+grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the
+need.
+
+"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.
+
+"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled
+to-night."
+
+He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for
+the powders had trembled more than was necessary.
+
+"You were all right at dinner," I said.
+
+"That was some time ago," he answered.
+
+"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."
+
+"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.
+
+Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge
+dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as
+silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of
+other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the
+arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told
+him to talk to me.
+
+"What about?" he asked.
+
+"Anything."
+
+"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past
+three hours in particular."
+
+"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.
+
+He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs
+crossed.
+
+"Don't you think it strange and--unsettling? Three months ago life
+was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day
+was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt
+lonely--lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four
+hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten
+it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the
+vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on?
+You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent,
+that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then
+you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then
+exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not
+going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to
+find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to
+save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now
+you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think
+that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall
+tell you how I know."
+
+I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials
+with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.
+
+"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true,
+wasn't it?"
+
+"Suppose it was?"
+
+His shoulders gave a slight shrug.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."
+
+I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.
+
+"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that
+I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"
+
+"Not the world."
+
+"You?"
+
+"As a rule. Not more than other people."
+
+"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"
+
+"I can with a good many men."
+
+"Not women?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and
+starts--jerkily; it's hard to follow them."
+
+"How do you do it?"
+
+"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the
+expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in
+succession--you just _see_."
+
+"I'm hanged if I do."
+
+"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening
+dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction
+of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't
+it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes
+between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken
+at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to
+go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be.
+You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're
+flabbergasted that _I_ should be the person. You're impotently angry.
+Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're
+going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether
+I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little
+thought--will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head
+because it'll hurt more. Still another thought--how hard to hit? You
+don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide
+to be on the safe side and hit rather gently. Then--then at last
+you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"
+
+I thought it over very carefully.
+
+"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each
+other. There isn't time."
+
+The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.
+
+"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was
+introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly
+assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into
+such attitudes."
+
+"How do you account for it?" I asked.
+
+"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."
+
+I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather
+than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then
+I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh--er--porter, taxi,
+please."
+
+"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.
+
+"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"
+
+"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.
+
+He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."
+
+I jumped up and ran into the hall.
+
+"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.
+
+"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.
+
+I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.
+
+"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get
+interested."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Why not?" I persisted.
+
+"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot
+more that I haven't told you about. I only----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking
+drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather--abnormal."
+
+"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"Occupy your mind more."
+
+"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as
+we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.
+
+As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace,
+our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we
+had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in
+aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm
+that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two
+thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side
+like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent
+conversation.
+
+As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh
+train of thought.
+
+"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness
+one employs in advancing these general propositions.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young
+friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going
+on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to
+paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that
+gets published, the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my
+question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six
+psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James
+there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power
+that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and
+observation, comes to you--by some freak of nature--ready made. You
+could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"
+
+"I might try."
+
+"I know what that means."
+
+"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your
+advice."
+
+"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.
+
+"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."
+
+"I'm still waiting to see the result."
+
+"You've seen it."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."
+
+"In my sleep?"
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."
+
+"I didn't write in my own name."
+
+"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.
+
+His lips opened, and then shut in silence.
+
+"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.
+
+"It won't go any further," I promised.
+
+"I don't want even you to know."
+
+"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."
+
+We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us
+thought of turning in.
+
+"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the
+Wellington Street crossing and were waiting for a stream of traffic
+to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.
+
+"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.
+
+"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.
+
+"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.
+
+"Try something a little less well--known: get hold of a book that's
+been published anonymously."
+
+"'Gretchen' was published over a _nom de plume_."
+
+"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."
+
+"You don't know him?"
+
+"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you
+didn't."
+
+"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.
+
+"A mere quibble," I protested.
+
+"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who _has_ met
+him?"
+
+I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a
+smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was
+borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.
+
+"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.
+
+"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he
+answered in parenthesis.
+
+He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had
+reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the
+fantastic tangle was straightened out.
+
+Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in
+Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of
+"Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name
+through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with
+the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the
+same way: even the _Heir-at-Law_ I had just witnessed came to a
+similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without
+criticism or suggestion from the author.
+
+I could see no reason for a _nom de plume_ in the case of "Gretchen"
+or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was
+different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the
+second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out
+of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert
+and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but
+the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering
+termination, had taken place a few months--a few weeks, I might
+say--before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I
+was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke
+through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
+
+"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
+
+He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to
+have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth
+century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all
+time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
+
+"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
+
+"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon
+Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
+
+Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona
+Macleod.'"
+
+"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence.
+"You think after what's passed...."
+
+"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he
+hesitated.
+
+"I know. 'Tisn't that--altogether. It's the future."
+
+"What's going to happen?"
+
+"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him
+writing plays."
+
+Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know
+the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was
+trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with
+friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for
+minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was
+always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously
+from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before
+mustering resolution to take a step forward....
+
+"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed
+Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.
+
+"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out;
+as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I
+do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind
+on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.
+
+"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days
+you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....
+
+I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a
+credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the
+belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope
+or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the
+close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a
+costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian
+mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through
+the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse
+drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse
+seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been
+manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.
+
+The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat
+armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard
+peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken
+by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his
+memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the
+peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
+
+In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She
+was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black
+hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far
+apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore
+an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met,
+but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her
+walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the
+Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and
+once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror
+changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire
+and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and
+frightened.
+
+It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a
+fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and
+intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always
+interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched
+away. Gradually--like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist--the
+outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open
+with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.
+
+The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at
+almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple
+Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on
+the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters,
+with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.
+
+"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean?
+Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know
+her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And
+it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've
+never felt so ... so _conscious_ of anybody in my life. I saw her for
+those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall
+meet her again----"
+
+"Don't you want to?"
+
+He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once
+more in mine.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up
+Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy
+curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's
+some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ...
+she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
+
+When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink.
+He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was
+reluctant to be left to his own company.
+
+"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your
+dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to
+change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The
+Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"
+
+He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.
+
+"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
+
+"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I
+shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a
+diversion. Come to oblige me."
+
+He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat
+and jerking it out straight.
+
+"All right," he said at last.
+
+"You will be my salvation."
+
+"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
+
+"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
+
+"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered,
+turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
+
+For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's
+premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from
+Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and
+in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be
+concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of
+reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In
+the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the
+careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was
+held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the
+question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my
+brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by
+reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in
+store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered
+occasional pangs of disappointment?
+
+Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed.
+Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and
+arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South
+Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing
+the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More
+charitable than the Psalmist--from whom indeed he differs in all
+material respects--Brian could not bring himself to believe that any
+one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked.
+At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be
+attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in
+the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.
+
+For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial
+good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my
+curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I
+was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was
+inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common
+fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade
+manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should
+have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge;
+indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.
+
+When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my
+sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with
+her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would
+cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not
+to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other
+mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived
+for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the
+code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have
+had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle";
+"Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation
+successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist
+nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or
+even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps
+needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they
+sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian
+and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I
+had passed out of the life of all three--presumably for ever.
+
+In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that
+my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter
+would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the
+weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in
+contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and
+position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and
+independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to
+know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.
+
+I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present
+regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She
+was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited--tasting life for the first
+time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it
+could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before
+wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday
+world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless
+courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's
+passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side
+with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she
+was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those
+thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched
+Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England
+has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice
+over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my
+happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.
+
+I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board
+the _Bessarabia_. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of
+instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My
+niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.
+
+"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her
+ingenious explanation.
+
+As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went
+abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to
+be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a
+bachelor party."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BRANDON COURT
+
+      "I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do
+      you?"
+
+      "At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
+
+      "Do _you_ call it that too?" ...
+
+      ... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you
+      all my life!"--RUDYARD KIPLING, "The Brushwood Boy."
+
+
+The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed
+myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
+
+"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she
+had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the
+rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be
+there."
+
+As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second
+reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
+
+"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the
+Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last
+minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own
+account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley
+or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize
+him...."
+
+"Do you _know_ him?" Gladys asked me in surprise.
+
+"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he
+had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the
+Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."
+
+Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to
+gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several
+years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the
+sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly
+respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public
+position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for
+his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do
+so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the
+waters returned to me after not many days.
+
+"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.
+
+"Oh, a topper!"
+
+I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.
+
+"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded, _per obscurans ad
+obscurantius_; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of
+the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent
+specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in
+weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the
+kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of
+speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might
+starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your
+plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was
+brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and
+followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination
+he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and
+unready sympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose
+he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him,
+and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a
+Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity
+Eight.
+
+I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.
+
+"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He
+is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not
+comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime
+Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime
+Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise
+him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you
+with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on
+five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and
+finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also
+his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious
+enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic
+instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously;
+he is making a mark in the House."
+
+"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the
+Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a
+very general feeling.
+
+I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of
+the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more
+than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable,
+I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I
+have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to
+size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did. Nigel
+went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an
+abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of
+personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those
+who--like the Jews--trample that they be not trampled on. He became
+overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for
+fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his
+tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House
+christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was
+not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom
+to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when
+he was sure of his ground.
+
+I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have
+been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff,
+make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness.
+Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own
+case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him
+no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will
+carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and
+humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the
+youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and
+figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not
+now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery
+of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still
+able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I
+laughed--though he had all the trumps in his hand--he must needs think
+I had reason for my laughter.
+
+"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat
+Culling. He is an irrepressible Irishman of some thirty summers, with
+a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ
+it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless
+face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument
+from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to
+Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in
+Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I
+know.
+
+"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he
+will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing
+that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a
+special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be
+losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He
+is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your
+hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him
+gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable
+foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will
+deal himself five aces with the utmost _sang froid_."
+
+"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in
+my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.
+
+"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her
+belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole
+time."
+
+I reminded myself that I stood _in loco parentis_, shook hands with
+Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.
+
+The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip
+conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my
+presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told
+me how life had treated him since our parting in Asia Minor; while
+Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated
+history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Avenement de
+Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily
+summoned to be informed of the birth--I noticed that the ministers
+were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi--it concluded with
+the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For
+reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived
+of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the
+badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable
+as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry
+when we arrived at Brandon Junction.
+
+We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being
+collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and
+from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I
+recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long
+rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour
+of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony
+must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from
+Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect
+without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.
+
+When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at
+the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud
+youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the
+ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling
+black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft,
+unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge
+hovered round her small, straight mouth, as though she were conscious
+of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile
+there lurked--or so I fancied--a suggestion of weariness as with one
+whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling
+blend of frankness and reserve. The _camaraderie_ of her greeting
+reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers;
+fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by
+her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the
+man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It
+was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends
+were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr.
+Culling."
+
+Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach
+Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were
+astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in
+trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be
+filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other
+people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick
+movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I
+remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical
+energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame
+could contain such fire without eruption.
+
+Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....
+
+"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands.
+"And where's the wicked uncle?"
+
+My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.
+
+"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a
+hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."
+
+"I feel even younger," I began.
+
+"Face massage," Culling murmured.
+
+"A good conscience," I protested.
+
+"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.
+
+It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other
+than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would
+outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched
+Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an
+excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his
+arrangements.
+
+"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in
+desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come
+to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in,
+everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."
+
+"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage,"
+objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one
+else.
+
+"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.
+
+"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good
+enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.
+
+Philip was seized with inspiration.
+
+"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"
+
+"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes,"
+his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."
+
+My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was
+shod with neat, serviceable brogues.
+
+"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the
+way."
+
+Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia
+and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across
+the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon
+Court.
+
+"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.
+
+"What was?" she asked.
+
+"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand,
+but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."
+
+We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a
+temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking
+down on me.
+
+"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"I sincerely hope so."
+
+"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time
+to go back and get a cab at the station."
+
+"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.
+
+"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake
+of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to
+make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them.
+Will you promise?"
+
+"The flesh is weak," I protested.
+
+"Am I worth a little promise like that?"
+
+"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."
+
+"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar,
+as you call them. You know you're really--you won't mind my saying
+it?--you're old enough...."
+
+"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was
+perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the
+subject. So far as I can see, my declining years will be one long
+riot of senile infidelity.
+
+"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I
+don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood
+facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine.
+"You're not in love with me, are you?"
+
+I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot
+tapped the ground with impatience.
+
+"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known
+me five minutes. Well,"--her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may
+have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm--"please
+don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till
+I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've
+knocked about the world, you're seasoned----"
+
+I held out my hand to seal the bargain.
+
+"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence.
+"I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."
+
+"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.
+
+"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she
+added with a flash of pride.
+
+"I think I saw that the moment we met."
+
+"I wonder."
+
+It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before
+I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty
+years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and
+troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared
+with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them
+had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and
+Sylvia had been in attendance at every important match in which he
+was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a
+prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an
+end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of
+Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and
+Sylvia, whose one cry--like Kundry's--had ever been, "Let me serve,"
+found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household,
+when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without
+an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding.
+Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had
+slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his
+place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the
+world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her
+devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am
+convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an
+outlet for her activities in militancy.
+
+"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her
+eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be
+friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."
+
+"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate
+them all!"
+
+"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.
+
+"Yes. Did you know her?"
+
+I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by
+her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came
+afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was
+reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.
+
+"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.
+
+"You think so?" she asked without conviction.
+
+It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions;
+they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was
+being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had
+troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers
+superfluous.
+
+"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden
+standstill.
+
+"I _say_, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.
+
+"He didn't come," I reassured her.
+
+"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept
+invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably
+polite."
+
+"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.
+
+"Why?"
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"Shyness, I suppose."
+
+"I hate shy people."
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I don't know him. What's he like?"
+
+"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the
+Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I
+ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather
+haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very
+nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."
+
+"Sounds like a degenerate poet."
+
+"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia.
+Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."
+
+"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."
+
+"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time
+to hate!"
+
+"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate
+myself more than anybody else."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't
+control myself."
+
+On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden
+was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the
+household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained
+Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as
+Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in
+prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget
+that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect
+for Morningtons--or any other pre-Conquest families--whether they come
+from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn
+reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have
+possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon
+Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for
+pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the
+Judge?" she said when we met. "Then--let me see--your sister-in-law
+was a Hylton."
+
+I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench
+politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion
+quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt.
+Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"--it
+now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square--rescued the conversation
+from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we had to arrange
+for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was
+coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought
+over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia
+volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while
+the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon
+Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.
+
+"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me,
+when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a
+cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that
+high, and now--God knows--it's in a decline you'd say he was taken.
+You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has
+his heart broken."
+
+I did not know what answer to give.
+
+"Just a passing mood," I suggested.
+
+"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.
+
+He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those
+feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world
+and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other
+business--a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost
+to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel
+moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy
+kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and
+the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.
+
+"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came
+towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his
+thumb in the front door of his flat, and while we dragged the depths
+of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick
+and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual,
+and his manner restless.
+
+"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.
+
+"I was giving up hope."
+
+"I _had_ to come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into
+one of his longest silences.
+
+We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens,
+reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming
+masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve
+rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth
+in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun,
+and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We
+drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymphaeas
+closing their eyes for the night.
+
+Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom,
+Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old
+spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.
+
+"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we
+approached.
+
+"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it,"
+said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of
+us did to improve or debase our minds.
+
+"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two
+glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and
+Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind
+as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his
+head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"
+
+Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At
+two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and
+passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as
+many minutes.
+
+"He _knows_ it's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance.
+If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"
+
+"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "If _you_ were blind,
+you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."
+
+"Not enough," said Gartside.
+
+"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ.
+You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive
+surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive
+organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing,
+hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."
+
+Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.
+
+"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."
+
+"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.
+
+"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the
+sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the
+moment he got into the room."
+
+"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.
+
+"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather,"
+Gartside went on.
+
+"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't
+coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere
+on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute
+touch sense."
+
+I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the
+fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.
+
+"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.
+
+"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling,
+infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.
+
+"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called
+'premonition.'"
+
+Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.
+
+"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."
+
+"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.
+
+"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's
+dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What
+about all those other mornings...."
+
+"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.
+
+"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure
+coincidence."
+
+I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.
+
+"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my
+observation in the East--the power possessed by many natives of
+foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came
+across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had
+been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One
+morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature
+was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I
+congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die
+punctually at eight that evening.
+
+In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the
+relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme
+unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect
+health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his
+assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be
+morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at
+hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on
+his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.
+
+"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating
+illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to
+fancies. An idea--from a dream, perhaps--that death will take place at
+a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body
+is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm
+going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I
+shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an
+unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick
+to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and
+dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."
+
+"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from
+the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in
+his voice.
+
+We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had
+a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.
+
+"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my
+bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know--it's your livelihood."
+
+"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."
+
+"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"
+
+Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or
+verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason.
+To write an entirely imaginative work would be--as the poet said of
+love--"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like
+keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal
+length.
+
+"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when
+I put this view before him.
+
+"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.
+
+"You'd lose the psychology of expectation--uncertainty."
+
+"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.
+
+"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."
+
+"What form does it take?"
+
+His lips parted, and closed again quickly.
+
+"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.
+
+Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and
+after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn the _entree_, it
+was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in
+my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were
+unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away
+from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between
+Philip and the Seraph.
+
+"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.
+
+He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.
+
+"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words
+the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair.
+I saw the footman who was handing round the coffee bend down and
+whisper something to Arthur.
+
+"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.
+
+"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she
+had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.
+
+"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.
+
+"The man only said...."
+
+Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia
+framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress,
+and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed
+with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle
+of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study
+in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into
+relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared
+unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my
+forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through
+bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted
+lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into
+the room.
+
+"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair
+by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be
+sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr.
+Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she
+ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She
+hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and
+as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs.
+Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."
+
+"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in the tone that tries to be
+sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.
+
+Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph
+as she did so.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him
+with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood
+likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I
+came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"
+
+I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the
+one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.
+
+"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was
+ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."
+
+Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at
+last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had
+already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant
+tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood
+about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table
+with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation
+for a stroll on the terrace.
+
+He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time
+and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and
+a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the
+face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that
+at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and
+unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's
+many feminine characteristics.
+
+It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he
+and I were the two last men in the world, and Brandon Court the only
+house in England--till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found
+two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house.
+Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had
+been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty
+years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or
+other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.
+
+It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open
+library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he
+would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it
+would have enlightened neither of us.
+
+On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the
+frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed
+herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair
+braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no
+portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the
+fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to
+judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable
+temperament....
+
+I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or
+twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately--almost before I
+had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the
+adjoining room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FIRST ROUND
+
+      "BRASSBOUND: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Prisoner?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: I warned you. You should have taken my
+      warning.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a
+      brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom
+      you.
+
+      SIR HOWARD: Then what do you expect to gain by this?
+
+      BRASSBOUND: Justice...."
+
+            BERNARD SHAW: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."
+
+
+But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the
+following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily
+placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the
+Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay
+scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding
+of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent
+pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.
+
+"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me.
+"Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun
+it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."
+
+As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly
+arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason
+for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and
+for some years I have found that other people tend to be somewhat
+irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in
+the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that
+the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it
+difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the
+first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical
+student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own
+person.
+
+"Seraph up yet?" I asked.
+
+"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first
+time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept
+in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had,
+further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and
+escorted Sylvia to the early service.
+
+"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.
+
+"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in
+disgrace over something."
+
+The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter
+Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time
+and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any
+known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to
+their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth
+doing. Sylvia--like most _devotes_--could not believe in the existence
+of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people
+should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my
+comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion
+only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for
+the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other--and to
+tell me all about it.
+
+"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.
+
+"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."
+
+Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and
+admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a
+strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and
+brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but
+Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He
+was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and
+brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his
+handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most
+enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use
+of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The
+first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy
+of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of
+our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I
+tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I
+forget who won; he certainly had the note.
+
+A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence.
+Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few
+days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of
+perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last
+Commemoration.
+
+"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced.
+"House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."
+
+"Who's paying?" asked Michael.
+
+"Guv'nor, I hope."
+
+"_Je_ ne _pense pas_," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the
+library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.
+
+"You come," Robin went on regardless of the interruption. "I've got
+six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."
+
+"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance
+together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead
+necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University
+dancing costume, I believe it's called."
+
+"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already
+depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for
+the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and
+Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates
+from Carfax.
+
+"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."
+
+"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was
+unpinning a motor-veil.
+
+"Oh, _yes_, darling Sylvia!" Robin--I know--was both fond and proud of
+his sister, but the tone of _ad hoc_ blandishment suggested that
+experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll
+come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully
+averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."
+
+"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.
+
+"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd
+you like?" he asked me.
+
+"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any
+one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I
+shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me
+drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to
+mischief."
+
+Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just
+entered the room, and turned to his sister.
+
+"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.
+
+"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.
+
+"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and
+misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to
+hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me
+know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the
+driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."
+
+Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's
+chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing
+up the drive, cutting all corners.
+
+"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."
+
+Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with
+the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime
+Minister's sudden appearance.
+
+"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise
+God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."
+
+"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.
+
+"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the
+selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a
+viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and
+fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make
+him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How
+perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."
+
+We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the
+inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's
+suggestion we began to retreat through the open French windows into
+the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file
+and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could
+escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had
+to be introduced afresh.
+
+"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement
+towards the window. "You may be able to help us."
+
+I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a
+spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met
+him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade,
+coming to Oxford to address some political club.
+
+"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato
+voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into
+three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance
+without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now.
+My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you
+know her by sight?"
+
+I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.
+
+"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter
+to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to
+Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the
+day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the
+four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The
+eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything
+of her before you left?"
+
+I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting
+old friends and being introduced to new ones that I had had neither
+time nor eyes....
+
+"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you
+know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten
+yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles
+beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by
+the slip?"
+
+The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the
+A.B.C. with an impatient slap.
+
+"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left
+London."
+
+"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.
+
+"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.
+
+"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been
+called away suddenly?"
+
+"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter
+makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place--with a
+view to tracing her."
+
+He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by
+first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western
+District Office at Victoria."
+
+The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows:
+
+        "DEAR SIR,
+
+    "This is to inform you that your daughter is well and in safe
+    keeping, but that she is being held as a hostage pending the
+    satisfactory settlement of the Suffrage Question. As you are
+    aware, Sir George Marklake has secured second place in the
+    ballot for Private Member's Bills. Your daughter will be
+    permitted to communicate with you by post, subject to
+    reasonable censorship; on the day when you promise special
+    facilities and Government support for the Marklake Bill, and
+    again at the end of the Report Stage and Third Reading. The same
+    privilege will be accorded at the end of each stage in the House
+    of Lords, and she will be restored to you on the day following
+    that on which the Bill receives the Royal Assent.
+
+    "You will hardly need to be reminded that the Marklake Bill is
+    to be taken on the first Private Member's night after the
+    Recess. Should you fail to give the assurances we require, it
+    will be necessary for us to take such further steps as may seem
+    best calculated to secure the settlement we desire."
+
+It took me some minutes to digest the letter before I was in a
+condition to offer even the most perfunctory condolence. Now that the
+blow had been struck, I found myself wondering why it had never been
+attempted before.
+
+"You've no clue?" I asked.
+
+Rawnsley inspected the letter carefully and held it up to the light.
+
+"Written with a Remington, I should say. And a new one, without a
+single defect in type or alignment. And the paper is made by
+Hitchcock. That's all I have to go on."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Advise Scotland Yard, I suppose. Then await developments. I don't
+wish what I've told you this morning to go any further; no good
+purpose will be served by giving the militants a free advertisement.
+When I am in town, it is to be understood that Mavis is with her
+mother at Hanningford; and when I am at Hanningford, Mavis must be at
+Downing Street."
+
+One has no business in private life to badger ministers with political
+questions, but I could not help asking what line Rawnsley proposed to
+take with the Marklake Bill. His grey eyes flashed with momentary
+fire.
+
+"It won't be taken this session," he declared. "I'm moving to
+appropriate all Private Members' time for the Poor Law Bill. And
+that's all, I think; I must be getting back to my wife, she's--a good
+deal upset. Can you spare Nigel, Roden? I should like to take him if I
+may. Good-bye, Mr. Merivale. Good-bye, Mr. ---- Oh, by the way, Roden,
+remember you're tarred with the same brush. As soon as the Recess is
+over, you'll have to keep a close watch on your family. Harding's
+another; I shall have to warn him."
+
+Rawnsley's departure left me with a feeling of anti-climax and vague
+discomfort. Short of assassination, which would have defeated its own
+object, a policy of abduction was the boldest and most effective that
+the militants could devise at a time when--in Joyce's words--all
+arguments had been exhausted on both sides and war _a outrance_ was
+declared by women who insisted on a vote against men who refused to
+concede it. I had every reason to think I knew whose brain had evolved
+that abduction policy; its reckless simplicity and directness were
+characteristic. Then and now I wondered, and still wonder, whether the
+author of that policy had sufficient imagination and perspective to
+appreciate the enormity of her offence, or the seriousness of the
+penalty attendant on non-success.
+
+"Ber-luddy day!" exclaimed Michael, rejoining us in the library and
+delicately brushing occasional drops of moisture from his immaculate
+person. A heavy downpour of rain was starting, and though I looked
+like being spared initiation into the mysteries of golf--which I am
+not yet infirm enough to learn--it was not very clear how we were to
+kill time between meal and meal. Gladys was spending the morning
+quietly in her room, Philip wandered to and fro like a troubled
+spirit, and Sylvia had mysteriously departed.
+
+In time Michael condescended to give us the reason. It appeared that
+while we were closeted with Rawnsley in the library, Robin had decided
+that rest and relaxation before his Schools could best be secured by
+the organisation of an impromptu Calico Ball, to be given that night
+to all who would come. While he sat at the telephone summoning the
+County of Hampshire to do his bidding, Sylvia had departed in her
+little white runabout to purchase masks and a bale of calico from
+Brandon Junction, and scour the neighbourhood in search of piano,
+violin, and 'cello. The wet afternoon was to be spent by the women of
+the party in improvising costumes, by the men in French-chalking the
+floor of the ball-room.
+
+I took the precaution of calling on Gladys to acquaint her with the
+day's arrangements, and beg her to see that I was not compelled to
+wear any costume belittling to the dignity of a middle-aged uncle.
+Then after writing a bulletin to catch my brother at Gibraltar, I felt
+I had earned rest and a cheroot before luncheon. Brandon Court was one
+of those admirably appointed houses where you could be certain of
+finding wooden matches in every room; it was not, however, till I got
+back to the library that I found companionship and the Seraph. He was
+lying on a sofa writing slowly and painfully with his left hand.
+
+"If that's volume three," I said, "I won't interrupt. If it's
+anything else, we'd better smoke and talk. I will do the smoking."
+
+"I'm only scribbling," he answered. "There's no hurry about volume
+three."
+
+"Your public--_quorum pars non magna sum_--is growing impatient."
+
+"There won't be any volume three," he said quietly.
+
+"But why not? I mean, a mere temporary hitch...."
+
+"It's not that. If it wasn't for this hand I could write like, well,
+like you _do_ write once in a lifetime."
+
+"What's to stop you?"
+
+"Nothing. I only said there wouldn't be a volume three. I shan't
+publish it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+His big blue eyes looked up at me thoughtfully for a moment from under
+their long lashes. Then he crumpled up the half-covered sheet of
+paper, remarking--
+
+"There are some things you can't make public."
+
+"But with a _nom de plume_...."
+
+"I might let _you_ see it," he conceded.
+
+There we had to leave the subject, as the library was soon afterwards
+invaded by zealous seekers after luncheon, first Lady Roden and
+Gartside, then the rest of the party with the single exception of
+Sylvia. Lady Roden walked over to the window and gazed in dismay at
+the unceasing downpour.
+
+"Is Sylvia back yet, does anybody know?" she asked.
+
+"She came in about a quarter of an hour ago," volunteered the Seraph.
+
+"Was she very wet?"
+
+"I didn't see her."
+
+Lady Roden bustled out of the room to make first-hand investigation.
+
+"She took a Burberry with her," Robin called out; then springing up he
+seized an ebony paper knife and advanced on Michael who was reclining
+decoratively on a Chesterfield sofa. "Talking of Burberries," he went
+on, with menace in his tone, "what the deuce d'you mean by stealing
+mine, Michael?"
+
+"Wouldn't be seen dead in your bloody Burberry," Michael responded
+with delicate languor.
+
+The Roden boys were all much of a size, and on the subject of raided
+and disputed garments a fierce border warfare raged unintermittently
+round their bedroom doors. It was so invariable a rule with Michael to
+meet all direct charges with an equally direct denial that his
+brothers placed but slight reliance on his word.
+
+"What was it doing in your room, then?" persisted Robin, as he applied
+the paper-knife to the soles of Michael's feet.
+
+"That was Phil's," said Michael ingenuously.
+
+Robin turned to his elder brother with the suggestion of a little
+disciplinary boiling-oil.
+
+"It'll be enough if we just ruffle him," answered the humane Philip.
+"Keep the door, Pat. Now, Robin!"
+
+The perfect harmony of their attack argued long practice. Almost
+before I had time to move out of the way, Culling was standing with
+his back to the door while a scuffling trio on the hearthrug indicated
+that castigation was already being meted out. Within two minutes the
+immaculate Michael had been reduced to slim, white nudity, and even as
+the decorous Gartside proffered a consolatory "_Times'_ Educational
+Supplement," the two brothers and Culling had divided the raiment and
+taken their centrifugal course through the house, secreting boots,
+socks, tie and collar in a succession of ingeniously inaccessible
+places as they went. Then the gong sounded, and Gartside took me in to
+luncheon.
+
+Such little breezes, as I afterwards discovered, were characteristic
+of Brandon Court when the three brothers were at home and Philip had
+forgotten his public dignity. I could have spared the present
+outbreak, as the inflammatory word "Burberry" had kept me from putting
+a certain question to the Seraph. At one-thirty he had told Lady Roden
+that Sylvia had come in about a quarter of an hour before: to be
+strictly accurate, she had entered the yard as the stable clock struck
+one-fifteen, and had come into the house three minutes later by a side
+door and gone straight to her room by a side staircase. The Seraph and
+I had been sitting in the library since twelve-forty-five. The library
+looked out over a terrace on to the lawn: stable yard, side door and
+side staircase were at the diametrically opposite angle of the house.
+It was impossible for any one, even with the Seraph's uncannily acute
+senses, to hear a sound from the stable yard; even had it been
+possible, he could not have identified it as the sound of Sylvia's
+return.
+
+I put my question in the smoking-room after luncheon, but got no
+satisfactory answer. Meeting Sylvia in the hall a few minutes later, I
+took my revenge by setting her to find out.
+
+The afternoon was spent in polishing the ball-room floor. Others
+worked, I offered advice. At one point, Michael, too, showed a
+tendency to offer advice, but the threat that his young body would be
+dragged up and down till the bones cut through the skin and scratched
+the floor, was effectual in persuading him to swathe his feet in
+towels and wade through uncharted seas of French chalk to the infinite
+detriment of the blue colour-scheme he had been forced into adopting
+for luncheon.
+
+Mrs. Roden, Sylvia and Gladys retired with their three maids and a
+bale of calico. From time to time one of us would be summoned to have
+our measurements taken, but no indication was manifested of the guise
+in which we were to appear. At eight we retired to our rooms with
+sinking hearts; at eight-thirty a group of sheepish men loitered at
+the stair-head, waiting for one less self-conscious than the rest to
+give a lead to the others.
+
+The ball--when it came and found us filled and reckless with
+dinner--proved an unqualified success. My indistinct memory of it
+recalls a number of pretty girls who danced well, talked very quickly,
+and called me--without exception--"my dear." I sat out two with
+Sylvia, and was cut three times by Gladys, who disappeared with Philip
+at an early stage. Further, I supped twice with two creditably hungry
+girls, discussed the lineage of the county with Lady Roden, and smoked
+a sympathetic cigarette with a nice-looking shy boy of fifteen, who
+was always being cut by Gladys when he was not being cut by some one
+else. His name was Willoughby, and I hope some girl has smiled on him
+less absent-mindedly than my niece.
+
+In my few spare moments I watched Sylvia dealing with her male guests.
+Culling approached and was rewarded with a smile and one dance.
+Gartside followed and received an even sweeter, Tristan-und-Isolde
+smile, and the same proportion of her programme. The Seraph,
+arm-in-sling, hung unostentatiously on the outskirts of the crowd, and
+with much hesitation summoned courage to ask if she could spare him
+one to sit out. She gave him two, and extended it later to three.
+
+I heard afterwards that at the end of the third he prepared to return
+to the ball-room.
+
+"Who are you taking this one with?" she asked him.
+
+"No one," he told her.
+
+"Why not stay here, then?"
+
+"Haven't you promised it to young Willoughby?"
+
+"He'll survive the disappointment," said Sylvia lightly.
+
+The Seraph shook his head. "May I have one later?" he asked. "You
+oughtn't to cut Willoughby, he's been looking forward to it."
+
+Sylvia was not accustomed or inclined to dictation from others.
+
+"Have you asked him?" she said, uncertain whether to be amused or
+angry.
+
+"It wasn't necessary. Haven't you felt his eyes on you while you were
+dancing? He thinks you're the most wonderful girl in the world. There
+he's right. He'll treasure up every word you speak, every smile you
+give him; he'll send himself to sleep picturing ways of saving your
+life at the cost of his own. And he'll dream of you all night."
+
+The Seraph's tranquil, unemotional voice had grown so earnest that
+Sylvia found herself growing serious in spite of herself.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't discuss me with boys like that," she said, more
+to gain time than administer reproof.
+
+"Should I have discussed you?" exclaimed the Seraph. "And would he
+have told me? Why can't you, why can't any girl understand the mind of
+a boy of fifteen? You'd make such men of them if you'd only take the
+trouble. Look at him now, he's thinking out wonderful speeches to make
+to you...."
+
+"I _hope_ not," said Sylvia ruefully.
+
+"He'll forget them all when he meets you. I was fifteen once."
+
+"I wonder if you'll ever be more."
+
+The Seraph made no answer.
+
+"That wasn't meant for a snub," said Sylvia reassuringly.
+
+"I know that."
+
+Sylvia looked at him curiously. "Is there anything you _don't_ know?"
+she asked as they descended the stairs to the ball-room.
+
+"I don't even know if you're going to let me take you in to supper."
+
+"I'm glad there's something."
+
+"That's not an answer."
+
+"Do you want to?"
+
+"You ought to know that without asking."
+
+"I'm afraid there's a great deal about you I _don't_ know."
+
+Supper was ended and their table deserted before Sylvia put the
+question with which I had primed her that afternoon.
+
+"Is there anything I _don't_ know? to use your own words," said the
+Seraph evasively.
+
+"That's not an answer, to use yours."
+
+"It's the only answer I can give," he replied, with that curious
+expression in his dark eyes that did duty for a smile.
+
+"Why won't you tell me? I'm interested. It's about myself, so I've a
+right to know."
+
+"But I can't explain; I don't know. It never happened before."
+
+"Never?"
+
+The Seraph thought over his first meeting with her the previous day.
+
+"Never with any one else," he answered.
+
+Sylvia shook her head in perplexity.
+
+"I don't understand," she said. "Either it was just coincidence and
+you were talking without thinking, or else ... I don't know. It's
+rather funny. D'you want to smoke? Let's go out on to the terrace."
+
+"The detectives are there."
+
+"No, father said they weren't to appear to-night."
+
+"They're out there."
+
+"How d'you know?"
+
+"I can hear them."
+
+Sylvia looked round at the closed plate-glass windows.
+
+"You _can't_," she said incredulously.
+
+"Will you bet? No, I don't want to rob you. Shall I tell you something
+else? You opened a fresh bottle of scent to-night when you dressed for
+dinner. It's Chaminade, the same kind that you were using before, but
+this is fresher. Had you noticed it?"
+
+The Seraph was considerably less impressed by his powers than Sylvia
+appeared to be.
+
+"Anything else?" she asked after a pause.
+
+The Seraph wrinkled his brows in thought.
+
+"Gladys Merivale was coughing last night," he said. "Some one passed
+my door at two o'clock and went into her room. I don't know who it
+was, but it wasn't you. The coughing stopped for a time, but started
+again just before three. Then you passed by and went in."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I heard you."
+
+"You may have heard some one; you didn't know it was me. I went once
+and mother went once. You couldn't tell which was which."
+
+The Seraph lit a cigarette and walked with her to the door of the
+supper-room.
+
+"Oh, it was your mother?" he said. "Then she went the first time."
+
+"But how do you know?" Sylvia repeated.
+
+"I can't explain, any more than about the car coming back this
+morning."
+
+Sylvia shook her head a little uneasily.
+
+"You're abnormal," she pronounced.
+
+"Because I...?"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Because I know a fraction more about you than other people?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"Only a fraction. It would take time to understand you."
+
+"How much? I hate to be thought a sphinx."
+
+"However little I wanted, we should be parted before I got it."
+
+"Why? How? How parted?"
+
+The Seraph shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Don't ask me to read the future," he said with a sigh.
+
+At the end of the ball I found the Roden boys congratulating
+themselves on the success of the evening. I added my quota of praise,
+and was pressed to state if I now felt equal to three successive
+nights at Commemoration.
+
+"Which reminds me!" Robin exclaimed, flying off at his usual tangent.
+"Where's Sylvia? Sylvia, my angel, what about Commem.?"
+
+His sister looked tired but happy, and in some way excited.
+
+"I'll come if you want me," she answered, putting her arm round
+Robin's neck and kissing him good-night. "Yes, all right--I will. Oh,
+Mr. Rawnsley told me this morning that Mavis wouldn't be able to come,
+so you must get another girl."
+
+Robin dropped his voice confidentially.
+
+"See if you can persuade Cynthia to come. And we're still a man
+short."
+
+Sylvia looked slowly round the room with thoughtful, unsmiling
+eyes--past Culling, past Gartside....
+
+"Will you come, Seraph?" she asked.
+
+Less than a day and a half had passed since I had noticed her practice
+of avoiding Christian names. For some reason I had supposed nicknames
+to fall into the same category.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+COMMEMORATION
+
+      "Oxford ... the seat of one of the most ancient and
+      celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid
+      picturesque environs at the confluence of the Cherwell
+      and the Thames.... Oxford is on the whole more attractive
+      than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor.... The best time
+      for a visit is the end of the Summer term.... This period
+      of mingled work and play (the latter predominating) is
+      named _Commemoration_.... It is almost needless to add
+      that an introduction to a 'Don' will greatly add to the
+      visitor's pleasure and profit."
+
+      KARL BAEDECKER: "Handbook for Travellers: Great Britain."
+
+
+Of the weeks that passed between my return to London from Brandon
+Court and our departure from London to Oxford, I have only the most
+indistinct recollection. My engagement book earned many honourable
+scars before I carried it away into my present exile, but for May and
+the first half of June there appears a black, undecipherable smudge
+that my memory tells me should represent a long succession of late
+nights and crowded days. Individual items are blurred out of
+recognition; my general sense of the period is that I pretended to be
+preternaturally young, and was punished by being made to feel
+prematurely old.
+
+It was the busiest part of the London season, and Gladys appeared to
+receive cards for an average of three balls a night on five nights of
+the week. I accompanied her everywhere, growing gradually broken to
+the work and relieved of my more serious responsibilities by the fact
+that Philip Roden was too busy at the House to waste his nights in a
+ball-room. We seemed to move in the midst of a stage army, the same
+few hundred men, women, and dowagers reappearing in an endless
+march-past. With the advent of the big hotels, hospitality had changed
+in character since the days when I counted myself a Londoner: there
+was more of it and it was less hospitable. The rising generation, and
+more particularly the female portion of it, seemed to have taken
+matters into its own hands.
+
+Regularly each morning, after a late breakfast, Gladys would set me to
+write a series of common-form letters: "Dear Mr. Blank," I would say,
+"My niece and I shall be so pleased if you will dine with us here
+to-night at 8.30 and go on to Lady Anonym's ball." Then Gladys would
+bring unknowing guest and unknown hostess into communication. "Can I
+speak to Lady Anonym?" I would hear her call down the telephone. "Oh,
+good morning! I say, do you think you could _possibly_ do with another
+man for your ball to-night? Honest? It _is_ sweet of you. Oh, quite a
+nice thing--Mr. Incognito Blank, 101, Utopia Chambers, St. James.
+Thanks, most awfully. Oh no, not _him_, he's the most awful stiff;
+this is a dear thing. Well, I would have, only he's only just got back
+to England, he's been shooting big game...."
+
+This was the retail method. In the case of intimate friends, Gladys
+would be encouraged to send in her own list of desirable invitees.
+Because I am old-fashioned and unacquainted with English ways, I trust
+I am not inaccessible to new ideas. I would carry the policy of
+promiscuity to its logical conclusion. An announcement in the _Times_
+with draft _menu_, name of band and programme of music--even a
+placard outside Claridge's--would save endless postage and stationery,
+and could not pack the ball-room tighter than on a dozen occasions I
+remember. Hostesses who believe that numbers are the soul of
+hospitality, could be certain beforehand of the success of their
+efforts; superior young men would continue to remark, "Society gettin'
+very mixed, what?" exactly as they have done ever since I entered my
+first ball-room at the age of seventeen. Everybody, in short, would be
+pleased.
+
+We saw a good deal of Sylvia during those weeks, as for reasons of her
+own she would frequently drop in at Pont Street and conduct her share
+of the arrangements over our telephone. Occasionally Gladys would be
+called in as an accomplice, I would hear "Mr. Aintree's" name added to
+Lady Anonym's list, and Gladys would remark with fine carelessness,
+"Oh, just send him the card, if you will; don't bother to say who it
+comes from." The Seraph may have suspected, but he never had
+documentary proof of the originating cause of some of his invitations.
+
+In making our arrangements for Commemoration, I decided to take the
+greater part of my charges to Oxford by road. Robin, of course, was
+still in residence, and Philip promised to come down by the first
+possible train. Gladys, Sylvia, the Seraph, and a _pis-aller_ of
+Robin's named Cynthia Bargrave constituted my flock; we motored
+quietly down to Henley, where we lunched and chartered a houseboat for
+the Regatta, and arrived in Oxford with ample time for the three girls
+to have a comfortable rest before dinner. I made rather a point of
+this, as they were going to have three very tiring days and would
+naturally wish to look their best; moreover, I wanted to roam round
+the town with the Seraph.
+
+Even Oxford, that I thought could never alter, had changed during my
+years of absence. The little, nameless back-street colleges I would
+gladly sacrifice to the Destroyer, for they serve no purpose beyond
+that of breeding proctors, and I know we counted it an indignity to be
+fined by the scion of a college we had to reach by cab. But the High
+should have been inviolate; there wanted no new colleges breaking
+through its immemorial sides.... Univ. men, standing at their lodge
+gate and looking northward, have told me the High already contains one
+college in excess.
+
+While the Seraph sought out Robin's rooms in Canterbury, I wandered
+through the college--guiltily, I admit--looking for traces of a
+popular outbreak that occurred when a ball took place at Blenheim and
+House men asked in vain for leave to attend it. In time I came to my
+own old rooms in Tom, and gazed rather in sorrow than anger at the
+strange new name painted over the door. Twice my fingers went to the
+handle, twice I told myself that "Mr. R.F. Davenant" had as much right
+to privacy as I should have claimed in his place.... I wandered out
+through Tom Gate, across St. Aldates, and down Brewer Street to those
+pleasant digs in Micklem Hall, where I once spent an all-too-short
+twelve months. Then I returned to college, crept furtively back to the
+old familiar door, knocked, listened, entered....
+
+"R.F. Davenant" was far more civil than I should have been at a like
+intrusion. He showed me round the rooms, offered me whisky and
+cigarettes, wanted to know when I had been up, whether I was going to
+the Gaudy.... We were friends in a minute. I liked his fair,
+neatly-parted hair and clean, fresh colouring; I liked his Meissonier
+artist proofs; I liked the way the left back leg of the sofa
+collapsed unless you underpinned it with a Liddle and Scott. Not a
+thing was changed but the photographs on the mantelpiece. I walked
+over and surveyed them critically. Then one of those things happened
+that convince me an idle Quixotic Providence is watching over my least
+movements: I was staring at the picture of a girl on horseback when he
+volunteered the information that it was his sister.
+
+"Your married sister?" I suggested.
+
+"Do you know her?"
+
+He fed me on Common-room tea and quarter-pound wedges of walnut cake.
+Joyce was coming up for two of the three balls I was attending, coming
+unprovided with partners to chaperone some girl who had captured her
+brother's wandering fancy. These elder sisters earn more crowns than
+they are ever accorded; it seemed that Joyce who trampled on the world
+would stretch herself out to be trampled on by her heedless only
+brother. I wonder wherein the secret lies.
+
+"Come and dine," suggested Dick Davenant.
+
+I told him of my own party, and lost no time in working the Cumberland
+days with his father for all they were worth. What happened to the
+Seraph I never discovered. As I hurried back to the Randolph for
+dinner, Robin met me with an apology in advance for the dull evening
+before me.
+
+"'Fraid you'll have rather a rotten time," he opined. "I wish you had
+let me find you some old snag or other."
+
+"I shall be all right, Robin," I said.
+
+"There's sure to be bridge _somewhere_. Or look here, what about a
+roulette-board? Combine business with pleasure--what?"
+
+"I shall be able to amuse myself," I assured him.
+
+Our dinner that night was one of the gayest meals I have eaten; we
+were all expectant, excited, above our usual form--with the single
+exception of Philip. If I were a woman, I suppose I should notice
+these things; as it was I put his silent preoccupation down to
+overwork. When he approached Robin with other-world gentleness and
+suggested a stroll up St. Giles after dinner "just to keep me company,
+old boy," I ought to have suspected something; but it was not till the
+Seraph, smoking a lonely cigar, murmured something about "_Consul
+videat ne respublica detrimentum capiat_," that I saw my authority
+over Gladys was being threatened.
+
+The girls had been despatched for their last mysterious finishing
+touches, and we had the hall of the Randolph to ourselves.
+
+"What the deuce ought I to do, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"What _can_ you do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why do anything?"
+
+That is the question I always ask myself when I have no definite idea
+what is expected of me.
+
+"I wish he'd had the consideration to wait till my brother came back,"
+I grumbled.
+
+"These little emotional crises never _do_ wait till we're ready for
+them, do they?"
+
+"From the fulness of the heart...."
+
+"Oh, pardon me, I was not speaking of myself."
+
+"I thought you were."
+
+The Seraph shook his head at me.
+
+"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or
+any one but your own self."
+
+I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.
+
+"No emotional crises have come _my_ way," I protested.
+
+"Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this
+afternoon."
+
+I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my
+chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will
+you...? No! sorry."
+
+"Will I what?"
+
+"It's no business of mine."
+
+"Why d'you start talking about it, then? Will I what?"
+
+The Seraph knocked the ash off his cigar, finished his coffee, and sat
+silent. I repeated my question.
+
+"Well...." he hesitated nervously. "Are you going to propose to her
+to-night?"
+
+"Really, Seraph!"
+
+"You're going to--some time or other...."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense!"
+
+"...I was wondering if it would be to-night."
+
+I felt myself growing rather annoyed and uncomfortable.
+
+"Not very good form to talk like this," I said stiffly. "After all,
+she's a friend of yours and mine. A joke's all very well...."
+
+"But I'm quite serious!"
+
+"My dear Seraph, d'you appreciate that I've met the girl once--a few
+weeks ago--and once only since she was a child of five?"
+
+"Oh yes. And do you remember my telling you what was bringing you back
+to England? Do you remember the impression she made on you that night?
+If you're going to marry her...."
+
+"Seraph, drop it!"
+
+He withdrew into his shell, and we smoked without speaking until I
+began to be sorry for snubbing him.
+
+"I didn't mean to be rude," I said apologetically. "But she's a nice
+girl; I may see her to-night for all I know to the contrary, and this
+coupling of names.... You see my point?"
+
+The Seraph suddenly developed a nervous, excited earnestness.
+
+"Let me give you a word of advice. If you're going to propose to
+her--oh, all right; if X. is going to propose to her, he'd better do
+it now--before the crash comes. There's going to be a very big crash;
+she's going down under it. If you--if X. proposed now, she might be
+got out of the way before it's too late. You--X. won't like to see the
+woman he's going to marry...."
+
+"X. marries her then?" I asked in polite incredulity. "Oh, he should
+certainly lose no time."
+
+"She may not accept you at once."
+
+"Come and get your coat, Seraph."
+
+"But she will later."
+
+"Come and get your coat," I repeated.
+
+"Ah--you don't believe me--well...."
+
+I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.
+
+"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of
+Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I
+have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday
+fortnight?"
+
+The Seraph shook his head without answering.
+
+"Very well, then," I said decisively.
+
+"But you don't know either."
+
+Of course he was right.
+
+"I may not know _now_," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due
+course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do--whether it's
+choosing a tie or...."
+
+"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more
+than what's in your own mind."
+
+"You talked about the woman X. was going to _marry_, not merely
+propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."
+
+"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"
+
+"Does she know herself?"
+
+"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so
+disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve,
+seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you
+at once."
+
+"You know her mind better than she does?"
+
+As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.
+
+"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that
+a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as
+part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you
+wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you
+come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."
+
+I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.
+
+"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.
+
+"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he
+answered.
+
+I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across
+Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was
+half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated
+and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening
+extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and
+white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow
+zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the
+Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H.
+contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.
+
+My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at
+the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various
+inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found
+her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air,
+flushed--or so I fancied--and occasionally passing a hand across eyes
+that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her
+to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the
+luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven
+undergraduate generations.
+
+"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said,
+after telling her of my meeting with Dick.
+
+"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here,"
+she answered.
+
+"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So--for that matter--have others."
+
+"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean.
+If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the
+staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"
+
+I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.
+
+"If you _will_ espouse unpopular political causes," I began.
+
+"I'm not complaining! _This_ was nothing to what I've been through in
+the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"
+
+I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I
+used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand
+along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I
+used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable
+precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while
+like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my
+affection.
+
+"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I
+said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time
+was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their
+hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as
+I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who
+know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise
+me."
+
+"Perhaps they don't know you."
+
+"That," I said, "is not very helpful."
+
+"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know
+me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."
+
+"But what did you expect?"
+
+"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."
+
+It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I
+told her--what was no more than the truth--that I owed no allegiance
+to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in
+politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing
+if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise
+question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was
+granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace
+and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of
+hostility.
+
+"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I
+refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and
+enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could
+persuade you to accept the _fait accompli_. You're up against _force
+majeure_, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"
+
+"Why give up at all?"
+
+"You're striking at an immovable body."
+
+"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"
+
+"Is it an irresistible force?"
+
+"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"
+
+The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.
+
+"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight
+of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."
+
+"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern
+hemisphere? Yes."
+
+"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen
+her since."
+
+"Has her father?"
+
+"You must ask him."
+
+"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour
+reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this
+week's _New Militant_, I had such fun writing it."
+
+"What was the rumour?"
+
+"We--ell!" Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her
+memory. "Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in
+that, of course; _you_'ve disappeared before now. Then some one else
+said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the
+suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about
+it; you'd have thought Mr. Rawnsley was making a mystery of it.
+However, I wanted to know, so I'm asking the question in the leading
+article. Perhaps he'll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to
+give me a match?"
+
+I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul's good.
+
+"As I say, my law's pretty rusty," I told her in conclusion, "but you
+may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather
+severe."
+
+"Brutally," Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. "But you've got
+to catch your criminal before you can imprison him."
+
+"Or her."
+
+"And you can't catch without evidence."
+
+I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one,
+but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.
+
+"That's the most banal remark I've ever heard from you," I told her.
+"There never was a criminal yet that didn't think he'd left no traces,
+never one that didn't think he was equal to the strain of sitting
+waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened
+or become reckless----"
+
+"Which am I?"
+
+"Neither as yet. You'll become reckless, because I don't think you
+know what fear means."
+
+"Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial
+room of the _New Militant_, will you climb up and see my moderating
+influence at work? If it hadn't been for me, we should have been
+prosecuted over the first number."
+
+"I suppose that's Mrs. Millington?" I hazarded. An echo of her fiery
+pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson
+and sabotage campaign.
+
+"What's in a name?" Joyce asked sweetly.
+
+"Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there's _some one_ who has to be
+restrained. I tell you you'll be arrested the day after your
+restraining influence is withdrawn...."
+
+Joyce bowed her assent.
+
+"And that will happen when you're invalided home from the front."
+
+Joyce bowed again. "Me that never had a day's illness in my life," I
+heard her murmur.
+
+"It'll be a new experience, and you'll have it very shortly if I know
+anything of what a woman looks like when she's overworked,
+over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways,
+you're man's inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues
+of life...."
+
+"But this wasn't!" The interruption came quickly in a tone that had
+lost its early banter. "Elsie's case comes on at the end of this week.
+I've been with her, I didn't want to come to-night, but she made
+me--so as not to disappoint Dick. It's not very pleasant to sit
+watching any one going through.... However, don't let's talk about it.
+You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It's cheap...."
+
+"And so very filling? I'll give no more."
+
+"Don't stop, it's a wonderful index. As long as people give me good
+advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more."
+
+I weighed the remark rather deliberately.
+
+"You were nearer being spiteful then than I've ever heard you," I
+said.
+
+"But wasn't it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give
+me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph."
+
+"The only three who'll give you anything more?"
+
+"Among the non-politicals. I've got politicals who'd go through fire
+and water for me," she declared proudly.
+
+"I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?"
+
+"Those three." She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a
+mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. "My friend,
+you're not suggesting _yourself_?"
+
+"I'm waiting to be asked."
+
+"It would be waste of time. You've not been living your own sinful
+selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came--it's
+kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six
+months before I could be certain of you."
+
+"You won't get six months."
+
+"Then it's hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win
+without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to
+the ball-room?"
+
+I exhibited my unfinished cigar.
+
+"When you're tired of oakum and a plank bed," I began....
+
+"Caught, tried _and_ condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn't
+leave it as late as that."
+
+"The sooner the better."
+
+"I'll come as soon as there's a warrant out."
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"Faithfully. But there won't be any warrant if the cause succeeds."
+
+"I pray you'll fail," was my fervent answer.
+
+Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.
+
+"You've spoilt _every_thing by that!"
+
+"My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause."
+
+"We can't be separated."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Anything you like!"
+
+She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The
+flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope
+of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited
+breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that
+moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the
+background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible.
+Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was
+hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun
+gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and
+shoulders.
+
+"Anything you like!" she repeated in confident gay challenge.
+
+"I hold you to that."
+
+Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it
+once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings
+so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight
+and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt,
+my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of
+those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian
+jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the
+ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.
+
+"Hold out your hand, Joyce," I said. "No, the other one. There!"
+
+I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table,
+and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.
+
+Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.
+
+"No good," I said. "You may cut the ring, which would be a pity
+because it's unique; and it's not yours till you've won the wager. Or
+you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too
+... well, anyway, it won't be yours to amputate if I win the bet."
+
+Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.
+
+"Will you take it off, please?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"You said I might fix the wager."
+
+"Take it off, please!" she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me.
+Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well
+when she disapproves.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested. "I've finished my cigar."
+
+"A joke may be carried too far," she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I
+remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.
+
+"Heaven witness I'm not joking!" I protested. "Nothing I could say
+would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my
+chance. It's a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you
+separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long
+as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I'm
+backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me."
+
+Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some
+difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.
+
+"How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?" she asked.
+
+I had not considered that.
+
+"Till my death?" I suggested.
+
+"Sooner than that, I hope."
+
+"Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back."
+
+Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as
+she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elated and quite
+deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm bound up with the cause more intimately than you
+think," she began with unexpected gentleness. "For--let me see--three
+years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and
+I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a
+Suffragan Bishop...."
+
+"Quite a proper distinction," I interrupted. "Neither fish, flesh,
+fowl, nor good red herring."
+
+"...and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire."
+
+"But this is where I come in."
+
+"Too late, I'm afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my
+own. I've sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the
+_New Militant_. I'm living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That
+looks like business, doesn't it?"
+
+I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and
+mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.
+
+"Living out in the East," I said, "I have learnt the virtue of
+infinite patience."
+
+Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important
+question unasked.
+
+"When I win my wager," I began.
+
+"You won't."
+
+"Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object
+to the consequences?"
+
+Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.
+
+"I've never given the matter a thought," she answered.
+
+"Subconsciously?" I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Well, give it a thought now," I begged.
+
+"It wouldn't make much difference whether I objected or not."
+
+"If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing's a joke in
+questionable taste, I'll take the ring off here and now."
+
+Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I
+suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes
+were soft and kind.
+
+"I think any girl 'ud be very lucky...." she began. I bowed, and as I
+did so an imp of mischief took possession of her tongue. "...very
+lucky indeed--to engage your roving affection."
+
+"That wasn't what you started to say."
+
+"I never know what I _am_ going to say. That's why I'm so good on a
+platform."
+
+"Shall I take the ring off?"
+
+"I prefer to win it in fair fight."
+
+"If you can," I rejoined, as we pressed our way into the bright warmth
+of the ball-room.
+
+My charges appeared to be profiting by my absence. Couple after couple
+floated by with touching heads and dreamy eyes; half-way down the room
+Philip was whispering in Gladys' ear and making her smile; I caught a
+glimpse of Robin and Cynthia; then Sylvia and the Seraph glided past.
+
+"Don't they look sweet together?" said Joyce, half to herself, as our
+faces were subjected to a quick, searching glance.
+
+"What about a turn before supper?" I suggested.
+
+"Am I having it with you?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"I should like to."
+
+We started round the room, half-way through the waltz. Joyce was a
+beautiful dancer, easy, light, and rhythmical. It was too good to
+spoil with talking; I contented myself with one final remark.
+
+"After all," I said, "you may as well start getting used to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECOND ROUND
+
+    "One sleeps, indeed, and wakes at intervals,
+    We know, but waking's the main part with us,
+    And my provision's for life's waking part.
+    Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
+    All day, I build, scheme, study and make friends;
+    And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
+    Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
+    The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
+    What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith?
+    You, the philosopher that disbelieve,
+    That recognise the night, give dreams their weight--
+    To be consistent--you should keep your bed,
+    Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
+    For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
+    And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,
+    Live through the day and bustle as you please.
+    And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
+    To unbelieve as I to still believe?
+    Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you
+    Bedridden,--and its good things come to me."
+
+        ROBERT BROWNING: "Bishop Blougram's Apology."
+
+
+The Bullingdon Ball took place on the Tuesday night, and Joyce
+returned to town the following morning. Her brother may have mentioned
+the time, or it may have been pure coincidence that I should be buying
+papers and watching the trains when she arrived at the station with
+the girl she was chaperoning. We met as friends and exchanged papers:
+I gave her the _Morning Post_ and received the _New Militant_ in
+return. As the train slipped away from the platform, she waved
+farewell with a carefully gloved left hand. Then Dick and I strolled
+back to the House.
+
+In drowsy, darkened chamber Robin was sleeping the sleep of the just.
+As I voyaged round his rooms, I reflected that undergraduate humour
+changes little through the ages, and in Oxford as elsewhere the
+unsuspecting just falls easy prey to wakeful, prowling injustice. An
+enemy had visited that peaceful home of slumber. Half-hidden by
+disordered bed-clothes, a cold bath prematurely awaited Robin's foot,
+and on his table was spread a repast such as no right-thinking man
+orders for himself after two nights' heavy dancing. Moist, indecorous
+slabs of cold boiled beef, beer for six, two jars of piccalilli and a
+round of over-ripe Gorgonzola cheese, offered piteous appeal to a
+jaded, untasting palate. Suspended from the overmantel--that soul
+might start on equal terms with body--hung the pious aspiration--"God
+Bless our Home."
+
+"Garton, for a bob!" Robin exclaimed when I described the condition of
+his rooms.
+
+Flinging the bed-clothes aside, he fell heavily into the bath,
+extricated himself to the accompaniment of low, vehement muttering
+that may have been a prayer, and bounded across the landing to render
+unto Garton the things that were Garton's. I followed at a
+non-committal distance, and watched the disposal of two pounds of
+boiled beef in unsuspected corners of Garton's rooms. Three slices
+were hidden in the tobacco jar, the rest impartially distributed
+behind Garton's books--to mature and strengthen during sixteen weeks
+of Long Vacation. Balancing the jug of beer on the door-top--whence it
+fell and caved in the fraudulent white head of a venerable
+scout--Robin hastened back to his own quarters and sported the oak.
+
+"I was thinking of a touch of lunch on the Cher," he observed,
+exchanging his dripping pyjamas for a dressing-gown and making for a
+window-seat commanding Canterbury Gate, a cigarette in one hand and a
+Gorgonzola cheese in the other. "If you wouldn't mind toddling round
+to Phil and the Seraph and routing the girls out, we might all meet at
+the House barge at one. I'll cut along and dress as soon as I've given
+Garton a little nourishment. I suppose the pickles 'ud kill him," he
+added with a regretful glance at the two-pound glass jars.
+
+I communicated the rendezvous to Philip, threw an eye over the "Where
+is Miss Rawnsley?" article as I crossed the Quad, and dropped anchor
+in the Seraph's rooms. His quaint streak of femininity showed itself
+in the bowls of "White Enchantress" carnations with which the tables
+and mantelpiece were adorned. A neat pile of foolscap covered with
+shorthand characters indicated early rising and studious method. I
+found him working his way through the _Times_ and _Westminster
+Gazette_ for the last three days.
+
+"I suppose there is no news?" I said when I had told him Robin's
+arrangements for the day and described the Battle of the Beef.
+
+"Nothing to-day," he answered. "Have you seen yesterday's _Times_?"
+
+I had been far too busy with Joyce and my three wards to spare a
+moment for the papers. I now read for the first time that the Prime
+Minister had moved for the appropriation of all Private Members' days.
+The Poor Law Reform Bill would engage the attention of the House for
+the remainder of the Session, to the exclusion of Female Suffrage and
+every other subject.
+
+"That's Rawnsley's answer to _this_," I said, giving the Seraph my
+copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+"I wonder what the answer of the _New Militant_ will be to Rawnsley,"
+he murmured when he had read the article.
+
+"That is for you to say," I told him. "You read the Heavens and
+interpret dreams and forecast the future...."
+
+"Fortunately I can't."
+
+This was an unexpected point of view.
+
+"Wouldn't you if you could?" I asked.
+
+"Would any one go on living if he didn't cheat himself into believing
+the future was not going to be quite as black as the present?"
+
+This was not the right frame of mind for a man who had spent two
+nights dancing with Sylvia--to the exclusion of every one else, and I
+told him so.
+
+"Come along to the Randolph," he exclaimed impatiently. "To-day,
+to-night; and to-morrow all will be over. I was a fool to come. I
+don't know why I did."
+
+We picked up our hats and strolled into King Edward Street.
+
+"You came because Sylvia invited you," I reminded him. "I heard the
+invitation. Young Rawnsley was not there, but Culling and Gartside
+were, and a dozen more I don't know by name. Any of them might have
+been chosen instead, but--they weren't. You should be more grateful
+for your advantages, my young friend."
+
+"I'm not."
+
+I linked my arm in his, and tried to find out what was upsetting him.
+
+"You've been having some senseless, needless quarrel with her...." I
+hazarded.
+
+"How can two people quarrel when they've not a single point in common?
+Our lives are on parallel lines, continue them indefinitely and
+they'll never meet. Therefore--it's a mistake to bring the parallels
+so close together that one can see the other."
+
+For a moment I wondered whether he had put his fortune to the test and
+received a rebuff.
+
+"Does Sylvia think your lives are on parallel lines?" I asked.
+
+"What experience or imagination do you think a girl like that's got?
+It never occurs to them that everybody's not turned out of the same
+machine as themselves, with the same ideas, beliefs, upbringing,
+position, means. D'you suppose Sylvia appreciates that she spends more
+money on dress in six months than I earn in a year? Can she imagine
+that I hate and despise all the little conventions that she wouldn't
+transgress for all the wealth of the Indies? The doctrines she's
+learnt from her mother, the doctrines she'll want to teach her
+children--can she imagine that I regard them as so much witchcraft
+that I wouldn't imperil my soul by asking any sane child to believe?
+I'm an infidel, a penniless, unconventional Bohemian, and she--well,
+you know the atmosphere of Brandon Court. What's the good of our going
+on meeting?"
+
+"Nigel is neither infidel, unconventional, nor Bohemian," I said.
+"Moreover, he stands on the threshold of a big career...."
+
+"I daresay," said the Seraph as I paused.
+
+"Nigel was not invited. Gartside may be an infidel if he ever troubles
+to think of such things; he is certainly not penniless or Bohemian. He
+is a large-framed, large-hearted hero, with every worldly advantage a
+girl could desire. Gartside was not invited. No more were the others.
+You were."
+
+"She hadn't known me two days; perhaps two days aren't long enough to
+find me out."
+
+"Feminine intuition...." I began.
+
+"Feminine intuition's a woman's power of jumping to wrong conclusions
+quicker than men. Unless you want to get yourself into trouble, you'd
+better not march into Sylvia's presence with a _New Militant_ in your
+hand."
+
+I thanked him for the reminder, and bequeathed the offending sheet to
+the Martyrs' Memorial. The heavy type of the headline, "Where is Miss
+Rawnsley?" reminded me of our earlier conversation.
+
+"I shan't be sorry to get rid of my charges," I remarked. "They're a
+responsibility in these troublous times."
+
+"Sylvia's in no danger," he answered with great confidence.
+
+"I'm not so sure."
+
+"She's absolutely safe."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, and the confidence died out of his eyes.
+
+"I don't. It's--just an opinion."
+
+"Even if you're right, there's still Gladys," I said.
+
+"I'd forgotten her."
+
+"She's a fair mark."
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Though not as good as Sylvia."
+
+"I assure you Sylvia's in no danger."
+
+"But how do you know?" I repeated.
+
+"I tell you; it's only an opinion."
+
+"But you don't express any opinion about Gladys."
+
+"How could I?"
+
+"How can you about Sylvia?"
+
+He hesitated, flushed, opened his lips and shut them again in his old
+tantalising way.
+
+"I don't know," he answered as we entered the Randolph, and walked to
+the end of the hall where the three girls were awaiting us.
+
+Robin had provided an imposing flotilla for our accommodation. His own
+punt was reserved for Cynthia, himself, and the luncheon-baskets; a
+mysterious reconciliation had placed Garton's at the disposal of
+Philip, Gladys, and myself, while Sylvia and the Seraph were stowed
+away in a Canadian canoe, detached by act of sheer piracy from the
+adjoining Univ. barge. We took the old course through Mesopotamia and
+over the Rollers, mooring for luncheon half a mile above the Cherwell
+Hotel. Hunger and a sense of duty secured my presence for that meal
+and tea; in the interval I retired for a siesta. Distance, I find,
+lends enchantment to a chaperon.
+
+It was in my absence that Philip asked Gladys to marry him. On my
+reappearance at tea-time, Robin shouted the news across a not
+inconsiderable section of Oxfordshire. I affected the usual surprise,
+warned Philip that he must await my brother's approval, and shook
+hands with him avuncularly. Then I watched the orgy of kissing that
+seems inseparable from announcements of this kind. A mathematician
+would work out the possible combinations in two minutes, but his
+calculation would, as ever, be upset by the intrusion of the personal
+equation, for Robin kissed Gladys not once, but many times, less with
+a view to welcoming her as a sister than from a reasonable belief that
+such ill-timed assiduity would exasperate her elder brother.
+
+In time it occurred to some one to make tea, and at six o'clock the
+flotilla started home. Robin ostentatiously transferred me from
+Philip's punt to his own, and with equal ostentation announced his
+intention of starting last so as to round up the laggards. The
+Canadian canoe shot gracefully ahead, and was soon lost to view; a
+fast stream was running, and the boat needed little assistance from
+the paddle. I have no doubt that in the late afternoon sun, and with
+an accompaniment of rippling water gently lapping the sides of the
+boat, time passed all too quickly. Fragments of conversation were
+disinterred for my benefit in the course of the following weeks, to
+set me wondering anew what sympathetic nimbus I must wear that girls
+and boys like Sylvia and the Seraph should unlock their hearts for my
+inspection.
+
+I gather that Sylvia called for the verdict on the success of their
+expedition to Oxford, and that the Seraph found for her, but with
+reluctant, qualified judgment.
+
+"You're not sorry you came?" she asked. "Well, what's lacking? I'm
+responsible for bringing you here; I want everything to be quite
+perfect."
+
+"Everything _is_ perfect, Sylvia."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"_Some_thing's wrong. You're moody and silent and troubled, just like
+you were the first time we met. D'you remember that night? You looked
+as if you thought I was going to bite you. I don't bite, Seraph. Tell
+me what's the matter, there's still one night more; I want to make you
+glad you came."
+
+"You can't make me gladder than I am. But you can't find roses without
+thorns. I wish we weren't all going back to-morrow."
+
+"It's only to London."
+
+"I know, but it'll all be different."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I don't know, but it _will_ be. These three days wouldn't have been
+so glorious if I hadn't remembered every moment of the time that they
+were--just three days."
+
+Shipping his paddle, he lay back in the boat and plunged his arms up
+to the elbow in the cool, reedy water. Sylvia roused him with a
+challenge.
+
+"Four days would have bored you?"
+
+"Have you ever met the man who _was_ bored by four days of your
+company?"
+
+"Don't you sometimes fancy you know me better than most?"
+
+"I've known you since Whitsun."
+
+"You've known me since...."
+
+She stopped abruptly. The Seraph lifted a wet hand, and watched the
+water trickling in zigzag rivulets up his arm.
+
+"Shall I finish it for you?" he asked.
+
+"You don't know what I was going to say."
+
+"You've known me since the day I was born."
+
+"Why do you think I was going to say that?"
+
+"You were, weren't you?"
+
+"I stopped in the middle."
+
+"You'd thought out the end."
+
+"Had I?"
+
+"Unconsciously?"
+
+A hand waved in impatient protest.
+
+"If it was unconscious, how should I know?"
+
+The Seraph glanced quickly up at her face, and turned away.
+
+"True," he answered absently.
+
+"No one could know," she persisted.
+
+"_I_ knew."
+
+"Guessed."
+
+For answer he picked up his coat from the bottom of the boat, and
+extracted a closely written sheet of college note-paper. Folding it so
+that only the last line was visible, he handed it her with the words--
+
+"You'll find it there."
+
+Sylvia read the line, and gazed in perplexity at her companion.
+
+"But I never _said_ it," she persisted.
+
+"You were going to."
+
+She turned the paper over without answering.
+
+"What's on the other side?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph extended an anxious hand.
+
+"Please don't read that!" he implored her. "It's not meant for you to
+see."
+
+"Is it about me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why shouldn't I see it?"
+
+"You may, but not now."
+
+"Well, when?"
+
+The Seraph's manner had grown suddenly agitated. To gain time, he
+produced a cigarette, but his agitation was betrayed in the trembling
+hand that held the match.
+
+"When we meet again," he answered after a pause.
+
+"We meet again to-night."
+
+"When we meet--after parting."
+
+"We part to dress for dinner."
+
+"I mean a long, serious parting," he replied in a low voice.
+
+Sylvia laughed at his suddenly grave expression.
+
+"Are we going to quarrel?" she asked.
+
+He nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why, Seraph?" she asked more gently.
+
+"We can't help it."
+
+"It takes two to make a quarrel. _I_ don't want to."
+
+"We shouldn't--if we were the only two souls in creation."
+
+Sylvia sat silent, fidgeting with a signet ring, and from time to time
+looking questioningly into the troubled blue eyes before her.
+
+"How do you _know_ these things?" she asked at length. "You can't
+know."
+
+"Call it guessing, but I was right over the unfinished sentence,
+wasn't I?"
+
+"Perhaps, but how do you know?"
+
+"I don't. It's fancy. Some people spend their lives awake, others
+dreaming." He shrugged his shoulders. "I dream. And sometimes the
+dream's so real that I know it must be true."
+
+Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face
+before.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't dream we were going to quarrel," she said. "I
+don't want to lose you as a friend."
+
+"You won't. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help
+badly."
+
+Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes
+recovered their disdainful, independent fire.
+
+"Why should I want help?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know," was all he could answer. "You will."
+
+Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped
+Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up
+and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly
+through Mesopotamia neither was able--perhaps neither was willing--to
+pick up the threads of the conversation where they had been dropped.
+In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade
+of Addison's Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows.
+Sylvia's mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he
+had spoken.
+
+"Do we meet and make it up?" she asked with assumed lightness of tone
+as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and
+shot clear into the Isis.
+
+"We meet."
+
+"And make it up?" she repeated.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Do you care?"
+
+"Sylvia!"
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"If we don't?" The Seraph sat motionless for a moment, and then began
+paddling the boat alongside the barges. "I shall go abroad. I've never
+been to India. I want to go there. And then I shall go on to Japan,
+and from Japan to some of Stevenson's islands in the South Seas. I've
+seen everything else that I want to see."
+
+"And then?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shook his head uncertainly.
+
+"Burial at sea, I hope."
+
+"Seraph, if you talk like that we shall quarrel now."
+
+"But it's true."
+
+"There'd be nothing more in life?"
+
+"Not if we quarrelled and never made it up."
+
+"But if we _did_----"
+
+"Ah, that'ud make all the difference in the world."
+
+For a moment they looked into each other's eyes: then Sylvia's fell.
+
+"I don't want to quarrel," she said. "I don't believe we shall, I
+don't see why we need. If we do, I'm prepared to make it up."
+
+"I wonder if you will be when the time comes," he answered.
+
+We were, with a single, noteworthy exception--a subdued party that
+night at dinner. Philip and Gladys had much to occupy their minds and
+little their tongues: Sylvia and the Seraph were silent and
+reflective: I, too, in my unobtrusive middle-aged fashion, had passed
+an eventful night and morning. The exception was Robin, who furnished
+conversational relief in the form of Stone Age pleasantries at the
+expense of his brother in particular, engaged couples in general, and
+the whole immemorial institution of wedlock. I have forgotten some of
+his more striking parallels, but I recollect that each fresh dish
+called forth a new simile.
+
+"Pity oysters aren't in season, Toby," he remarked. "Marriage is like
+your first oyster, horrid to look at, clammy to touch, and only to be
+swallowed at a gulp." "Clear soup for me, please. When I'm offered
+thick, I always wonder what the cook's trying to hide. Thick soup is
+like marriage." "Why does dressed crab always remind me of marriage? I
+suppose because it's irresistible, indigestible, and if carelessly
+mixed, full of little pieces of shell." "Capercailzie is symbolical of
+married life: too much for one, not enough for two." "Matrimony is
+like a cigarette before port: it destroys the palate for the best
+things in life."
+
+No one paid any attention to Robin as he rambled on to his own
+infinite contentment: he would probably still be rambling but for the
+arrival of an express letter directed to me in Arthur Roden's writing.
+We were digesting dinner over a cigar in the hall, and after reading
+the letter I took Sylvia and the Seraph aside, and communicated its
+contents. By some chance it was included in a miscellaneous bundle of
+papers I packed up before leaving England, and I have it before me on
+my table as I write.
+
+"Private and Confidential," it began--
+
+    "MY DEAR TOBY,"
+
+    "If this arrives in time, I shall be glad if you will send me a
+    wire to say all is well with Sylvia and the others. We are a
+    good deal alarmed by the latest move of the Militants. You will
+    have seen that Rawnsley got up in the House the other day and
+    moved to appropriate all Private Members' time till the end of
+    the Session, in this way frustrating all idea of the Suffrage
+    coming up in the form of a Private Member's Bill.
+
+    "The Militants have made their counterstroke without loss of
+    time. Yesterday morning Jefferson's only child--a boy of
+    seven--disappeared. We left J. out when we were running over
+    likely victims at Brandon: he was away in the _Enchantress_
+    inspecting Rosyth at the time, and I suppose that was how we
+    forgot him. We certainly ought not to have done so, as he has
+    been one of the most outspoken of the anti-militants.
+
+    "The child went yesterday with his nurse to Hyde Park. The
+    woman--like all her damnable kind--paid no attention to her
+    duty, and allowed some young guardsman to sit and talk to her.
+    In five minutes' time--she says it was only five minutes--the
+    child had disappeared. No trace of him has been found.
+    Jefferson, of course, is in a great state of worry, but agrees
+    with Rawnsley that no word of the story must be allowed to reach
+    the Press, and no effort spared to convince the electorate of
+    the utter impossibility of considering the claims at present
+    put forward by the Militants. I am arranging a series of
+    meetings in the Midlands and Home Counties as soon as the House
+    rises.
+
+    "And that reminds me. Rawnsley received a second letter
+    immediately after the abduction of J.'s boy, telling him his
+    action in respect of Private Members' time had been noted, and
+    that he would be given till the end of the month [June] to
+    foreshadow an autumn session. There may be an autumn
+    session--that depends on the Committee Stage of the Poor Law
+    Bill--but the Suffrage will not come up during its course, and
+    Rawnsley is purposely withholding his announcement till the
+    month has turned.
+
+    "For the next ten days, therefore, we may hope to be spared any
+    fresh attack. After that they will begin again, and as my
+    Midland campaign is being announced in the course of this week,
+    it is more than probable that the blow may be aimed at me.
+
+    "Please shew this letter to Sylvia and the boys, and explain as
+    much of the Rawnsley affair as may be necessary to make it clear
+    to her. At present she has been told that Mavis is ill in London
+    and may have to undergo an operation. Tell her to use the utmost
+    care not to stir in public without some competent person to
+    escort her. Scotland Yard is increasing its bodyguards, and
+    everything must be done to assist them.
+
+    "You will, of course, see the necessity of keeping this letter
+    private.
+
+                                      "Ever yours,
+                                                  "ARTHUR RODEN."
+
+As I gave the letter to Sylvia and the Seraph to read, I will admit
+that my first feeling was one of unsubstantial relief that Joyce had
+been in Oxford when the abduction took place in London. I did not in
+any way condone the offence, I should not have condoned it even had I
+known that she was mainly responsible for the abduction. Independently
+of all moral considerations, I found myself being glad that she was
+out of town at the time of the outrage. The consolation was flimsy. I
+concede that. But it is interesting to me to look back now and review
+my mental standpoint at that moment. I had already got beyond the
+point of administering moral praise and blame: my descent to active
+participation in crime followed with incredible abruptness.
+
+I felt the "Private and Confidential" was not binding against the
+Seraph, as he had been present when Rawnsley described the
+disappearance of Mavis. While he expounded her father's letter to
+Sylvia, I gave its main points to Philip and Robin. The comments of
+the family were characteristic of its various members. Philip shook a
+statesmanlike head and opined that this was getting very serious, you
+know. Robin inquired plaintively who'd want to abduct a little thing
+like him.
+
+"I don't want any 'competent escort,'" Sylvia exclaimed with her
+determined small chin in the air.
+
+"For less than twenty-four hours," I begged. "I'm responsible for your
+safety till then. After that you can fight the matter out with your
+father."
+
+"But I can look after myself even for the next twenty-four hours."
+
+I assumed my severest manner.
+
+"Have you ever seen me angry?" I said.
+
+"Do you think you could frighten me?" she asked with a demure smile.
+
+"I'm quite sure I couldn't," I answered helplessly. "Seraph, can you
+do anything with her?"
+
+"Nobody can do anything with her...."
+
+"Seraph!"
+
+"...against her will."
+
+"That's better."
+
+I struck at a propitious moment.
+
+"When we leave here," I said to the Seraph, "you're to take her hand
+and not let go till you're back in the hotel again. I give her into
+your charge. Treat her...."
+
+I hesitated, and Sylvia interrogated me with a King's Ransom smile.
+
+"Treat her as she deserves," I said. "If she were my wife, ward or
+daughter, I should slap her and send her to bed. So would you, so
+would any man worthy of the name."
+
+"Would you, Seraph?"
+
+He was helping her into her cloak and did not answer the question.
+Suddenly she turned round and looked into his eyes.
+
+"Would you, Seraph?" I heard her repeat.
+
+"I shall treat you--as you deserve to be treated," he answered slowly.
+
+"That's not an answer," she objected.
+
+"What's the good of asking him?" I said as the rest of our party
+joined us.
+
+In the absence of Joyce I spent large portions of a dull and
+interminably long night smoking excessive cigarettes and leaning
+against a wall to watch the dancers. Towards three o'clock I
+discovered an early edition of an evening paper and read it from cover
+to cover. Canadian Pacifics were rising or falling, and some
+convulsion was taking place in Rio Tintos.
+
+The only other news of interest I found in the Cause List. I remember
+the case of Wylton _v._ Wylton and Sleabury was down for trial one day
+towards the end of that week.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CAUSE CELEBRE
+
+    "Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological?"
+
+                  GEORGE GISSING: "Born in Exile."
+
+
+I always look back with regret to our return to London after
+Commemoration. Our parting at the door of the Rodens' house in Cadogan
+Square was more than the dispersal of a pleasant, youthful,
+light-hearted gathering; it marked out a definite end to my first
+careless, happy weeks in England, and foreshadowed a period of
+suspense and heart-burning that separated old friends and strained old
+alliances. As we shook hands and waved adieux, we were slipping
+unconsciously into a future where none of us were to meet again on our
+former frank, trustful footing.
+
+I doubt if any of us recognised this at the time--not even the Seraph,
+for a man is notoriously a bad judge in his own cause. Looking back
+over the last six months, I appreciate that the seeds of trouble had
+already been sown, and that I ought to have been prepared for much
+that followed.
+
+To begin with, the astonishing acrimony of speech and writing that
+characterised both parties in the Suffrage controversy should have
+warned me of the futility of trying to retain the friendship of Joyce
+Davenant on the one hand and the Rodens on the other. Bitter were
+their tongues and angry their hearts in the old, forgotten era of
+demonstrations and hecklings; the bitterness increased with the
+progress of the arson campaign, and its prompt, ruthless reprisals;
+but I remember no political sensation equalling the suppressed,
+vindictive anger of the days when the abduction policy was launched,
+and no clue could be found to incriminate its perpetrators. I suffered
+the fate of most neutral powers, and succeeded in arousing the
+suspicions of both belligerents.
+
+Again, the Wylton divorce proved--if proof were ever needed--that when
+English Society has ostracised a woman, her sympathisers gain nothing
+for themselves by championing her cause. They had better secure
+themselves greetings in the market-place by leading the chorus of
+moral condemnation. Elsie Wylton would scarcely have noticed the two
+added voices, and the Seraph and I might have spared ourselves much
+unnecessary discomfort. He was probably too young to appreciate that
+Quixotism does not pay in England, while I--well, there is no fool
+like a middle-aged fool.
+
+Lastly, I ought to have seen the shadow cast by Sylvia's tropical
+intimacy with the Seraph at Oxford. She was unquestionably
+_intriguee_, and I should have seen it and been on my guard. Resist as
+she might, there was something arresting in his other-world,
+somnambulant attitude towards life; for him, at least, his dreams were
+too real to be lightly dismissed. And his sensitive feminine sympathy
+was something new to her, something strangely stimulating to a girl
+who but half understood her own moods and ambitions. I have no doubt
+that in their solitary passage back to Oxford she had unbent and
+revealed more to him than to any other man, had unbent as far as any
+woman of reserve can ever unbend to a man. Equally, I have no doubt
+that in cold retrospect her passionate, uncontrolled pride exaggerated
+the significance of her conduct, and magnified the moment of
+unaffected friendliness into an humiliating self-betrayal.
+
+The Seraph--it is clear--had not responded. I know now--indeed, I knew
+at the time--that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his
+receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence
+had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a
+man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism.
+Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy
+she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate
+his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. It never occurred
+to him that Sylvia could forget his relative poverty, obscurity, and
+their thousand points of conflict; it never dawned on her that he
+could be held back by honourable scruples from accepting what she had
+shown herself willing to offer. The Seraph came back from Oxford
+absorbed and pre-occupied with haunting memories of Sylvia; with his
+curious frankness he told her in so many words that she possessed his
+mind to the exclusion of every other thought. There he had stopped
+short--for no reason she could see, and it was not possible for her to
+go further to meet him. Next to the Capitol stands the Tarpeian Rock.
+I ought to have remembered that with Sylvia it was now crown or
+gibbet, and that there was no room for platonic admirers.
+
+With his genius for the unexpected the Seraph disappeared from our ken
+for an entire week after our return to London. Gladys and I were
+always running over to the Rodens' or receiving visits from Sylvia
+and Philip; it appeared that he had forsaken Cadogan Square as
+completely as Pont Street, and the unenthusiastic tone in which the
+information was volunteered did not tempt me to prosecute further
+inquiries. On about the fifth day I did pluck up courage to ask Lady
+Roden if he had yet come to the surface, but so far from receiving an
+intelligible answer I found myself undergoing rigorous examination
+into his antecedents. "Who _is_ this Mr. Aintree?" I remember her
+asking in her lifeless, faded voice. "Has he any relations? There used
+to be a Sir John Aintree who was joint-master of the Meynell."
+
+After a series of unsuccessful inquiries over the telephone, I set out
+to make personal investigation. Sylvia had carried Gladys off to
+Ranelagh, and as Robin offered his services as escort to the girls, I
+felt no scruples in resigning my ward to her charge. For Sylvia, I am
+glad to say, my responsibility had ceased, and I was at liberty to
+proceed to Adelphi Terrace, and ascertain why at any hour of the day
+or night I was met with the news that Mr. Aintree was in town, but
+away from his flat, and had left no word when he would be back. I
+called in at the club before trying his flat. The Seraph was not
+there, but I found the polyglot Culling explaining for Gartside's
+benefit certain of the more obvious drolleries of the current "Vie
+Parisienne."
+
+"Where did ye pick up yer French accent, Bob?" I heard him inquire
+with feigned admiration. "In Soho? I wonder who dropped it there?"
+Then he caught sight of me, and his face assumed an awful solemnity.
+"'Corruptio optimi pessima!' I wonder ye've the courage to show
+yerself among respectable men like me and Gartside."
+
+I inquired if either of them knew of the Seraph's whereabouts, but the
+question appeared to add fuel to Culling's indignation.
+
+"Where is the Seraph?" he exclaimed. "Well ye may ask! His wings are
+clipped, there's a dint in his halo, and his harp has its strings
+broken. The Heavenly Choir----" He paused abruptly, seized a sheet of
+foolscap and resumed his normal tone. "This'll be rather good--the
+Heavenly Choir and our Seraph flung out like a common drunk same as
+Gartside here.
+
+    'To bottomless perdition, there to dwell--
+    Why can't the club afford a decent pen?
+    You're our committeeman, Bob, you're to blame.
+    I always use blank verse for my complaints.--
+    To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
+    In adamantine chains and penal fire.'"
+
+            JOHN MILTON: "Paradise Lost, Liber One."
+
+I watched the Heavenly Choir being sketched. In uniform and figure the
+Archangel Gabriel presented a striking resemblance to any Keeper of
+the Peace at any Music Hall. An official braided coat bulged at the
+shoulders with the pressure of two cramped wings, his peaked cap had
+been knocked over one eye, and his halo--in Culling's words--was "all
+anyhow." As the artist insisted on a companion picture to show the
+Seraph's reception in Bottomless Perdition, I turned to Gartside for
+enlightenment.
+
+"It's been going on long enough to be getting serious," I was told. "A
+solid week now."
+
+"_What's_ been going on?" I exclaimed in despair. "Where are we? Above
+all, where's the Seraph?"
+
+"Isn't it telling you we are?" protested Culling. "It started on the
+day you returned from your godless wanderings and prowled through
+London like a lion seeking whom you might devour. 'Portrait of a
+Gentleman--well known in Society--seeking whom he may devour,'" he
+murmured to himself, stretching forth a hand for fresh foolscap. "And
+it's been going on ever since. And nobody's had the courage to speak
+to him about it. There you have the thing in a nutshell."
+
+I turned despairingly to Gartside, and in time was successful in
+extracting and piecing together an explanation of his dark references
+to the Seraph. "Once upon a time," he began.
+
+"When pigs were swine," Culling interrupted, "and monkeys chewed
+tobacco."
+
+"Shut up, Paddy! Once upon a time a girl named Elsie Davenant married
+a man called Arnold Wylton. Perhaps she knows why she did it, but I'm
+hanged if anybody else did. She was a nice enough girl by all
+accounts, and Wylton--well, I expect you've heard some queer stories
+about him, they're all true. After they'd been married--how long was
+it, Paddy?"
+
+"Oh, a few years--by the calendar," said Culling, eagerly taking up
+the parable. "It's long enough she must have found 'em! Wylton used to
+work in little spells of domesticity in the intervals of being
+horse-whipped out of other people's houses, and disappearing abroad
+while sundry little storms blew over. Morgan and Travers took in a new
+partner and started a special 'Wylton Department' for settling his
+actions out of court...."
+
+"This is all fairly ancient history," I interposed.
+
+"It's the extenuating circumstance," said Gartside.
+
+Culling warmed oratorically to his work.
+
+"In the fulness of time," he went on in the manner of the Ancient
+Mariner, "Mrs. Wylton woke up and said, 'This is a one-sided
+business.' Toby, ye're a bachelor. Let me tell you that married life
+is a _mauvais quart d'heure_ made up of exquisite week-ends. While
+Wylton dallied unobtrusively in Buda Pesth, giving himself out to be
+the Hungarian correspondent of the _Baptist Family Herald_, Mrs.
+Wylton spent her exquisite week-end at Deauville."
+
+He paused delicately.
+
+"Girls will be girls," sighed Gartside.
+
+"A gay cavalry major, with that way they have in the army, made a
+flying descent on Deauville. He'd been seen about with her in London
+quite enough to cause comment. Good-natured friends asked Wylton why
+he was vegetating in Pesth when he might be in Deauville; he came, he
+saw, he stayed in the self same hotel as his wife...."
+
+"Which curiously enough had been already chosen by the gay cavalry
+major."
+
+Culling shook his head over the innate depravity of human nature.
+
+"You see the finish?" he inquired rhetorically. "They say the senior
+partner in Morgan and Travers had a seizure when Wylton had finished
+the last batch of cases in his own department, and strolled into the
+private office to instruct proceedings for a petition."
+
+"Six days ago, decree nisi was granted," said Gartside.
+
+"Scene in Court: President expressing sympathy with Petitioner,"
+murmured Culling, with quick pencil already at work on the
+blotting-pad.
+
+I lit a cigar to clear my head.
+
+"Where does the Seraph come in?" I persisted like a man with an _idee
+fixe_.
+
+"In the sequel," said Gartside. "There is a right way of doing
+everything, also a wrong. When one is divorced, one hides one's
+diminished head...."
+
+"I always do," said Culling.
+
+"One grows a beard and goes to live in Kensington. Mrs. Wylton is
+making the mistake of trying to brazen things out. 'You may cut me,'
+she says, 'but ye canna brek me manly sperrit.' Consequently in every
+place where she can be certain of attracting a crowd, Mrs. Wylton is
+to be found in the front row of the stalls, very pretty, very quiet
+and so unobtrusively dressed that you're almost tempted to damn her as
+respectable."
+
+He lit a cigarette and I took occasion to remind him that we had not
+yet come in sight of the Seraph.
+
+Culling took up the parable.
+
+"Is she alone?" he asked in a husky whisper. "Sir, she is not! Who
+took her to dinner last night at Dieudonne's, the night before at the
+Savoy, the night before that at the Carlton? Who has been seen with
+her at the Duke of York's, the Haymarket, the St. James'?"
+
+"Who rides with her every summer morning in the Park?" cut in
+Gartside. "It is our Seraph. Our foolish Seraph, and we lay at your
+door the blame for his demoralisation. Seriously, Toby, somebody ought
+to speak the word in season. He's getting talked about, and that sort
+of flying in the face of public opinion doesn't do one damn's worth of
+good. The woman's got to have her gruel and take her time over it.
+She'll only put people's backs up by going on as she's doing at
+present. Mind you, I'm sorry for her," he went on more gently. "In her
+place I'd have done precisely the same thing, and I'd have done it
+years ago. But I should have had the sense to recognise I'd got to
+face the consequences."
+
+I wondered for a short two seconds if it would be of the slightest
+avail to proclaim my belief in Elsie Wylton's innocence. A glance at
+Culling and Gartside convinced me of the futility.
+
+"Where's the Seraph now?" I asked.
+
+"With her. Any money you like. She lives with her sister in Chester
+Square; you'll find him there."
+
+I sent a boy off to telephone to Adelphi Terrace. Until his return
+with the announcement that the Seraph was still away from home,
+Gartside suggested the lines on which I was to admonish the young
+offender.
+
+"The gay cavalry major's prudently shipped himself back to India," he
+said, "and he was a pretty shadowy figure to most people as it was.
+What the Seraph has to understand is that he'll get all the discredit
+of being an 'and other' if he ties himself to her strings in this way.
+I only give you what everybody's saying."
+
+I promised to ponder his advice, and after being reminded that Gladys
+and I were due at his musical party the following week, and reminding
+him that he was expected to lunch on my house-boat at Henley, we went
+our several ways.
+
+Wandering circuitously round the smoking-rooms and library on my way
+to the hall, I had ample corroboration of what--in Gartside's
+words--everybody was saying. The Wylton divorce was the one topic of
+conversation. For the most part, I found Gartside's own tolerance to
+the woman representative of the general feeling in the club: his
+strictures on the folly of the Seraph's conduct had a good many
+echoes, though two men had the detachment to praise his disinterested
+behaviour. Of the rest, those who did not condemn opined that he was
+too young to know any better.
+
+The one discordant note was struck when I met Nigel Rawnsley in the
+hall. Elsie Wylton was shot hellwards in one sentence and the Seraph
+in another, but the burden of his discourse was reserved for the
+sacramental nature of wedlock and the damnable heresy of divorce. I
+was subjected to a lucid exposition of the Anglican doctrine of
+marriage, initiated into the mysteries of the first three (or three
+hundred) General Councils of the Church, presented with thumbnail
+biographies of Arius and S. Athanasius, and impressed with the
+necessity of unfrocking all priests who celebrated the marriage of
+divorced persons. It was all very stimulating, and I found that half
+my most prosaic friends were living in something that Rawnsley
+damningly described as "a state of sin."
+
+It was tea-time before I arrived at Chester Square. I suppose I had
+never taken Gartside very seriously: the moment I saw Elsie and the
+Seraph, my lot was unconditionally thrown in with the publicans and
+sinners. She greeted me with the smile of a woman who has no care in
+the world: then as she turned to ring the bell for tea, I caught the
+expression of one who is passing through Purgatory on her way to Hell.
+The Seraph's eyes were telegraphing a whole code-book. I walked to the
+window so that she could not see my face, nor I hers.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my dropping in," I said as carelessly as
+I could. "It was tea-time for one thing, and for another I wanted to
+tell you that you've done about the pluckiest thing a woman can do.
+Good luck to you! If there's anything I can do...."
+
+Then we shook hands again, and I found her death-like placidity a good
+deal harder to bear than if she had broken down or gone into
+hysterics. I do not believe the Davenant women know how to cry:
+Nature left the lachrymal sac out of their composition. Yet on
+reflection I can see now that she was suffering less than in the days
+six weeks before when the anticipation of the divorce lowered
+menacingly over her head and haunted every waking moment. It is
+curious to see how suspense cards down a woman's spirit while the
+shock of a catastrophe seems actually to brace her and call forth
+every reserve of strength. From this time till the day of my departure
+from England, Elsie was indomitable.
+
+"It's hard work at present," she said with a gentle, tired smile, "but
+I'm going through with it."
+
+That was what her father used to say when I climbed with him in
+Trans-Caucasia. He would say it as we crawled and fought and bit our
+way up a slippery face of rock, sheer as the side of a house. And he
+was five and twenty years my senior.
+
+"What are you doing to-night?" I asked.
+
+"We were trying to make up our minds when you came in," said the
+Seraph.
+
+"Dinner somewhere, I suppose, and a theatre? What's on, Seraph? I'm
+all alone to-night, and I want you and Elsie to dine with me."
+
+Elsie was sitting with closed eyes, bathing her forehead with scent.
+
+"Make it something that starts late," she said wearily. "I don't feel
+I can stand many hours."
+
+After a brief study of the theatrical advertisements in the _Morning
+Post_ the Seraph went off to make arrangements over the telephone. I
+took hold of Elsie's disengaged hand and tried in a clumsy, masculine
+fashion to pump courage into her tired spirit.
+
+"You must stick it out to the end of the Season," I told her. "It's
+only a few more weeks, and then you can rest as long as you like.
+Don't let people think they can drive you into hiding. If you do that,
+you'll lose pride in yourself, and when you lose pride in yourself,
+why should any one believe in you?"
+
+"How many people believe in me now?"
+
+"Not many. That's why I admire your pluck. But there's Joyce for one."
+
+"Yes, Joyce," she assented slowly.
+
+"And the Seraph for another."
+
+"Yes, the Seraph."
+
+"And me for a third."
+
+I felt her trying to draw her hand away.
+
+"I wonder if you do, or whether it's just because I'm a bit--hard
+hit."
+
+I let go the hand as she rose to blow out the spirit lamp. Standing
+erect--blue-eyed, pale faced and golden haired--she was wonderfully
+like Joyce, I thought, with her slim, black-draped figure and slender
+white neck, but a Joyce who had drunk deep of tribulation.
+
+"It's a pity you weren't ever at a boys' school," I said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"If you had been, you'd know there are some boys who simply can't keep
+themselves and their clothes clean, and others who can't get dirty or
+untidy if they try. In time the grubby ones usually get cleaner, but
+the boy who starts with a clean instinct never deteriorates into a
+grub. The distinction holds good for both sexes. And it applies to
+conduct as much as clothes. The Davenants can't help keeping clean.
+I've known three in one generation and one in another."
+
+I said it because I meant it. I should have said it just the same if
+Elsie had had no sister Joyce.
+
+The Seraph came back with Dick Davenant, and I tried to get him to
+join us, but he was already engaged for dinner. Shortly afterwards I
+found it was time to get home and change my clothes. In the hall I
+found Joyce and pressed her into our party. It was a short, hurried
+meeting, as she was saying good-bye to two colleagues or
+fellow-conspirators when I appeared. I caught their names and looked
+at them with some interest. One was the formidable Mrs. Millington, a
+weather-beaten, stoutish woman of fifty with iron-grey hair cut short
+to the neck, and double-lensed pince-nez. The other was an anaemic girl
+of twenty--a Miss Draper--with fanatical eyes that watched Joyce's
+every movement, and a little dry cough that told me her days of
+agitation were numbered. When next we met she wiped her lips after
+coughing.... Mrs. Millington I never saw again.
+
+That night was my first effort in the vindication of Elsie Wylton. I
+believe we dined at the Berkeley and went on to Daly's. The place is
+immaterial; wherever we went we found--or so it seemed to our
+over-sensitive, suspicious nerves--a slight hush, a movement of
+turning bodies and craning necks, a whispered name. Elsie went through
+it like a Royal Duchess opening a bazaar; laughing and talking with
+the Seraph, turning to throw a word to Joyce or myself; untroubled,
+indifferent--best of all, perfectly restrained. The hard-bought
+actress-training of immemorial centuries should give woman some
+superiority over man....
+
+We certainly supped at the Carlton in a prominent position by the
+door. I fancy no one missed seeing us. The Seraph knew everybody, of
+course, and I had picked up a certain number of acquaintances in two
+months. We bowed to every familiar form, and the familiar forms bowed
+back to us. When they passed near our table we hypnotised them into
+talking, and they brought their women-folk with them....
+
+When supper was ended we moved outside for coffee and cigars, so that
+none who had entered the supper room before us should leave without
+running the gauntlet. We had our share of black looks and noses in
+air, directed I suppose against Joyce as much as against her sister;
+and many a mild husband must have submitted to a curtain lecture that
+night on the text that no man will believe political or moral evil of
+any woman with a pretty face. The older I get the truer I find that
+text; I cannot remember the day when I was without the instinct
+underlying such a belief.
+
+At a quarter-past twelve Elsie began to flag, and we started our
+preparations for returning home. As I waited for my bill--and swore a
+private oath that Gartside should translate his sympathy into acts,
+and join our moral-leper colony before the week was out--an unexpected
+party emerged from the restaurant and passed us on their way to
+collect cloaks. Gladys and Philip, Sylvia and Robin, driven home from
+Ranelagh by the impossibility of securing a table for dinner, had
+eaten sketchily at Cadogan Square, hurried to the Palace, and turned
+in to the Carlton to make up for lost food.
+
+The Seraph of course saw them first, rose up and bowed. I followed,
+and both of us were rewarded by a gracious acknowledgment from Sylvia.
+Then she caught sight of Joyce and Elsie, and her mouth straightened
+itself and lost its smile. The change was slight, but I had been
+expecting it. Another moment, and the straight lines broke to a slight
+curve. Every one bowed to every one--Robin with his irrepressible,
+instinctive good-humour, Philip more sedately, as befitted a public
+man, the eldest son of the Attorney-General, and an avowed opponent of
+the Militant Suffrage Movement. Then Sylvia passed on to get her
+cloak, I arranged with Philip to take Gladys home, we bowed again and
+parted.
+
+The whole encounter had taken less than two minutes. It was more than
+enough to make Elsie say she must decline my invitation to Henley.
+
+"A public place is one thing, and a houseboat's another," she said.
+"You wouldn't invite two people to stay with you if you knew the mere
+presence of one was distasteful to the other."
+
+"You've got to go the whole road," I said. "If the Rodens know me,
+they've got to know my friends."
+
+"We mustn't be in too much of a hurry," she answered. "I'm right,
+aren't I, Joyce? There's no scandal about Joyce, but she's given up
+visiting with the Rodens. It was beginning to get rather
+uncomfortable."
+
+The matter was compromised by the Seraph inviting Elsie to come to
+Henley in an independent party of two. They would then secure as much
+publicity as could be desired without causing any kind of
+embarrassment to a private gathering.
+
+I saw nothing of Sylvia until Gartside's Soiree Musicale three nights
+later. The Seraph dined with us, and when Philip snatched Gladys from
+under my wing almost before the car had turned into Carlton House
+Terrace, I retired with him into an inviting balcony and watched the
+female side of human nature at work.
+
+Sylvia stood twelve feet from us, looking radiant. Instinctive wisdom
+had led her to dress--as ever--in white, and to wear no jewellery but
+pearls. Her black hair seemed silkier and more luxuriant than ever;
+her dark eyes flashed with a certain proud vitality and assurance.
+Nigel Rawnsley was talking to her, talking well, and paying her the
+compliment of talking up to her level. I watched her give thrust for
+thrust, parry for parry; all exquisite sword play.... His enemies
+called Nigel a prig, even his friends complained he was overbearing; I
+liked him, as I contrive to like most men, and only wish he could meet
+more people of his own mental calibre. He had met one in Sylvia; there
+was no button to his foil when he fenced with her.
+
+"Thus far and no farther," I murmured.
+
+The Seraph looked up, but I had only been thinking aloud. I was
+wondering why she painted that sign over her door when Nigel
+approached. A career of brilliant achievement and more brilliant
+promise, her own chosen faith and ritual, ambition enough and to
+spare--Nigel entered the lists well armed, and she was the only one
+who could humanise him. I wondered what gulf of temperamental
+antipathy parted them and placed him without the pale....
+
+They talked till Culling interposed his claim for attention,
+preferring the request with triplicated brogue. From time to time
+Gartside strayed away from his other guests and shivered a lance in
+deferential tourney. As I watched his fine figure, and looked from him
+to the irrepressible Culling, and from Culling to Rawnsley's
+clear-cut, intellectual face, I asked myself for the thousandth time
+what indescribable affinity could be equally lacking in three men
+otherwise so dissimilar.
+
+With light-hearted carelessness she guarded the sword's length of
+territory that divided them. It was adroit, nimble fencing, but I
+wondered how much it amused her. Not many women can resist the
+age-long fascination of playing off one admirer against another; but I
+should have written Sylvia down among the exceptions. She did not want
+admiration.... Then I remembered Oxford and read into her conduct the
+first calculated stages in the Seraph's castigation. If this were her
+object, it failed; the Seraph was ignorant of the very nature of
+jealousy. In the light of their subsequent meeting, I doubt if this
+were even her motive.
+
+We had both received a distant bow as we entered the room, but not a
+word had been vouchsafed us. I am afraid my nature is too indolent to
+be greatly upset by this kind of neglect. The Seraph, I could see,
+grew rather unhappy when his presence was overlooked every time he
+came within speaking distance. It was not till the end of the evening
+that she unbent. I had promised to take Gladys on to a ball, and at
+eleven I came out of hiding and went in search of her. Culling had
+just been told off to find Robin, and Sylvia stood alone.
+
+"Are you going on anywhere?" she asked the Seraph when they had the
+room to themselves.
+
+"It's the Marlthrops, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"And Lady Carsten. Robin and I are going there. Are you coming?"
+
+The Seraph's hand went to his pocket and made pretence of weighing
+three or four invitations in the balance. Finally he selected the
+Carsten card and glanced at it with an air of doubt.
+
+"Will my presence be welcome?" he asked.
+
+"You must ask Lady Carsten, she's invited you."
+
+"Welcome to you?"
+
+"It depends on yourself."
+
+"What must I do?"
+
+Sylvia pursed up her mouth and looked at him with head on one side.
+
+"Be a little more particular in the company you keep."
+
+"I usually am."
+
+"With some startling lapses."
+
+"I'm not aware of any."
+
+Sylvia drew herself up to her full height.
+
+"How have you spent the last week?"
+
+"In a variety of ways."
+
+"In a variety of company?"
+
+"The same nearly all the time."
+
+She nodded.
+
+"This is my objection."
+
+"If _she_ doesn't object...." A dawning flush on Sylvia's cheek warned
+him to leave the sentence unfinished.
+
+"I'm giving you advice for your own sake because, apparently, you've
+no one else to advise you," she said with the slow, elaborate
+carelessness of one who is with difficulty keeping her temper. "You've
+spent the last week thrusting yourself under every one's notice in
+company with a woman who's just been divorced from her husband. Every
+one's seen you, every one's talking about you. If you like that sort
+of notoriety...."
+
+"Can it be avoided?"
+
+"You can drop the woman."
+
+"She's none too many friends."
+
+"She's one too many."
+
+"I cannot agree."
+
+"Then you put yourself on her level."
+
+"I should be proud to rank with her."
+
+Sylvia paused a moment to steady her voice.
+
+"I've got a temper," she remarked with exaggerated indifference, "it's
+never wise for anybody to rouse it, and many people would be annoyed
+if you talked to them as you're talking to me. I--simply don't think
+it's worth it, but can you wonder if I ask you to choose between her
+and me?"
+
+The Seraph's face and voice were grave.
+
+"The choice seems unnecessary," he said.
+
+"You must take it from me that I have no wish to be seen about with a
+man who allows his name to be coupled with a woman of that kind."
+
+"What kind, Sylvia?"
+
+"You know my meaning."
+
+"But your meaning is wrong."
+
+"I mean an ugly word for an ugly sin. A woman of the kind that breaks
+the Seventh Commandment."
+
+The Seraph began tearing his card in narrow strips.
+
+"Elsie Wylton didn't," he said quietly.
+
+"She told you so?"
+
+"I didn't need telling."
+
+Sylvia's expression implored pity on the credulity of man. The Seraph
+was still nervously fingering his card, but no signs of emotion
+ruffled her calm. The face was slightly flushed, but she bent her head
+to hide it.
+
+"Part friends, Seraph," she said at last, "if you're not coming to the
+Carstens'. Think it over, and you'll find every one will give you the
+same advice."
+
+"I dare say." He pocketed the torn card and prepared to accompany her.
+"What would you do in my place if you believed the woman innocent?"
+
+Sylvia shirked the question.
+
+"Innocent women don't get into those positions."
+
+"It is possible."
+
+"How can she prove her innocence?"
+
+"How do you prove her guilt?"
+
+"I don't attempt to go behind what the Court finds."
+
+At the door the Seraph hesitated.
+
+"To-night's only an armistice, Sylvia," he stipulated. "I must have
+time to think. I'm not committed either way."
+
+She gave him her old friendly smile.
+
+"If you like." Then the smile melted away. "My ultimatum comes in
+force to-morrow morning, though. You must make up your mind then."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HENLEY--AND AFTER
+
+      "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a
+      disappointed woman."--COLLEY CIBBER: "Love's Last Shift."
+
+
+Henley Regatta was something of a disappointment to me. I had
+furbished up the memories of twenty years before--which was one
+mistake--and was looking forward to it--which was another. In great
+measure the glory had departed from the house-boats, every one poured
+into the town by train or car, and the growth of _ad hoc_ riverside
+clubs had reduced the number of punts and canoes on the river itself.
+Being every inch as much a snob as my neighbour, I regretted to find
+Henley so deeply democratised....
+
+I think, in all modesty, my own party was a success. Our houseboat was
+the "Desdemona," a fair imitation of what the papers call "a floating
+hotel": we brought my brother's cook from Pont Street and carried our
+cellar with us from town. And there was a pleasant, assiduous
+orchestra that neither ate nor slept in its zeal to play us all the
+waltzes we had grown tired of hearing in London. A Mad Hatter's
+luncheon started at noon and went on till midnight. Any passing boat
+that liked the "Desdemona's" looks, moored alongside and boarded her:
+no one criticised the food or cigars, many dropped in again for a
+second or third meal in the course of the afternoon, and if they did
+not know Gladys or myself, they no doubt had a friend among my guests
+or waiters.
+
+Both those that slept on board and those that visited us at their
+stomachs' prompting were cheery, light-hearted, out to enjoy
+themselves. I admit my own transports were moderated by the necessity
+of having to dance attendance on Lady Roden. The air became charged
+with Rutlandshire Morningtons, and our conversation showed signs of
+degenerating into a fantastic Burke's Auction Bridge. Two earls
+counted higher than three viscounts; I called her out with one
+marquis, she took the declaration away with a duke, I got it back
+again with a Russian prince: she doubled me.... Apart from this, I
+enjoyed myself. All the right people turned up, except Gartside who
+was kept in town discussing Governorships with the India Office.
+
+There were Rodens to right of us, Rodens to left of us: in a field
+behind us, unostentatiously smoking Virginia cigarettes, loitered a
+watchful Roden bodyguard. The Regatta started on July 3rd and on the
+previous day Rawnsley had given the House its time-table. There would
+be no Autumn Session, but the House would sit till the end of the
+third week in August to conclude the Third Reading of the Poor Law
+Bill; no fresh legislation would be introduced. The New Militants had
+their answer without possibility of misconstruction, and the families
+of Cabinet Ministers moved nowhere without a lynx-eyed, heavy-booted,
+plain-clothes escort.
+
+I summoned Scotland Yard out of its damp, cheerless meadow, gave it
+bottled beer and a pack of cards, and told it to treat the "Desdemona"
+as its own and to ring for anything likely to contribute to its
+comfort. Though we had never met before and were only to meet once
+again, I felt for those men as I should feel for any one deputed to
+bear up the young Rodens lest at any time they dashed their feet
+against stones....
+
+Sylvia was laconic and decisive. She had engaged and defeated her
+father, met and routed her brothers. Any one who guarded her reckless
+person did so at their peril; she declined to argue the point. I fancy
+Lady Roden accepted a detective more or less as part of her
+too-often-withheld due; Philip was constitutional, guided by
+precedent, anxious to help peace and order in the execution of their
+arduous duties. The only active molestation came from Robin: left to
+himself he would have ignored the detectives' very existence, but at
+the fell suggestion of Culling I discovered him whiling away the
+morning by bursting into the guard-room at five-minute intervals with
+hysterical cries of "Save me! Oh, my God! save me!"
+
+The saturnine, enigmatic Michael pursued his own methods. How he had
+escaped from Winchester in the midst of the terminal examinations, I
+never discovered. His telegram said, "What about me for Henley, old
+thing? Michael." I wired back, "Come in your thousands," and he came
+in a dove-grey suit, grey socks and buckskin shoes, grey tie, silk
+handkerchief and Homburg hat. I appreciated Michael more and more at
+each meeting. Of a detached family he was the most detached member.
+Observing me staring a trifle unceremoniously at his neck-tie, he
+produced a note-book and pencil and invited my written opinion. "On
+Seeing my New Tie" was inscribed on the front page, and the
+comments--so far as I remember the figures--were:--
+
+(1) "Oh, my God!" (forty per cent.).
+
+(2) "_Have_ you seen Michael's tie?" (forty per cent.).
+
+(3) "Michael _darling_!" (Sylvia's _cri de coeur_, ten per cent.).
+
+(4) "It's a devilish good tie" (my own verdict, perhaps not altogether
+sincere). (Ten per cent.).
+
+"Come and shew yer ticket o' leave," urged Culling with derisory
+finger outstretched to indicate the forces of law and order.
+
+"No bloody peelers for this child," Michael answered in a voice
+discreetly lowered to keep the offending epithet from his sister's
+ears.
+
+I noticed an exchange of glances between Culling and himself, but was
+too busy to think much of it at the time. Eleven minutes later,
+however, the majesty of Scotland Yard had been incarcerated in its own
+stronghold. Culling sat outside their door improvising an oratorio on
+an accordion. "The Philistines are upon thee," I heard him thunder as
+I passed that way. Michael was lying prone on the deck of the
+house-boat, dangling at safe distance the key of the cabin at the end
+of a Japanese umbrella.
+
+"_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_" he asked, as an official hand shot
+impotently out of the cabin window. The question may have been
+imperfectly understood.
+
+"_Sanguineos quis custodes custodiet ipsos?_" he ventured.
+
+As there was still no answer, common humanity ordained that I should
+possess myself of the key and hold a gaol delivery. The detectives
+were near weeping with humiliation, but I comforted them in some
+measure, won a friendship that was to serve me in good stead, and was
+at length free to resume my duties as host.
+
+From time to time perfunctory racing took place, without arousing
+either interest or resentment. We all had our own ways of passing the
+time between meal and meal; one would study the teeth and smile of a
+musical-comedy star, another would watch Culling at the Three Card
+Trick, a third would count the Jews on a neighbouring house-boat....
+There was no sign of Elsie or the Seraph, but that was only to be
+expected. He was to provide her with luncheon and publicity at Phyllis
+Court, and give the "Desdemona" a wide berth. Those, at least, were
+his sailing orders if he came; but Elsie had been over-tired and
+over-excited for some weeks past, and I should not have been surprised
+to hear she had stayed in town at the last moment.
+
+It is one thing to set a course, and another to steer it--of Henley
+this is probably truer than of any other stretch of water in the
+world. When half the punts are returning from island to post after
+luncheon, and the other half paddle down stream to look at the
+house-boats, the narrow water midway between start and finish becomes
+hopelessly, chaotically congested. One or two skiffs and
+dinghies--which should never be allowed at any regatta--make confusion
+worse confounded till a timely collision breaks their sculls, or the
+nose of a racing punt turns them turtle; and with the closing of the
+booms, three boats begin to sprout where only one was before.
+
+Through a forest of dripping paddles, I watched punt, dinghy and canoe
+fighting, pressing, yielding; up-stream, down-stream, broad side on,
+they slid and trembled like a tesselated pavement in an earthquake.
+The fatalists shipped their poles and paddles, and abandoned
+themselves to the line of least resistance. Faces grew flushed, but
+tempers remained creditably even....
+
+"Mary, mother of God! it's our sad, bad, mad Seraph!"
+
+Having exhausted the possibilities of the Three Card Trick, and being
+unable to secure either a pea or two thimbles, Paddy Culling had
+wandered to my side and was watching the crowd like a normal man.
+
+I followed the direction of his eyes. The Seraph had turned fatalist
+and was being squeezed nearer and nearer the "Desdemona." A last
+vicious thrust by a boatload of pierrots jammed the box of his punt
+under our landing-stage. He waved a hand to me and began distributing
+bows among my guests.
+
+"Droppit sthraight from Hiven," cried Culling with unnecessary
+elaboration of his already strong brogue. "The tay's wet, Mrs. Wylton,
+and we waiting for some one would ask a blessing. Seraph, yer
+ambrosia's on order."
+
+They would not leave the punt, but we brought them tea; and a fair
+sprinkling of my guests testified to the success of our last few
+weeks' campaign by coming down to the raft and being civil to Elsie.
+There was, of course, no commotion or excitement of any kind; of those
+who lingered on deck or in the saloon, fully half, I dare say, were
+unconscious of what was going on below. Such was certainly the case
+with Sylvia. While Paddy and I served out strawberries to the crew of
+the punt, she had been washing her hands for tea, and as we crowned a
+work of charity with a few cigars and a box of matches, she came out
+onto the raft for assistance with the clasp of a watch-bracelet.
+
+Paddy volunteered his services, I looked on. Her eyes travelled idly
+over the crowded segment of river opposite my boat, and completed
+their circuit by resting on the punt and its occupants. Elsie bowed
+and received a slight inclination of the head in return. The Seraph
+bowed, and was accorded the most perfect cut I have ever witnessed.
+Sylvia looked straight through him to a dinghy four yards the other
+side. It was superbly, insolently done. I have always been too lazy to
+cultivate the art of cutting my friends, but should occasion ever
+arise, I shall go to Sylvia for the necessary tuition.
+
+As soon as the congestion was in some measure relieved, the Seraph
+waved good-bye to me and started paddling up stream towards Henley
+Bridge. Elsie had seen all that was to be seen in the cut,
+and--womanlike--had read into it a variety of meanings.
+
+"I hope you're not tired," the Seraph said, as they landed and walked
+down to the station.
+
+"I've had a lovely time," she answered. "Thanks most awfully for
+bringing me, and for all you've done these last few weeks. And before
+that." She hesitated, and then added with a regretful smile, "We must
+say good-bye after to-day."
+
+"You're not going away?"
+
+"Not yet; but you've got into enough trouble on my account without
+losing all your friends," she answered.
+
+"But I haven't."
+
+"You're risking one."
+
+"On your account?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He had not the brazenness to attempt a direct denial.
+
+"Why should you think so?" he hedged.
+
+"Seraph, dear child, I couldn't help seeing the way she took your bow.
+I got you that cut."
+
+"She doesn't cut Toby," he objected. "And he and I are equally
+incriminated."
+
+"There is a difference."
+
+"Is there?"
+
+"She's quite indifferent how much _he_ soils his wings."
+
+The Seraph was left to digest the unspoken antithesis. His face
+gradually lost the flush it had taken on after their encounter at the
+raft, his eyes grew calmer and his hands steadier; on the subject of
+their contention, however, he remained impenitent.
+
+"I shan't say good-bye till you honestly tell me you don't want to see
+me again."
+
+"You know I can't say that, Seraph."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+"But it isn't! The good you do me is simply not worth the harm you do
+yourself. It didn't matter so much till Sylvia came to be reckoned
+with."
+
+The Seraph shifted impatiently in his corner.
+
+"Neither Sylvia Roden nor any other woman or man in the world is going
+to dictate who I may associate with, or who I mayn't."
+
+"You must make an exception to the rule in her case."
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Every man has to make an exception to every rule in the case of one
+woman."
+
+His chin achieved an uncompromising angle.
+
+"To quote the Pharisee of blessed memory," he said, "I thank God I am
+not as other men."
+
+Elsie was well enough acquainted with his moods to know nothing was to
+be gained by further direct opposition.
+
+"I should like you to come to Chester Square," she compromised; "but
+you mustn't be seen with me in public any more."
+
+"I shall ride in the Park to-morrow as usual," he persisted.
+
+"I shan't be there, Seraph."
+
+A surprise was awaiting me when Gladys and I returned to Pont Street
+in the early hours of Sunday morning, after waiting to see the
+fireworks--by immemorial tradition--extinguished by a tropical
+downpour. Brian notified me by wireless that he was on his way home
+and halfway through the Bay. He was, in fact, already overdue at
+Tilbury, but had been held up while the piston of a high-compression
+cylinder divested itself of essential portions of its packing.
+
+"Who's going to tell him about Phil?" Gladys asked in consternation
+when I read her the message. We were getting on so comfortably without
+my brother that I think the natural affection of us both was tinged
+with resentment that he was returning by an earlier boat than he had
+threatened.
+
+"As you are the offender," I pointed out.
+
+"You were responsible for me."
+
+"Why not leave it to Phil?" I suggested, with my genius for
+compromise.
+
+"That's mean."
+
+"Well, will you tell him yourself? No! I decline to be mixed up in it.
+I shan't be here. The day your parents land, I shall shift myself bag
+and baggage to an hotel. Isn't the simplest solution to break off the
+engagement? Well, you're very hard to please, you know."
+
+I really forget how we settled the question, but the news was
+certainly not broken by me. The Seraph dropped in to dinner on the
+last night of my guardianship, and I asked him whether he thought I
+could improve on the Savoy as my next house of entertainment.
+
+"But you're coming to stay with _me_," he said.
+
+"My dear fellow, you've no experience of me as a guest. I don't know
+how long I'm staying in London."
+
+"The longer the better, if you don't mind roughing it."
+
+I knew there would be no "roughing it" in his immaculate mode of
+living, but the question was left undecided for the moment as I really
+felt it would be better for us both to run independently. Ten weeks of
+domesticity shared even with Gladys gave me a sensation of clipped
+wings after my inconsiderate, caravanserai existence, and--without
+wishing to be patronising--I had to remember that he was a man of very
+moderate means and would feel the cost of housing me more than I
+should feel it myself. The following afternoon I called round at
+Adelphi Terrace to acquaint him with my decision, but something seemed
+to have upset him; he was gazing abstractedly out of the window and I
+had not the heart to bother him with my own ephemeral arrangements. At
+the door of the flat his man apologetically asked my advice on the
+case; his master was eating, drinking, and smoking practically
+nothing, wandering about his room instead of going to bed, and gazing
+out into space instead of his usual daily writing.
+
+I thought over the symptoms on my way to the Club, and decided to
+employ a portion of the afternoon in playing providence with Sylvia.
+It is a part for which I am unfitted by inclination, instinct,
+experience, and aptitude.
+
+Some meeting of political stalwarts was in progress when I arrived at
+Cadogan Square, but I was mercifully shewn into Sylvia's own room and
+allowed to spend an interesting five minutes inspecting her books and
+pictures. They formed an illuminating commentary on her character. One
+shelf was devoted to works of religion, the rest to lives and
+histories of the world's great women. Catherine of Siena marched in
+front of the army, Florence Nightingale brought up the rear; in the
+ranks were queens like Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia, and Joan of
+Arc, the great uncrowned; writers from Madame de Sevigne to George
+Eliot, actresses from Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry, artists like Vigee le
+Brun, reformers like Mary Woolstonecraft. It was a catholic library,
+and found space for Lady Hamilton among the rest. My inspection was
+barely begun when the door opened and Sylvia came in alone.
+
+"'Tis sweet of you to come," she said. "Have you had tea? Well, d'you
+mind having it here alone with me? I'm sure you won't want to meet all
+father's constituents' wives. I hope I wasn't very long."
+
+"No doubt it seemed longer than it was," I answered. "Still, I've had
+time to look at some of your books and make a discovery about you. If
+you weren't your father's daughter, you'd be a raging militant."
+
+From the sudden fire in her eyes I thought I had angered her, but the
+threatening flame died as quickly as it had arisen.
+
+"There's something in heredity after all, then," she said with a
+smile. "Do I--look the sort of person that breaks windows and burns
+down houses?"
+
+So far as looks went the same question might have been asked of Joyce
+Davenant. That I did not ask it was due to a prudent resolve to keep
+my friendship with Rodens and Davenants in separate watertight
+compartments.
+
+"You look the sort of person that has a great deal of ability and
+ambition, and wants a great deal of power."
+
+"Without forgetting that I'm still a woman."
+
+"Some of the militants are curiously feminine."
+
+"'Curiously,' is just the right adverb."
+
+"Joan of Arc rode astride," I pointed out.
+
+"Florence Nightingale didn't break windows to impress the War Office."
+
+"As an academic question," I said, "how's your woman of personality
+going to make her influence effective in twentieth-century England?"
+
+"Have you met many women of personality?"
+
+"A fair sprinkling."
+
+"So I have; you could feel it as if they were mesmerising you, you had
+to do anything they told you. But they'd none of them votes."
+
+The arrival of tea turned our thoughts from politics, and at the end
+of my second cup I advanced delicately towards the purpose of my call.
+
+"You like plain speaking, don't you, Sylvia?" I began.
+
+"As plain as you like."
+
+"Well, you're not treating the Seraph fairly."
+
+I leant back and watched her raising her little dark eyebrows in
+amused surprise.
+
+"Has he sent you here?" she asked.
+
+"I came on my own blundering initiative," I said. "I don't know what
+the trouble's about."
+
+"But whatever it is, I'm to blame?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+Sylvia was delighted. "If a man doesn't think highly of women I do
+like to hear him say so!"
+
+"As a matter of fact I'm not concerned to apportion blame to either of
+you. You're both of you abnormal and irrational; as likely as not
+you're both of you wrong. I wanted to tell you something about the
+Seraph you may not have heard before."
+
+In a dozen sentences I told her of my first meeting with him in
+Morocco.
+
+"Thanks to you," I said, "he's pretty well got over it. Remember that
+I saw him then, and you didn't; so believe me when I tell you he was
+suffering from what the novelists call a 'broken heart.' He won't get
+over it a second time."
+
+"You're sure it was broken?" she asked dispassionately. "Um. It sounds
+to me like a dent; press the other side, the dent comes out."
+
+I produced a cigarette case, and flew a distress signal for
+permission.
+
+"I should like you to be serious about this," I said.
+
+"I? Where do I come in?"
+
+I searched vainly for matches, and eventually had to use one of my
+own.
+
+"He's in love with you," I said.
+
+Sylvia dealt with the proposition in a series of short sentences
+punctuated by grave nods.
+
+"Gratifying. If true. Seems improbable. Irrelevant, anyway. Unless I
+happen to be in love with him."
+
+"I was not born yesterday," I reminded her. "Or the day before."
+
+"You might have been."
+
+I bowed.
+
+"I mean, you're so deliciously young. Do you usually go about talking
+to girls as you've been talking to me?"
+
+I buttoned up my coat, preparatory to leaving. "Being a friend of you
+both," I said, "if a word of advice----"
+
+"But you haven't given it."
+
+Literally, I suppose that was true.
+
+"Well, if your generosity's greater than your pride, you can apologise
+to him: if your pride's greater than your generosity, waive the
+apology and sink the past. I've a fair idea what the quarrel's about,"
+I added.
+
+"I see." Sylvia brought flippancy into her tone when speaking of
+something too serious to be treated seriously: the flippancy was now
+ebbing away, and leaving her implacable and unyielding. "Is there any
+reason why I should do anything at all?" she asked.
+
+I stretched out my hand to bid her good-bye. "I've not done it well,"
+I admitted, "but the advice was not bad, and the spirit was really
+good."
+
+"Admirable," she answered ironically. "I should be glad of such a
+champion. Have you given _him_ any advice?"
+
+"What d'you suggest?"
+
+Sylvia knelt on the edge of a sofa, clasping her hands lazily behind
+her head.
+
+"I ride in the Park every morning," she began. "I ride alone because I
+prefer to be alone. My father objects, and Phil doesn't like it,
+because they don't think it's safe. I think I'm quite capable of
+taking care of myself, so I disregard their objection. Your friend
+also rides in the Park every morning, sometimes with a rather
+conspicuous woman and the last few mornings alone. I don't know
+whether it's design, I don't know whether it's chance--but he rides
+nearer me than I like."
+
+I waited for her to point the moral, mentioning incidentally that
+England was a free country and the Park was open to the public.
+
+"He may have the whole of it," she answered, "except just that little
+piece where I happen to be riding at any given moment."
+
+"I'm afraid you can't keep him out of even that."
+
+Her eyes broke into sudden blaze. "I can flog him out of it as I'd
+flog any man who followed me when I forbade him."
+
+There was nothing more to be said, but I said it as soon as I dared.
+
+"We're friends, Sylvia?" She nodded. "And I can say anything I please
+to you?"
+
+"No one can do that."
+
+"Anything in reason? Well, it's this--you're coming a most awful
+cropper one of these fine days, my imperious little queen."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I do. You're half woman, and half man, and half angel, and
+three-quarters devil."
+
+Sylvia had been counting the attributes on her fingers.
+
+"When I was at school," she interrupted, "they taught me it took only
+two halves to make a whole."
+
+"I've learnt a lot since I left school. One thing is that you're the
+equivalent of any three ordinary women. Now I really am going. Queen
+Elizabeth, your most humble servant."
+
+Her hand went again to the bell, but I was ready with a better
+suggestion.
+
+"It would be a graceful act if you offered to show me downstairs," I
+said. "It'll be horribly lonely going down two great long flights all
+by myself."
+
+She took my arm, led me down to the hall, and presented me with my hat
+and stick.
+
+"Are you walking?" she asked as we reached the door. "If not, you may
+have my private taxi. Look at him." She pointed to an olive-green car
+at the corner of the Square. "I believe I must have made a conquest,
+he's always there, and whenever I'm in a hurry I can depend on him. I
+think he must refuse to carry any one else. It's an honour."
+
+I ran through my loose change, and lit upon a half-sovereign, which I
+held conspicuously between thumb and first finger.
+
+"He'll carry me," I said.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"Will you bet?"
+
+"Oh, of course, if you offer to buy the car!"
+
+"You haven't the courage of your convictions," I said severely.
+"Good-bye, Queen Elizabeth."
+
+It was well for me she declined the wager. I walked to the corner and
+hailed the taxi; but the driver shook his head.
+
+"Engaged, sir," he said.
+
+"Your flag's up," I pointed out.
+
+"My mistake, sir."
+
+Nonchalantly pulling down the flag, he retired behind a copy of the
+_Evening News_. I was sorry, because his voice was that of an educated
+man, and I am always interested in people who have seen better days;
+they remind me of my brother before he was made a judge. I had only
+caught a glimpse of dark eyes, a sallow complexion and bushy black
+beard and moustache. England is so preponderatingly clean-shaven that
+a beard always arouses my suspicions. If the wearer be not a priest of
+the Orthodox Church, I like to think of him as a Russian nihilist.
+
+After dinner the following night I mentioned to the Seraph that I had
+run across Sylvia, and hinted that his propinquity to her in the Park
+each day was not altogether welcome.
+
+"So she told me this morning," he said.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't mind my handing on an impression for what it
+was worth," I added with vague floundering.
+
+"Oh, not at all. I shall go there just the same, though."
+
+"You'll annoy her."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "That's as may be. This is not
+the time for her to be running any unnecessary risks."
+
+"You can hardly kidnap a grown woman--on horseback--in broad
+daylight--in a public park," I protested.
+
+"The place is practically deserted at the hour she rides."
+
+The following day the Seraph rode as usual. Sylvia entered the Park at
+her accustomed time; saw him, cut him, passed him. For a while they
+cantered in the same direction, separated by a hundred and fifty
+yards; then the Seraph gradually reduced the distance between their
+horses. His quick eyes had marked a group of men moving furtively
+through a clump of trees to the side of the road. Their character and
+intentions will never be known, for Sylvia abruptly drew
+rein--throwing her horse on his haunches as she did so--then she
+turned in her own length, and awaited her gratuitous escort. The
+Seraph had to swerve to avoid a cannon. As he passed, her hand flashed
+up and cut him across the face with a switch; an instinctive pull at
+the reins gave his horse a momentary check and enabled her to deal a
+second cut back-handed across his shoulders. Then both turned and
+faced each other.
+
+Sylvia sat with white face and blazing eyes.
+
+"It was a switch to-day, and it will be a crop to-morrow," she told
+him. "It seems you have to be taught that when I say a thing I mean
+it."
+
+The Seraph bowed and rode away without answering. Physically as well
+as metaphorically he was thin-skinned, and the switch had drawn blood.
+Three weeks passed before his face lost the last trace of Sylvia's
+castigation. A purple wale first blackened and then turned yellowish
+green. When I saw him later in the day, his face was swollen, and the
+mark stretched diagonally from cheekbone to chin, crossing and cutting
+the lips on its way. He gave me the story quietly and without
+rancour.
+
+"I can't go again after this," he concluded, "but somebody ought to.
+If you've got any influence with her, use it, and use it quickly. She
+doesn't know--you none of you know--the danger she's in at present!"
+
+He jumped up to pace the room in uncontrollable nervous excitement.
+
+"What's going to happen, Seraph?" I asked, in a voice that was
+intended to be sympathetic, sceptical, and pacifying at one and the
+same moment.
+
+"I don't know--but she's in danger--I know that--I know that--I'm
+certain of that--I know that."
+
+His overstrung nerves betrayed themselves in a dozen different ways.
+It occurred to me that the less time he spent alone in his own society
+the better.
+
+"I'll see if I can do anything," I said in off-hand fashion.
+"Meantime, I dropped in to know if your invitation held good for a bed
+under your hospitable roof-tree."
+
+"Delighted to have you," he answered; and then less conventionally,
+"it's very kindly intended."
+
+"Kindness all on _your_ side," I murmured, pretending not to see that
+he had plumbed the reason for my coming.
+
+The old, absent thought-reading look returned for an instant to his
+eyes.
+
+"All my razors are on my dressing-table," he said. "Don't hide them. I
+shan't commit suicide, but I shall want to shave. I never keep
+firearms."
+
+I had intended to supervise my removal from Pont Street in person; on
+reflection I thought it would be wiser to send instructions over the
+telephone, and give the Seraph the benefit of my company for what it
+was worth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE THIRD ROUND
+
+    "When we two parted
+      In silence and tears,
+    Half broken-hearted
+      To sever for years,
+    Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
+      Colder thy kiss;
+    Truly that hour foretold
+      Sorrow to this."
+
+            LORD BYRON: _When We Two Parted_.
+
+
+Though the flat in Adelphi Terrace became my home from this time until
+the end of my residence in England, I saw little of the Seraph for the
+week following my change of quarters. I think he liked my company at
+meals, and whenever we were together I certainly worked hard to
+distract his mind from the unhappy quarrel with Sylvia. But I will not
+pretend that I sat by him day and night devising consolatory speeches;
+I am no good at that kind of thing, he would have seen through me, and
+we should speedily have got on one another's nerves. For the first day
+or two, then, I purposely measured out my companionship in small
+doses; later on, when he had got used to my presence, I became more
+assiduous. Those were the days when I could see reflected in his eyes
+the fast approaching nightmare of his dreams.
+
+My one positive achievement lay in persuading him to resume the
+curious journal he had started at Brandon Court and continued in
+Oxford. I called--and still call--it the third volume of Rupert
+Chevasse's life, or, more accurately, "The Child of Misery"; for
+though it will never be published, its literary parentage is the same,
+and its elder brothers are Volumes One and Two. I count it one of the
+great tragedies of the book-world that--at least in his life-time--the
+third volume will never be given to the public; in my opinion--for
+what that is worth--it is the finest work Aintree has ever
+accomplished. At the same time I fully endorse his resolution to
+withhold it; it has been a matter of lasting surprise that even I was
+allowed to read the manuscript.
+
+He worked a great many hours each day as soon as I had helped the
+flywheel over dead-point. Half-way through the morning I would wander
+into the library and find a neat manuscript chapter awaiting me; when
+I had finished reading, he would throw me over sheet after sheet as
+each was completed. It was an interesting experience to sit, as it
+were, by an observation hive and watch his vivid, hyper-sensitive mind
+at work. I had been present at half the scenes and meetings he was
+describing. I had heard large fragments of the dialogue and allowed my
+imagination to browse on the significance of each successive
+"soul-brush." Yet--I seemed to have heard and seen less than nothing!
+His insight enabled him to depict a psychological development where I
+had seen but a material friendship. It was one-sided, of course, and
+gave me only the impression that a vital, commanding spirit like
+Sylvia's would leave on his delicate, receptive imagination. When at a
+later date Sylvia took me into her confidence and showed me reverse
+and obverse side by side, I felt like one who has assumed a fourth
+dimension and looked down from a higher plane into the very hearts of
+two fellow-creatures. It was a curious experience to see those souls
+stripped bare--I am not sure that I wish to repeat it--there comes a
+point where a painful "study of mankind is man."
+
+While the Seraph worked, I had plentiful excuse for playing truant.
+Decency ordained that after my twenty years' respite I should spend a
+certain amount of time with my brother and his wife, and since
+Sylvia's edict of banishment, I was the sole channel of communication
+between Cadogan Square and Adelphi Terrace. It was noticeable--though
+I say it in no carping spirit--that Philip sought my company a shade
+less assiduously when I ceased to watch over the welfare of Gladys.
+Finally, I devoted a portion of each day to Chester Square. Elsie
+adhered to her decision that the Seraph must be no more seen in
+company with her in public, and even a private call at the house was
+impossible so long as his face carried the marks of Sylvia's
+resentment.
+
+The burden of the publicity-campaign fell on my shoulders, though it
+came to be relieved--to his honour be it said!--by Gartside. I gave
+him my views of Elsie's behaviour, brought the two of them together at
+dinner, and left his big, kind heart to do the rest. He responded as I
+knew he would, and his adhesion to our party was matter of grave
+offence to Elsie's detractors, for his name carried more weight with
+the little-minded than the rest of us put together. Culling enrolled
+himself for a while, but dropped away as he dropped out of most
+sustained efforts. Laziness brought about his defection more than want
+of faith or the pressure of orthodox friends; indeed I am not sure
+that his strongest motive in joining us was not a passing desire to
+confound Nigel Rawnsley. In this as in other things, we never treated
+him seriously; but with Gartside it was different. At a time when
+Carnforth's resignation of the Bombay Governorship was in the hands of
+the India Office--and it was an open secret that Gartside's name stood
+high on the list of possible successors--it required some courage to
+incur the kind of notoriety that without doubt we both of us did
+incur. He ought to have been lunching with Anglo-Indians and patting
+the cheeks of Cabinet Ministers' children, instead of trying to infect
+Society with his belief in a divorced woman's innocence.
+
+In the course of the campaign I began to see a little, but only a
+little, more of Joyce than I had been privileged to do during the time
+when I was supposed to be watching over the destiny of Gladys. I am
+not sure that I altogether enjoyed my new liberty of access to her
+house; it worried me to see how overworked and tired she was beginning
+to look, though I had the doubtful satisfaction of knowing that
+nothing I could say or do would check her. She risked her health as
+recklessly as she had been risking her liberty since the inauguration
+of the New Militancy. I had to treat her politics like a cold in the
+head and allow them to run their nine days' course. Though I saw she
+was still cumbered with my scarab ring, we never referred to our
+meeting in Oxford. I am vain enough to think that she did not regard
+me even at this time with complete disfavour, but I will atone for my
+vanity by saying I dared do next to nothing to forward my suit. My
+foothold was altogether too precarious; an attempt to climb higher
+would only have involved me in a headlong fall.
+
+And yet, before I had been a week at Adelphi Terrace, I made the
+attempt. Elsie telephoned one evening that she was going out, but
+would have to leave Joyce who was too tired to face a restaurant and
+theatre. She would be dining alone; if I had nothing better to do,
+would I look in for a few minutes and see if I could cheer her up? I
+had promised to dine with Nigel, but it was a small party and I
+managed to slip away before ten. Joyce was half asleep when I was
+shown into the drawing-room; she did not hear me announced, and I was
+standing within two feet of her before she noticed my presence.
+
+"I've run you to earth at last," I said.
+
+Then I observed a thing that made me absurdly pleased. Joyce was
+looking very white and tired, with dark rings round the eyes, and
+under either cheekbone a little hollow that ought not to have been
+there. When she opened her eyes and saw me, I could swear to a tiny
+flush of pleasure; the blue eyes brightened, and she smiled as
+children smile in their sleep.
+
+"Very nearly inside it," she answered, with a woebegone shake of the
+head. "Oh, Toby, but I'm so tired! Don't make me get up."
+
+I had no thoughts of doing so. Indeed, my mind was solely concerned
+with the reflection that she had called me Toby; it was the first
+time.
+
+"What have you been doing to get yourself into this state?" I asked
+severely.
+
+"Working."
+
+"There you are!" I said. "Something always happens when people take to
+work. I shall now read you a short lecture on female stamina."
+
+"You're sure you wouldn't prefer to smoke?"
+
+"I can do both."
+
+"Oh, that's not fair."
+
+Joyce Davenant and Sylvia Roden have only two characteristics in
+common; one is that I am very fond of both, the other, that I can do
+nothing with either. I capitulated, and selected a cigarette.
+
+"A live dog's worth a good many dead lions," I reminded her as a final
+shot.
+
+"Are _you_ trying to convince me of the error of my ways?"
+
+"I am not your Suffragan Bishop," I answered in the tone Robert
+Spencer adopted in telling a surprised House of Commons that he was
+not an agricultural labourer.
+
+"I'm so glad. I couldn't bear an argument to-night."
+
+The effort she had made on my arrival had spent itself, and I was not
+at all certain whether I ought to stay.
+
+"Look here," I said, "if you're too tired to see me, I'll go."
+
+"Please, don't!" she laid a restraining hand on my sleeve. "I'm all
+right if you don't argue or use long words; but I've had such a
+headache the last few days that I haven't been able to sleep, and now
+I don't seem able to fix my attention properly, or remember things."
+
+I had met these symptoms before; the first time in India with men who
+were being kept too long at work in the hot weather.
+
+"In other words, you want a long rest."
+
+She nodded without speaking.
+
+"Why don't you take it?"
+
+"I simply can't. I've put my hand to the plough, and you know what we
+are. Obstinate, hard-mouthed brutes, the whole family of us. I've got
+other people to consider, I mustn't fail them."
+
+"And the benighted, insignificant people who don't happen to be your
+followers? Some of them may cherish a flickering interest in your
+existence."
+
+"Oh! they don't count."
+
+"Thank you, Joyce."
+
+She held out a pacifying hand. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be
+ungracious. But those women---- You know, you get rather attached to
+people when you've spoken and fought and been imprisoned side by side
+with them. I always feel rather mean; any one of them 'ud die for me,
+and I'm not at all sure I'd do the same for them. Everything's been
+different since Elsie got her freedom; it's easier to fight for a
+person than a principle."
+
+"Are you weakening?"
+
+"Heavens! No! I'm just showing you I should be honour-bound to stand
+by my fellows even if I lost all faith in the cause. I say, don't go
+on smoking cigarettes; ring the bell and make Dick give you a cigar.
+He's in the house somewhere. I heard him come in a few minutes ago."
+
+"I came to see you," I pointed out.
+
+"But I'm dreadfully poor company to-night."
+
+"I take you as I find you, in sickness and health, weal and woe----"
+
+"Mr. Merivale!"
+
+Her voice was very stern.
+
+"You remember our wager?" I said, with a shrug of the shoulders.
+
+"It was a joke," she retorted. "And not in very good taste. Oh, I was
+as much to blame as you were."
+
+"But I was quite serious."
+
+"Did you seriously think I should give up the Cause?"
+
+"I offered very long odds. A twopenny ring--but you remember what they
+were."
+
+"Are you any nearer winning?"
+
+"I should like to think so."
+
+"Because we haven't answered Mr. Rawnsley's time-arrangements in the
+House?"
+
+"Oh, I've no doubt the reply has been posted."
+
+She nodded significantly. "And they haven't found their hostages yet."
+
+"But they've paid no ransom."
+
+"It's an indurance test."
+
+I got up to find myself a match. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of
+her left hand, wearing the scarab-ring; it disappeared for a moment,
+and to my surprise reappeared without the ring.
+
+"Suppose we call the bet off?" she suggested. "It was all rather
+silly."
+
+"Odds offered and taken and horses running. It's too late now. How did
+you find out the secret?"
+
+"I didn't. My finger shrank and the ring came off three days ago when
+I was washing my hands."
+
+"You didn't pull?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Show me."
+
+"It was like this," she began, slipping the ring back on to the third
+finger. "Rather loose----"
+
+I tightened the couplings before she saw what I was about.
+
+"That's soon remedied. Come to me when the finger's nice and plump
+again, and I'll let it out."
+
+A shadow of annoyance crossed her face.
+
+"Now I shall have it cut," she said.
+
+"You could have had that done three weeks ago. You could have thrown
+the thing away three days ago. You didn't do either."
+
+A smile dimpled its way into her cheeks. "How old are you? Over
+forty?"
+
+"What a way of looking at things!" I exclaimed. "Marlborough was fifty
+before he started his campaigns, Wren nearer fifty than forty before
+ever he put pencil to paper. You don't know the possibilities of
+virgin soil."
+
+"I was wondering how long it was since you left school."
+
+I got up and dusted the flecks of cigarette ash from my shirt.
+
+"I'm going now," I said. "It's time you were in bed. Just one word
+before I go. You want to win this wager, don't you? So do I. Well, if
+you don't give yourself a holiday, you're going to break down and lose
+it."
+
+Smiling mischievously, she got up and took my proffered hand.
+
+"It'll be an ill-wind, then----"
+
+"Damn the wager!" I burst out. "I don't want to win it at that price.
+Joyce, if I say I'm beaten, will you be a good girl and go to bed and
+stay there? Win or lose, I can't bear to see you looking as ill as you
+are now."
+
+She shook her head a little sadly. "I can't take a holiday now."
+
+"You'll lose the wager."
+
+She looked up swiftly into my face, and lowered her eyes.
+
+"I don't know that I mind that much."
+
+"Joyce!"
+
+"But I can't take a holiday," she repeated.
+
+I opened the door, and on the threshold waved my hand in farewell.
+
+"Won't you wait till Elsie comes back?" she asked.
+
+"I will wait for no one."
+
+"But where are you off to?"
+
+I scratched my chin, as one does when one wishes to appear reflective.
+
+"I am going to break the Militant Suffrage Movement."
+
+"A good many people have failed," she warned me.
+
+"They never tried."
+
+"How will you begin?"
+
+I walked downstairs thoughtfully, weighed Dick's tall hat in the
+balance, and decided in favour of my own.
+
+"I have no idea," I called back to the figure at the stair-head.
+
+The Seraph had marked his confidence in me by the bestowal of a
+latch-key. I let myself in at Adelphi Terrace and wandered round the
+flat in search of him. He was not in the library or dining-room, but
+at length I discovered him in pyjamas sitting in the balcony outside
+his bedroom, and gazing disconsolately out over the river. He knew
+where I had been before I had time to tell him, and was able to make a
+fairly accurate guess at the nature of my conversation with Joyce.
+Perhaps there was nothing very wonderful in that, but it fitted in
+with the rest of his theory: I remember he summarised her mental
+condition by saying that a certain sub-conscious idea was coming to be
+consciously apprehended. It was a cumbrous way of saying that both
+Joyce and I had made rather an important discovery; what puzzled me
+then, and puzzles me still, is that at my first meeting with her
+either of us should have given him grounds for forming any theory at
+all. Even admitting that I may have been visibly impressed, I could
+see no response in her; but I have almost given up trying to
+understand the Seraph's mind or mode of thought.
+
+"You've not got her yet," he warned me.
+
+"No one knows that better than I do."
+
+"Her mind's still very full of her cause."
+
+"Yes, damn it."
+
+"Almost as full of it as of you. She's torn between you, and you'll
+have to fight if you want to keep your foothold."
+
+I told him, as I had told Joyce, that I proposed to break the Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"I thought you might be able to help. What _is_ going to be the end of
+it?"
+
+He shook his head moodily, and picked up a cigarette.
+
+"I'm not a prophet."
+
+"You've prophesied to some purpose before now," I reminded him.
+
+He paused to look at me with the cigarette in one hand and a lighted
+match in the other.
+
+"Guesswork," I heard him murmur.
+
+"But it worked out right?"
+
+"Coincidence."
+
+"_You_ don't think that."
+
+"I may think the world's flat if it amuses me," he answered, blowing
+out the match.
+
+The abruptness of his tone was unusual.
+
+"What's been worrying you, Seraph?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing. Why?"
+
+I lay back in my chair and looked him up and down.
+
+"You've forgotten to light your cigarette," I pointed out. "You're
+shaking as if you'd got malaria, and wherever your mind may be, it's
+not in this room and it's not attending to me."
+
+"I'm sorry," he apologised, sitting down. "I'm rather tired."
+
+To belie his words he jumped up again and began pacing feverishly up
+and down before the open balcony window.
+
+"Let's hear about it," I urged.
+
+"You can't do any good."
+
+"Let _me_ judge of that."
+
+He paused irresolutely and stood leaning his head against the frame
+of the window and looking out at the flaming sky-signs on the far side
+of the river.
+
+"It won't do any good," he repeated over his shoulder. "Nobody 'ud
+believe you, but--I don't know, you might try. She must be warned.
+Sylvia, I mean. She's absolutely on the brink, and if some one doesn't
+save her, she'll be over. I can't interfere, I should only precipitate
+it. Will you go, Toby? She might listen to you. It's worth getting
+your face laid open to keep her out of danger. Will you go?"
+
+He turned and faced me, wild-eyed and excited. His lips were white,
+and his fingers locked and unlocked themselves in uncontrollable
+nervous restlessness.
+
+"What's the danger?" I asked, with studied deliberation.
+
+"I don't know. How should I? But it's there; will you go?"
+
+"I don't mind trying," I answered, taking out my watch.
+
+"You must go now!"
+
+It was a quarter to one, and I told him so. Nobody can be less
+sensitive than I to the charge of eccentricity, but I refuse to
+disturb a Cabinet Minister's household at one in the morning to
+proclaim that an overstrung nervous visionary has a premonition that
+peril of a vague undefined order is menacing the daughter of the
+house.
+
+"We must wait till Christian hours," I insisted.
+
+"Ah, you don't believe it; no one does!"
+
+At eleven o'clock next morning--as soon, in fact, as I had drunk my
+coffee and was comfortably shaved and dressed--I drove round to
+Cadogan Square in search of Sylvia. I had no very clear idea what
+warning I was to give her when we met; indeed I felt wholly
+ridiculous and slightly resentful. However, my word had gone forth,
+and I was indisposed to upset the Seraph by breaking it. I left him in
+the library, silent and pale, writing hard and accumulating an
+industrious pile of manuscript against my return. By morning light no
+trace remained of his overnight excitement.
+
+To my secret relief Sylvia was not in when I arrived. The man believed
+she was shopping and would be out to luncheon, but if I called again
+about three I should probably find her at home. It hardly seemed worth
+my while to return to Adelphi Terrace, so I ordered some cigars, took
+a turn in the Park, lunched at the Club, and talked mild scandal with
+Paddy Culling. At three I presented myself once more in Cadogan
+Square.
+
+The door stood open, and Sylvia appeared in sight as I mounted the
+steps.
+
+"Worse and worse!" she exclaimed as she gave me a hurried shake of the
+hand. "I was so sorry to be out when you called this morning. Look
+here, will you go inside and tell mother you're coming to dinner
+to-night."
+
+"But I'm dining out already."
+
+"Oh, well, when will you come? Ring up and fix a night. I must simply
+fly now."
+
+"It won't take a minute."
+
+"Honestly I can't wait! I've got to go down to Chiswick of all
+unearthly places! My poor old darling of a fraeulein's been taken ill
+and she's got no one to look after her. I _must_ just see she's got
+everything she wants. It's horribly rude, but you will forgive me,
+won't you? She rang up at half-past twelve, and I've only just got
+back."
+
+Touching my hand with the tips of her fingers, she flashed down the
+steps before I could stop her. The bearded Orthodox Church retainer
+was waiting at the kerb, and I heard her call out "Twenty-seven,
+Teignmouth Road, Chiswick," as he slammed the door and clambered into
+his seat. I caught my last glimpse of her rounding the corner into
+Sloane Street, the same black and white study that I had admired when
+I first visited Gladys--white dress, black hat; white skin, dark hair,
+and soft unfathomable brown eyes; a splash of red at the throat, a
+flush of colour in her cheeks. Then I hailed a taxi on my own account
+and drove back to Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph was still in the library, sitting as I had left him more
+than four hours before. An empty coffee cup at his elbow marked the
+only visible difference. He was writing quicker than I think I have
+ever seen a man write, and allowed me to enter the room and drop into
+an armchair by the window without raising his eyes or appearing to
+notice my presence. I had been there a full five minutes before he
+condescended--still without looking up from his writing--to address
+me.
+
+"You couldn't stop her, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you saw her?"
+
+"Just for a moment."
+
+"'Just for a moment.' Those were the words I had used."
+
+He stopped writing, drew a line under the last words, blotted the page
+and threw it face-downwards on the pile of manuscript. Then for the
+first time our eyes met, and I saw it was only by biting his lips and
+gripping the arms of the chair that he could keep control over
+himself.
+
+"You'd like some tea," he said, in the manner of a man recalling his
+mind from a distance. "Can you reach the bell?"
+
+"Is this the end of the chapter?" I asked as he tidied the pile of
+manuscript and bored it with a paper fastener.
+
+"It's the end of everything."
+
+"How far does it carry you?"
+
+"To your parting from Sylvia."
+
+"Present time, in fact?"
+
+"Forty minutes ago."
+
+I checked him by my watch. "And what now?" I asked.
+
+He looked up at me, looked through me, I might say, and sat staring at
+the window without answering.
+
+The next two hours were the most uncomfortable I have ever spent. If
+in old age my guardian angel offers me the chance of living my whole
+life over again, I shall refuse the offer if I am compelled to endure
+once again that silent July afternoon. The Seraph sat from four till
+six without speech or movement. As the sun's rays lengthened, they
+fell on his face and lit it with cold, merciless limelight. He had
+started pale and grew gradually grey; the eyes seemed to darken and
+increase in size as the face became momentarily more pinched and
+drawn. I could see the lips whitening and drying, the forehead dewing
+with tiny beads of perspiration.
+
+I made a brave show of noticing nothing. Tea was brought in; I poured
+him out a cup, drank three myself, and ostentatiously sampled two
+varieties of sandwich and one of cake. I cut my cigar noisily, damned
+with audible good humour when the matches refused to strike, picked up
+a review and threw it down again, and wandered round the room in
+search of a book, humming to myself the while.
+
+At six I could stand it no longer.
+
+"I'm going to play the piano, Seraph," I said.
+
+"For pity's sake don't!" he begged me, with a shudder; but I had my
+way.
+
+When the _City of Pekin_ went down in '95 as she tried to round the
+Horn, one of my fellow-passengers was a gigantic, iron-nerved man from
+one of the Western States. I suppose we all of us found it trying work
+to sit calm while the boats were lowered away: no one knew how long we
+could keep our heads above water and we all had a shrewd suspicion that
+the boat accommodation was insufficient. We should have been more
+miserable than we were if it had not occurred to the Westerner to
+distract our minds. In spite of a thirty-degree list he sat down to the
+piano and I helped hold him in position while we thundered out the old
+songs that every one knows without consciously learning--"Clementine,"
+"The Tarpaulin Jacket," "In Cellar Cool." We were taking a call for
+"The Tavern in the Town" when word reached us that there was room in
+the last boat.
+
+I set myself to distract the Seraph's mind, and gave him a tireless
+succession of waltzes and ragtimes till eight o'clock. Then the bell
+of the telephone rang, and I was told Philip Roden wished to speak to
+me.
+
+"It's about Sylvia," he began. "She hasn't come back yet, and we don't
+know where she is. The man says you had a word with her as she started
+out: did she say where she was going?"
+
+I told him of the message from Chiswick, and repeated the address I
+had heard her give the chauffeur.
+
+"I don't know what the matter was," I added. "Sylvia may have found
+the woman worse than she expected. Hadn't you better inquire who took
+the message and see if he or she can throw any light on the mystery?"
+
+I was half dressed for dinner when Philip rang me up again, this time
+with well-marked anxiety in his voice.
+
+"I say, there's something very fishy about this," he began. "I've just
+rung up the Chiswick address and the Fraeulein answered in person. She
+wasn't ill, she hadn't been ill, and she certainly hadn't sent any
+message to Sylvia."
+
+"Well, but who----?" I started.
+
+"Lord knows!" he answered. "It might be any one. The address is a
+boarding house with a common telephone: any one in the house could
+have used it. You said twelve-thirty, didn't you? The Fraeulein was out
+in Richmond Park at twelve-thirty."
+
+"What about Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+"That's the devil of it: Sylvia hadn't been near the place. When was
+it exactly that you saw her? Three-five, three-ten? And she turned
+into Sloane Street? North or South? Well, North's the Knightsbridge
+end. And that's all you can say?"
+
+I mentioned the invitation she had given me, and asked if I could be
+of any assistance in helping to trace her. Philip told me he was going
+at once to Chiswick to investigate the mystery of the telephone, and
+promised to advise me if there was anything fresh to report. Then he
+rang off, and I gave a _resume_ of our conversation to the Seraph. He
+had just come out of the bath and was sitting wrapped in a towel on
+the edge of the bed. I remember noticing at the time how thin he had
+gone the last few weeks: he had always been slightly built, but the
+outline of his collarbones and ribs was sharply discernible under the
+skin.
+
+"I think it would be rather friendly if I went round after dinner to
+see if there's any news of her," I concluded.
+
+"There won't be," he answered.
+
+"Well, that of course we can't say."
+
+"_I_ can. They won't have found her, they don't know where she is."
+
+"Philip may hear something in Chiswick; it looks like a silly
+practical joke."
+
+"But you know it isn't."
+
+"I don't know what to think," I answered, as I returned to my room and
+the final stages of my toilet. I soon came back, however, to tie my
+tie in front of his glass and propound a random question. "I suppose
+_you_ don't know where she is?"
+
+"How should I?"
+
+"You sometimes do."
+
+"So do other people."
+
+"You sometimes know where she is when other people don't--and when
+you've no better grounds for knowing than other people."
+
+He was still sitting on the bed in _deshabille_, his hands clasped
+round his bare knees and his head bowed down and resting on his hands.
+For a moment he looked up into my face, then dropped his head again
+without speaking.
+
+"You remember what happened at Brandon Court?" I persisted.
+
+"Guess-work," he answered.
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"Well, what other explanation do you offer?"
+
+"I don't know; you've got some extra sensitiveness where Sylvia's
+concerned. Call it the Sixth Sense, if you like."
+
+"There _is_ no Sixth Sense. I thought Nigel disposed of that fallacy
+at Brandon."
+
+"Not to my satisfaction--or yours."
+
+The Seraph jumped up and began to dress.
+
+"Well, anyway I don't know where she is now," he observed.
+
+"Meaning that you did once?"
+
+"You _say_ I did."
+
+"You know you did."
+
+"There's not much sign of it now."
+
+"May be in abeyance. It may come back."
+
+I watched him spend an unduly long time selecting and rejecting
+dress-socks.
+
+"It won't come back as long as the connection's broken at her end," I
+heard him murmur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ZEAL THAT OUTRUNS DISCRETION
+
+    "Selina! The time has arrived to impart
+    The covert design of my passionate heart.
+    No vulgar solicitudes torture my breast,
+    No common ambition deprives me of rest....
+    My soul is absorbed in a scheme as sublime
+    As ever was carved on the tablets of time.
+    To-morrow, at latest, through London shall ring
+    The echo and crash of a notable thing.
+    I start from my fetters, I scorn to be dumb,
+    Selina! the Hour and the Woman are come...
+      Hither to the rescue, ladies!
+        Let not fear your spirits vex.
+      On the plan by me that made is
+        Hangs the future of your sex...
+      Shall she then be left to mourn her
+        Isolation and her shame?
+      Come in troops round Hyde Park Corner,
+        Every true Belgravian dame."
+
+      SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN: "The Modern Ecclesiazusae."
+
+
+I ought to have known better than to go round to Cadogan Square next
+morning. Bereaved families, like swarming bees, are best left alone;
+and I knew beforehand that I could render no assistance. At the same
+time, I felt it would be unfriendly to treat Sylvia's disappearance as
+part of the trivial round and common task, especially after my
+overnight conversation with Philip. And if I could bring back any news
+to the Seraph, I knew I should be more than compensated for my
+journey.
+
+Save for its master and mistress, I found the house deserted. Philip
+had organised himself into one search party, Robin into another: Nigel
+Rawnsley appeared to be successfully usurping authority at Scotland
+Yard, and from Sloane Street and Chiswick respectively Gartside and
+Culling paced slowly to a central place of meeting. Every shopkeeper,
+loafer, postman, and hawker along the route was subjected to searching
+inquisition: the car, its passenger, and black-bearded driver were
+described and re-described. My two detective friends from Henley, as I
+afterwards found out, passed a cheerful day at headquarters, drinking
+down unsweetened reprimands and striving to explain the difficulties
+of protecting a young woman who refused to be shadowed.
+
+I admired the way Arthur Roden took punishment. When armchair critics
+scoff at a generation of opportunist politicians, I think of him--and
+of Rawnsley, who suffered first and longest. Their public
+pronouncements never wavered; the Suffrage must be opposed and
+defeated on its own merits or demerits, and no attacks on property, no
+menaces to person could shake them from what they regarded as a
+national duty. Even if I chose to think old Rawnsley's mechanical,
+cold-blooded inhumanity extended to the members of his own family, it
+would be impossible to charge Jefferson with indifference to his only
+child, or Roden with want of affection towards his only daughter. I
+know of no girl who exacted as much admiring devotion from the members
+of her own family as Sylvia: or one who repaid the exaction so
+generously.
+
+Their wives were even more uncompromising than the Ministers. I have
+no doubt the New Militants thought to strike at the fathers through
+the mothers, and the reasoning seemed tolerably sound. I admit I
+expected at first to find Mrs. Rawnsley and Mrs. Jefferson calling for
+quarter before their husbands, and if the New Militants miscalculated,
+I miscalculated with them. I had not expected their policy of
+abduction to arouse much active sympathy, but the bitter,
+uncompromising resentment it evoked far surpassed my anticipations.
+Had the perpetrators been discovered, I believe they would have been
+lynched in the street; and without going to such lengths, I feel
+confident that the mothers themselves would have sacrificed their own
+children rather than yield a single inch to women who had so outraged
+every maternal instinct. Had their own feelings inclined to surrender,
+Rawnsley, Jefferson, and Roden would have surrendered only over their
+wives' bodies.
+
+"We shall go on exactly as before," Arthur told me when I asked his
+plans. "The enemy has varied its usual form of communication; this is
+what I have received."
+
+He threw me a typed sheet of paper.
+
+"We shall be glad to know _within the next ten days_ (expiring
+Saturday) when the Government will guarantee the introduction of a
+bill to give women the parliamentary vote on the same terms as it is
+enjoyed by men."
+
+"How are you answering this?" I asked.
+
+"My campaign in the Midlands is all arranged," was the reply, "and
+will go forward in due course."
+
+"And Sylvia?"
+
+"Anything that can be done will be done. I am offering two thousand
+pounds reward...."
+
+"Are you making the whole thing public?"
+
+"It's more than half public already. We tried to keep it secret, as
+you know. To avoid giving them a free advertisement. However, they've
+advertised themselves by broad hints in the _New Militant_; the
+gutter-press has taken it up until half England knows and the other
+half suspects. Rawnsley's seeing the _Times_, and you'll have the
+whole story in to-morrow's papers. I shall confirm it at Birmingham
+next week." He paused, and drummed with his fingers on the library
+table. "I can't answer for the men, but there's not a mother in the
+length and breadth of the land who won't be on our side when the story
+comes out."
+
+The ultimate collapse of the whole New Militant campaign has proved
+his sagacity as a prophet.
+
+"You've got no traces yet of Mavis Rawnsley and the Jefferson boy?" I
+asked.
+
+"So far the police are completely baffled. They're clever, these
+women, very clever."
+
+"No clue?"
+
+"Nothing you could take into court. We're not even sure where to look
+for the perpetrators."
+
+"You've no suspicions?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"Oh, suspicions, certainly." He looked at me shrewdly and with a spice
+of disfavour. "Candidly, I suspect your friend Miss Davenant."
+
+"Why her in particular?" I asked carelessly.
+
+"By a process of exclusion. The old constitutional agitators, the
+Blacks and the Campions and that lot, are out of the question; they've
+publicly denounced the slightest breach of the law. I acquit the Old
+Militants, too--the Gregorys and Haseldines and Ganons. They're too
+stupid, for one thing; they go on burning houses and breaking windows
+in their old fatuous way. And for another thing they haven't the
+nerve...."
+
+"There are a good many Hunger-Strikers among them," I interposed,
+probably with the dishonest intention of spreading his suspicions over
+the widest possible area.
+
+"Less than before," he answered. "And their arch-Hunger-Striker, the
+Haseldine woman, carried meat lozenges with her the last time she
+visited Holloway. No, they're cowards. If you want brain and courage
+you must look to a little group of women who detached themselves from
+the Old Militant party. Mrs. Millington was one and Miss Davenant was
+another."
+
+"The eminently moderate staff of the ultra-constitutional _New
+Militant_," I said as I prepared to leave.
+
+"If you've any influence with either of those women and want to save
+them a long stretch of penal servitude, now's your time to warn them."
+
+"Good Heavens! you don't suppose I'm admitted to their counsels!"
+
+"You could advise them as a friend."
+
+"When you tell me there's not enough suspicion to carry into court? I
+fear they wouldn't listen."
+
+"They might prefer to stop play before their luck turns," he answered
+as he accompanied me to the door. "Their quiescent state is the most
+significant, most suspicious, most damning thing about them. If a
+house-breaker opened a religious bookshop, you might think he had
+reformed. Or you might think he was preparing an extra large coup. Or
+you might think he sold sermons by day and cracked cribs by night."
+
+"What cynics you public men are!" I exclaimed as I ran down the steps
+and turned in the direction of Chester Square.
+
+I have said that "Providence" is not one of my star _roles_, and I had
+every reason to know that my eloquence was unavailing when set to the
+task of converting Joyce from her militant campaign. However, I have
+seen stones worn away by constant dripping.... And in any case I had
+not been near the house for nearly two days.
+
+"I'm afraid you can't see Joyce," Elsie told me as we shook hands.
+"She wouldn't go to bed when the doctor told her, and now she's really
+rather bad."
+
+I was more upset by the news than I care to say, but Elsie hastened to
+assure me.
+
+"It's nothing much so far," she said. "But she's got a temperature and
+can't sleep, and worries a good deal."
+
+"Can't we get her away?" I exclaimed impatiently.
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"I've tried, but she simply won't leave town."
+
+"But what's to keep her?"
+
+"There's the paper every week."
+
+It always annoys me to find any one thinking the world will come to an
+end unless run on his or her own favourite lines.
+
+"If she died, some one else would have to edit it," I pointed out.
+"Who's doing it now?"
+
+"Mrs. Millington. I'm afraid it's no use telling people that till they
+_are_ dead."
+
+"And then it's a little late in the day," I answered irritably.
+
+Elsie proceeded to give me the real reason for Joyce's obstinacy.
+
+"When you're dead you don't have to take responsibility for your
+deputy's mistakes."
+
+"That's it, is it? Mrs. Millington setting the Thames on fire?"
+
+"Her zeal sometimes outruns her discretion," said Elsie with a smile.
+"That's what's chiefly worrying Joyce."
+
+I picked up my hat and stick and moved towards the door.
+
+"And Joyce is losing her nerve?" I hazarded.
+
+"She's not up to her usual form," was all Elsie would answer.
+
+"Give her my love," I said at the door, "and best wishes for a quick
+recovery. If she isn't well in two days' time, I shall carry her off
+by main force and put her into a nursing home."
+
+Then I went off to lunch at the Club, and found fault with the food,
+the wine, the cigars and all creation. Paddy Culling opened a
+subscription list to buy me a box of liver pills. The Seraph--after I
+had been two minutes at Adelphi Terrace--said he was sorry Joyce was
+no better.... I thanked him for his sympathy, and sat down to read the
+current copy of the _New Militant_.
+
+In my careless, hot-blooded youth I made a collection of inanimate
+journalistic curiosities. It was my sole offence against the wise rule
+that to collect anything--from wives up to postage stamps--is a mark
+of incipient mental decay. There was the _Punch_, with the cartoon
+showing the relief of Khartoum; and I remember I had a copy of the
+suppressed issue of the _Times_, when the compositors usurped control
+of Empire and edited one of Harcourt's Budget speeches on lines of
+their own. There was also a pink _Pall Mall Gazette_, bought wet from
+the machine at a shilling the copy, when paper ran out and they
+borrowed the pink reserve rolls of the _Globe_. I had a copy of
+another journal that described in moving language the massacre of the
+Peking Legations. The Legations were, in fact, never massacred, but
+they should have been on any theory of probability, and, for aught I
+know, the enterprising journalist may have believed with Wilde that
+Nature tends to copy Art.
+
+I also had several illustrated weeklies depicting--by the pen of Our
+Special Artist--that first Coronation Ceremony of Edward the Seventh,
+and the verbal account of it given by "A Peeress" who had been
+present. More lately I acquired the original American paper which sent
+the _Titanic_ to her grave with the band playing "Nearer, my God, to
+Thee."...
+
+I am half sorry the collection is dispersed. I should have liked to
+add the one historic number of the _New Militant_ that appeared under
+Mrs. Millington's fire-and-brimstone editorship. To the collector it
+is curious, as being the last issue of the paper; by the mental
+pathologist it is regarded as an interesting example of what is by
+common consent called "Militant Hysteria." The general public will
+remember it as the documentary evidence which at last enabled the
+police to secure a warrant of arrest against the "proprietors,
+printers and publishers of the newspaper called and known as the _New
+Militant_," to raid the printing office in Clerkenwell, and lay bare
+the private memoranda of the New Militant organisation.
+
+My own copy did not survive my departure from England, and I could not
+do Mrs. Millington the injustice of trying to reproduce her deathless
+periods. I remember there was a great deal of "Where is Miss Rawnsley?
+Where is Master Jefferson? Where is Miss Roden?" Such questions
+implicated no one, and only annoyed inconsequential persons like
+myself, who detest being set conundrums of which I do not know the
+answer by some one who obviously does. The practice is futile and
+vexatious.
+
+The incriminating words came heavy-typed in the last paragraph of the
+leading article, and contained an unmistakable threat that the policy
+of abduction would continue until female suffrage had been secured.
+
+After dinner that night I strolled round to the Club to hear what
+people were saying.
+
+"They've done for themselves this time," Gartside told me with much
+assurance when I ran across him in the hall. "Don't ask me where I got
+it from, and don't let it go any further, but there's a warrant out
+against some one."
+
+I was conscious of a very uncomfortable sensation of hollowness.
+
+"Is it indiscreet to ask who?"
+
+"I can't tell you, because I don't know. I fancy you proceed against
+the whole lot, printers included."
+
+"They've not wasted much time," I said.
+
+It was Tuesday night. The _New Militant_ went to press at midday and
+was on sale next morning throughout the country. In London, of course,
+it could be obtained overnight, and I had secured an early copy by
+calling at the office itself.
+
+I stood in the middle of the hall wondering exactly what I could do to
+prevent the arm of the law stretching out and folding Chester Square
+in its embrace. I was still wondering when Paddy Culling bounded up
+the steps and seized Gartside and myself by either hand.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there," he panted, momentarily
+releasing my arm in order to mop a red, dripping forehead. His broken
+collar and caved-in hat suggested a fight: his brogue reminded me that
+the offer of a golden throne in heaven will not avail to keep an
+Irishman out of a brawl. "Down Clerkenwell way ut was, the War of the
+Woild Women. The polis...."
+
+He was settling down to a narrative of epic proportions. The Irish are
+this world's finest raconteurs as they are its finest fighters, riders
+and gentlemen. It was an insult, but I could not wait.
+
+"Have they raided the place, Paddy?" I asked.
+
+"They have." His eyes reproached me for my interruption. "The
+polis...."
+
+"Did they get any one?"
+
+"Am I telling ye or am I not? Answer me that."
+
+"I know, Paddy," I said with all the contrition at my command. "But
+I've got to go, and I just wanted the main outline...."
+
+"They got Mrs. Millington," he began again, "and she fighting the way
+ye'd say she'd passed her born days being evicted. There was one had
+the finger bitten off him and another scratched in the face till the
+gutters ran blood. Five strong men held her down and stamped out the
+life of her, and five more dragged her down the road by the hair of
+her head and droppit her like a swung cat over the railings of the
+common mortuary. The vultures...."
+
+"Did they get any one else?" I interrupted.
+
+"It's the fine tale ye're spoiling," he complained.
+
+"But just tell me that," I pleaded.
+
+"They did not," he answered with ill-concealed disgust. "Unless ye'd
+be calling a printer's devil one of God's fine men and women. But the
+polis...."
+
+I hurried down the steps and jumped into a taxi. I thought first of
+calling to warn them at Chester Square. Then I decided to communicate
+by telephone. If Joyce had not already been arrested, and if I was to
+be of any assistance later on, I could not afford to be discovered in
+the incriminating neighbourhood of her house.
+
+I gave the Seraph the heads of my story as I looked up the number and
+waited for my call.
+
+"You're through," the Exchange told me after an interminable delay.
+
+"Hallo, hallo!" I kept calling, for what seemed like half an hour.
+"Will you give another ring, please, Exchange?"
+
+A further age dragged its course, and I was told that there did not
+seem to be any one at the other end.
+
+"Now will you tell me what we're to do, Seraph?" I exclaimed.
+
+We sat and stared at each other for the best part of five minutes.
+Then the decision was taken out of our hands. I saw him prick up his
+ears to catch a sound too faint for my grosser senses.
+
+"Some one coming upstairs," he whispered. "It's a woman, and she's
+coming slowly. Now she's stopped. Now she's coming on again."
+
+I rose from my chair and tiptoed across the room.
+
+"Can it be Joyce?" I asked, sinking my own voice to a whisper.
+
+"She's going on to the next floor," he answered with a shake of the
+head; and then with sudden excitement, "Now she's coming back."
+
+"She mustn't ring the bell," I cried, running out into the hall.
+
+"It's all right, there's nobody here but ourselves," he called out as
+I opened the door and ran out onto the landing.
+
+Ten feet in front of me, leaning back against the banisters, stood
+Joyce Davenant. One hand covered her eyes and the other was pressed to
+her heart. She was trembling with fever and panting with the exertion
+of climbing four flights of stairs. A long fur coat stretched down to
+bare feet thrust into slippers, her head was covered by a shawl,
+though the hair fell loosely inside her coat. At the neck I could see
+the frilled collar of a nightdress.
+
+"Joyce!" I exclaimed.
+
+She uncovered her face and showed eyes preternaturally bright, and
+white cheeks lit by a single spot of brilliant colour.
+
+"I said I'd come when there was a warrant out," she panted with game,
+gallant attempt at a smile. Then I caught her in my arms as she fell
+forward, and carried her as gently as I could inside the flat.
+
+I left it to the Seraph to take off her coat and lay her in his own
+bed. He did it as tenderly as any woman. Then we went to the far side
+of the room and held a whispered consultation. I am afraid I could
+suggest nothing of value, and the credit of our arrangement lies
+wholly at his door.
+
+"We must get a nurse," he began. "Elsie mustn't be seen coming near
+the place or the game's up. What about that woman who helped you bring
+Connie Matheson home from Malta this spring? Can you trust her? Have
+you got her address? Well, you must see if you can get her to-night.
+No, not yet. We want a doctor. Her own man? No! It would give us away
+at once. Look out Maybury-Reynardson's address in the telephone book,
+somewhere in Cavendish Square. He's a sportsman; he'll do it if you
+say it's for me. You must go and see him in person; we don't want the
+Exchange-girls listening. Anything more? I'll square my man and his
+wife when they come in. Oh, tell your nurse the condition this poor
+child's come in; say it's a bachelor establishment and we haven't got
+a stitch of anything, and can't send to Chester Square for it. Tell
+her to bring...."
+
+He paused to listen as heavy feet ascended the stairs. The noise was
+loud enough even for me this time. There was a ring at the door.
+
+"Wine cellar. Locked. Haven't got key," he whispered turning out the
+light and locking himself inside the room with Joyce.
+
+I opened the front door and found myself faced with the two Roden
+detectives I had corrupted with bottled beer at Henley.
+
+"Why, this is like old times!" I said. "Have you been able to find any
+trace of Miss Roden?"
+
+They had not, and I see now that my question was singularly tactless.
+They bore no resentment, however, and told me they had called on other
+business. There was a warrant out against Miss Davenant. She was not
+to be found at the Clerkenwell printing office, and while Chester
+Square was being searched, a woman had slipped out of the house by a
+side door, entered a car and driven away.
+
+"Could you follow her?" I asked, with all the Englishman's love of the
+chase.
+
+That, it appeared, had been difficult, as the number of the car seemed
+to have been wilfully obscured.
+
+"That's an offence, isn't it?" I asked.
+
+It was, and the driver--if traced--would find himself in trouble. They
+had followed a likely-looking car and seen it turn southward out of
+the Strand. When they reached Adelphi Terrace, however, there was only
+one car in sight, drawn up outside our door and presenting a
+creditably clear number-plate. Its driver had vaguely seen another
+car, but had not particularly noticed it. They called on chance, as
+this was the only suite with lights in it. Had I seen or heard
+anything of the car or a woman getting out of it?
+
+"I've only just come in myself," I told them. "Half an hour, to be
+exact. That was possibly my taxi you saw outside. I didn't notice the
+number. How long ago did you see your suspected car turn into Adelphi
+Terrace? Ten minutes? Oh, then I should have seen any one who came up
+here, shouldn't I? Would you like to look round to make sure?"
+
+The senior man stepped back and glanced up at the name painted over
+the door.
+
+"It's Mr. Aintree's flat," I explained. "I'm staying with him."
+
+The man hesitated uncertainly.
+
+"I haven't any authority," he began.
+
+"Oh, hang the authority!" I said. "Mr. Aintree wouldn't mind.
+Dining-room, wine-cellar, library.... Won't you come in? Not even for
+a drink? Sure? Well, good-night. Oh, it's no trouble."
+
+Detectives--or such few of them as I have met--remind me of
+Customs-house officials: if you offer your keys and go out of your way
+to lay bare your secrets before their eyes, they will in all
+probability let you through without opening a single trunk. They are
+perverse as women--and simple as children.
+
+I tapped at the Seraph's door and told him I had disposed of the
+police without uttering a single falsehood. It was almost the last
+time I was able to make that boast. We gave our friends ten minutes'
+start, and I then set out in search of nurse and doctor. Joyce looked
+shockingly ill when I left, but her breathing was peaceful.
+Occasionally she moved or moaned in her sleep; as I turned at the door
+for a last look, the Seraph was rearranging her pillow and smoothing
+the hair back from her face.
+
+I had to walk into the Strand to find a taxi. Outside the Vaudeville I
+met my brother and his wife, and was bidden to sup with them at the
+Savoy. I refused for many reasons, the first being that a man who
+starts a career of crime at the age of forty-two must not for very
+decency be seen eating in company with a judge of the High Court. My
+meeting did good in giving me the idea of establishing a succession of
+_alibis_. When I had made the necessary arrangements with
+Maybury-Reynardson and the nurse, I looked in once more at the Club.
+
+Culling, Gartside and Nigel Rawnsley had the north smoking-room to
+themselves. They seemed to be discussing some plan of campaign, and
+the rescue of Sylvia was its object. Perhaps I should not say
+"discussing": Nigel was holding forth in a way that made me think he
+must have been a Grand Inquisitor in some previous incarnation. The
+ruthlessness of a Torquemada was directed by Napoleonic statecraft and
+brought down to date by the terrorism of a brow-beating counsel. The
+combination was highly impressive; his own contribution consisted in
+an exquisite choice of epithets.
+
+"Talk to the Chief," I heard him say in summary of his plan of
+campaign. "Get him to arrange for Merivale, J., to try the case, and
+you'll find the woman Millington will exhibit surprising celerity in
+imparting whatever information she may have gathered in respect of the
+whereabouts of Mavis and Sylvia and the Jefferson boy."
+
+"King's Evidence, d'you mean?" asked Gartside. "Not she!"
+
+"Inconceivably less ornate than that. I agree with you that she might
+withhold her consent. It is therefore more expedient to coax her into
+the confessional without implicating her fellow conspirators. If you
+were being tried by Merivale and saw seven years' penal servitude
+stretching in pleasing prospect before you, you'd want to start the
+day on terms of reasonable amity with your judge. If you knew
+Merivale's daughter was engaged to marry a man whose sister had been
+spirited away, would you not strive to acquire merit in the eyes of
+your judge's family by saying where the sister could be found? It is
+approximately equivalent to a year's reduction of sentence."
+
+Paddy Culling scratched his head thoughtfully with a paper knife.
+
+"If Miss Davenant's afther hiding herself in one of the coops where
+the other little chicken's stored away...." he began.
+
+"She's not," Nigel interrupted decisively. "The risk's too
+considerable; she wouldn't want to betray herself and her hostages at
+the same moment. She's in London...."
+
+"Is she?" asked Gartside.
+
+"She was to-day at lunch-time, because her doctor called at the house.
+Of course, the police in their infinite sagacity must needs start
+searching at the wrong end and afford her opportunities of escape."
+
+"Out of London if she wanted to," persisted Gartside.
+
+"Not by train," said Nigel. "Every station's watched...."
+
+"By car."
+
+"By airship, equally. The woman's seriously ill; you'd kill her."
+
+Paddy Culling looked at his friend a little enviously.
+
+"You know a lot about the inside of that house," he said.
+
+"By the simple expedient of the sovereign in season to the
+kitchen-maid, who, like the rest of her class, was unquestionably
+loyal, but more unquestionably impecunious. The woman Davenant's in
+London, and they'll find her in three days. Where she is, I can't tell
+you. I may know more when I've seen the officers' reports to-morrow
+morning. Sylvia I'll undertake to find within a week. The woman
+Millington will give her away, and if she doesn't, the woman Davenant
+will have to."
+
+"When you've caught her," said Culling quietly.
+
+"Not even when you've caught her," said Gartside with greater
+knowledge. "I know the breed. It's pedigree stock."
+
+Nigel lit a cigarette with ostentatious elaboration.
+
+"Even pedigree stock has its less spirited moments," he said. "For
+example, when it's seriously ill. I fancy I could make the woman
+Davenant tell me all I wanted in three minutes."
+
+The tone was extraordinarily sinister. I seemed to realise in a flash
+why Sylvia, with a woman's quicker, deeper insight, kept the speaker
+at a distance.... However, I had come to the Club to establish an
+_alibi_, not to reflect on the character of Sylvia's admirers. And I
+wanted to get back to Adelphi Terrace as soon as my purpose was
+effected.
+
+"I was sorry to run away in the middle of your story, Paddy," I said.
+"I'd promised to meet a man, and I was rather late as it was. You'd
+got as far as the disposal of Mrs. Millington's body in the common
+mortuary and the arrest of a poor, mean printer's devil. What happened
+then? Was any one else caught?"
+
+Paddy looked at me almost with affection, his eyes alight with
+oratorical fire.
+
+"It's yourself should have been there to see it," he began, grasping
+my arm with one hand and making his points with the other. "The polis
+and red coats was there, and the newspaper men in their thousands, and
+the gravediggers in their tens of thousands...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE
+
+      "My mind ... rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give
+      me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the
+      most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper
+      atmosphere.... I crave for mental exaltation. That is why
+      I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather
+      created it, for I am the only one in the world ... the
+      only unofficial consulting detective.... I am the last
+      and highest court of appeal in detection.... I examine
+      the data, as an expert, and pronounce a specialist's
+      opinion. I claim no credit in such cases. My name figures
+      in no newspaper. The work itself, the pleasure of finding
+      a field for my peculiar powers, is my highest
+      reward."--SIR A. CONAN DOYLE: "The Sign of Four."
+
+
+Premonitions--so far as my gross person is concerned--are a matter of
+digestion, nerves and liver. If I woke up on the morning after Joyce's
+flight to Adelphi Terrace with a dull sense of impending disaster, I
+ascribe it to the fact that I had passed a more than ordinarily
+hideous night. Unlike the Seraph, who never went to bed, I had
+sufficient philosophy to turn in when the doctor had left and the
+nurse was comfortably established. It had been made clear to me that I
+could do no manner of good by staying up and getting in people's
+way....
+
+I started in my own room, but quickly took refuge in the library. If
+there are two sounds I cannot endure, one is that of a crying child,
+and the other of a woman--or man for that matter--moaning in pain.
+Even in the library I could hear Joyce suffering. Maybury-Reynardson
+had told us she was all right, and there is no point in calling in
+experts if you are going to disbelieve them. But I do not want to
+experience another night of the same kind.
+
+And in the morning the papers were calculated to heighten the horror
+of the worst premonitions I could experience. I opened the _Times_,
+noted in passing that Gartside had fulfilled popular expectation by
+being appointed to the Governorship of Bombay, and turned to the
+account of the Clerkenwell raid. Culling was right in saying Mrs.
+Millington's had been the only arrest of importance; but he had left
+the battlefield at the end of the fighting, and had not waited to see
+the conquerors march into the citadel.
+
+I felt myself growing chilled and old as I read of the discoveries in
+the printing office. Mrs. Millington would stand charged with
+incitement to crime and public threat of abduction; serious enough, if
+you will, but her debt was discharged as soon as she had paid the
+penalty for a single article in a single paper. Her threats were
+embryonic, not yet materialised. Joyce stood to bear the burden of the
+three abductions carried out to date....
+
+I am no criminologist, and can offer neither explanation nor theory of
+the mental amblyopia that leads criminals to leave one weak link, one
+soft brick, one bent girder, to ruin a triumph of design and
+construction. They always do--men and women, veterans and tiros--and
+Joyce was no exception. When the police broke open the safe in her
+editorial office, the first document they found was the half sheet of
+Chester Square notepaper that the journalists agreed to christen "The
+Time Table."
+
+It was written in Joyce's hand, and her writing could be identified
+by a short-sighted illiterate at ten yards' distance. I have forgotten
+the dates by this time, and can only guess at them approximately;
+words and names have been added in full where Joyce put only initials.
+This was the famous Time Table:--
+
+
+                                        500, Chester Square, S.W.
+
+  May 8. Rejection of W. (women's) S. (suffrage) Amendment.
+
+  May 9. M.R. (Mavis Rawnsley) letter R. (Rawnsley).
+
+  June 17. P.--(private) M. (members') Day. [This was ruled
+    through.]
+
+  June 16. R.'s (Rawnsley's) Time Table.
+
+  June 17. P. (Paul) J. (Jefferson) Letters R. and J. (Rawnsley
+    and Jefferson).
+
+  June 30. R. (Rawnsley) to decide re A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 2. R. (Rawnsley) in H. (House). No A.S. (Autumn Session).
+
+  July 9. S. (Sylvia) R. (Roden). Letters R. (Rawnsley) & R.
+    (Roden).
+
+  July 19. R. (Rawnsley) to reply re facilities.
+
+  July 20. W.G. [I am not sure whether this refers to Walter
+    Greatorex, the ten-year-old son of the President of the Board
+    of Agriculture and Fisheries, or Lady Winifred Gaythorne,
+    daughter of the Marquis of Berwick--of the India Office. Both
+    Greatorex and Berwick were opposed to the franchise, but in a
+    mild, unoffending fashion. The invariable typed challenge does
+    not help me to decide, as only one letter was to be sent, the
+    usual Letter R. (Rawnsley)].
+
+"So far the police have been unable to discover the whereabouts of
+Miss Davenant," the article concluded. That was the sole, poor
+consolation I could offer to a white, tired Seraph as I threw him the
+paper and went back to my gloomy premonitions.
+
+As he read, I thought over my last _alibi_ in the north smoking-room
+at the Club. I wondered what story my friends, the Henley detectives,
+were concocting in their report, and what action Nigel Rawnsley would
+take when he had digested it.
+
+It is not entirely my "wisdom after the event" that made me select
+Nigel as our most formidable opponent, nor altogether my memory of the
+lead he had taken in the discussion overnight; I was beginning to
+appreciate his character. When he is Prime Minister of England, like
+his father before him, it will be in virtue of the same qualities. A
+brain of steel and a ruthless, iron resolution will force the +hoi
+physei archomenoi+ to follow and obey him. He will be feared, possibly
+even hated, but the hatred will leave him indifferent so long as power
+is conceded him. I have met no young man so resolute or successful in
+getting his own way; few who give me the impression of being so
+ruthless and, perhaps, unscrupulous in their methods. He is still
+preserved from active mischief by his astonishing self-consciousness
+and lack of humour; when he has outgrown these juvenilities, he will
+be really formidable. His wife--when she comes--will have my sympathy,
+for what that is worth; but there will be many women less discerning
+than Sylvia to strive for the privilege.
+
+It was noon before the Amateur Detective invaded us. The Seraph's
+man--who had already been admitted to our secret, and would at any
+time have been crucified head-downwards for his master--flung open the
+library door with the words--
+
+"Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, Lord Gartside, Mr. Culling, Mr. Philip Roden."
+
+The Seraph rose and offered chairs. You could to some extent weigh
+and discriminate characters by the various modes of entry. Nigel
+refused to be seated, placed his hat on the table and produced a
+typewritten transcript of the two detectives' reports in the
+traditional manner of a stage American policeman--which in passing, I
+may say, is nothing like any American policeman I have ever met
+anywhere in America or the civilised world. Philip and Gartside were
+self-conscious and uncomfortable; Culling strove to hide his
+embarrassment by more than usual affability.
+
+"It's ill ye're looking, Seraph," he remarked, as he accepted a
+cigarette. "And has this great ugly brute Toby been slashing the face
+off you?"
+
+Then the inquiry began, with Philip as first spokesman.
+
+"Sorry to invade you like this, Seraph," he began, "but it's about my
+sister. You know she's disappeared? Well, we were wondering if you
+could help us to find her."
+
+"I'll do anything I can...." the Seraph started.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" Nigel cut in.
+
+"I'm afraid I don't."
+
+"Do you know any one who does?" Philip asked.
+
+"I don't know that I do."
+
+Philip hesitated, started a sentence, and closed his lips again
+without completing it. Nigel took up the examination.
+
+"You know Miss Davenant, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does she know where Sylvia and Mavis are?"
+
+"I have no idea. You must ask her."
+
+"I propose to."
+
+The Seraph turned to Philip, glancing at the clock as he did so.
+
+"I'm afraid the limits of my utility are soon reached. If there's
+anything I can do...."
+
+"You can tell us where Miss Davenant is hiding," said Nigel.
+
+"Can I?"
+
+"You can and will."
+
+The Seraph treated him to a long, unhurried scrutiny, starting from
+the boots and working up to the freckled face and sandy hair. Then he
+turned away, as though the subject had no further interest for him.
+
+Nigel tried to return the stare, but broke into a blush and took
+refuge in his typewritten transcripts.
+
+"I have here," he said, "a copy of the reports of the two detectives
+who watched Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square last night. They
+saw a woman, with her hair loose, and a long coat over whatever
+clothes she was wearing, jump into a car and drive to Adelphi
+Terrace."
+
+"They were certain of the identity of the car?" I asked.
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"They weren't when I talked to them last night," I said. "No
+number--no nothing. They thought it was the same car and called in on
+chance, as there was a light here, to see if we knew anything. I
+offered to show them round, but they wouldn't come in, so we prayed
+for mutually sweet dreams and parted."
+
+Nigel tapped his papers.
+
+"I have here their sworn statement that the car which left Chester
+Square was the car that turned into Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Perjury--like joy--cometh in the morning," I observed.
+
+"That is as may be. I happen to know that Miss Davenant is seriously
+ill; I imagine, wherever she has gone, she has not gone far. The
+number of houses within easy reach of Chester Square--houses that
+would take her in when there's a warrant out for her arrest--is
+limited. These considerations lead me to believe that the statement of
+these men is not perjured."
+
+"I will apologise when next we meet," I said. When a young man like
+Nigel becomes stilted and dignified, I cannot repress a natural
+inclination to flippancy.
+
+Philip intervened before Nigel could mature a crushing repartee.
+
+"Look here, Seraph," he began. "Just as a favour, and not because we
+have any right to ask, will you say whether Miss Davenant's anywhere
+in this flat? If you say she is, I'm afraid we shall have to tell the
+police; if you say she isn't, we'll go away and not bother you any
+more."
+
+"You must speak for yourself," Nigel interposed, before the Seraph
+could answer.
+
+We sat for a moment in silence. Then Nigel continued his statement
+with unmistakable menace in his tone.
+
+"If once the police intervene, the question becomes more serious and
+involves any one found harbouring a person for whom a warrant of
+arrest has been issued. I naturally do not wish to go to extremes." He
+turned to me: "You offered to show the detectives round these rooms
+last night; will you make me the same offer?"
+
+I pointed to the Seraph.
+
+"They aren't my rooms. I'm only a guest. I took it upon myself to make
+the offer in the Seraph's absence."
+
+He repeated his request in the proper quarter, but was met with an
+uncompromising refusal.
+
+"May I ask your reason?" he said.
+
+"It is a question of manners," answered the Seraph.
+
+"Then you wish me to apply for a search-warrant?"
+
+"I am entirely indifferent. If you think it worth while, apply for one.
+As soon as it is presented, the police--are--welcome--to--any--
+discoveries--they--may--make."
+
+The Seraph spoke with the quiet scorn of injured innocence. I saw a
+shadow of uncertainty settle on Nigel's face. The Seraph must have
+seen it, too; we preserved a strategic silence until uncertainty had
+matured into horrid doubt. I felt sorry for Nigel, as I feel sorry for
+any successful egoist in the toils of anticipated ridicule.
+
+"It would be quicker to clear the matter up now," he said.
+
+"My whole day is at your disposal."
+
+"But mine is not. What is that room?"
+
+"A spare bedroom, now occupied by Toby, if you ask for information."
+
+Nigel started to cross the room.
+
+"I like to check all verbal information," he remarked.
+
+The Seraph had shorter distance to cover, and was standing with his
+back to the door when Nigel got there.
+
+"I allow no unauthorised person to search my rooms without my leave,"
+he said.
+
+"You cannot always prevent it."
+
+"I can in this case."
+
+"We are four to one."
+
+"You are one to two."
+
+"My mistake, no doubt." He waved a hand round the room to indicate his
+allies.
+
+"Assuredly your mistake, if you think Toby will stand by and let you
+search my rooms without my leave, or that any one of the others would
+raise a finger to help you."
+
+Not one of his three allies had moved a step to support him. Nigel was
+impressed. Without retreating from his position he tried the effect of
+bluff.
+
+"You forget the circumstances are exceptional. My sister has been
+spirited away, and so has Phil's. If we think you know the whereabouts
+of the woman who kidnapped them, we shall neither of us hesitate to
+employ timely physical force on you, perhaps inflict salutary physical
+pain."
+
+"You may try, if you like."
+
+"If I try, I shall succeed."
+
+"You don't really think that, you know."
+
+Gartside felt it was time to restore the peace. Walking up to Nigel,
+he led him firmly back to his place at the table and motioned the
+Seraph to his old position in the armchair by the fireplace. There was
+a long, awkward silence. Then Culling crossed the room, and sat on the
+arm of the Seraph's chair.
+
+"Ye're white and ill, Seraph," he said, "and ye know I'm not the man
+would badger you. We're in a hole, and maybe ye can give us a hoist
+out of it. Do ye, or do ye not, know where Miss Davenant's hiding
+herself?"
+
+The Seraph looked him steadily in his eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, is she, or is she not, in these rooms?"
+
+"Would _you_ like to search them?"
+
+"Damn it, no, man! Give us yer word, and that's enough."
+
+For a fraction of time the Seraph gazed at the faces of Culling,
+Philip and Gartside, weighing the characters and measuring the men.
+
+"It's not enough for Rawnsley," he said.
+
+"It'ull have to be."
+
+"He likes to check all verbal information."
+
+Culling shook his clenched fists in the air and involved us all in a
+comprehensive curse. The Seraph lit himself a cigarette, blew out the
+match with a deliberation Nigel could not have surpassed, and
+addressed the company.
+
+"We seem to have reached a deadlock," he began. "Shall I offer a
+solution? The four of you come here and charge me with harbouring the
+woman who is supposed to have made away with Miss Rawnsley and Miss
+Roden. Very good. Every man is free to entertain any suspicions he
+likes, and to ventilate them--provided he doesn't forget his manners.
+Three of you behaved like gentlemen, the fourth followed his own
+methods. I should like to oblige those three. Rawnsley, you have
+menaced me with personal violence, and threatened me with a search
+warrant. You have done this in my own library. If you will apologise,
+and undertake not to enter these rooms again or to molest me here or
+anywhere else, and if you will further undertake not yourself to
+apply--or incite any one else to apply--for a warrant to search the
+flat, I shall have pleasure in accompanying Gartside wherever he
+chooses to go, unlocking any doors that may be locked, and offering
+him every facility in inspecting every nook and cranny in these rooms.
+As you may not accept verbal information even from him, I shall have
+pleasure in extending my offer to Culling. The one will be able to
+check the other."
+
+He blew three smoke-rings and waited for an answer.
+
+There was another moment of general discomfort. Nigel jibbed at the
+idea of apologising, Gartside and Culling would have done anything to
+avoid accepting the offer; from Philip's miserable fidgeting I could
+see that he had been persuaded into coming against his better
+judgment. For myself, I waited as a condemned man waits for the drop
+to fall. It was bound to come in a few seconds' time, but--illogically
+enough--I had ceased to dread it. My one fear was that Joyce should
+betray herself by one of those pitiful moans that had mingled with my
+dreams and vexed my sleep throughout the night. To this hour I can
+remember thinking how horror-stricken I should be if that sound broke
+out again. It had begun to get on my nerves.... The discovery itself
+was inevitable; I could imagine no trick or illusion that would enable
+the Seraph to steer his inquisitors past one of the principal rooms in
+the flat.
+
+"I apologise for any offence I may have given, and I undertake all
+that you ask."
+
+It was not gracefully done, but the Seraph accepted the words for the
+spirit.
+
+"Come on, and let's get it over!" Culling exclaimed, jumping up and
+cramming his hat on the back of his head. With sinking heart I saw the
+three of them framed in the doorway, Gartside's huge form towering
+over the other two.
+
+"Devilish sorry about the whole business," I heard him begin as the
+door closed. It was opened again for a moment as the Seraph reminded
+me where the drinks were kept, and suggested I should compound a
+cocktail. Then it closed finally.
+
+Outside in the hall Culling added his contribution to the general
+apology.
+
+"Come quietly," was all the Seraph would answer. "I hope she's
+sleeping."
+
+Both men paused abruptly and gazed first at the Seraph and then at
+each other. He returned their gaze unwaveringly, surprised apparently
+that they should be surprised. Then he led them wide-eyed with
+expectation across the hall; wide-eyed they watched him bend and
+listen, tap and gently open a bedroom door. The nurse rose from her
+chair at the bedside and placed a finger on her lips--
+
+"Praise God, she's sleeping!" murmured Paddy Culling, with instinctive
+reverence removing his hat. Gartside looked for a moment at the
+flushed cheeks and parched lips, then turned away as the Seraph closed
+the door.
+
+"Mustn't go back yet," he said. "We'd better look at one or two more
+rooms just to fill in time."
+
+One of the shortest recorded councils of war was held in the bathroom.
+Culling, with his quick, superficial sympathy had already made up his
+mind, but Gartside stood staring out of the window with head bent and
+hands locked behind his back, struggling and torn between an
+unwillingness to hurt Joyce and a deep hungry desire to bring Sylvia
+safely out of her unknown hiding-place.
+
+"You'll kill her if you move her," the Seraph remarked,
+dispassionately but with careful choice of time. Gartside's foot
+tapped the floor irresolutely. "Toby's engaged to marry her," he added
+softly.
+
+With a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders Gartside turned to Culling,
+nodded without speaking, and linked arms with the Seraph.
+
+"You're a good little devil," he said with a forced smile. "When this
+poor girl's better, get her to say where Sylvia is. She'll tell you.
+And let me know when the whole damned thing's straightened out. I'm
+off to Bombay in ten days' time. And it isn't very cheerful going off
+without knowing where Sylvia is. Now we've been out long enough," he
+added in firm, normal tones.
+
+All three of us looked up quickly as the door opened. Culling's hat
+was once more on his head, and he was trying to pull on a pair of
+gloves and light a cigarette at the same time.
+
+"All over but the cheering," he began abruptly. "High and low we've
+searched, and not found enough of a woman would make a man leave Eden,
+and she the only woman in the world."
+
+"You've searched every room?" asked Nigel with a suspicious glance at
+the Seraph.
+
+"Cellar to garret," answered Culling serenely, "and no living creature
+but a pair of goldfinches, and one of them dead; unless you'd be
+counting the buxom matron that the Seraph dashes my hopes by sayin'
+has a taste for drink like the many best of us, and she married
+already, and the mother of fourteen brace of twins and a good plain
+cook into the bargain."
+
+Nigel picked up his papers and turned to Gartside for corroboration.
+
+"We searched every room," he was told, "and Miss Davenant's not here.
+Seraph, we owe you...."
+
+The apology was cut short, as speaker and listeners paused to catch a
+sound that floated through the silent hall and in at the open library
+door. A long, troubled moaning it was, the sound I had heard all night
+and dreaded all the morning.
+
+"I shall have to check the verbal information after all," said Nigel
+as he put back his hat and papers on the table.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Gartside as he approached the door.
+
+"It seems I must search the house myself."
+
+"You undertook to accept our finding."
+
+"I thought I could trust you."
+
+"I have said Miss Davenant is not in these rooms," said Gartside in a
+warning voice.
+
+"If you said it a hundred times I should still disbelieve you. Let me
+pass, please."
+
+He raised a hand to clear himself a passage, but in physical strength
+he had met more than his match. Seizing both wrists in one hand and
+both ankles in the other, Gartside carried him like a child's doll
+across the room to the open library window, thrust him through it, and
+held him for ninety seconds stretched at arm's length three storeys
+above the level of the street. The veins stood out on his forehead,
+and I heard his voice rumbling like the distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"When I say a thing, Nigel, you have to believe me. The moon's of
+green cheese if I tell you to believe it, and when I say Miss
+Davenant's not in this flat, she's not and never has been, and never
+will be. You see?"
+
+Stepping back from the window, he dropped his burden on a neighbouring
+sofa. Nigel straightened his tie, brushed his clothes, and once more
+gathered up his hat, his papers, and the remains of his dignity.
+
+"Culling says there is no woman but a cook in the house," he began,
+with the studied tranquillity of an angry man. "He clearly lies.
+Gartside says Miss Davenant is not in the flat. He probably lies, but
+it is always possible that the sound we heard may have come from some
+woman Aintree thinks fit to keep in his rooms. In either event, I do
+not feel bound by the undertaking I have given." He pulled out a
+note-book and pretended to consult it. "To-day's Wednesday. If my
+sister and Sylvia have not been restored to their families by midday
+on Monday, I shall apply for a warrant to have these rooms searched.
+They will, of course, be watched in the interval. If Lord Gartside or
+any other person presumes to lay a finger on me, I shall summon him
+for assault."
+
+Pocketing the note-book he passed out of the flat with the air I
+suspect Rhadamanthus of assuming, when he is leaving the court for the
+luncheon interval, and has had a disagreeable morning with the
+prisoners. Culling accompanied him to prevent a sudden bolt at a
+suspicious-looking door, Philip followed with the Seraph, I brought up
+the rear with Gartside. All of us were smarting with the Englishman's
+traditional dislike of a "scene."
+
+"I never congratulated you on the Bombay appointment," I said, with
+praiseworthy design of scrambling onto neutral territory. "How soon
+are you off?"
+
+"Friday week," he answered.
+
+"It's little enough time--nine days."
+
+"Oh, I've known for some little while beyond that. It was only made
+public to-day."
+
+"It's a pleasant post," I said reflectively. "In a tolerably pleasant
+country. I shall probably come to stay with you; I'm forgetting what
+India's like."
+
+"I wish you would," he said warmly.
+
+"How are you going? P. and O. I suppose?"
+
+"No, I shall go in my own yacht."
+
+Culling turned round to reprove me for my forgetfulness.
+
+"We Gartsides always take our own yachts when we cross the ocean to
+take up our new responsibilities of Empire," he explained.
+
+"Where do you sail from?" I ask. "Marseilles?"
+
+"Southampton. Are you coming to see me off?"
+
+"I might. It depends whether I can get away. Half London will be
+there, I suppose?"
+
+Candidly I cannot say whether my questions were prompted by what the
+Seraph would call a sub-conscious plan of campaign. Gartside
+undeniably thought they were, and met me gallantly.
+
+"I'm eating a farewell dinner every night till I sail," he said. Then,
+sinking his voice, he added, "You know the yacht--she's roomy, and
+there will be only my two aide-de-camps and myself. No one will be
+seeing me off, because I haven't told them when I'm sailing. It's the
+usual route--anywhere in the Mediterranean. But I can't sail before
+Friday week."
+
+"I see. Well," I held out my hand, "if I _don't_ see you again, I'll
+say good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye. Best of luck!" he answered, and waved a hand as I walked
+back and rejoined the Seraph in the hall.
+
+He was so white that I expected every moment to see him faint, and his
+clothes were wet with perspiration. I, who am not so fine-drawn, had
+found the last hour a little trying.
+
+"You're going to bed in decent time to-night," I told him. "I'm going
+to see Nurse, and find out if she knows of any one she can trust to
+come and help her. And I'm going to keep you out of the sick-room at
+the point of a bayonet if you've got one."
+
+I had expected a protest, but none came. He sat with closed eyes,
+resting his head on his hand.
+
+"I suppose that will be best," he assented at last.
+
+"And now you're coming to get something to eat," I said, leading him
+into the dining-room.
+
+"I'm not hungry," he complained.
+
+"But you're going to eat a great deal," I said, pushing him into his
+chair and selecting a serviceable, sharp-pronged pickle-fork.
+
+After luncheon I had my usual siesta, prolonged rather beyond my usual
+hour. It was five o'clock when I awoke, and I found the Seraph playing
+with a sheet of paper. He had written "Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
+Sunday, Monday" on it, and after "Monday," "12.0 P.M."
+
+"What's all this?" I asked.
+
+"Our days of grace."
+
+I added "Friday week" to the calendar.
+
+"If we can get Joyce well enough to move away from Nigel's damned
+cordon of police," I said, "and if we can hide her somewhere till
+Friday week, friend Gartside's yacht is going to solve a good many
+problems."
+
+"It's not going to find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+That was unquestionably true.
+
+"I don't know how that's going to be managed," I said.
+
+We sat without speaking until dinner-time, and ate a silent dinner. At
+eleven o'clock he left the room, changed out of his dress clothes into
+a tweed suit, and put on a hat and brown walking boots.
+
+"Where are you off to?" I asked when he came back.
+
+"I'm going to find Sylvia."
+
+The expression in his eyes convinced me--if I wanted any
+convincing--that the strain of the last few days had proved too much
+for him.
+
+"Leave it till the morning," I said in the tone one adopts in talking
+to lunatics and drunken men.
+
+"She wants me now."
+
+"A few hours won't make any difference," I urged. "You'll start
+fresher if you have a night's rest to the good."
+
+The Seraph held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye. You think I'm mad. I'm not. No more than I ever am. But
+Sylvia wants me, and I must go to her."
+
+"Where is she?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Then how are you going to find her?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, where will you start looking?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He was already halfway across the hall. I balanced the rival claims of
+Joyce and himself. She at least had a doctor and nurse, and a second
+nurse was coming in the morning. He had no one.
+
+"Damn you, Seraph!" I said under my breath, and then aloud: "Wait a
+bit and I'll come too."
+
+"Hurry up then!" he answered chafing visibly at the delay.
+
+I spoke a hurried word to the nurse, took a last look at Joyce,
+changed my clothes and joined him on the landing.
+
+"Which way first?" I asked, and received the answer I might have
+expected.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SIXTH SENSE
+
+      "There was no sound at all within the room. But ... he
+      saw a woman's face.
+
+      "He saw it quite clearly for perhaps five seconds, the
+      face rising white from the white column of the throat, the
+      dark and weighty coronal of the hair, the curved lips
+      which alone had any colour, the eyes, deep and troubled,
+      which seemed to hint a prayer for help which they
+      disdained to make--for five seconds, perhaps, the illusion
+      remained, for five seconds the face looked out at him ...
+      lit palely, as it seemed, by its own pallor, and so
+      vanished."
+
+                   A.E.W. MASON: "Miranda of the Balcony."
+
+
+Neither by inclination nor habit am I more blasphemous or foul-mouthed
+than my neighbour, but I should not relish being ordered a year in
+Purgatory for every occasion on which I repeated "Damn you, Seraph!"
+in the course of the following nineteen or twenty hours.
+
+It was nearly midnight when we left Adelphi Terrace, and I had in my
+own mind fixed one hour as the maximum duration of my patience or
+willingness to humour a demented neurotic. Thirty minutes out, thirty
+minutes back, and then the Seraph would go to bed, if I had to keep
+him covered with my revolver. _En parenthese_, I wish I could break
+myself of the habit of carrying loaded firearms by night. In the
+settled, orderly Old Countries it is unnecessary; in the West it is
+merely foolish. I should be the richer by the contents of six
+chambers before I had time to draw on the quick, resourceful child of
+a Western State.... Nevertheless, my revolver and I are inseparable.
+
+We started down the Strand, along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace,
+and through Eaton Square to the Cadogan Estate. This was what I ought
+to have expected, if I had had time to sort out my expectations. The
+Seraph stood for a few minutes looking up at the Rodens' slumbering
+house, and then walked slowly eastward into Sloane Street.
+
+"Shall we go back now?" I suggested, in the voice one uses to deceive
+a child.
+
+"I'm not mad, Toby," he answered, like a boy repeating a lesson. "I
+must find Sylvia."
+
+He wandered into Knightsbridge, hesitated, and then set out at an
+uncertain three miles an hour along the border of the park towards
+Kensington. I realized with a sinking heart that he was heading for
+Chiswick.
+
+"Better leave it till the morning, Seraph," I urged, with a hand on
+his shoulder. "She'll be in bed, and we mustn't disturb her."
+
+He shook me off, and wandered on--hands in pocket and eyes to the
+ground. Twice I thought he would have blundered into an early
+market-cart, but catastrophe was averted more by the drivers' resource
+than any prudence on his own part. As we left Kensington and trudged
+on through the hideous purlieus of Hammersmith, I began to visualize
+our arrival at the Fraeulein's house, and my stammering, incoherent
+apologies for my companion's behaviour.
+
+The deferential speech was not required. On entering Chiswick High
+Street we should have turned to the right up Goldhawk Road, and then
+taken the second or third turning to the left into Teignmouth
+Terrace. The Seraph plodded resolutely on, looking neither to the
+right nor left, through Hounslow, past the walls of Sion Park and the
+gas-works of Brentford, into Colnbrook and open country. There was no
+reason why he should not follow the great road as far as the Romans
+had built it--and beyond. Night was lifting, and the stars paled in
+the blue uncertain light of early dawn.
+
+I gripped him by the shoulders and made him look me in the face.
+
+"We're going back now," I said.
+
+"_You_ can."
+
+"You're coming with me."
+
+"I must find Sylvia."
+
+"If you'll come back now, I'll take you to her in the morning."
+
+"I'm not a child, Toby, and I'm not mad."
+
+"You're behaving as if you were both."
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he repeated, as though that were an answer to
+every conceivable question.
+
+"If you're sane," I said, "you can appreciate the insanity of walking
+from London to Bath in search of a girl who may be in Scotland or on
+the Gold Coast for all you know. She's as likely to be in the Mile End
+Road as on the Bath Road. Why not look there? It's nearer Adelphi
+Terrace, at all events."
+
+He looked at me for a moment reproachfully, as though his last friend
+had failed him, then turned and plodded westward....
+
+"God's truth!" I cried. "Where are you off to?"
+
+"I must find Sylvia," he answered.
+
+"But where? Where?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why this God-stricken road rather than another?"
+
+"She came along here."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"She did," was all he would answer.
+
+It was near Langley that I threatened him with personal injury. He had
+quickened his pace and shot slightly ahead of me. I have never been of
+a fleshy build, and with the exception of excessive cigar-smoking, my
+tastes are moderate. On the other hand, I never take exercise save
+under compulsion, or walk a mile if I can possibly ride, drive, or
+fly. We had covered some twenty miles since leaving home, my feet
+seemed cased in divers' boots, my mouth was parched with thirst, and I
+was ravenously hungry.
+
+"Are you sane?" I asked, as I caught him up.
+
+"As sane as I ever am."
+
+"Then you will understand my terms. We are going to leave the main
+road and walk straight to Langley Station. We are going to take the
+first train back to town, and we are...."
+
+"You can," he interrupted.
+
+"You will come with me. Don't tell me you have to find Sylvia, because
+it will be waste of breath. I have here a six-chambered revolver,
+loaded. Unless you come to the station with me, here and now, I shall
+empty one chamber into each of your legs. And if any one thinks I'm
+murdering you, I shall say I'm in pursuit of a dangerous lunatic. And
+when they see you, they'll believe me."
+
+He looked at me for perhaps half a second, and then walked on. It was,
+I suppose, the answer I deserved.
+
+It came as a surprise to me when he accepted my breakfast proposition
+at Slough. I put his assent down to sheer perversity, for I should
+have breakfasted in any case. My mind was made up. I would ask him for
+the last time to accompany me back to London, and if he refused I
+would return to Adelphi Terrace and bed, leaving him to follow the
+sun's path till he pitched head-foremost into the Bristol Channel....
+
+I breakfasted unwashed, unshaven, dusty, at full length on a sofa in a
+private room, simmering with grievance and irritability.
+
+"_Now_ then," I said, as I lit a cigar, threw the Seraph another, and
+turned to a Great Western time-table.
+
+"I must be getting on," he answered, giving me back my cigar.
+
+"Just a moment," I said. "Up-trains, Sundays. Up-trains, week-days.
+Ten-fifteen. Horses and carriages only. Ten-thirty; that'ull do me.
+I'll walk with you as far as the cross-roads."
+
+I was so angry with myself and him that we parted without a word or
+shake of the hand. I watched him striding westward in the direction of
+Salt Hill, and carried my temper with me towards the station. The
+first twenty yards were covered at a swinging, resolute pace, the
+second more slowly. I was still far from the station when an absurd,
+irritating sensation of shame brought me to a standstill. Mad,
+unreasonable as I knew him to be, the more I thought of the Seraph,
+the less I liked the idea of leaving him in his present state. The
+sight of a garage, with cars for hire, decided me. I ordered one for
+the day, with the option of renewing on the same terms as long as I
+wanted it.
+
+"Take the money while you can get it," I warned the proprietor, with
+the petulance of a tired man. "With luck you'll next hear of me from
+the inside of a padded cell. Now!" I said to the driver, "listen very
+carefully. I'm about as angry as a man can be. Here are two sovereigns
+for yourself; take them, and say nothing, whatever language you may
+hear me use. I want you to drive along the Bath Road until you see a
+young man in a grey tweed suit walking along with his eyes on the
+ground. You're to keep him in sight wherever he goes. _He's_ mad, and
+_I'm_ mad, and _everybody's_ mad. Follow him, and address a remark to
+me at your peril. I've been up all night, I've walked from London to
+Slough, and I'm now going to sleep."
+
+My orders called forth not so much as the lift of an eyebrow. The
+difference between eccentricity and madness may be measured in pounds
+sterling. A rich man is never mad in England, unless, of course, his
+heirs-at-law cast wistful glances at the pounds sterling. In that case
+there will be an Inquisition and a report to the Masters.... My driver
+left me to slumber undisturbed.
+
+I slept only in snatches. The car would run a mile, pass the Seraph,
+pull up, wait, start forward and stop again. Once I invited him to
+come aboard, but he shook his head. I dozed, and dreamed, and woke,
+asking the driver what had come of our quarry.
+
+"He's following, sir," he told me.
+
+I was struck with an ingenious idea.
+
+"At the next cross-roads," I said, "turn off to the right or left,
+drive a hundred yards and pull up. If he follows, we'll lead him round
+in a circle and draw him back to London."
+
+We shot ahead, turned and waited. In time a dusty figure came in sight
+trudging wearily on. At the cross-roads he came for a moment into full
+view, and then passed out of sight along the Bath Road without so
+much as throwing a glance in the direction of the car.
+
+"Damn you, damn you, damn you, Seraph!" I said, as I ordered the
+driver to start once more in pursuit.
+
+At Taplow the dragging feet tripped and brought him down. Through a
+three-cornered tear in the leg of his trousers I could see blood
+flowing freely; his hands were cut and his forehead bruised, but he
+once more rejected my offer of a seat in the car. Opposite Skindles he
+stumbled again, but recovered himself and tramped on over the bridge,
+into Maidenhead, and through the crowded, narrow High Street.
+Passers-by stared at the strange, dusty apparition; he was too
+absorbed to notice, I too angry to be resentful.
+
+It was as we mounted Castle Hill and worked forward towards Maidenhead
+Thicket that I noticed his pace increasing. A steady four miles an
+hour gave way to intermittent spells of running. I heard him panting
+as he came alongside the car, and the rays of a July afternoon sun
+brought beads of sweat to glisten dustily on his lips and forehead.
+
+"Wait here," I said to the driver as we came to the fringe of the
+Thicket. To our right stretched the straight, white Henley Road; ahead
+of us lay Reading and Bath.
+
+The Seraph trotted up, passed us without a word or look, and stumbled
+on towards Reading.
+
+"Forward!" I said to the driver, and then countermanded my order and
+bade him wait.
+
+Twenty yards ahead of us the Seraph had come to a standstill, and was
+casting about like a hound that has overshot the scent. I watched him
+pause, and heard the very whimper of a hound at fault. Then he walked
+back to the fork of the road, gazed north-west towards Henley, and
+stood for a moment on tiptoe with closed eyes, head thrown back and
+arms outstretched like a pirouetting dancer.
+
+I waited for him to fall. I say "waited" advisedly, for I could have
+done nothing to save him. I ought to have jumped out, called the
+driver to my aid, tied hands and feet, and borne my prisoner back to
+London and a madhouse. Throughout the night and morning, well into the
+afternoon, I had cursed him for one lunatic and myself for another. My
+own madness lay in following him instead of shrugging my shoulders and
+leaving him to his fate. His madness ... as I watched the strained
+pose of nervous alertness, I wondered whether he was so mad after all.
+
+With startling suddenness the rigid form relaxed, eyes opened, head
+fell forward, arms dropped to the body. He ran fifty yards along the
+road, hesitated, plunged blindly through a clump of low gorse bushes,
+and fell prone in the middle of a grass ride.
+
+"Stop where you are!" I called to the driver as I ran down the road
+and turned into the bridle-path.
+
+The Seraph was lying with one foot caught in a tangle of bracken. He
+was conscious, but breathed painfully. I helped him upright, supported
+him with an arm round the body, and tried to lead him back to the car.
+
+"This way!" he gasped, pointing down the ride. Half a mile away I
+caught sight of a creeper-covered bungalow--picturesque, peaceful,
+inanimate, but with its eastern aspect ruined by the presence of a new
+corrugated iron shed. I judged it to be a garage by the presence of
+green tins of motor spirit.
+
+"She's there--Sylvia!" he panted, slowly recovering his breath as we
+walked down the bridle-path. "Go in and get her. Make them give her
+up!"
+
+I looked at his torn, dusty clothes, his white face and dizzy eyes. At
+the fork of the road I had come near to being converted. It was
+another matter altogether to invade a strange house and call upon an
+unknown householder to yield up the person of a young woman who ought
+not to be there, who could only be there by an implied charge of
+felonious abduction, who probably was not there, who certainly was not
+there.... I am at heart conventional, decorous, sensitive to ridicule.
+
+"We can't," I said weakly. "It's a strange house; we don't know that
+she's there; we might expose ourselves to an action for slander...."
+
+He walked to the gate of the garden, freed himself from the support of
+my arm, and marched up to the front door. I took inglorious cover
+behind a walnut-tree and heard him knock. There was a pause. A window
+opened and closed; another pause, and the sound of feet approaching.
+Then the door opened.
+
+"I have come for Miss Roden," I heard him say.
+
+"Roden? Miss Roden? No one of that name lives here."
+
+The voice was that of a woman, and I tried to catch sight of the face.
+I had heard that voice before, or one suspiciously like it.
+
+"I will give you two minutes to produce Miss Roden."
+
+The answering voice quivered with sudden indignation.
+
+"You must be intoxicated. Take your foot out of the door and go away,
+or I'll call a man and have you given in charge."
+
+The voice, rising in shrill, tremulous excitement, would have added
+something more, but was silenced by a fit of coughing. I left my
+walnut-tree, pushed open the gate, and arrived at the bungalow door
+as the coughing ceased and a handkerchief dabbed furtively at a fleck
+of bright red froth.
+
+"Miss Draper, I believe?" I said.
+
+She looked at me in surprise.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"We met at Miss Davenant's house in Chester Square. Don't apologize
+for not remembering me, we were never introduced. I just caught your
+name. We have called...."
+
+"Is this person a friend of yours?" she asked, pointing a contemptuous
+finger at the Seraph.
+
+"He is. We have called for Miss Roden."
+
+"She is not here."
+
+"One minute gone," said the Seraph, watch in hand.
+
+Miss Draper turned her head and called to some one inside the house. I
+think the name was "John."
+
+"I am armed," I warned her.
+
+She paid no attention.
+
+"One minute and a half," said the Seraph.
+
+I put my hand out to cover the watch, and addressed Miss Draper.
+
+"I don't think you appreciate the strength of our position," I began.
+"You are no doubt aware that the office of the _New Militant_ has been
+raided; your friend Mrs. Millington has been arrested, and there is a
+warrant out against your other friend, Miss Davenant."
+
+"They haven't caught her," said Miss Draper, defiantly.
+
+I could almost forgive her when I saw the look of doglike fidelity
+that the mention of Joyce's name brought into her eyes.
+
+"Do you know where she is?" asked the Seraph.
+
+"I shan't say."
+
+"I think it probable that you do _not_ know," I answered. "Miss
+Davenant is critically ill, and is lying at the present time in my
+friend's flat."
+
+"You expect me to believe that?"
+
+"It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. The flat is already
+suspected and watched."
+
+"Why don't they search it?"
+
+"Because England is a corrupt country," I said, boldly inventing. "I
+have what is called a friend at Court. Miss Davenant's sister--Mrs.
+Wylton--is an old friend of mine, and I wish to spare her the pain of
+seeing Miss Davenant arrested--in a critical condition--if it can be
+avoided. My friend at Court has been persuaded to suspend the issue of
+a search-warrant, if Miss Roden and the others are restored to their
+families before midnight to-night. I may say in passing that if Miss
+Davenant were arrested, tried and imprisoned, it would be no more than
+she richly deserved. However, I do not expect you to agree with me.
+Out of regard to Mrs. Wylton we have come down here. I need not say
+how we found Miss Roden was being kept here----"
+
+"She is not."
+
+I sighed resignedly.
+
+"You wish Miss Davenant to be given up?"
+
+"You don't know where Miss Davenant is, and I do."
+
+It was bluff against bluff, but we could go on no longer on the old
+lines. I produced my revolver as a guarantee of determination,
+pocketed it once more, pushed my way past her as gently as I could,
+waited for the Seraph to follow, and then closed the door.
+
+"I am now going to search the house," I told Miss Draper. "This is
+your last chance. Tell me where Miss Roden is, and I will compound a
+felony, and let you and every one else in the house escape. Put a
+single obstacle in my way, and I will have the lot of you arrested.
+Which is it to be?"
+
+She started to tell me again that Sylvia was not there. I made a step
+across the room and saw her cover her face with her hands. The battle
+was over.
+
+"Where is she?" I demanded, thanking God that it has not often been my
+lot to fight with women.
+
+Miss Draper pointed to a door on the left of the hall; the key was in
+the lock.
+
+"No tricks?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"You had better make yourself scarce."
+
+Even as I put my hand to the door she vanished into the back of the
+house. I heard the sound of an engine starting, and rushed out to see
+if I had even now been outwitted. The garrison was driving out hatless
+and coatless, stripped of all honours of war; in the driving-seat sat
+my friend the bearded priest of the Orthodox Church, his beard
+somewhat awry. Miss Draper was beside him; there was no one else.
+
+I returned to the hall--where the Seraph was sleeping upright against
+the wall--opened the door and entered a darkened room. As my eyes grew
+accustomed to the subdued light, I traced the outline of a window, and
+drew back the curtains. The sun flooded in, and showed me that I stood
+in a bedroom. A table with an untasted meal stood against one wall; by
+the other was a camp bedstead. At length on the bed, fully dressed but
+blindfolded, gagged, and bound hand and foot, lay Sylvia Roden.
+
+I cut the cords, tore away the bandages, and watched her rise stiffly
+to her feet. Then I shut the door and stood awkwardly at the window,
+while she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
+
+It was soon over, but she was the better for it. I watched her drink
+three tumblers of water and seize a crust of dry bread. It appeared
+that she had conducted a hunger-strike of her own for the last
+twenty-four hours; and I think she looked it. Her face was white with
+the whiteness of a person who has been long confined in a small, dark
+room. A bruise over one temple showed that her captors had had to deal
+with a woman of metal, and her wrists were chafed and cut with the
+pressure of the cords. Worst of all was her change of spirit; the
+voice had lost its proud ring of assurance, the dark eyes were
+frightened. Sylvia Roden was almost broken.
+
+"You didn't expect to see me, Sylvia," I said, as I buttered the stale
+crusts to make them less unappetizing.
+
+She shook her head without answering.
+
+"Did you think no one was ever coming?"
+
+She looked at me still with the frightened expression in her eyes.
+
+"No."
+
+The uncertainty of her tone made me wonder whom she had been
+expecting. My question was answered before I could ask it.
+
+"How did you find me?"
+
+"The Seraph brought me here."
+
+Her pale cheeks took on a tinge of colour.
+
+"Where is he?" she asked.
+
+"Outside."
+
+"I must go to him!" she exclaimed, jumping up and then swaying
+dizzily.
+
+I pressed her back into her chair.
+
+"Wait till you've had some food," I said, "and then I'll bring him
+in."
+
+"But I don't want any more."
+
+"Sylvia," I said firmly, "if you're not a good girl we shan't rescue
+you another time."
+
+She ate a few slices of bread and butter while I gave her an outline
+of our journey down from London. Then we went out into the hall. The
+Seraph had collapsed from his upright position, and was lying in a
+heap with his head on the floor. I carried him out of the hall and
+laid him on the bed in Sylvia's prison. His heart was beating, but he
+seemed to have fallen into a deep trance. Sylvia bent down and kissed
+the dusty forehead. Then her eyes fell on a faint red mark running
+diagonally from one cheek-bone, across the mouth, to the point of the
+chin. She had started crying again when I left the room in search of
+brandy.
+
+I stayed away as long as I thought necessary to satisfy myself that
+there were no other prisoners in the house. When I came back, the
+tears were still wet on her cheeks, and she was bathing his face and
+waiting for the eyes to open.
+
+"Your prison doesn't run to brandy," I told her. "We must get him to
+Maidenhead, and I'll give him some there. I've got a car waiting about
+half a mile away. Will you look after him while I fetch it?"
+
+"Don't be long," she said, with an anxious look at the white, still
+face.
+
+"No longer than I can help. Here's a revolver in case any one wants to
+abduct either of you. It's loaded, so be careful."
+
+I placed the revolver on the table and picked up my hat.
+
+"Sylvia!" I said at the door.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Can you be trusted to look after him properly?"
+
+She smiled for the first time since her release from captivity.
+
+"I think so," she said. Then the voice quavered and she turned away.
+"He's rather precious."
+
+The car was brought to the door, and the driver--who, after all, had
+been paid not to be surprised--looked on unemotionally as we carried
+the Seraph on board. I occupied an uncomfortable little seat backing
+the engine, while Sylvia sat in one corner and the Seraph was propped
+up in the other.
+
+On the way back I was compelled to repeat _in extenso_ the whole story
+of our search, from the hour we left Adelphi Terrace to the moment
+when Miss Draper bolted with the Orthodox Church priest and I forced
+my way into the darkened prison cell.
+
+Sylvia's face was an interesting study in expression as the narrative
+proceeded.
+
+"But how could he _know_?" she asked in a puzzled tone when I had
+ended. "You must explain that. I don't see how it's possible."
+
+"Madam, I have provided you with a story," I replied in the manner of
+Dr. Johnson; "I am not obliged to provide you with a moral."
+
+As a matter of fact I had reversed the natural order, and given the
+moral before the story. The moral was pointed when I drank a friendly
+cup of tea in Cadogan Square; the day before she marked his cheek with
+its present angry wale.
+
+Of course, if you point morals before there's a story to hang them
+from, you must expect to see them disregarded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+OR THE OBVIOUS ALTERNATIVE
+
+      "If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman--always
+      a rash thing to do--he never dreams of considering
+      whether the idea is right or wrong. The one thing he
+      considers of any importance is whether one believes it
+      oneself.... The inherited stupidity of the race--sound
+      English common sense...."
+
+                OSCAR WILDE: "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
+
+
+If the Seraph's quest for Sylvia was one of the strangest experiences
+of my life, I count our return to London among its pleasantest
+memories. Almost before I had time to cut the cords round her wrists
+and ankles, I was telling myself that Joyce now lay free from the
+menace of an inquisition at Adelphi Terrace. Thursday afternoon. She
+had eight days to pick up sufficient strength for Maybury-Reynardson
+to say I might smuggle her to Southampton and convey her on board the
+S.Y. _Ariel_.... I hope I was not heartless or ungrateful in thinking
+more of her than of the white, unconscious boy in front of me; there
+was nothing more that I could do, and if there had been, Sylvia would
+have forestalled me.
+
+I count the return a pleasant memory for the light it threw on
+Sylvia's character. Passion and pride had faded out of her dark eyes;
+I could no longer call her Queen Elizabeth; but she was very tender
+and remorseful to the man she had injured. This was the Sylvia of an
+Oxford summer evening; I could recognise her from the Seraph's
+description. I treasure the memory because it was the only glimpse I
+ever caught of this side of her character; when next we met--before
+her last parting from the Seraph--she had gone back to the earlier
+hard haughtiness, and though I loved Sylvia at all times, I loved her
+least when she was regal.
+
+And lastly I dwell on this memory for the way she talked to me when my
+tale was done. It was then she showed me the reverse side of her
+relations with the Seraph, and filled in those spaces that the
+manuscript narrative in Adelphi Terrace left blank. I remember most of
+what she told me; their meetings and conversations, her deepening
+interest, rising curiosity, growing attachment.... I had watched the
+Sixth Sense as a spectator; she gave me her own curiosity--uneasiness--
+belief and disbelief--ultimate uncertainty. I realised then what it
+must have meant to such a girl to find a man who was conscious of her
+presence at a distance and could see the workings of her mind before
+they were apparent to herself in any definite form. I learned to
+appreciate the thrill she must have experienced on discovering a soul
+in sympathy with her own restless, volatile, hungry spirit.
+
+I remember it all, but I will not be guilty of the sacrilege of
+committing it to paper. No girl has ever spoken her heart to me as
+Sylvia then spoke it; I am not sure that I want to be again admitted
+to such confidences. It is all strange, and sad, and unsatisfactory;
+but above all it is sacred. Her imprisonment had taken the fire out of
+Sylvia's blood; and her meeting with the Seraph had worked on her
+emotions. At another time she would have been more reticent. As after
+our return from Oxford, I sometimes think we were punished by an
+extreme of cold for having been injudiciously admitted to bask in an
+extreme of heat. That is the way with the English climate, and with a
+certain number of reserved, proud girls who grow up under its
+influence....
+
+I dropped Sylvia at Cadogan Square without going in, and carried the
+Seraph straight back to Adelphi Terrace. Maybury-Reynardson was paying
+Joyce an evening visit; the report was satisfactory so far as it went,
+but indicated that we must exercise great patience before a complete
+cure could be expected. I asked--on a matter of life and
+death--whether she could be moved in a week's time. He preferred to
+give no opinion, and reminded me that I must not attempt to see or
+speak to the patient. Then I turned him over to the Seraph, ordered
+myself some dinner, and went to bed.
+
+In the morning a telephone message informed me that Arthur Roden would
+like us both to go round to Cadogan Square. I answered that it was out
+of the question so far as the Seraph was concerned; and it was not
+till late on the Saturday afternoon that I felt justified in letting
+him get out of bed and accompany me. He still looked perilously white
+and ill, and though one strain had been removed by the discovery of
+Sylvia, and another by the departure of the search-warrant bogey, I
+could see no good purpose in his being called in to assist at an
+affecting reconciliation, and having to submit to a noisy chorus of
+congratulation.
+
+We were spared both. I suppose I shall never know the true reason for
+the reception that awaited us, but I distribute the responsibility in
+equal shares between Lady Roden and Nigel Rawnsley. And of course I
+have to keep reminding myself that I had been present at the search,
+while they were not; that they were plain, matter-of-fact
+materialists with a rational cause for every effect, while I--well, I
+put myself out of court at once by asking them to believe in an
+absurdity called a Sixth Sense.
+
+I find it hard, however, to forgive Nigel his part in the scene that
+followed; so far as I can see he was actuated first by jealousy on
+Sylvia's account, secondly by personal venom against the Seraph as a
+result of the unauthorised search-party, and lastly by the obstinate
+anger of a strong-willed, successful egoist, who has been driven to
+dwell even temporarily in the shade of unsuccess. Lady Roden, it must
+never be forgotten, had to sink the memory of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, and the quarterings and armorial devices of an entire
+Heralds' College, before she could be expected to do justice to a man
+like the Seraph.
+
+We were shown into the library, and found Arthur, Nigel and Philip
+seated before us like the Beasts in Revelation. Lady Roden and Sylvia
+entered later and sat to one side. There was much bowing and no
+hand-shaking.
+
+The story of the search was already known--Sylvia had told it as soon
+as she got home, probably in my own words; and in the first, fine,
+careless rapture, I have no doubt she had spoken of the Seraph in the
+strain I had heard in the car. If this were the case, Lady Roden's
+eyes must have been abruptly and painfully opened. I felt sorry for
+her. Rutlandshire Morningtons frowned sour disfavour from the walls at
+the possibility of her daughter--with her daughter's faith and
+wealth--allying herself with an infidel, unknown, relationless vagrant
+like Lambert Aintree. Rationalism in the person of Nigel Rawnsley was
+called in to discredit the story of the search and save Sylvia from
+squandering herself on a common adventurer.
+
+"You remember the terms of our agreement last Wednesday?" he began. "I
+undertook to suspend application for a search warrant...."
+
+"If we discovered Sylvia," I said. "Yes?"
+
+"And my sister Mavis."
+
+I hope Nigel did not see my jaw drop. Save for the moment when I
+looked casually through the other rooms in the Maidenhead bungalow I
+had completely forgotten the Mavis stipulation. Every plan and hope I
+had cherished in respect of Joyce had been cherished in vain.
+
+"The time was to expire on Monday, at noon," said the Seraph.
+
+"Exactly. I thought I would remind you that only half the undertaking
+had been carried out. That is all."
+
+Nigel would make an admirable proctor; he is to the manner born. I had
+quite the old feeling of being five shillings the poorer for straying
+round the streets of Oxford at night without academical dress.
+
+I caught the Seraph's eye and made as if to rise.
+
+"One moment," said Arthur. "There is a good deal more to come."
+
+I folded my arms resignedly. Any one may lecture me if it amuses him
+to do so, but the Seraph ought to have been in bed instead of having
+to submit to examination by an old K.C.
+
+"The question is a good deal wider," Arthur began. "You, Aintree, are
+suspected of harbouring at your flat a woman who is wanted by the
+police on a most serious charge...."
+
+"I thought we'd cleared all this up on Wednesday," I said, with an
+impatient glance at Nigel.
+
+"No arrangement you may have made on Wednesday is binding on me."
+
+"It was binding on your son, who sits on one side of you," I said,
+"and on Mr. Nigel Rawnsley, who sits on the other."
+
+Arthur drew himself up, no doubt unconsciously.
+
+"As a Minister of the Crown I cannot be a party to any connivance at
+crime."
+
+"Philip and Nigel," I said. "As sons of Ministers of the Crown, I hope
+you will take that to heart."
+
+"What I have to say----" Arthur began.
+
+"One moment!" I interrupted. "Are you speaking as a Minister of the
+Crown or a father of a family? Sylvia's been restored to you as the
+result of your son and Nigel conniving at what you hope and believe to
+be a crime. You wouldn't have got her back without that immoral
+compromise."
+
+"The flat would have been searched," said Nigel.
+
+"It was. Paddy and Gartside searched it and declared themselves
+satisfied...."
+
+"They lied."
+
+"Will you repeat that to Gartside?" I asked invitingly. "I fancy not.
+They searched and declared themselves satisfied. I offered to show the
+detectives round ten minutes after--by all accounts--this woman ought
+to have taken refuge there. Anybody could have searched it if they'd
+approached the owner properly."
+
+He ignored my implied reproof and stuck to his guns.
+
+"There was a woman there when Gartside said there was not."
+
+"Gartside only said Miss Davenant wasn't there."
+
+It was the Seraph speaking, slowly and almost for the first time. His
+face flushed crimson as he said it. I could not help looking at
+Sylvia; I looked away again quickly.
+
+"There was _some_ woman there, then?" said Nigel.
+
+My cue was plain, and I took it.
+
+"Miss Davenant is the only person whose name is before the house," I
+interposed. "Gartside said she was not there. Were you satisfied,
+Phil? I thought so. It's no good asking you, Nigel; you won't be
+satisfied till you've searched in person, and that you can't do till
+after Monday. Every one who agreed to Wednesday's compromise is bound
+by it till Monday midday. If after that Nigel _still_ thinks it worth
+while to conduct Scotland Yard over the flat, of course we shan't
+attempt to stop him. As for any one who was not present or personally
+bound by Wednesday's compromise, that is to say, you, Arthur--do you
+declare to win by 'Father of a Family' or 'Minister of the Crown'? You
+must take one or the other."
+
+"The two are inseparable," he answered shortly.
+
+"You must contrive to separate them. If you declare 'Father of a
+Family,' you must hold yourself bound by Phil's arrangement. If you
+declare 'Minister of the Crown,' you oughtn't to have profited by the
+compromise, you oughtn't to have allowed us to restore Sylvia to you.
+Common schoolboy honour tells you that. Incidentally, why haven't you
+had the flat searched already? As a Minister of the Crown, you
+know...."
+
+If my heart had not been beating so quickly, I should have liked to
+study their faces at leisure. The history of the last two days was
+written with tolerable clearness. Nigel had told Arthur--and possibly
+his own father--the story of his visit to Adelphi Terrace; he had
+hinted sufficient to incite one or both to take the matter up
+officially. Then Philip had intervened and depicted himself as bound
+in honour to take no step until the expiration of the armistice. Their
+faces told a pretty tale of "pull devil, pull baker," with Nigel at
+the head, Philip at the feet, and Arthur twisting and struggling
+between them.
+
+I had no need to ask why the flat had not yet been searched, but I
+repeated my question.
+
+"And when _are_ you going to search it?" I added.
+
+Arthur attempted a compromise.
+
+"If you will give me your word...." he began.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" I said. "Are you bound or are you not? Sylvia's in
+the room to settle any doubts on the subject."
+
+He yielded after a struggle.
+
+"I will take no steps to search the flat until after midday on Monday,
+provided Mavis is restored by then."
+
+I made another attempt to rise, but Arthur waved me back into my seat.
+
+"I have not finished yet. As you point out, Sylvia is in the room. I
+wish to know how she got here, and I wish still more to know how she
+was ever spirited away in the first instance."
+
+"I know nothing about the getting away. She may be able to throw light
+on that. Hasn't she told you how we found her?"
+
+"She has given me your version."
+
+"Then I don't suppose I can add anything to it."
+
+"You might substitute a story that would hold a little more water."
+
+"I am afraid I am not naturally inventive."
+
+"Since when?"
+
+His tone told me that I had definitely lost Arthur as a friend--which
+was regrettable, but if I could play the part of whetstone to his
+repartee I was content to see him draw profit from the _debris_ of our
+friendship.
+
+"It is only fair to say that you and Aintree are regarded with a good
+deal of suspicion," he went on. "Apart from the question of the
+flat...."
+
+"Not again!" I begged.
+
+"I have not mentioned the report of the officers who watched Miss
+Davenant's house in...."
+
+"Nigel has," I interrupted. "_Ad nauseam._ My interview was apparently
+very different from their report. Suppose we have them in?"
+
+"They are not in the house."
+
+"Then hadn't we better leave them out of the discussion? What else are
+we suspected of?"
+
+Arthur traced a pattern on the blotting-pad, and then looked up very
+sternly.
+
+"Complicity with the whole New Militant campaign."
+
+I turned to the Seraph.
+
+"This is devilish serious," I said. "Incitement to crime, three
+abductions, more in contemplation. I shouldn't have thought it to look
+at you. Naughty boy!"
+
+Arthur was really angry at that. I knew it by his old habit of growing
+red behind the ears.
+
+"You appear to think this is a fit subject for jesting," he burst out.
+
+"I laugh that I may not weep," I said. "A charge like this is rather
+upsetting. Have you bothered about any evidence?"
+
+"You will find there is perhaps more evidence than you relish. Apart
+from your intimacy with Miss Davenant...."
+
+"She's a very pretty woman," I interrupted.
+
+"...you have successfully kept one foot in either camp. You were
+present when Rawnsley told me of the abduction of Mavis, and added
+that the matter was being kept secret. Miss Davenant at once
+published an article entitled 'Where is Miss Rawnsley?'"
+
+"If she really abducted the girl, she'd naturally notice it was being
+kept quiet," I objected.
+
+"On the day after Private Members' time had been appropriated,
+Jefferson's boy disappeared; Miss Davenant must have been warned in
+time to have her plans laid. She referred to my midland campaign, and
+had an accomplice lying in wait for my daughter with a car, the same
+day that Rawnsley made his announcement that there would be no autumn
+session."
+
+"You will find all this on the famous Time Table," I reminded him.
+
+"She got her information from some one who knew the arrangements of
+the Government."
+
+"I'm surprised you continued to know me," I said, and turned to the
+Seraph. "It's devilish serious, as I said before, but it seems to be
+my funeral."
+
+Arthur soon undeceived me.
+
+"You are both equally incriminated. Aintree, is it not the case that
+on one occasion in Oxford and another in London, you warned my
+daughter that trouble was in store for her?"
+
+The Seraph had been sitting silent and with closed eyes since his
+single intervention. He now opened his eyes and bowed without
+speaking.
+
+"I suggest that you knew an attempt would be made to abduct her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are quite certain?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Then why the warning?"
+
+"I knew trouble was coming; I didn't know she would be abducted."
+
+"What form of trouble did you anticipate?"
+
+"No form in particular."
+
+"Why trouble at all?"
+
+"I knew it was coming."
+
+"But how?"
+
+He hesitated, and then closed his eyes wearily.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Arthur balanced a quill pen between the first fingers of both hands.
+
+"On Wednesday last your rooms were visited, and the question of a
+search-warrant raised. You obtained a promise that the warrant would
+not be applied for if my daughter and Miss Rawnsley were restored
+within five days. Did you know at that time where they were?"
+
+"No."
+
+"When did you find out?"
+
+"I don't know where Miss Rawnsley is. I didn't know where your
+daughter was till we came to the house."
+
+"We none of us know our hats are in the hall till we look to make
+certain," Nigel interrupted; "but you found her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No one told you where she was?" Arthur went on.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how did you find her?"
+
+"I believe she has told you."
+
+"She has given me Merivale's version. I want yours."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How did you start?"
+
+"She's told you. I walked out of the house, and went on till I found
+her."
+
+"How did you know where to look?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"It was pure coincidence that you should walk some thirty miles,
+passing thousands of houses, and walk straight to the right house--a
+house you didn't know, a house standing away from any main road? This
+was pure coincidence?"
+
+"I knew she was there."
+
+"I think you said you didn't know till you got there. Which do you
+mean?"
+
+"I felt sure she _was_ there."
+
+"You felt that when you left London?"
+
+"I knew she was in that direction. That's how I found the way."
+
+"No one had told you where to look?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Of the scores of roads out of London, you took just the right one. Of
+the millions of houses to the west of London you chose the right one.
+You ask me to believe that you walked thirty miles, straight to the
+right house, because you knew, because you 'felt' she was there?"
+
+"I ask you to believe nothing."
+
+"You make that task quite easy. I suggest that when you were given
+five days' grace you went to some person who knew of my daughter's
+whereabouts, and got the necessary information?"
+
+"No."
+
+Arthur retired from the examination with a smile of
+self-congratulation, and Nigel took up the running.
+
+"Do you know where my sister is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you--er--_feel_ where she is?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can you walk from this house and find her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How soon will you be able to do so?"
+
+With eyes still closed, the Seraph shook his head.
+
+"Never, unless some one tells me where she is."
+
+"Is any one likely to, before Monday at noon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how do you propose to find her?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You know the consequences?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Nigel proceeded to model himself on his leader with praiseworthy
+fidelity.
+
+"I suggest that the person who told you where to look for Miss Roden
+is no longer available to tell you where to look for my sister?"
+
+"No one told me where to look for Miss Roden."
+
+"But you found her, and you can't find my sister?"
+
+"That is so."
+
+"You suggest no reason for the difference?"
+
+For an instant the Seraph opened his eyes and looked across to Sylvia.
+Had she wished, she could have saved him, and his eyes said as much.
+I, too, looked across and found her watching him with the same
+expression that had come over her face when he suggested the
+possibility of a woman being hidden in his rooms the previous
+Wednesday morning.
+
+"I suggest no reason," he said at last.
+
+Nigel's examination closed, and I thought it prudent to ask for a
+window to be opened and water brought for the Seraph. Sylvia's eyes
+melted in momentary compassion. I walked over and sat beside her at a
+discreet distance from her mother.
+
+"Not worth saving, Sylvia?" I asked.
+
+A sceptical chin raised itself in the air, but the eyes still believed
+in him.
+
+"How did they get hold of me?" she asked, "and how did he find me? How
+_could_ he, if he didn't know all along?"
+
+"Remember Brandon Court," I said.
+
+"Why didn't he mention it?"
+
+I pointed to the Bench.
+
+"My dear child, look at them! Why not talk higher mathematics to a
+boa-constrictor?"
+
+"If he can't make them believe it, why should I?"
+
+"Because you _know_."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything. You know he's in love with you, and you're in love with
+him."
+
+"I'm not!"
+
+Her voice quivered with passion; there was nothing for it but a bold
+stroke. And one risk more or less hardly mattered.
+
+"Can you keep a secret, Sylvia?"
+
+"It depends."
+
+"No. Absolutely?"
+
+"All right."
+
+I lowered my voice to a whisper.
+
+"There _was_ a woman in his rooms last Wednesday, and she is the woman
+I am engaged to marry."
+
+Her look of scorn was caused less by concern for my morals than by
+pity for my simplicity in thinking she would believe such a story.
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"You must. It's your last chance. If you let him go now, you'll lose
+him for ever, and I'm not going to let you blight your life and his,
+if I can stop it. You must make up your mind now. Do you believe me?"
+
+Her expression of scorn had vanished and given place to one of painful
+perplexity.
+
+"I'm not...."
+
+"Do you believe me, Sylvia?"
+
+She hesitated in an agony of indecision, until the moment was lost.
+The water had arrived, and Arthur was dismissing me from the Presence.
+
+"You're not going to arrest us, then?" I said.
+
+"I reserve perfect freedom of action," he answered, in the Front Bench
+manner.
+
+"Quite right," I said. "I only wish you'd reserved the inquisition
+till this boy was in a better state to receive it. Would it interfere
+with your liberty of action if I asked you to say a word of thanks
+either to Aintree, myself, or both? I believe it is usual when a man
+loses his daughter and has her restored to him."
+
+A few minutes more would have tried my temper. Arthur sat down again
+at his table, opened a drawer, and took out a cheque-book.
+
+"According to your story it was Aintree who was chiefly instrumental
+in making the discovery?"
+
+"That was the lie we agreed on," I said.
+
+Arthur wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds, and handed it to the
+Seraph with the words--
+
+"That, I think, clears all obligations between us."
+
+"Except that of manners," I exclaimed. "The House of Commons----"
+
+But he had rung the bell, and was tidying his papers into neat,
+superfluous bundles.
+
+Philip had the courage to shake me by the hand and say he hoped to see
+me again soon. I am not sufficiently cynical to say it was prompted by
+the reflection that Gladys was my niece, because he was every whit as
+cordial to the Seraph.
+
+I shook hands with Sylvia, and found her watching the Seraph fold and
+pocket the two thousand pound cheque.
+
+"He's taking it!" she said.
+
+"Your father should have been ashamed to make the offer. It serves him
+right if his offer's accepted. Don't blame the Seraph. If Nigel and
+your father proceed on the lines they've gone on this afternoon, one
+or both of us will have to cut the country. The Seraph's not made of
+money; he'll want all he can lay hands on. Now then, Sylvia, it's two
+lives you're playing with."
+
+She had not yet made up her mind, and indecision chilled the warmth of
+her eyes and the smile on her lips. I watched the effort, and wondered
+if it would suffice for the Seraph. Then question and answer told
+their tale.
+
+"When shall we see you again?" I heard her ask as I walked to the
+door.
+
+"I can hardly say," came the low reply. "I'm leaving England shortly.
+I shall go across India, and spend some time in Japan--and then visit
+the Islands of the South Seas. It's a thing I've always wanted to do.
+After that? I don't know...."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
+
+      "The instant he entered the room it was plain that all
+      was lost....
+
+      "'I cannot find it,' said he, 'and I must have it. Where
+      is it?... Where is my bench?... Time presses; and I must
+      finish those shoes.'
+
+      "They looked at one another, and their hearts died within
+      them.
+
+      "'Come, come!' said he, in a whimpering miserable way:
+      'let me get to work. Give me my work.'
+
+      "...Carton was the first to speak:
+
+      "'The last chance is gone: it was not much....'"
+
+                  CHARLES DICKENS: "A Tale of Two Cities."
+
+
+As I helped the Seraph out of the house and into a taxi, I was trying
+to string together a few words of sympathy and encouragement. Then I
+looked at his face, and decided to save my breath. Physically and
+mentally he was too hard hit to profit by any consolation I could
+offer. As a clumsy symbol of good intention I held out my hand, and
+had it gripped and retained till we reached Adelphi Terrace.
+
+"Never mind me," he said, in a slow, sing-song voice, hesitating like
+a man speaking an unfamiliar language. "It's you and Joyce we've got
+to consider."
+
+"Don't worry your head, Seraph," I said. "We'll find a way out. You've
+got to be quiet and get well."
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"I've no idea," I answered blankly.
+
+The Seraph sighed and lifted his feet wearily on to the seat opposite.
+
+"You played that last hand well, Toby. I'm afraid you'll have to go on
+playing without any support from me. I'm dummy, I'm only good for two
+possible tricks."
+
+I waited to see the hand exposed.
+
+"I can't find Mavis," he went on. "You see that?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You must ask Joyce to tell you. She spoke a few words this morning,
+and she's getting stronger. If she refuses ... but she won't if you
+ask her."
+
+"If she does?"
+
+"You must go on bluffing Nigel. He doesn't know who's in the flat, and
+old Roden doesn't know either. They'd have searched three days ago,
+they'd have arrested us to-day on suspicion if they hadn't been afraid
+of making fools of themselves. Keep bluffing, Toby. The keener you are
+to get the search over and done with, the more they'll be afraid of a
+mare's nest." The words trailed off in a sigh. "If there's anything I
+can do I'll do it, but I'm afraid you'll find me pretty useless."
+
+"You're going quietly to bed for forty-eight hours," I told him.
+
+He raised no protest, and I heard him murmur, "Saturday night. Sunday
+night. Monday night. It'll be all over then, one way or the other."
+
+On reaching the flat I carried him upstairs, ordered some soup, and
+smoked a cigarette in the hall. Maybury-Reynardson was completing his
+evening inspection, and when he came out I asked for the bulletin.
+
+"It's in the right direction," he told me, "but very, very slow. The
+mind's working back to normal whenever she wakes, and she's been
+talking a little. I'm afraid you must go on being patient."
+
+"Could she answer a question?"
+
+"You mustn't ask any."
+
+"I'm afraid it's absolutely necessary."
+
+"What d'you want to know?"
+
+"The police will search this flat on Monday if we don't find out
+before then where Miss Rawnsley was taken to when she disappeared."
+
+Maybury-Reynardson shook his head.
+
+"You mustn't think of bothering her with questions of that kind. If
+you did, I don't suppose she could help you."
+
+"But you said the mind was normal?"
+
+"Working back to normal. Everything's there, but she can't put it in
+order. The memory larder is full, but her hands are too weak to lift
+things down from the shelves."
+
+"It's a matter of life and death," I urged.
+
+"If it was a matter of eternal salvation I doubt if she could help
+you. Do you dream? Well, could you piece together the fragments of all
+you dreamt last night? You might have done so a moment after waking,
+little pieces may come back to you when some one suggests the right
+train of thought. That's Miss Davenant's condition. To change the
+parallel, her eyes can see, but they see 'through a glass darkly.'"
+
+I thought the matter over while he was examining and prescribing for
+the Seraph.
+
+"We're in a tight corner, Seraph," I said when he had gone. "I don't
+see any other way out, I'm going to take the responsibility of
+disobeying him."
+
+He offered no suggestion, and I walked to the door of Joyce's room and
+put my fingers to the handle. Then I came back and made him open his
+eyes and listen to me.
+
+"I'll take the blame," I said; "but will you see if you can make her
+understand? She's known you longer."
+
+It was not the true reason. When I reached the door I was smitten with
+the fear that she would not recognise me, and my nerve failed.
+
+We explained our intentions to a reluctant nurse; I fidgeted outside
+in the hall and heard the Seraph walk up to the bedside and ask Joyce
+how she was.
+
+"I'm better, thanks," she answered. "Let me see, do I know you?" There
+was a weak laugh. "I should like to be friends with you, you've got
+such nice eyes."
+
+The Seraph took her hand and asked if she knew any one named Mavis
+Rawnsley.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know her. Her father's the Prime Minister. Mavis, yes, I
+know her."
+
+"Do you know where she is?"
+
+"Mavis Rawnsley? She was at the theatre last night. What theatre was
+it? She was in the stalls, and I was in a box. Who else was there?
+Were you? She was with her mother. Where is she now? Yes, I know Miss
+Rawnsley well."
+
+"Do you know where she is now?"
+
+"I expect she's at the theatre."
+
+She closed her eyes, and the Seraph came back to the door, shaking his
+head. I tiptoed into the room, looked round the screen and watched
+Joyce smiling in her sleep. As I looked, her eyes opened and met mine.
+
+"Why, I know you!" she exclaimed. "You're my husband. You took me to
+the theatre last night, when we saw Mavis Rawnsley. We were in a box,
+and she was in the stalls. Some one wanted to know where Mavis was.
+Tell them we saw her at the theatre, will you?"
+
+She held out her hand to me; I bent down, kissed her forehead, and
+crept out of the room. The Seraph was lying on the bed we had made up
+for him in my room. I helped him to undress, and retired to the
+library with a cigar--to forget Joyce and plan the bluffing of Nigel.
+
+My first act was to get into communication with Paddy Culling on the
+telephone.
+
+"Will you do me another favour?" I began. "Well, it's this. I want you
+to get hold of Nigel and take him to lunch or dine to-morrow--Sunday--at
+the Club. Let me know which, and the time. When you've finished eating,
+lead him away to a quiet corner--the North Smoking Room or the
+Strangers' Card Room. Hold him in conversation till I come. I shall
+drop in accidentally, and start pulling his leg. You can help, but do
+it in moderation; we mustn't make him savage--only uncomfortable. You
+understand? Right."
+
+Then I went to bed.
+
+On Sunday morning I started out in the direction of Chester Square,
+and made two discoveries on the way. The first was that our house was
+being unceasingly watched by a tall Yorkshireman in plain clothes and
+regulation boots; the second, that the Yorkshireman was in his turn
+being intermittently watched by Nigel Rawnsley. His opinion of the
+Criminal Investigation Department must have been as low--if not as
+kindly--as my own. On two more occasions that day I found him engaged
+on a flying visit of inspection--to keep Scotland Yard up to the
+Rawnsley mark and answer the eternal question that Juvenal propounded
+and Michael Roden amended for his own benefit and mine at Henley.
+
+Elsie received me with anxious enquiries after her sister. I gave a
+full report, propounded my plan of campaign, and was rewarded by being
+shown the extensive and beautiful contents of her wardrobe. I should
+never have believed one woman could accumulate so many clothes; there
+seemed a dress for every day and evening of the year, and she could
+have worn a fresh hat each hour without repeating herself. My own rule
+is to have one suit I can wear in a bad light, and four that I cannot.
+With hats the practice is even simpler; I flaunt a new one until it is
+stolen, and then wear the changeling until a substitute of even
+greater seediness has been supplied. My instincts are conservative,
+and my hats more symbolical than decorative; for me they typify the
+great, sad law that every change is a change for the worse.
+
+My only complaint against Elsie was that her wardrobe contained too
+much of what university authorities would call the "subfuse" element.
+The most conspicuous garments I could find were a white coat and
+skirt, white stockings and shoes, black hat and veil, and heliotrope
+dust coat. I am no judge whether they looked well in combination, but
+I challenge the purblind to say they were inconspicuous. To my eyes
+the _tout ensemble_ was so striking that I laid them on a chair and
+gazed in wondering admiration until it was time to call up Gartside
+and warn him that I stood in need of luncheon.
+
+Carlton House Terrace had a depressing, derelict appearance that
+foreboded the departure of its lord. All the favourite pictures and
+ornaments seemed to have been stowed away in preparation for India,
+neat piles of books were distributed about the library floor, and
+every scrap of paper seemed to have been tidied into a drawer. We sat
+down a pleasant party of three, and I made the acquaintance of
+Gartside's cousin and aide-de-camp, Lord Raymond Sturling. An
+agreeable fellow he seemed, who put himself and his services entirely
+at my disposal in the event of my deciding to come for a part or all
+of the way. I could only avail myself of his offer to the extent of
+sending him to see if Mountjoy's villa at Rimini was still in the
+market, and if so what his figure was for giving me immediate
+possession.
+
+Gartside himself was as hospitable as ever in offering me every
+available inch on the yacht for the accommodation of myself and any
+friends I might care to bring with me. I ran through the list and
+found myself wondering if Maybury-Reynardson could be persuaded to
+come. I had hardly known him long enough to call him a friend, but he
+had gone out of his way to oblige me in coming to attend Joyce, and on
+general principles I think most big London practitioners are the
+better for a few days at sea at the close of the London season.
+
+I called round in Cavendish Square for a cup of tea, and told him he
+was pulled down and in need of a change.
+
+"Look at the good it did my brother," I said. "Just to Marseilles and
+back. Or if you'll come to Genoa and overland to Rimini, I shall be
+very glad to put you up for as long as you can stay. It's Gartside's
+own yacht, and I'm authorised by him to invite whom I please. He's a
+capital host, and you'll be done to a turn. The only fault I have to
+find with his arrangements is that he carries no doctor, and I'm
+sufficiently middle-aged to be fussy on a point like that. Anybody
+taken ill, you know, anybody coming on board ill, and it would be
+devilish awkward. I shall insist on a doctor. He'll be Gartside's
+guest, but I shall pay his fees, of course, and he can name his own
+figure. What do you think of the idea? We shall be to all intents and
+purposes a bachelor party."
+
+When Maybury-Reynardson's name was first mentioned to me on the
+evening of Joyce's flight, the Seraph had justly described him as a
+"sportsman." Under the grave official mask I could see a twinkling eye
+and a flickering smile.
+
+"It depends on one case of nervous breakdown that I've got on hand at
+present," he said. "If my patient's well enough...."
+
+"She's got to be," I said.
+
+"When do you sail?"
+
+"Friday."
+
+"You can't make it later?"
+
+"Absolutely impossible."
+
+"This is Sunday. I'll tell you when we're a little nearer the day."
+
+"She must be moved on Thursday afternoon."
+
+"Must? Must?" he repeated with a smile. "Whose patient is she?"
+
+"Whose wife's she going to be?" I asked in my turn.
+
+"I suppose it'll be pretty hot," he said. "First week in August. I
+must get some thin clothes."
+
+"Include them in the fee," I suggested.
+
+"Damn the fee!" he answered, as we walked to the door.
+
+Paddy Culling had arranged to give Nigel his dinner at eight. I had
+comfortable time to dress and dine at Adelphi Terrace, and nine-thirty
+found me wandering round the Club in search of company.
+
+"Praise heaven for the sight of a friendly face!" I exclaimed as I
+stumbled across Paddy and Nigel in the North Smoking Room.
+
+"Where was ut ye dined?" asked Paddy, as I pulled up a chair and rang
+for cigars. To a practised ear his brogue was an eloquent war signal.
+
+"In the sick-house," I told him, "Adelphi Terrace."
+
+"Is ut catching?" he inquired. "It's not for my own self I'm asking,
+but Nigel here. I owe ut to empire and postherity to see he runs no
+risks."
+
+I reassured him on the score of posterity.
+
+"He's just knocked up and over-tired," I said, "and I'm keeping him in
+bed till Wednesday or Thursday."
+
+"Then he'll not be walking ye into the Lake District to find Miss
+Mavis for the present," Paddy observed with an eye on Nigel.
+
+"He'll be walking nowhere till Wednesday at earliest," I said with
+great determination.
+
+Paddy cut a cigar, and assumed an air of dissatisfaction.
+
+"I'd have ye remember the days of grace," he grumbled.
+
+I shrugged my shoulders without answering.
+
+"Where's me pound of flesh?" he demanded. "Manin' no disrispec' to
+Miss Mavis," he added apologetically to Nigel.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't help you to find her," I said.
+
+"Can the Seraph?"
+
+"I don't suppose so. In any case he can do nothing for the present."
+
+Paddy returned to his cigar and we smoked in silence till Nigel picked
+up the threads where they had been dropped.
+
+"You say Aintree's ill," he began cautiously. "If I were disposed to
+regard the time of illness as so many _dies non_, would he be in a
+position to find my sister by the end of the week?"
+
+"Frankly, I see no likelihood."
+
+"It's an extra five days."
+
+"What good can they do? Or five weeks for that matter?"
+
+"You should know best."
+
+"I have no more idea where your sister is than you have, and no better
+means of finding out."
+
+"And Aintree?"
+
+"In speaking for myself, I spoke for him. If he knew or had any means
+of finding out he'd tell me."
+
+Paddy flicked the ash off his cigar and entered the firing line.
+
+"When the days of grace have expired, ye'll have yer contract
+unfulfilled?"
+
+"And we shall be prepared to face the consequences."
+
+"Och, yer be damned! Is the Seraph?"
+
+"He can't help himself." I had sowed sufficient good seed and saw no
+profit in staying longer. "I shall see you both to-morrow at noon?"
+
+"Not me," said Paddy. "I've searched the place once."
+
+"You, Nigel?"
+
+"If I think fit," he answered loftily.
+
+"I only ask, because you mustn't worry the Seraph. You can search his
+rooms, but you mustn't try to cross-question him. He's not equal to
+it."
+
+"I think you'd be wise to accept the extension of time."
+
+"My dear man, what's the good? If we can't find your sister, we can't.
+Saturday's no better than Monday. As Monday was the original time,
+you'd better stick to it and get your search over."
+
+"If Aintree's ill...."
+
+"Humbug! Nigel," I said. "If you believe we're harbouring a criminal,
+it's your duty to verify your belief. If you think you can teach
+Scotland Yard its business, bring your detectives and prove your
+superior wisdom. Bring 'em to-morrow; bring 'em to-night if you like,
+and as many as you can get. The more there are," I said, turning at
+the door to fire a last shot, "the more voices will be raised in
+thanksgiving for Nigel Rawnsley."
+
+The following morning I just mentioned to the Seraph that we need
+expect no search-party that day, and then went on to complete certain
+other arrangements. Raymond Sturling called in on the Tuesday morning
+to report his success in the negotiations for Mountjoy's villa at
+Rimini. I rang up my solicitor and told him to conclude all
+formalities, and on the Wednesday afternoon dropped in at Carlton
+House Terrace, and mentioned that Maybury-Reynardson had cleared up
+odds and ends of work and felt justified in accepting my vicarious
+invitation to accompany the Governor of Bombay as far as Genoa. On
+Thursday I called at Chester Square.
+
+Elsie's car was standing at the door when I arrived, and she had paid
+me the compliment of putting on all the clothes I had most admired on
+the previous Sunday. Very slim and pretty she looked in the white coat
+and skirt, and when she smiled I could almost have said it was Joyce.
+The face was older, of course, but that difference was masked when she
+dropped the black veil; the slight figure and fine golden hair might
+have belonged to either sister.
+
+I complimented her on her appearance, and suggested driving round to
+Adelphi Terrace. The Seraph was still rather weak and in need of
+attention, and though I had two nurses in the flat to look after
+Joyce, they would not be there for ever. As we crossed Trafalgar
+Square into the Strand I recommended Elsie to raise her veil.
+
+"Just as I thought," I murmured as we entered Adelphi Terrace. My
+plain-clothes Yorkshireman was watching the house from the opposite
+side of the road; Nigel was watching my plain-clothes Yorkshireman
+from the corner of the Terrace.
+
+"Bow to him," I said to Elsie. "He may not deign to recognise you, but
+he can't help seeing you. Quite good! Now then, remember that sprained
+ankle!"
+
+With a footman on one side and myself on the other, she was half
+carried out of the car, across the pavement and into the house. The
+ankle grew miraculously better when she forgot herself, and started to
+run upstairs; I date its recovery from the moment when we passed out
+of my Yorkshire friend's field of vision.
+
+I said good-bye to the Seraph while Elsie was in Joyce's room. I never
+waste vain tears over the past, but when I saw him for the last time,
+weak, suffering and heart-broken--two large blue eyes gazing at me out
+of a white immobile face--I half regretted we had ever met, and
+heartily wished our parting had been different. Ill as he was, I could
+have taken him; but it would have been an added risk, and above all,
+he refused to come. As at our first meeting in Morocco, he was setting
+out solitary and unfriended--to forget....
+
+Despite our dress-rehearsal the previous day, an hour had passed
+before Joyce appeared in the white coat and skirt, black hat and
+heliotrope dust-coat. She greeted me with a weak, pathetic little
+smile, bent over the Seraph's bed and kissed him, and then suffered me
+to carry her downstairs. As in bringing Elsie into the house, the
+footman and I took each an arm, across the pavement into the car. My
+Yorkshire friend watched us with interest, and I could not find it in
+my heart to grudge him the pleasure. He must have found little enough
+padding to fill out the spaces in his daily report. And all that his
+present scrutiny told him was that a woman's veil was up when she
+entered a house, and down when she left it.
+
+We drove north-west out of London, to the rendezvous fixed by Raymond
+Sturling on the outskirts of Hendon. Maybury-Reynardson awaited us,
+and directed operations while we shifted Joyce into a car with a couch
+already prepared. Her luggage had been brought from Chester Square in
+the morning and was piled on the roof and at the back.
+
+"A _mariage de convenance_," Sturling remarked with a smile, as he saw
+me inspecting the labels.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling. S.Y. _Ariel_, Southampton," was the name and
+destination I found written.
+
+"It may save trouble," he added apologetically. "I thought you
+wouldn't mind."
+
+His foresight was justified. We drove slowly down to Southampton and
+arrived an hour before sunset, Joyce in one car with Maybury-Reynardson,
+Sturling with me in the other. I had anticipated that all ports and
+railway termini would be watched for a woman of Joyce's age and figure,
+and we were not allowed to board the tender without a challenge.
+
+"My wife," Sturling explained brusquely. "Yes, be as quick as you can,
+please. I want to get her on board as soon as possible.
+Sturling--aide-de-camp to Lord Gartside, to Bombay by his own yacht.
+There she is, the _Ariel_, sailing to-morrow. These gentlemen? Mr.
+Merivale and Dr. Maybury-Reynardson. Friends of Lord Gartside. That
+all?"
+
+"All in order, my lord."
+
+"Right away."
+
+As the tender steamed out I turned to mark the graceful lines of the
+_Ariel_. She was a clean, pretty boat at all times, and when I thought
+of the service she was doing two of her passengers, I could have
+kissed every plank of her white decks. Her mainmast flew the burgee of
+the R.Y.S., and the White Ensign fluttered at her stern; I remember
+the official reports had announced that the new governor would proceed
+direct to Bombay, calling only at Suez to coal. The Turkish flag
+flying at the foremast showed that Gartside was taking no steps to
+correct a popular delusion.
+
+"Lady Raymond Sturling's" nurses arrived by an early train on Friday
+morning, followed at noon by Gartside in a special. We sailed at
+three. Paddy Culling sent wireless messages at four, four-thirty and
+five: "Sursum corda" was the first; "Keep your tails up" the second;
+and "Haste to the Wedding" completed the series.
+
+I was not comfortable until we had passed out of territorial waters.
+Any one nurse may leave her patient and walk abroad in search of air
+and exercise: the second must not quit the house till the first has
+returned. I remembered that too late, when our two friends were
+already on board; and until I heard the anchor weighed, I was
+wondering if the same thought had stirred the sluggish imagination of
+the plain-clothes Yorkshireman. Whatever his suspicions, it appears
+that he did not succeed in making them real to Nigel. If he had there
+would have been no undignified raid on Adelphi Terrace next morning,
+and the feelings of one rising young statesman need not have been
+ruffled.
+
+While Maybury-Reynardson was paying Joyce his nightly visit, I paced
+the deck with Gartside, silently and in grateful enjoyment of a cigar.
+As the light at the Needles dwindled and vanished, we became as
+reflective as befitted one man who was leaving England for several
+years, and another who had left her for ever. It was not till we had
+tramped a dozen times up and down that he broke his long silence.
+
+"How did you find Sylvia?" he asked in a tone that showed how his
+thoughts had been occupied.
+
+I told him the story as she herself had heard it, adding as much of
+the earlier history as was necessary to convince him.
+
+"Perhaps I'm not leaving so much behind after all," was his comment.
+"Good luck to the Seraph! He's a nice boy."
+
+"He'll need all the luck he can get," I answered. "You'll get oil and
+water to mingle quicker than you'll bring those two together. Tell me
+how it's to be done, Gartside, and you'll put the coping-stone on all
+your labours."
+
+In the darkness I heard him sigh.
+
+"I can't help you. I'm not a diplomatist, I'm just a lumpy,
+good-tempered ox. Sylvia saw that, bless her! Poor Paddy!" he added
+softly. "He's as fond of her as we any of us were."
+
+I mentioned the trinity of wireless messages.
+
+"That's like Paddy," he said with a laugh. "Well, he's right. You're
+the only one that's come out on top, and good wishes to you for the
+future!"
+
+We shook hands and strolled in the direction of our cabins.
+
+"You don't want thanks," I said, "but if you do you know where to come
+for them."
+
+"Oh well!" I heard him laugh, but there was no laughter in his eyes
+when the light of the chart-room lamp fell on his face. "If I can't
+get what I want, there's some satisfaction in helping a friend to get
+what _he_ wants."
+
+"I'll have that copied out and hung on my shaving-glass," I said. "I
+shall want that text during the next few months."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going to bring Sylvia and the Seraph together," I answered in the
+same tone I had told Joyce I was going to break the Militant Suffrage
+movement.
+
+"And how are you going to do that?"
+
+"God knows!" I replied with a woeful shake of the head.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE RAID
+
+      "I can see you flying before the laughter like ...
+      tremulous leaves before the wind, and the laughter will
+      pursue you to Paris, where they'll make little songs
+      about you on the boulevards, and the Riviera, where
+      they'll sell your photographs on picture postcards. I can
+      see you fleeing across the Atlantic to ... the immensity
+      of America, and there the Yellow Press, pea-green with
+      frenzy, will pile column of ridicule upon column of
+      invective. Oh, ... do you think it isn't worth while to
+      endure six months' hard labour to amuse the world so
+      profoundly?"
+
+                               W.S. MAUGHAM: "Jack Straw."
+
+
+The appropriate milieu for Individualism is a desert island inhabited
+by the Individualist.
+
+Another or others may have expressed the same sentiment in earlier and
+better language: I have become attached to my own form by use and
+habit. The words rise automatically to my lips whenever I think of the
+Davenant women; of Elsie and her obstinate, ill-advised marriage, her
+efforts to regain freedom, the desperate stroke that gave her divorce
+in exchange for reputation, her gallant unyielding attempt to win that
+reputation back.... Or maybe I find myself thinking of Joyce and her
+loyal long devotion to a cause that lost her friends and money, gained
+her hatred and contempt, and threatened her ultimately with illness,
+imprisonment and--well, I prefer not to dwell on the risks she was
+calling down on her foolish young head.
+
+It was a courageous, forlorn-hope individualism--the kind that sets
+your blood tingling and perhaps raises an obstinate lump in your
+throat--but it was wasteful, sadly wasteful. I remember the night
+Elsie joined us at Rimini. I met her at the station, escorted her to
+the Villa Monreale, led her to Joyce's bedroom, watched them meet and
+kiss.... "Gods of my fathers," I murmured, "what have you won, the
+pair of you, for all your courage and endurance?"
+
+The individualism showed its most impracticable angularity when you
+tried to force it into a cooperative, well-disciplined scheme like our
+escape from England. Sometimes I marvel that we ever got away at all;
+You could count on Gartside and Sturling, Maybury-Reynardson and the
+nurses, Culling and the Seraph; they were not individualists. It was
+no small achievement to make Joyce and Elsie answer to the word of
+command. Do I libel poor Joyce in saying she would have proved more
+troublesome had her head ached less savagely and her whole body been
+less weak? I think not. Elsie certainly showed me that the moment my
+grip slackened she was bound by her very nature to take the bit
+between her teeth and bolt to the cliff-edge of disaster.
+
+I blame her no more than I blame a dipsomaniac; I bear her no ill-will
+for causing the one miscarriage in my plans. I am not piqued or
+chagrined--only sorrowful. Had she obeyed orders, we might have seen
+her spared the final humiliation, the last stultification of her
+campaign to win a reputation.
+
+When I called Gartside to witness my intention of moving heaven and
+earth to bring Sylvia and the Seraph into communication, I did not
+mention that I had already taken the first step. We sailed on Friday
+at three, and at three-thirty Culling was to post a letter I had
+written to Sylvia. I have no natural eloquence or powers of
+persuasion, but I did go down on my knees, so to say, and implore her
+again not to let two lives be ruined if she had it in her power to
+avert catastrophe. Only a little sacrifice of pride was demanded, but
+she must unbend further than at their last meeting if she was to
+overcome the Seraph's curious bent of self-depreciation.
+
+Then I frankly worked on her feelings and described the Seraph's
+condition when we left Adelphi Terrace. His nerves had broken down
+during the anxious days before her disappearance; and the strain of
+finding her, the disappointment of her reception after the event, and
+the day by day worry of having Joyce in the house and never knowing
+when to expect a search-warrant or an arrest, had proved far too great
+a burden for his overwrought, sensitive, highly-strung nature.
+
+I said it was no more than common humanity for her to see how he was
+getting on, and made no bones of telling her how bad I thought him.
+Elsie was due to slip out of Adelphi Terrace on the Friday evening,
+catch the nine o'clock boat train to Calais, run direct to the villa
+at Rimini and make all ready for our arrival. I make no secret of the
+fact that when I wrote to Sylvia I was not at all relishing the idea
+of the Seraph lying there with no one but the housekeeper and her
+husband to look after him.
+
+Perhaps Elsie too did not care for that prospect, perhaps she speaks
+no more than the truth in saying he grew gradually worse after our
+departure, perhaps her pent-up individualism was seeking a riotous,
+undisciplined outlet. Nine o'clock came and went without bringing her
+a step nearer the Continental boat train. At ten she was still sitting
+by his bedside, at twelve she had to watch and listen as he began to
+grow light-headed. Not until eight on the Saturday morning did she
+steal away to her sister's deserted room and lie down for a few hours'
+sleep. By that time she had called in her own doctor, veronal had been
+administered, and the Seraph had sunk into a heavy trance-like
+slumber.
+
+He was still sleeping at noon when Sylvia arrived in obedience to my
+letter. Her coming was characteristic. As soon as she had decided to
+swallow her own pride, she summoned witnesses to be spectators of what
+she was doing. Sylvia could never be furtive or other than frank and
+courageous; she told her mother that she was going immediately to
+Adelphi Terrace and going alone.
+
+Opposition was inevitable, but she disregarded it. Lady Roden forbade
+her going, reminding her--I have no doubt--of Rutlandshire
+Morningtons, common respectability, and the Seraph's entire
+unworthiness. I can picture Sylvia standing with one foot impatiently
+tapping the floor, otherwise unmoved, unangered, calm and intensely
+resolute. The homily ended--as is the way of most sermons--when her
+mother had marshalled all arguments, reviewed, dismissed, assembled
+and reinspected them a second and third time. Then Sylvia put on her
+hat, called at a florist's on the way, and presented herself at
+Adelphi Terrace.
+
+The Seraph's man opened the bedroom door and came back to report that
+the patient was still sleeping.
+
+"I've brought him some flowers," she said. "I suppose it's no good
+waiting? You can't say how soon he's likely to wake up?"
+
+Something in her tone suggested that she would like to wait, and the
+man showed her into the library, provided her with papers, and
+withdrew to answer a second ring at the front door bell.
+
+Sylvia was still wandering round the room, glancing at the pictures
+and reading the titles of the books, when her attention was attracted
+by the sound of men's voices raised in altercation. Some one appeared
+to be forcing an entry which the butler was loyally trying to oppose.
+
+"Here's the warrant," said a voice, "properly signed, all in order. If
+you interfere with these officers in the discharge of their duty, you
+do so at your own risk."
+
+Sylvia listened with astonishment that changed quickly to alarm. The
+voice was that of Nigel Rawnsley, speaking as one having authority.
+
+"One of you stay here," he went on, "and see that nobody leaves the
+flat. The other come with me. Take the library first."
+
+The door opened, and for an amazed moment Nigel stood staring at the
+library's sole occupant.
+
+"Sylvia!" he exclaimed. "What on earth brings you here?"
+
+His tone so resembled her mother's that all Sylvia's latent opposition
+and obstinacy were called into play.
+
+"Have you any objection to my being here?" she asked.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It was rather a surprise."
+
+"As I don't always warn you beforehand, I'm afraid a good many things
+I do must come as a surprise to you."
+
+"And to yourself?"
+
+"You must explain that."
+
+"Surely no explanation is needed?"
+
+"No explanation is wanted. We can start level, and I needn't bother to
+explain my presence here."
+
+Nigel hastened to welcome a seeming ally.
+
+"I imagine Aintree could supply that," he said.
+
+She drew herself suddenly erect in a pose that demanded his right to
+use such words. The vindictiveness of his tone and the jealousy of his
+expression warned her that the Seraph lay in formidable peril.
+
+"I want to find what Aintree and his friends have done to my sister,
+and I suppose you have a little account to settle with him in respect
+of an uncomfortable few days you lately spent at Maidenhead."
+
+"Do you imagine he had any hand in that?" she asked contemptuously.
+
+"He knew where to look for you," was the significant answer, "and he
+found that out from the woman he's been hiding in these rooms. As it's
+too much trouble for him to find out where my sister is, I've called
+to gain that information from the lady herself."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Search the flat."
+
+"And if she isn't here?"
+
+"She _was_."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Oh, I admit I didn't see her. It may have been any one. But there's a
+very strong probability, and I'm going on that."
+
+"And if there's no one here now?"
+
+"She must have got away."
+
+"Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself."
+
+"What d'you mean?"
+
+"What are you going to do if you find no one?"
+
+"If there's no woman now, the woman who got away was Miss Davenant. If
+Aintree has been harbouring Miss Davenant...." He paused delicately.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm afraid he'll have some difficulty in persuading a judge not to
+sentence him to a considerable term of imprisonment."
+
+"You'll have him arrested?"
+
+"That is one of the regrettable but necessary preliminaries. _I_
+shan't do anything."
+
+"Except rub your hands?" she taunted.
+
+"Not even that," he answered with supercilious patience. Then, seeing
+no profit in pursuing his conversation with Sylvia, he raised his
+voice to summon the detectives into the library. "We'll take this room
+first," he told her, "and then leave you undisturbed."
+
+The detectives did not answer his summons immediately and he turned to
+fetch them from the hall. As he did so Sylvia saw him start with
+surprise. Two paces behind them, an unseen auditor of their
+conversation, stood Elsie Wylton. With a slight bow to Sylvia she
+entered the library and in the Seraph's interests requested Nigel to
+carry out his search as quickly and silently as possible.
+
+"He's sleeping now," she said, "but he's been awake most of the night,
+so please don't disturb him. If you'll search the other rooms, I'll
+stay here and talk to Miss Roden."
+
+Nigel retired with a nicely blended expression of amazement,
+humiliation and menace. As the ring of his footsteps grew gradually
+fainter, Elsie turned to Sylvia with outstretched hands.
+
+"I'm so glad you've come," she began. "I was afraid...."
+
+"How long has he been ill?" interrupted Sylvia in a voice of stern
+authority.
+
+"It's some time now...."
+
+"And how long have you been here?"
+
+There was an unmistakable challenge in her tone. Elsie's thoughts had
+been so much concerned with the Seraph, her mind was so braced in
+readiness to meet Nigel's attack, that for the moment her own share in
+the quarrel with Sylvia was forgotten. The library door stood open;
+outside in the hall the amateur detective was directing operations.
+
+"Some time," she answered with studied vagueness.
+
+The simmering suspicions of eight ambiguous weeks were brought to
+boiling point in Sylvia's mind.
+
+"How long?" she repeated.
+
+Elsie leaned forward, a finger to her lips; before she could speak,
+the hall was filled with the creak of heavy boots and Nigel appeared
+in the doorway.
+
+"She's not here," he announced.
+
+"Who were you looking for?" Elsie inquired, masking her impatience at
+his untimely return.
+
+"Your sister."
+
+"Oh, I could have told you that."
+
+"She _was_ here."
+
+"Was she? What a pity you didn't come sooner! Why, Mr. Merivale
+invited you on Sunday, he told me. When he met you at your Club. I'm
+afraid you and the--er--gentleman outside have had your journey in
+vain."
+
+Nigel's face flushed at the taunt and a certain uncomfortable prospect
+of polite criticism from the Criminal Investigation Department he had
+undertaken to educate.
+
+"Not altogether," he said.
+
+"No?"
+
+"We've found Aintree."
+
+"Ah; yes. I wanted to get him away to the sea, but he's not fit to
+move yet."
+
+"He may have to."
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"A warrant for his arrest won't wait for him to get well--and away."
+
+Nigel had never learned to disguise his feelings, and the threatening
+tone of his voice left no doubt in Elsie's mind that he was rapidly
+becoming desperate and would double his stakes to retrieve his earlier
+losings.
+
+"So you're arresting him?" she said.
+
+"He has obligingly piled up so much evidence against himself," he
+answered with a lift of the eyebrows.
+
+"The same kind of evidence that led you to search these rooms for my
+sister?"
+
+Nigel stood rigidly on his dignity.
+
+"That will be forthcoming at the proper time and place."
+
+"Unlike my sister," she rejoined in a mischievous undertone.
+
+"Possibly she may be forthcoming when Aintree has been arrested."
+
+A provoking smile came to disturb the last remnants of gravity on
+Elsie's face, lending dimples to her cheeks and laughter to her eyes.
+
+"Possibly he won't be arrested," she remarked.
+
+"You will prevent it?"
+
+"I leave that to you."
+
+"It's a matter for the police. I have no part or lot in it."
+
+Elsie laughed unrestrainedly at his stiff dignity.
+
+"You'll move heaven and earth to spare yourself a second humiliation
+like the present," she told him with a wise shake of the head. "It's
+ridiculous enough to search a man's rooms for a woman who isn't there,
+but you can't--you really can't arrest a man for harbouring a woman
+when there's no shred of evidence to show she was ever under the same
+roof."
+
+Her mockery deepened the flush on Nigel's thin skin to an angry spot
+of red on either cheek.
+
+"You forget that several of us visited this place the day after Miss
+Roden disappeared," he answered.
+
+Elsie looked him steadily in the eyes.
+
+"I have every reason to remember it."
+
+"Your sister was here then."
+
+"You saw her?"
+
+"I heard her."
+
+"You heard _a_ woman."
+
+"It was your sister or yourself."
+
+"Or one of a million others."
+
+Nigel thumped out his points on the top of a revolving bookcase.
+
+"I had the house watched. No woman entered or left till yesterday.
+Barring two nurses, and they're accounted for. You or your sister must
+have left here yesterday."
+
+"And not come back?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, that makes it much easier, doesn't it? If one went out and
+never came back, and you find the other here the following day, it
+looks ... I mean to say, a perfectly impartial outsider might think,
+that it was my sister who got away and I who remained behind."
+
+"Exactly. And it's on the same simple reasoning that Aintree will be
+arrested."
+
+Nigel crooked his umbrella over his arm and slowly drew on his gloves.
+It was a moment of exquisite, manifest triumph. Elsie stood disarmed
+and helpless; Sylvia was too proud to ask terms of such a conqueror.
+
+"All the same, what a pity you didn't come before the bird was
+flown!" Elsie suggested with the sole idea of gaining time.
+
+"It's something to have found Aintree at home," Nigel returned.
+
+"And you're going to arrest him for harbouring my sister?" Elsie
+walked into the hall and stood with her fingers on the handle of the
+door. Her heart was beating so fast that she felt sure she must be
+betraying emotion in her face. There was only one way of saving the
+Seraph, and she had resolved to take it. That it involved the
+immediate and irrevocable sacrifice of her reputation did not disturb
+her: she was filled with pity and doubt--pity for Sylvia, and doubt
+whether Nigel would accept her sacrifice. "I suppose--you're quite
+certain--he wasn't harbouring--_me_?"
+
+Nigel's unimaginative mind hardly weighed the possibility.
+
+"There's no warrant against you."
+
+"Fortunately not."
+
+"Then why should he harbour you?"
+
+Elsie waited till her lips and voice were under control. Then she
+turned away from Sylvia and faced him with the steadiness of
+desperation.
+
+"It's a very wicked world, Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+There was a moment's silence: then Sylvia leapt to her feet with
+cheeks aflame.
+
+"D'you mean you were here the whole time?"
+
+"Some one was. Ask Mr. Rawnsley."
+
+"Were you?"
+
+"D'you think it likely?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+Elsie hardened her heart to play the unwelcome role to its bitter end.
+
+"You know my character, you've not had time to forget my divorce or
+the way I thrust myself under the noses of respectable people. Have I
+got much more bloom to lose?"
+
+"It's not true! The Seraph ... he _wouldn't_!"
+
+"You used to see us about together."
+
+"There's nothing in that!"
+
+"Enough to make you cut him at Henley." Each fresh word fell like a
+lash across Sylvia's cheeks, but as long as Nigel dawdled irresolutely
+at the door it was impossible to end the torture.
+
+"_Will_ you say whether you were here the whole time?" she demanded of
+Elsie.
+
+"'Course she wasn't," Nigel struck in. "There are convenances even in
+this kind of life. Merivale was here the whole time."
+
+"_Was_ he?" Elsie asked. Every new question seemed to suck her deeper
+down.
+
+"I have his word and the evidence of my own eyes."
+
+"You know he was actually living here? Not merely dropping in from
+time to time? It's important, my reputation seems to hang on it. If I
+was the woman Lord Gartside found, and Mr. Merivale didn't happen to
+be living here to chaperon us, the Seraph couldn't have been
+harbouring my sister, but it's good-bye to the remains of my good
+name. And if Mr. Merivale _was_ here, I couldn't have been living here
+too, and the Seraph may have harboured one criminal or fifty. Which
+was it? I don't like to guess. Mr. Rawnsley, just tell me
+confidentially what you believe yourself."
+
+Nigel bowed stiffly and prepared to leave the room.
+
+"As the conduct of the case is not in my hands," he answered loftily,
+"my opinion is of no moment."
+
+Elsie held the door open for him, shaking her head and smiling
+mischievously to herself.
+
+"So there's nothing for it but a general arrest? Well, _che sera
+sera_: I suppose it'll be all over in a week or two, and then we shall
+be let out in time to see the fun. It'll be worth it. I wish women
+were admitted to your Club, it 'ud be so amusing to hear your friends
+chaffing you about your great mare's nest. 'Well, Rawnsley, what's
+this I hear about your giving up politics and going to Scotland Yard?'
+Men are such cats, aren't they? Every one would start teasing you at
+the House, the thing 'ud get into the papers, they'd hear of it in
+your constituency. Can you picture yourself addressing a big meeting
+and being heckled? A woman getting up and asking how you crushed the
+great militant movement and brought all the ringleaders to book? One
+or two people would laugh gently, and the laughter would spread and
+grow louder as every one joined in. They'd laugh at you in private
+houses and clubs, and the House of Commons. They'd laugh at you in the
+streets. Funny men with red noses and comic little hats would come on
+at the music halls and imitate you. They'd laugh and laugh till their
+sides ached and the tears streamed down their cheeks, and you'd try to
+live it down and find you couldn't, and in the end you'd have to leave
+England and live abroad, until they'd found something else to laugh
+at. You're going? Not arresting us now? Oh, of course, you haven't got
+the proper warrant. Well, I expect we shall be here when you come
+back. Good-bye, and good luck to you in your new career!"
+
+The door closed heavily behind his indignant back, and Elsie turned a
+little wearily to Sylvia, bracing herself for an explanation that
+would be as hard as her recent battle. The mockery had died out of her
+voice and the laughter out of her eyes.
+
+"Shall I go and see if the Seraph's awake yet?" she temporised, "or
+would you prefer to leave a message?"
+
+Sylvia tried to speak, but no words would come--only a dry, choking
+sob of utter misery and disillusionment. With hasty steps she crossed
+to the door and fumbled blindly for the handle.
+
+"Miss Roden! Sylvia!"
+
+"_Don't_ call me that!"
+
+"I'm sorry. Miss Roden, I've got something to say to you!"
+
+"I don't want to hear it, I only want to get away!"
+
+"You must listen, your whole life's at stake--and the Seraph's, too."
+
+The mention of his name brought her to a momentary standstill.
+
+"What is it?" she demanded.
+
+"You must shut that door."
+
+"I won't."
+
+Elsie wrung her hands in desperation. Outside on the landing, three
+paces from where they were standing, Nigel Rawnsley had paused to
+light a cigarette.
+
+"It's about--the woman who was here," she whispered as he began to
+descend the stairs.
+
+"Was it you?"
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"No, say it! say it! Yes or no."
+
+The sound of Nigel's descending footsteps had abruptly ceased at the
+angle of the stairs.
+
+"For God's sake come back inside here a minute!" Elsie implored her.
+
+"I won't, it's no good; I shouldn't believe you whatever you said. If
+you weren't here, why did you say you were? And if you were---- Oh,
+let me go, let me go!"
+
+With a smothered sob she broke away from Elsie's restraining hand and
+rushed precipitously down the stairs. Nigel tried to walk level with
+her, but she passed him and hurried out into the street. Elsie closed
+the door and walked with a heavy heart into the library. On a table by
+the window reposed the bouquet of flowers that Sylvia had
+brought--lilies, late roses and carnations, all white as the Seraph
+loved them. Taking them in her hand, she tiptoed out of the room and
+across the hall to the Seraph's door. He was still sleeping, but awoke
+in the early afternoon and inquired whether any one had called.
+
+"The search-party," Elsie told him, forcing a smile.
+
+"Who was there?"
+
+"Young Mr. Rawnsley and two detectives."
+
+"Was that all?"
+
+The pathetic eagerness of his tone cut her to the quick.
+
+"Wasn't it enough?" she asked indifferently.
+
+The Seraph shielded his eyes from the light with one hand.
+
+"I don't know. Sometimes I used to think I knew when other
+people--some people--were near me. I fancied--when I was asleep--I
+suppose it must have been a dream--I don't know--I fancied there was
+some one else quite close."
+
+He turned restlessly on the bed and caught Elsie's fingers in a
+bloodless, wasted hand.
+
+"How did you keep the search-party out?" he inquired.
+
+"I didn't. They came in, and looked into every room. For some
+unaccountable reason," she added ironically, "Joyce was nowhere to be
+found."
+
+"Were they surprised to see you here?"
+
+"A little. I told them you were seedy and I'd called to inquire."
+
+The Seraph lay silent till he had gathered sufficient strength to go
+on talking.
+
+"I suppose they really thought you'd been here the whole time?"
+
+"Oh no!"
+
+"But how else...."
+
+"I don't know," Elsie interrupted quickly. "You must ask _them_ who
+the woman was Mr. Rawnsley heard the first time he was here. They
+couldn't say it was me without suggesting that you and I were both
+compromised."
+
+She sprinkled some scent on a handkerchief and bathed his forehead.
+
+"Do you think you can get some more sleep, Seraph? I want to get you
+well as soon as possible, and then I must take you abroad. London in
+August isn't good for little boys."
+
+"Where shall we go?"
+
+"I must join Toby and Joyce at Rimini."
+
+The Seraph sighed and closed his eyes.
+
+"I can't go there yet. They'll be--frightfully happy--wrapped up in
+each other--all that sort of thing. I don't want to see them yet."
+
+Elsie dropped no hint of the time that must elapse before Joyce was
+strong again or "frightfully happy."
+
+"Where shall it be then?" she asked.
+
+The Seraph pressed her fingers to his lips.
+
+"You go there, Elsie. I must travel alone. I shall go to the East. I
+shan't come back for some time. If ever."
+
+The effort of talking and the trend of the conversation had made him
+restless. Elsie smoothed his pillow, and rose to leave the room.
+
+As he watched her walk to the door, his eyes fell for the first time
+on the bouquet of roses and lilies.
+
+"Who brought those?" he inquired.
+
+"I found them in the library," she answered.
+
+"Is there no name?"
+
+For a moment she pretended to look for a card, then shook her head
+without speaking. As she saw him lying in bed, she wondered if he
+would ever know the price at which his freedom from arrest had been
+purchased. Of her own sacrifice she thought little; it was but
+generous payment of a long outstanding debt. All her imagination was
+concentrated on Sylvia--her sanguine, happy arrival, the morning's
+long agony, her hopeless, agonised departure.
+
+"And no message?" the Seraph persisted with a mixture of eagerness and
+disappointment.
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder who they can be from."
+
+"One of your numerous admirers, I suppose," Elsie answered carelessly.
+Then she opened the door, walked wearily to her own room, and
+tried--unsuccessfully--to cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+RIMINI
+
+    "We left our country for our country's good."
+
+              GEORGE BARRINGTON: _Prologue_.
+
+
+We arrived in Rimini at the end of the first week in August--Joyce,
+her two nurses, Maybury-Reynardson and I. Elsie joined us as soon as
+we were comfortably settled in the villa, and has stayed on week after
+week, month after month, tending her poor sister with a devotion that
+touched my selfish, hardened old heart. Dick came for a few days
+before the beginning of the law term; otherwise we have been a party
+of three, as the doctor and nurses returned to England as soon as
+Joyce appeared to be out of danger.
+
+Rimini turns cold at the beginning of November, and we have had to
+make arrangements for going into winter quarters. Cairo and the
+Riviera are a little public for two escaped criminals, but I hear
+there is a tolerable hotel at Taormina; and as Joyce has never been in
+Sicily before, we might spend at least the beginning of our honeymoon
+there. For myself, I do not mind where we go so long as we can escape
+from Rimini. I want no unnecessary reminders of the last three months,
+the weary waiting, the frequent false dawns of convalescence, the
+regular relapses. They have been bad months for Joyce, but I venture
+to think they were worse for Elsie and myself. In my own case there
+definitely came an early day when my nervous system showed signs of
+striking work; it was then that I embarked on my first and last
+venture in prose composition.
+
+When she is well enough to be bothered with such vain trivialities, I
+shall present my manuscript to Joyce. I hope she will read it, for I
+have intended it for her eyes alone; and if she rejects the task, I
+shall feel guilty of having wasted an incredible amount of good sermon
+paper. And when she has read it, she must light a little fire and burn
+every sheet of it; not even Elsie must see it, though she has been
+instrumental in giving me information over the last chapters that I
+should not otherwise have obtained.
+
+I think my decision is wise and necessary. In part the book is too
+intimate an account of Sylvia's character and the Seraph's feelings
+for me to be justified in making it public: in part, the pair of us
+have already done sufficient injury to Rodens and Rawnsleys without
+giving the world our candid opinion of either family: in part, we have
+to remember that during the last eight months, wherever we found the
+law of England obtruding itself on our gaze, we broke it with a light
+heart and untroubled conscience. There is not the least good in taking
+the world into our confidence in the matter of these little
+transgressions.
+
+In a week's time there will be a quiet wedding at the British
+Consulate; it will take place in the presence of a Consul who has
+treated me with such uniform kindness that I have sometimes wondered
+if he has ever heard of such things as extradition orders. Our
+marriage will be the last chapter of one phase in my life. It opened
+on a day when I walked up the steps of the Club, and paused for a
+moment to gaze at the altered face of Pall Mall and read on a
+contents-bill that the old militants had broken every window on the
+east side of Bond Street, interrupted a meeting, and burnt down an
+Elizabethan house in Hertfordshire. "Shocking," I remember thinking,
+"and quite unimpressive." Before I was twelve hours older, Fate had
+introduced me to a young woman whose machinations may or may not have
+been infinitely more shocking; they were certainly not unimpressive.
+
+The closing scenes of the Militant campaign are soon given. Elsie left
+London and joined us here as soon as the Seraph was fit to travel.
+That was three days after Nigel's second raid. They must have been
+anxious days, as our rising young statesman seems to have been torn
+between a quite bloodthirsty lust for revenge and a morbid horror of
+another fiasco as humiliating as his search-party. Elsie went round by
+Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for
+Bombay and came overland to Rimini. When I met her and heard the
+details of her flight, I could tell her that all danger was over,
+and--if Justice had not been done--the stolen goods had at least been
+restored.
+
+The news reached us as we came out of the Bay. Gartside and I were on
+deck, watching the sun strike golden splinters out of the hock-bottle
+towers of the royal palace at Cintra. The wireless operator came down
+with a tapped message that Mrs. Millington had revealed the
+whereabouts of Mavis Rawnsley and young Paul Jefferson. He added that
+the police had so far discovered no trace of that hardened
+criminal--Miss Joyce Davenant.
+
+When Elsie joined us and told me the story of the Rawnsley raid, I
+could not help thinking once again, "_Plus ca change, plus c'est la
+meme chose_." The gallant fight she had made for freedom and
+reputation ended in disaster, and she left England branded with the
+stigma that the Divorce Court had striven to impose and we had fought
+tooth and nail to remove. Joyce's struggle for the suffrage ended, as
+she now knows, in putting the suffrage further from the forefront of
+practical politics than it has been for a generation. When the
+recording angel allots to each one of us our share of responsibility
+in moulding the face of history, what effective change will be
+credited to the united or separate efforts of Rawnsleys and Rodens,
+Seraphs, Davenants and Merivales?
+
+Two results stand out. The first is a marriage that will be celebrated
+at the Consulate in a week's time, the second is a listless letter
+penned in exile, signed by the Seraph and dated from Yokohama. Joyce
+knows I am tolerably fond of her, and will acquit me of speaking
+rhetorically if I say that I would wipe the last eight months--and all
+they mean to us both--from the pages of Time, if I could spare the
+Seraph what he has been through since I dined with him that first
+evening at the Ritz. Here is the letter, and no one will be surprised
+to learn that I spent a melancholy day after reading it.
+
+"I send you the last chapters of Volume III. As you've waded through
+the earlier stuff, you may care to see the record brought up to date.
+I call it 'The End' because there's nothing more to write, and if
+there were, I shouldn't write it. Some day I suppose I may have to
+write again, when my present money (Roden's money) is exhausted. Not
+till then.
+
+"India was one disappointment, and Japan another, though the fault, I
+imagine, lay in my lack of appreciation. The South Seas will be a
+third. '_Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_.' I don't
+want to move on, but I can't stand Yokohama any longer.
+
+"When I get to San Francisco I shall probably cross the States,
+arriving in New York at the end of December. Then I suppose one has to
+see this Panama Canal. After that, God knows.
+
+"Before I left England I was looking for the MS. of the earlier
+chapters of Vol. III. I couldn't find them. Did you by any chance get
+them mixed up in your luggage? If so, please destroy them at once,
+with the new chapters, as soon as you have read them. Don't let
+anybody see them, even Joyce. In this I depend on your friendship and
+honour.
+
+"I hope Joyce is all right again now. Give my love to her and Elsie,
+and take my best wishes for yourself. You--I suppose--are a fixture at
+Rimini, or at any rate out of England. I can't answer for myself, but
+I don't expect we shall meet again. You must have found me a
+depressing host in London. I'm sorry. Good-bye."
+
+He said that even Joyce was not to see the third volume--put me on my
+honour, in fact--and see it she shall not. There is another reason. I
+read those last chapters and then went through the whole volume from
+beginning to end. Without exaggeration the effect was overwhelming--his
+style is so artless, his pathos so unpremeditated. I felt as if I had
+been re-reading Hardy's most poignant novels--"Tess" and "Jude" and "A
+Pair of Blue Eyes." It was horrible. I went up to my room, lit the fire
+and prepared for the holocaust.
+
+Then I was tempted. Yes, he puts me on my honour, depends on my
+friendship, all that sort of thing.... But I did not burn a sheet. It
+was a chilly evening, I lit a cigar, and waited for the pyre to burst
+into destructive flame. As I watched and meditated, Sylvia's little
+face seemed to look at me out of the fire, the black coals crowning
+her forehead as I used to see it crowned with her own lustrous hair. I
+thought of our last meeting when she struggled with her devils of
+pride and unbelief; and of her meeting with Elsie when she came in
+hope and left in humiliation. I confess I love Sylvia very
+dearly--love her as all men love her--for her beauty, her queenliness
+and clean, passionate pride; love her because I know something of her
+loneliness, her passion for service, and the repeated rejections of
+her sacrifices. And I love her a little more on my own account,
+because she talked to me as if I had been her own sister, and I
+perhaps know--better than any one--what she must have been through
+during those sad, mad months in England.
+
+Well, I broke faith with the Seraph and wrote her a line of overture.
+I was perhaps a fool to do it, as I had already had evidence in plenty
+of my incompetence to play the _role_ of Providence. "I am sending you
+the MS. of a book," I told her. "It is the third volume of Gordon
+Tremayne's 'Child of Misery'. I know you have read the first two
+volumes, for we have discussed and admired them together a dozen
+times. Did you ever suspect who the author was?
+
+"In telling you it was the Seraph, I am breaking my word to him and
+running the risk of being branded and disowned. I must tell you,
+though, to explain the existence of the third volume. I watched it
+being written, day by day. That evening on the Cher, when he
+anticipated some words you were going to say, the words had already
+been written down as part of the current chapter. I saw him brought up
+short when you were spirited away and the connection was broken. Most
+wonderful of all, I was present when the connection was re-established
+and he jumped up like one possessed, exclaiming, 'Sylvia wants me!'
+
+"When you have read these pages, you will not be in a position to
+doubt any longer. He loves you as no woman was ever loved before, and
+in him you have found the half that completes and interprets your
+'_ame incomprise_.' Get him back, Sylvia. I don't know how it's to be
+done, but you must use your woman's wit to find a way. I'm asking for
+his sake and yours, not for mine--though I would give much to see 'The
+Child of Misery' growing to happier manhood.
+
+"I am afraid you will say I am hardly the man to ask anything of you
+or yours. The Rodens and Merivales have hardly made a success of their
+recent relationship. But I should like to be forgiven. What is my
+crime? That I helped to keep justice from touching a woman who had
+done you and your family a great wrong. Well, Sylvia, you'd have done
+the same thing and told the same lies, had you been in my place and
+had you wanted Joyce as badly as I wanted her. So will you forgive me
+and be friends? And if you forgive me, will you forgive the woman
+who's going to be my wife in a few days' time? I must reconcile myself
+to the idea of being estranged from the rest of your family, but
+(between ourselves) I'll let 'em all go if you'll write and say Joyce
+and I are not quite such monsters of iniquity as you may have thought
+us.
+
+"One thing more. When you've read the third volume, you will no longer
+doubt that Mrs. Wylton's presence in Adelphi Terrace was due to
+charitable impulse towards Joyce and the Seraph. And you ought to
+think well of any one who played the Good Samaritan to the Seraph.
+Don't try to rehabilitate her character in public; it can only be done
+at a risk to the Seraph's personal safety. And in any case you won't
+convince a man like Nigel or the men he's already told the story to.
+
+"Return me the MS. when you've read it, will you? I was entrusted with
+its destruction, and put on honour not to let another soul read it.
+You see how I keep my trust. The worst thing you can say of me is what
+I've already said of myself--that most damning of all judgments--that
+I meant well."
+
+I sent that letter to Sylvia nine days ago, and received her reply
+this morning. She returned me the MS., and I burnt it--with the
+knowledge that I was destroying one of the greatest literary treasures
+of this generation.... Well, they had to do the same with some of
+Ruskin's letters.
+
+"I wish you had not told me to send you back the book," she began. "I
+should have liked to keep it. Or rather--I don't know--I half wish you
+hadn't sent it at all. The time that has passed since the beginning of
+August has been rather hard to bear, and the book has only turned
+misgiving into certainty.
+
+"Of course I forgive you! As if there were anything to forgive! And
+Miss Davenant too. I hope she is better now. Will you ask her to
+accept my love and best wishes for the future? And of course I include
+you. We were good friends, weren't we? As I said we should be the
+first time we met. Only I said then that you would find me worth
+having as a friend, and I'm afraid I did everything I could to
+disprove it. You stood me awfully well. I think you knew most of the
+dark corners in my mean little soul--and if you did, perhaps you see
+that I didn't do much beyond showing my true nature.
+
+"This isn't a pose--I'm really--well, I was going to say 'broken'--but
+I hope I'm a little more tolerant. You'd hardly recognise me if you
+saw me, there's little enough of the 'Queen Elizabeth' about me now.
+It's a horrid, flat world, and I wish I could find something in it to
+interest me. May I ask for just one good mark? You wrote to me when
+you left England, telling me to swallow my pride and go to see the
+Seraph. Well, it was a struggle, but I did go--as you know. When I got
+there, I seemed to find more than I could bear, and so of course
+everything went wrong. But I did try, and you will give me my one
+little good mark, won't you? I want it.
+
+"Mother says I'm run down and in need of a change, so Phil's taking me
+over to the United States at the beginning of December. There's a sort
+of Parliamentary Polytechnic Tour to Panama, every one who can get
+away is going to see the Canal. I don't in the least want to go, but I
+suppose the States can hardly be duller than England, and as long as
+mother thinks I must have a change, change I must have. If it isn't
+Panama it will be somewhere worse.
+
+"We shall spend Christmas in New York. Will you send me a letter of
+good wishes to the Fifth Avenue Hotel? And tell me where you are going
+to settle permanently and whether you will let me come and see you. If
+your wife will not mind, I should like to see you both again--well and
+happy, I hope. Somebody must be happy in this world, or it wouldn't go
+on. I don't want to lose you as a friend; I'm feeling lonely enough as
+it is.
+
+"I am hardly likely to see the Seraph again, but if you meet him, I
+should like you to give him a message. Say it is from a woman who did
+him a great wrong: say she now knows the wrong she did him and has
+been punished for it. Tell him you know how much she hates ever
+apologising or admitting she was wrong, but that she wants him to know
+of her apology before she finally passes out of his memory. Will you
+tell him that? It won't do any good, but it will make me more
+comfortable in my mind."
+
+At the bottom of the page six words had been scratched out. I did not
+mean to read them, but the obliteration was incomplete, and the
+firelight shining up through the paper enabled me to decipher: "Oh, my
+God, I am miserable." Then followed the signature: "Affectionately
+yours (may I sign myself 'affectionately'?) Sylvia."
+
+After reading her letter I concentrated my thoughts on the question
+how to blot out time, annihilate space, bridge two continents, and
+bring two proud, sore, sensitive spirits into communion. My method of
+attaining concentration of mind is to think of something different and
+wait for inspiration to solve my original problem. Joyce may remember
+the day when I stumped into her room and talked at large of honeymoons
+and winter resorts. That was the time when my mind was concentrated on
+the problem of Sylvia and the Seraph. She will further recollect
+assenting to my suggestion of a villa at Taormina.
+
+On leaving her room I strolled round to the bank to see if they had
+agents in Sicily or could give me any information on the subject of a
+suitable villa. They were kind but helpless, and eventually I thought
+it the safer course to write for rooms at an hotel and look for a
+villa at our leisure. Ambling out of the bank, I wandered in the
+direction of the telegraph office.
+
+Inspiration came in the interval between wiring for rooms and engaging
+berths on the Wagon-Lits--I knew it would. As soon as our places were
+booked I walked back to the telegraph office and cabled to the Seraph
+at Yokohama. "Letter and enclosures received with thanks," I wired.
+"All nonsense about not meeting again. Will you lunch Christmas Day,
+one-thirty? Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.--TOBY."
+
+Then I came back to the Villa Monreale.
+
+Joyce's first words were to tell me I had been away a very long time.
+Flattering as this was, I had to justify myself and account for every
+moment of my absence. She wanted to know what I had wired to the
+Seraph, and as husbands and wives _in posse_ should have no secrets
+from each other, I showed her the draft of my cable. Her face was a
+study.
+
+"My dear!" she exclaimed, "we can't go all the way to New York even to
+see the Seraph. You suggested Taormina when you left here...."
+
+"Quite so," I assented.
+
+"Did you order rooms?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then we can't go to New York."
+
+"I never proposed to."
+
+"Why did you invite the Seraph to lunch with us there?"
+
+"I didn't."
+
+"Toby!"
+
+She was not satisfied till I spelt out the draft of the cable word by
+word; and then she rather resented my remarks about the incurable
+sloppiness of the female mind. As a matter of fact, I cannot claim
+originality for the phrase; I believe a Liberal Prime Minister coined
+it as a terse description of his opponents' mental shortcomings. I
+only borrowed it for the nonce.
+
+"Will--you--lunch--Christmas Day----" I pointed out. "It doesn't say
+we shall be there to receive him."
+
+"I don't understand it," she said rather wearily. I have since
+honourably resolved not to be guilty of facetiousness when we are
+married, but at the moment I was rather pleased with my little
+stratagem.
+
+"I'm arranging for some one to be there to meet him," I said.
+
+"Who?" she asked.
+
+"A young woman named Sylvia Roden," I answered.
+
+And even then her appreciation of my diplomacy was grudging.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+            TRISTRAM.
+
+    "Raise the light, my page! that I may see her--
+      Thou art come at last, then, haughty Queen?
+    Long I've waited, long I've fought my fever;
+      Late thou comest, cruel hast thou been."
+
+            ISEULT.
+
+    "Blame me not, poor sufferer! that I tarried;
+      Bound I was, I could not break the band.
+    Chide not with the past, but feel the present!
+      I am here--we meet--I hold thy hand."
+
+            MATTHEW ARNOLD: "Tristram and Iseult."
+
+
+I had intended to write no more, but as we left the Consulate to-day
+after our wedding, a cable was handed me by my smiling Italian valet.
+
+"Paddy Culling for a bob!" I said, as I opened it and prepared for
+some whimsical message of congratulation.
+
+I was wrong. The cable was my reply from Yokohama.
+
+"No offence intended," it ran. "Delighted lunch as
+suggested.--SERAPH."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page   4: repellant replaced with repellent               |
+    | Page  52: "ths same advice" replaced with                 |
+    |           "the same advice"                               |
+    | Page  90: been been replaced with been                    |
+    | Page  95: torso replaced with trio                        |
+    | Page 119: "because its unique" replaced with              |
+    |           "because it's unique"                           |
+    | Page 125: femineity replaced with femininity              |
+    | Page 127: dispise replaced with despise                   |
+    | Page 233: Frauelein replaced with Fraeulein                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  66: A sackbut is a trombone from the Renaissance    |
+    |           and Baroque eras.                               |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
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